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Does anyone on these boards no how or where one might buy videogames at wholesale for a small business ?

If you have a legitimate B&M game business contact Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft and ask for a list of distributors.

Also note that wholesale for a $50 game is about $42-$45 depending on quantity.

That can't be real??? how can you make money when your profit is onlt $6 bucks and what about 3 months later when the games are going for $39 bucks??? Hell!! what about when their going for $7 bucks!!??

amazing, isnt it? thats why places like Gamestop and EB sell action figures and used games, to make up for that very small profit.

Originally Posted by jetblac That can't be real??? how can you make money when your profit is onlt $6 bucks. . .

If getting brand new games for $5-$10 was as easy as going to a distributer (instead of a retail store), we'd all be doing it, and all of the retail game shops would go out of business in no time. Unfortunately, the retail business is much, much more complicated than that.

You think video games is bad imagine grocery stores, how much do you think they're making on a 53 cent can of beans? That's why they have started selling games, movies, lawn chairs and 3 man canoes.

But grocery stores sell massive quantities of food. Ever notice those lines, and how much people throw into their carts? What boggles my mind is how gamestop stays afloat. We have several of them in my area, and whenever I'm in one, I see maybe one sale per visit while I'm in there 10 minutes. Assuming a $6 profit on a transaction, they make $60 an hour? Amazing that they can survive after paying the employees, lights, heat, for the store location, taxes, and new stock.

On that note I have to chime in. Grocery stores have only a 1% profit margain. Thats right, we only make 1 penny per every dollar paid to us. Why is Wal-Mart such competition for grocery stores? Because they have a 2% profit margain. That one extra cent makes all the difference.

As said before, the retail business is amazing.

How can Wal-Mart got a 2% profit margin while all the other grocery stores only makes 1%?

Originally Posted by jetblac That can't be real??? how can you make money when your profit is onlt $6 bucks and what about 3 months later when the games are going for $39 bucks??? Hell!! what about when their going for $7 bucks!!??

Very few of the games make a lot of money for the stores; only the huge sellers like Halo, Zelda, GTA etc are a good investment for them. Most of the time, the average game barely breaks even or takes a loss. Where EB and other videogame stores make their dough is on the accessories like controllers, memory cards and cables etc; these are much cheaper for them to get hold of and there's a much higher markup.
It's impossible for a small/independent videogame store to compete with Walmart and Best Buy etc; these stores aren't making anything on games, and they DON'T CARE! What they do care about is getting your ass into the store because of their low prices, as hopefully you'll buy other merchandise along with the games.

I have to disagree with 1% profit margin on grocery stores because prices vary a lot between stores like say

1lb of Cherry is $4.99 in one store
and
1lb of Cherry is $2.99 in another store

so the store that is charging $4.99/lb of Cherry should make more than just 1% profit, in fact they are making $2.00 profit per pound bought by the customer.

I've heard from someone who worked in purchasing at a grocery store headquarters (Giant Eagle in Erie, PA) that the biggest markups that he could remember were watermelons. They paid maybe a penny for them, then sell them at $4. He said that if you drove up to a farmer, offered him $20 to fill up the bed of your pickup truck with watermelons, he'd jump right on that.

"I have to disagree with 1% profit margin on grocery stores because prices vary a lot between stores like say

1lb of Cherry is $4.99 in one store
and
1lb of Cherry is $2.99 in another store

so the store that is charging $4.99/lb of Cherry should make more than just 1% profit, in fact they are making $2.00 profit per pound bought by the customer. "

Stores will frequently have "Loss Leader" sales where they actually lose money on one item to get you into the store so you buy other items. Since most people will not walk out of the store with only a pound of cherries.

Back to game sales. If a store like Wal-Mart buys lets say 100,000 copies of a game and sell them for $5 profit each, thats $500,000. Even if they bought 50,000 and sold them for $2 profit that is still $100,000. The point is money is made by selling high quantities at low profit (versus low quantity at high profit).

If grocery stores only made a 2% profit margin, they'd all go broke. I've heard that they make more like a 200% profit margin, and that makes more sense. That's why homeless shelters can get food for what we might call dirt cheap.

"If grocery stores only made a 2% profit margin, they'd all go broke. I've heard that they make more like a 200% profit margin, and that makes more sense. That's why homeless shelters can get food for what we might call dirt cheap."

2% of billions of dollars still adds up. The info below was taken from:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=ABS&annual
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=WMT&annua

All data is for one year.

Albertson's
Total Sales = $35,626,000,000
Net Profit = $485,000,000
Percent Profit = 1.36%

Wal-Mart
Total Sales = $264,525,000,000
Net Profit = $8,039,000,000
Percent Profit = 3.04%

So look at Wal-Mart, they only made 3% profit, but that is on sales of over 264 BILLION DOLLARS. That still adds up to over $8 Billion profit.

I dunno about groceries and games,but jewelry has a 300% mark-up.

"I dunno about groceries and games,but jewelry has a 300% mark-up."

But how much businnes do they do?

If you buy an item for $100 and sell it for $200 that is $100 in profit.

If you buy 20 items for $45 each and sell them all for $50 each that is $100 profit.

Specifically for games: The games and consoles sell very close to cost. The accessories are sold for a higher mark up.

believe me if you could buy games wholesale for $25 (MSRP = $50) everyone here would be in business on eBay.

i dont by that buy for 45 sell for 50. my uncle runs a grociery store and he buys movies for $7 sells for 15-20 and video games at 30 then sells at 50. so when stores sell games like final fantasy x-2 for 29.99 in a few months they will be losing only a peny per game.
ie when they sell them at full price they make 20 a game not 5.

I'm no expert, but I doubt any retailer in the world can buy a new FFX-2 for $30, unless its stolen

if a wholesaler is charging you $42+ for a MSRP game of $50 you are being screwed. It has been ages since I bought wholesale - it was for the Atari Jaguar. Carts are more expensive with less manufacturer room for profit and I remember $50 games were costing somewhere in the range of $29- $36. This was for a ma & pa operation.