Why I advocate for a product that supposedly competes with my sales
I’ve worked at a couple LGSs now. Both of them were focused on singles sales and dealt with higher-end products including the Power 9. At both of these stores, as a matter of professional opinion, I was ardently and avidly pro-proxy.
My definition of a proxy is the same as most others’: any card that represents another without trying to pass as an actual copy of it. Blanked foils printed over with art made by creators like TheProxyGuy or SheepWave on Twitter, custom printed cards with different art and backs, cards printed on paper in sleeves, painted over MDFC checklist cards, all the way down to Sharpie’d basics are all fine. Counterfeits are a slightly separate matter.
The conventional wisdom here is pretty straightforward: I have high end products to sell. By officially advocating for a replacement product at a fraction of a fraction of the price that functions within the bounds of my store the same as my expensive product, I am hurting my own sales. Therefore, I should not advocate for this replacement product.
But this conventional wisdom is missing a critical component that makes my stance not only logical, but also, simply speaking, the superior tactic when it comes to my sales and other positive effects within the broader community.
Play
One of the biggest pieces missing here is that people need a space to use their expensive cardboard. And the best space to do such a thing is where others are also using expensive cards. Therefore, you should offer a different and, overall, worse option in order to allow more matches where the expensive card is being played.
To reframe this, if I sat down at a casual Magic night and opened on Flooded Strand
, Volcanic Island
, Delver of Secrets // Insectile Aberration
, I wouldn’t be able to play at that casual night for very long before people begin leaving for good. If they don’t feel like they can keep up or actually just can’t (financially speaking), they will stop playing. Similarly, if I hosted an EDH night and someone showed up with an optimized, $4,000 cEDH deck, they would struggle to find games at all, and wouldn’t have a reason to buy more of those cards in the future. After all, if they can’t play with the ones they have now, why spend pretty large sums of cash for others they also can’t play?
Compare this to if we allow proxies. Now, instead of being forced to play a Legacy deck in a casual environment because that may be the only available space, the store can actually offer a Legacy weekly night and get lots of players. Not just lots of players, but lots of potential variety. The store can now offer a safe and coordinated space to really utilize those expensive cards, and players now have a very good reason to consider buying more.
Same for the EDH example, where now people can engage with the cEDH player without having to invest in thousands of dollars of cards up-front. This keeps the cEDH player from polluting casual games and provides a means for others to step into their arena.
The counterargument here is that the players in question can simply organize their own time and space outside of the shop. While true from the standpoint of it being possible, it is not ideal for multiple reasons.
Firstly, it is simply easier to organize games at reputable game stores because games stores are able to draw more people by being broadly safer. Having a well-known place for organizing games put out a broadcast for players draws a much higher crowd than having to scrape together a group from random group members. It also means that one player skipping out or stopping coming is felt much more. It can lead to a cascade of people stopping, resulting in the end of the group.
Secondly, a secondary location is not necessarily safe for all members of the community to go to without prior knowledge. LGBT+, women, or racial minority members of the community may find certain areas hostile to them. Going to these secondary locations can pose a real risk and be an incentive to not participate. Even if the physical risk is minimal, the social risk is potentially still high. Being called a slur isn’t exactly the ideal Legacy, Vintage, or cEDH experience and people feel more empowered in private settings to let bigotry fly.
Thirdly, even if a local group was fine or good, consistency is a key factor. The average LGS experience would shift less than that of the average private group. If I went from one LGS that allowed proxies to another, my experience might be mildly better or worse overall. However, if I went from one private group to another, I could be trading a chill local crowd for a very not chill crowd.
A lot of this is due to the fact that WotC has guidelines for their WPN stores. One of those is no proxies for official events. And while I have arguments there as well, running a proxy weekly with no official WotC support is perfectly within their rules. The other rules are about creating a welcoming and hospitable atmosphere. Private groups have no such rules to abide by and only some social pressure on them to do the same. Losing WPN status for a store is catastrophic enough that even the most bigoted of owners with any business sense will be smart about how they run things.
However, aside from just the community, letting players use proxies actually boosts sales.
Investment
I’m a very invested Legacy player. I love playing the format. I think it offers a ton of very fun, super unique decks, can fit a lot of playstyles, and generally has intricate and interesting games. I also think the average player sees a $2.5-3k price tag for decks and exits the scene before trying any games. It makes it hard to find players.
Six years ago, I started playing at a local store on Wednesdays with three others in a proxy-friendly environment. I proxied up ten full decks and offered them to passersby to sit down and try. I kept the lists as stock, diverse, and relevant as possible.
After a few weeks of this, we were up to six players. Then eight. We knew of others who had decks in the format, but couldn’t make time on Wednesdays. We got the store to okay two FNMs, one of which being Legacy. We organized as many decks as we could for the FNM, but knew we’d be short.
So one of those players who wasn’t already invested bought a Bayou
from the store to be able to compete.
Not a proxy, but a full on, actual, factual Revised HP Bayou. They sold out of a secondary Modern deck to do so, but that sale came directly as a result of us creating a proxy environment to get them invested.
You see, when it comes to large purchases, a large part of what people rely on is their emotions. You don’t want to just get the most value out of a house purchase, you want the house to feel right to you, to feel like home. This is something major business outlets talk about, including the Harvard Business Review.
That FNM had twelve players, non-proxy. By the time I moved a few months later, we had managed to grow that Legacy FNM, with minimal support from the store, to twenty-four players, all non-proxy. It was big enough that it turned into a monthly event and there wasn’t a Standard FNM to go with it. I always brought the proxied decks with me to sit down with unfamiliar players.
My move brought me to working at an LGS. Eventually, I learned three others in the area had Legacy decks and were interested in starting local events. I convinced the manager to let me run proxied events, citing my previous success. We started weeklies on Wednesdays again. First we had five players. Then we had eleven. The players in this area were much better off financially. The store generated another $4.5k in sales over three weeks from older cards. It got shut down eventually for reasons outside my control and moved to a different store. That store also sold through many old, expensive Reserved List cards and format staples like Fetches and Force of Will
.
tl;dr
Proxies have a number of great advantages for shops who are open to using them. They allow people to experiment with formats that would otherwise be prohibitive to try without having to pay. They give the community more play options. Keeping a store proxy-friendly keeps players safe and boosts sales.
