Games, Comics and More: Sherman Sanders shares his story of Gryphon Games and Comics

Any geeks roaming Fort Collins may eventually find their way to Gryphon Games and Comics. Whether it’s the newest comic, a new board game or a place to play Magic the Gathering, Gryphon Games and Comics is the place to be.

This shop has been situated at 1119 W Drake Rd for a few years, but Gryphon itself has been in Fort Collins for over 12 years.

Offering board games, comics, other products and a place for people to meet to play games such as Dungeons and Dragons or Magic the Gathering, Gryphon offers a place for community. Whether it is to buy something, play a game with friends or enjoy a cup of coffee.

I was able to sit down with Sherman Sanders, co-owner with his wife Liana, about how Gryphon Games and Comics has grown a community around games, comics and much more.

As the owner of a game and comic shop, would you characterize yourself as a geek?

I’m not even sure. I’m not even sure what that means anymore. I like a lot of geek culture things but I’m so surrounded by it, that I don’t really think of it as a sub-genre, it’s kind of just my life. So yeah, no, maybe? [Laughs]

Between you and Liana, who would you say is nerdier or geekier?

Me. I definitely pursue things more actively, she’s kind of passively more interested in fantasy stuff and what have you. She enjoys novels and stuff like that but she’s not going out of her way to participate in activities, so that’s probably the defining difference for most people.

How did you and Liana meet and how did you get to this point?

We met at the humane society here in town. We both worked there, she worked there a lot longer than I did. We bought the store after we had been together for 4 years, so she was still going to school at CSU at the time. The store was quite a bit smaller. We’ve had it for 12 years now and it’s grown quite a bit. It was something we — I don’t want to say fell into, but really we fell into it. We came to the previous owner when he was going out of business, so we were there for the closing sale and he allowed as though they were no longer closing but someone was going to buy the business. We made an offer on the business and from the time we knew it was going out to the time that we took over and had 100 percent control was three weeks. So it was not a super planned thing. We had talked about trying to start a store of some type initially, and that was a long, couple-year plan. Three weeks was definitely not the plan, but it came together

Before you guys came across this, what kind of store did you want to open?

A game store. I read very few comics before we got the store, and probably just a couple more than Liana had. So together, we had probably read a handful. So the whole comic thing was very much a “that is what the store was, so that is what we got.” So we started learning a lot about comics and trying to figure out how to order and all that. Without being a comic enthusiast, having a comic book store is not ideal. But we have since hired people who are comic enthusiasts and that has really made a huge difference. Either half of our store,the games or the comics side, is a full time (job). It’s a very involved thing, and its very challenging to do both. But, at the same time it’s more rewarding because you don’t have to worry about fluctuations in either market quite as much.

In your words, how did Gryphon Games and Comics get to the point it is today? What big steps did you guys go through to get here, to what it is today.

Big steps probably would involve getting new systems and getting solid employees. Those are the two big steps, but honestly every day is just incremental movement and trying to make as good a judgement call on any given situation. Ninety-nine percent of being a business owner is just seeing a problem and figuring out how to work it. There are so many countless little decision points you have to make that there’s no big steps, it’s just, like, “figure it out.”

Over the 12 years you have been the owners. How has overall business been? How has it gone since you started until today?

Ups and downs. We were doing pretty well before we moved, but since we have moved it has been a huge challenge. The store has kind of grown up in the era of Amazon, and that has been an ongoing issue for our industry in general. It’s a tough deal, honestly. We’ve had setbacks. We moved the store within the first year and a half. We got it, that was a setback. We hit the recession shortly after that, that was a huge setback. After that, we pulled out of the recession, did really well for a couple years in there, and now we are currently struggling quite a bit. Having a location this big, a cafe, trying to balance between these two and trying to deal with online sales and a slump in Magic (The Gathering). There’s countless things. There’s many elements to our struggles. So that’s where we are currently at; we are making some positive gains but we have a big hole to dig out of.

You touched on Amazon being an issue. How are you guys combating Amazon and online purchasing, especially because that has become so big?

Really just by trying to provide the best community. There’s kind of an assumption that everybody can get wealthy by providing the lowest prices out there, and the reality is that does not work for a business of our type. There’s an assumption that the lowest price available is the best value, and we like to think that we provide value here. A lot of our customers recognize that. We are supported by people who appreciate what we do, not so much value seekers, those aren’t our customers. If they’re looking for the best price, we don’t have it. If they’re looking for a place to play, people to meet, direct contact with people, the ability to talk about their hobbies and their games and find out what the next step is and what’s out there that they don’t necessarily know about, then we are that place.

What would you say about the community of this store makes it so special?

We don’t have one community. There are definitely people who associate themselves with Gryphon and say “That’s my store” right? But the reality is they don’t necessarily interact with one another. We have comic communities, Pokemon communities, Magic communities, role-playing communities, war-games communities, and these people don’t cross over a heck of a lot. The most crossover you see typically is when people have children. It will be “I play this game, my kid does this thing, I will come for them.” But what makes a community is community champions. People in the community who are really invested in what they’re doing, and want to see it succeed. Not for any personal gain, but for the love of the hobby. So when somebody comes in and they’re excited about Pokemon, they make a Pokemon community because they’re going to be here every week, they’re going to be talking about it and talking it up and excited to be here. It doesn’t matter how much we do as a store. If we don’t have people in that community who are excited about it, that community is never going to flourish. For us, it’s encouraging those people to be here, giving them an environment that is conducive to that community. That’s what we’re looking at, trying to provide the framework that other people who are excited about their hobby can come in here and use.

What kinds of customers come through here the most often?

We really get quite a bit of diversity. I mean, kinds of people? You know, it’s people who are interested in nerd culture. That’s quite a big group, you know? The stuff we are interested in has been around for millennia. It depends on that community again, right? If you’re talking miniatures players, its almost exclusively male and people under 30. If you’re talking role-players, it’s a huge diverse community. We have all ages. I had a really interesting encounter the other day with a guy and his grandson who were in buying stuff because the kids friend was already playing with their grandmother, so that was going to be their group. So that’s reflected across what we see coming in to play or purchase products. There’s everybody.

For you personally, what would you say is your favorite type of customer to come in here?

Favorite type? That’s tough. Obviously I love our weekly customers who make the business run. Why we started this business was to have a community and without those people in here every week we would not have this opportunity. But when I look at a kid coming in for the first time and excited about getting into something, that’s probably the most rewarding thing for me, because I was that kid. I started playing D&D when I was six, so I literally remember going into a store for the first time and buying my first D&D product and being like “this is the best thing ever.” So having that experience and being able to share that experience with a younger generation is pretty great. There are some cool moments in this store for sure.

I know Gryphon is very big on the tournament and competition aspect. How many tournaments are held weekly?

We do tournaments for a couple different games. It’s mostly Magic is what people think of when they talk about tournaments. We do a weekly Heroclix tournament, but that’s relatively low-key, prizing is very low. It’s still a very casual tournament format. For our Magic tournaments, we do get a fair number of new players in, but it’s pretty competitive. We run tournaments for Magic three nights a week, but on any given night we are running two to three individual tournaments.

How did Magic the Gathering become almost “the thing” here?

Magic is extremely popular in the majority of stores of our type. It’s not something we personally set out to do. Like, I don’t play Magic. I have played Magic, I am a competent player, but I don’t look to play Magic and it’s not something like “this is why I want to do this store.” A lot of stores start out with people who are Magic players and are like “I want to deal with Magic cards all day long.” We’ve hired people who have that personality and want to do that. But a lot of what it is marketing their product, and appeal to new players and have a really solid tournament scene. Magic is pretty unique in that it is a value game. Most anything we sell is a depreciating asset. There is a collectible aspect, especially with comics, but with Magic you can open a brand new pack and you’ll have more value from that pack before it was sitting on the shelf. It isn’t 100%, but there’s that element to it, and so it’s much easier to get people to invest in the game overall.

As of right now, where you stand, what would your hopes be for going forward for the future of Gryphon Games and Comics?

Sustainability. Like I said, our industry is very tough and the world changes overnight sometimes, and it’s very hard to know. For instance, there was a few years ago that digital books and stuff were going to come out and people were only going to buy digital stuff and books were going to disappear. What they found was there was an initial push, and then the numbers went down and people just decided they did not like reading stuff on e-readers nearly as much as they liked having a book in their hand. So there is always this fear that everything we do is somehow passe or going to be outdated by new technology. But video games have been around for a long time and board games have been doing really well. There are definitely things afoot in the world that make our industry very touch and go. We have tried to make our store valuable to the community beyond what we sell, but we don’t have a way to generate money except to sell stuff. So if people don’t buy it from us we don’t have that possibility.