THE GAMETRADERS STORY: With mark langford
Mark Langford: Gametraders owner/founder
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here did it all start and what’s in store for the future of Gametraders? This month we talk to the Managing Director and Founder/Owner of Gametraders, Mark Langford about his passion for Gametraders and the gaming business.
Where did you get the idea for Gametraders? Mark: My first foray into retail was in 1998 when I started a business called Leisureland in Blackwood South Australia, There was not a lot to do for
younger people in Blackwood so it became the destination of choice because it was an exciting place to be, mainly because there was always something to do there such as playing Warhammer, N64 and Playstation games and generally a great place to hang out. In 1999 it really took off when the Pokemon craze started, for the first two weeks the Pokemon cards sat on the shelf but then it became a phenomenon, we could not get enough stock and where ordering cards by the pallets load. Within a few months the kids would come in with loads of cards and would use our tables for trading and swapping and
this is where I saw an opportunity to become the middleman, it also planted the seeds for Gametraders but I didn’t know it at the time. For the next 12 months we traded approximately 10,000 cards, kids could bring in their doubles and excess cards to us and trade them for cards that they didn’t have, they and their parents loved the fact that they could off load their unwanted cards and make up their decks without having to buy the boosters packs all of the time. Like most crazes however, it died off quite quickly and I found myself at the cross roads, we were not selling enough of our other product such as