• When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

Opening a new brick and mortar shop
13 13

196 posts in this topic

19 hours ago, jas1vans said:

Great read.

Thank you for talking about the hard work that goes into opening your own business. I've read a couple other "starting my own comic shop" blogs and there is no mention of initial investment, no thought process of stock, location, etc. or any mention of long hours. "Have comics, sell comics, profit" didn't seem to line up with what (little) I know about how a business operates.

Good luck with the shop!

Long hours are (and should be) a natural part of the entrepreneurial process. But mine are overly long because of the location I chose. Kevin Smith's flagship Secret Stash location is only open 48 hours a week. On that kind of schedule, if you can get an employee to cover one full day for you, it wouldn't be difficult to maintain a personal schedule around 45-50 hours a week. But we are in an environment where we are obligated to be open 7 days a week, minimum 73 hours, frequently open later than our stated 9pm closing time on Fridays and Saturdays and pushing that 73 to 76 or 77.

I knew what I was signing up for. And I am no stranger to long hours. In a past life as a union employee I would routinely clock 2-3 weeks a year where I cracked 100 hours, and a couple dozen weeks where I broke 80. This is a much longer streak of them. But working 80 hours for yourself feels like less work than 60 for someone else.

I probably won't delve into the initial investment side too greatly. But I will say that my opening calculus was centered around determining what I felt net profits would be in year 5, applying a very conservative P/E to that number, and then backtracking to my initial monetary investment and determining what I was being "paid" during the 5 years in terms of equity. I am taking a modest salary from the shop, but I wouldn't have started down this path if I didn't think the return would be there.

You can absolutely make a good living as a comic shop owner. There are hundreds of people doing it around the country. But there are also hundreds of comic shop owners who have bought themselves a not-much-better-than-minimum-wage job. If they have modest needs, and find the non-financial rewards to be there, it can still be a very happy life. Time will tell whether mine continues its initial trends, but I am 100% certain I provided this business a better starting position than my two previous ones. Better location, better planning, a wiser and more humble owner, far better capitalization. It might still fail. But I'm enjoying the journey.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Any big surprises?  I was surprised to see new books only accounted for 15% of your first month - has that percentage increased with more pull box customers?  I've heard some groaning about the borderline collapse in the number of new books being sold at stores - what is your experience in terms of the the health of new comics.

And there has been a lot of discussion about young comic buyers.  What percentage of buyers do you see falling into the 10 - 16 year old range?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, musicmeta said:

Do you have any Valiant comics on your shelves for sale? I would think only a few key issues would sell in 9.4+ and mostly the rest would not but having a nice Comic book store with a lot of foot traffic might facilitate more demand for Valiants regardless of series??  Any customers trying to sell you Valiant books?  I always thought the pre-Unity books were really great reading and some if graded in 9.6/9.8 actually are worth a little bit of money. Even most of the post Unity books from the first series are great reading.  Is there a need for your store to list the 2nd/3rd series of Valiant books?  Just curious as to what the market is for your store when it comes to Valiant comics.  BTW,  Your story is most informative...Never even thought to consider a lot of what you talked about in considering "IF", "When" and "Where" to open up a brick and mortar comic book store. 

There's more demand for older Valiant than I would have expected. Not enough to justify keeping the "immediately after Unity" stuff on the tables. But there are a half dozen keys that move for $100+ now, and we have multiple customers that will happily snatch up random pre-Unity issues for $10-20 each. The hardest stuff to find is obviously the end of the run stuff from volume 1. And very little of that has come in. But we probably see books like Harbinger 1, X-0 4, Magnus 12, and the like coming in every 3-4 weeks.

The current titles do okay, not great. But we order heavier than we would otherwise just because Valiant makes more of an effort to reach out to us. I get a call from Valiant at least once every 6-8 weeks checking in and asking how things are going. They solicit feedback in which titles are easier or harder to sell and why. I'm usually on the phone with them for 10-15 minutes each time. None of the "big" publishers have ever called, even though we are in the top 10-20% of accounts depending on the publisher. We do get calls from small press creators every few weeks, and we will automatically order at least 5 copies of any title that a creator takes the time to contact us about, even if we think it will be a tough sell. But Valiant is the only "name" publisher to do so.

Once the movies start coming out, I expect we will be able to comfortably move all the volume 1 stuff on the tables. But I doubt the sales will warrant more than two long boxes of tables space.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, 1Cool said:

Any big surprises?  I was surprised to see new books only accounted for 15% of your first month - has that percentage increased with more pull box customers?  I've heard some groaning about the borderline collapse in the number of new books being sold at stores - what is your experience in terms of the the health of new comics.

And there has been a lot of discussion about young comic buyers.  What percentage of buyers do you see falling into the 10 - 16 year old range?

Lots of big surprises. Some we will get to later in the story, some we may not.

New Release Comics stabilized around 23% of revenue.
Trade Paperbacks and HCs sits around 17% of revenue.

Those TPB/HC customers are still reading comics, they are just reading them in a format that better suits their lifestyle. It would be easy to try to group customers in boxes but it doesn't work out that way. It's not as though people are all TPB, or all digital, or all single issues. We have some customers who read half their titles digitally, a quarter of them in traditional issues, and a quarter only in trade form. One of our larger pull subs, who is subscribed to 78 titles a month currently, gets all of his DCs as single issues, but also buys every new Walking Dead and Saga trade that comes out. We have a sub who gets all the new Star Trek titles as single issues, but she only buys her Harley Quinn in trades. We have several customers who test drive new titles only in digital form, but if they decide they like it, they convert to single issues.

Looking back at the last couple years, I think Marvel's publishing unit has floundered, and as Marvel goes, so goes the industry. Legacy was a cashgrab, and while it was the umbrella under which we saw a few great stories (like Donny Cates' stellar run on Thanos), it really wasn't the freshening that was needed. Marvel has wasted opportunity after opportunity to convert mainstream interest in the characters into revenue from the publishing arm. They make it nigh impossible for a casual fan to determine a "reading order". And the "stealth-miniseries" nonsense is very frustrating. The 2018 relaunches are a mixed bag. Cap and Black Panther and Venom are doing well. Amazing is still drafting off the Red Goblin fervor, with lots of customers cautiously buying it but few raving about it. The Iron Man and Thor titles are suffering. The one genuine highlight has been Immortal Hulk. I have no idea if the story can maintain the current momentum, and whether there's enough runway there (or whether CB "don't call me Akira" is enough of a fool to yank Ewing off of it), but so far it looks like the story that is going to vault Al Ewing into being THE top writer working at Marvel today.

Regarding young buyers, we see a decent mix of younger customers, but far more 14yo girls buying comics than 14yo boys. Part of what makes it challenging to tell is we have more than a handful of subs who specifically tell us "I need to add a copy of Lumberjanes for my daughter" or "I need to go to two copies of Star Wars Adventures from now on because the boys aren't willing to share them any more", and I don't have firm info on ages for those kids. We have probably 10-15 all ages titles each month that outsell lesser superhero titles like Champions. Sonic outsells titles like Spawn, Daredevil, and Old Man Logan. Star Wars Adventures outsells all three X-Men:Color titles. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic outsells Titans, Batman Beyond, Green Arrow, etc. Very few of the all-ages sales are to subscribers. But we routinely sell more Uncle Scrooge than Exiles, that sort of thing... I am VERY hopeful about the Marvel Superhero Adventures one-shots, because they put all-ages stories featuring movie characters on the shelf every month. I just wish there was an all-ages Deadpool I could sell... and I realize how ludicrous that sounds. But you wouldn't believe the number of parents who tell me their 8yo loved the two Deadpool movies and they want to get him some Deadpool comics (but then balk at the graphic violence)... sigh...

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This thread inspired me to go visit genesis comics as I was in Nassau County today, but Google maps said it was another 50 minutes away so that project ended before it began. Sorry genesis.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good to see you back, TJ.  I do hope that, as you said, you’ve made good on your debts.  There were some good people that put a lot of faith in you way back when.  

That said, I wish you well on the new shop.  I’m enjoying the story (you were always really good at that).  

I’m fascinated by your China adventure and want to hear more about it.  Was it like Cane in “Kung Fu” or more like a John Woo movie?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, lighthouse said:

There's more demand for older Valiant than I would have expected. Not enough to justify keeping the "immediately after Unity" stuff on the tables. But there are a half dozen keys that move for $100+ now, and we have multiple customers that will happily snatch up random pre-Unity issues for $10-20 each. The hardest stuff to find is obviously the end of the run stuff from volume 1. And very little of that has come in. But we probably see books like Harbinger 1, X-0 4, Magnus 12, and the like coming in every 3-4 weeks.

The current titles do okay, not great. But we order heavier than we would otherwise just because Valiant makes more of an effort to reach out to us. I get a call from Valiant at least once every 6-8 weeks checking in and asking how things are going. They solicit feedback in which titles are easier or harder to sell and why. I'm usually on the phone with them for 10-15 minutes each time. None of the "big" publishers have ever called, even though we are in the top 10-20% of accounts depending on the publisher. We do get calls from small press creators every few weeks, and we will automatically order at least 5 copies of any title that a creator takes the time to contact us about, even if we think it will be a tough sell. But Valiant is the only "name" publisher to do so.

Once the movies start coming out, I expect we will be able to comfortably move all the volume 1 stuff on the tables. But I doubt the sales will warrant more than two long boxes of tables space.

Great to hear there is some "life" in the Valiant books. Hopefully if the movies are any good (Most important) then perhaps Valiant comic sales will increase for your store.  Nice to know Valiant checks up with you to see how their books are selling.  All the best on your store.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, chrisco37 said:

Good to see you back, TJ.  I do hope that, as you said, you’ve made good on your debts.  There were some good people that put a lot of faith in you way back when.  

That said, I wish you well on the new shop.  I’m enjoying the story (you were always really good at that).  

I’m fascinated by your China adventure and want to hear more about it.  Was it like Cane in “Kung Fu” or more like a John Woo movie?

The monetary debts were settled long ago. The karmic debts, it's hard to say if those are ever truly repaid. I think most of us wind up perpetually owing some folks in our life, and being perpetually owed by others. But that's life. You try to do right by as many people as you can, and hope the ones you didn't do right by will forgive. Roughly 5% of my Facebook friends are members of this board. They chose to remain my friend when I probably didn't deserve it, and they've seen my journey the last decade (including way too many pics from East Asia). All I can do is try to be the person they thought was worthy of their friendship.

The China stories will come, with some Thailand and Cambodia mixed in. Somewhere in my stuff that came back were some Chinese Marvel Avengers given away at Age of Ultron. None of them were 9.6+, but I figured I could probably get top census for once.

 

But here's a typical 6:22am scene in early September about 150 meters from my apartment while I was there.

Sigh... I can smell the youtiao from here... (pronounced yo-tee-oww and oh, so tasty...). I had fresh baozi every morning, but had to limit the youtiao to a couple times a week.

14007B68-835A-4A73-9FF7-43C2E47E4772.thumb.JPG.ef036d3837605131641e45f1cc0b0d03.JPG

 

There's a reason I lost 45lbs and 11% body fat while I was there. When there's a daily farmer's market in walking distance that opens at 430am all year round, it's awfully difficult to eat unhealthy. And if you take another look at the pic above and try to find obese people? Yep. None to be found.

E4A66CD6-E8FB-4489-998F-12A706BA4779.thumb.JPG.a7a6c0fb643b3b35159af63ad10e4ae0.JPG

 

Whatever you do, never get in the middle of a group of women fighting over fresh corn. The guy on the left has the right idea. Stay a few paces back at all times.

2F17CFA6-AB66-4A74-B8A8-EA38DF036155.thumb.JPG.5c8fa9a42e3b00291a0ac34e73a28a4d.JPG

 

I'll do more storytelling in a couple days. Monthly order was due last night, and I'm pretty wiped.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, I meant more on the financial front.  A person can make good on that.  The other stuff (kharma, etc), I guess that depends on the individual situations.  

Looking forward to hearing about the China Adventure (as I said before).  No surprise you lost weight.  Last time you were posting regular, you were surviving on McDoubles.  Living in a place with no processed garbage food and (most likely) walking instead of driving, you're going to be healthier.  Awhile back, we (me and the wife) changed our diet up.  Minimal carbs/processed food (very little bread, no pasta, no french fries, etc).   Dropped a bunch of weight doing (literally) nothing.  After we started this (over a year ago), we had a friend come over to visit.  We went out to a burger joint.  Decided to "cheat" and ate the burger with the bun and some fries. Within 30 minutes, just felt so horrible.  I can't even imagine what the difference was like for you (coming back to the States after that much time abroad).  

Had to be brutal on your body. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, lighthouse said:

The one genuine highlight has been Immortal Hulk. I have no idea if the story can maintain the current momentum, and whether there's enough runway there (or whether CB "don't call me Akira" is enough of a fool to yank Ewing off of it), but so far it looks like the story that is going to vault Al Ewing into being THE top writer working at Marvel today.

No surprise.   Immortal Hulk has captured the essence of what made the Hulk a popular character in the first place.  In addition, single issue stories are being told.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This has been a well-written and interesting read, and I appreciate the time this must have taken to put together.  Spent some time reading Mile High Chuck's old blog posts when I got back into collecting about 6 months ago, and these remind me a bit of those entries.  I realize there are all sorts of opinions there, but they were certainly informative/interesting.  Looking forward to more!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, chrisco37 said:

Yeah, I meant more on the financial front.  A person can make good on that.  The other stuff (kharma, etc), I guess that depends on the individual situations.  

Looking forward to hearing about the China Adventure (as I said before).  No surprise you lost weight.  Last time you were posting regular, you were surviving on McDoubles.  Living in a place with no processed garbage food and (most likely) walking instead of driving, you're going to be healthier.  Awhile back, we (me and the wife) changed our diet up.  Minimal carbs/processed food (very little bread, no pasta, no french fries, etc).   Dropped a bunch of weight doing (literally) nothing.  After we started this (over a year ago), we had a friend come over to visit.  We went out to a burger joint.  Decided to "cheat" and ate the burger with the bun and some fries. Within 30 minutes, just felt so horrible.  I can't even imagine what the difference was like for you (coming back to the States after that much time abroad).  

Had to be brutal on your body. 

McDonald's, KFC, and Pizza Hut have a major presence in China, especially in the larger cities. When I was in China last year, these restaurants were all over the place. There's plenty of opportunities to chow down on burgers, fried chicken, and pizza. But you're right in that Chinese food, in general, is more healthy than the junk food you get here.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 8/29/2018 at 11:10 PM, sfcityduck said:

Turns out we grew up in the same town and our parents are friends.  My mother had even mentioned to me some months back that a friend's son had opened up a comic shop.  Small world.  Look forward to the rest of the read.  As I said earlier, I enjoy the writing style.  

It's a small world indeed, in a myriad number of ways, and yet still vast.  I find it amusing that I know @lighthouse and @ft88 both from college, they were both finance majors, and to my knowledge didn't know each other. They most certainly had classes together,  it was a small university.  Ed and I where neighbors in the dorms, and that's how I got to know him and bought and traded comics with him. TJ maybe wasn't active in the hobby at the time. Nevertheless, more than a decade later I join the CGC boards, and find lighthouse and ft88 both are active members of the boards, and still I don't think they really crossed paths.  Now we have both TJ and Ed on the same boards with their own CGC blogs of sorts, with 2 very different perspectives on the business of comics. TJ's pro brick and mortar, Ed's very much against it for the most part, but both have been generous in their insight and business methodologies which makes for an interesting read.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 8/31/2018 at 7:10 PM, lighthouse said:

There's a reason I lost 45lbs and 11% body fat while I was there. When there's a daily farmer's market in walking distance that opens at 430am all year round, it's awfully difficult to eat unhealthy. And if you take another look at the pic above and try to find obese people? Yep. None to be found.

How does one measure such an exact percentage of shed body fat?  I guess I need to get out of the house more often.  :nyah:

Here's another question: is there such a thing as a fully-Westernized comic book store in China, with new American comics/back issues/trades/tchotchkes/etc.?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 minutes ago, jools&jim said:

How does one measure such an exact percentage of shed body fat?  I guess I need to get out of the house more often.  :nyah:

Here's another question: is there such a thing as a fully-Westernized comic book store in China, with new American comics/back issues/trades/tchotchkes/etc.?

It's not a perfect measurement to be sure, but there are several brands of bathroom scales that measure such things, and I own two of them. They both agreed I was roughly 33% when I left and 22% when I returned. It's quite possible both those numbers were wrong, but I would expect the delta was close (I did lose 5.5 inches off my waist).

China is a big country, so it's certainly possible. The younger citizens LOVE Americana. But the city I was in was their Detroit, a cold weather, industrial, automotive city of 3 million people. My neighborhood had no foreigners in it. The closest foreigners that weren't North Korean were around a kilometer away, and the nearest enclave of foreigners was a Germantown around 10km away. It was very common for me to meet people on the street in my neighborhood who would tell me they had never met a foreigner in their entire life. That's certainly not what you get in Shanghai or Beijing. I was a cross between supermodel and zoo animal for many people in my immediate neighborhood, but I "got to know" a few dozen of them, and many others got used to me walking around and it stopped being quite the spectacle for them.

Lots and lots and lots of stores in my city sold comic book character merchandise (the majority of it certainly unlicensed). But actual comics, no. The only ones I saw during my stay were the free ones given away at Age of Ultron.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, thehumantorch said:

Could you tell us about your file customer base?  How quickly it's grown and how many file customers you hope to have within 1 year?

There's a lot more story to tell, and I plan to chart more of the changes over time. But I can give some of the early numbers.

After one month open, we had 31 pull customers. Between them they were getting 156 titles. Total number of copies was roughly 170, counting the folks who got both covers of DCs, multiple covers of IDW, etc. That doesn't double count the twice-monthly titles, so in the 156 number, a sub getting Batman would count as 1 (rather than the 2 actual issues each month).

After two months open, we had 54 pull customers. Between them they were getting 270 titles. Total copy count around 305. Later on we did a better job of tracking the multiple copy folks, so the numbers are a tiny bit fuzzy early.

And that's obviously just what was subscribed to, not total spending. There are some subs who literally only pick up the titles on their pulls. But most subscribe to 10 and actually buy 14, that sort of thing.

In the very beginning we would start a pull for someone for as few as one title. We did that in the beginning to be as "friendly" as possible with new customers. But the deadbeat rate for single-title subs winds up around 55%. And while it isn't that big of a deal to ultimately yank 3 or 4 consecutive issues of Darth Vader out of a box and put them back on the shelves or tables, the overhead associated with getting the pull set up isn't worth it. So later on we set a 3-title minimum. We miss out on a few people that might have started with 1 title and ultimately grown into 5 or 6, but it saves the grief. Making polite nagging phone calls to a 6-title deadbeat sub is easier than trying to call someone about the whopping 4 books in their box.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, lighthouse said:

Making polite nagging phone calls to a 6-title deadbeat sub is easier than trying to call someone about the whopping 4 books in their box.

I was going to ask how you handle those customers who neglect their pulls and your policy on frequency of settlement, whether or not you required a credit card for back-up and how such a policy might be different from what you have used in the past. If you're getting to it though, I can wait.

I would also be interested in reading your thought process behind the POS system you've chosen. I've heard if you get the one offered from Diamond it comes with an almost equal start-up cost value in free merchandise. I'm assuming it was overall cost/efficiency in comparison to probable return if something other than the Diamond POS was chosen.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, DeadOne said:

I was going to ask how you handle those customers who neglect their pulls and your policy on frequency of settlement, whether or not you required a credit card for back-up and how such a policy might be different from what you have used in the past. If you're getting to it though, I can wait.

I would also be interested in reading your thought process behind the POS system you've chosen. I've heard if you get the one offered from Diamond it comes with an almost equal start-up cost value in free merchandise. I'm assuming it was overall cost/efficiency in comparison to probable return if something other than the Diamond POS was chosen.

We do not require backup payment. The only subs who have to do anything like that are the ones who want to subscribe to titles from publishers like Boundless (what amounts to pseudo-porn). If it's a title we simply can't shelve, we require that they keep a running gift card that they top up periodically, which amounts to a deposit against those books. Because if we get stuck with them we will likely choose to destroy them rather than risk them popping up in a box on the tables. I don't judge those customers; my personal collection happens to have a bunch of early Cherry Poptart in it. But if a customer bails on picking up Weapon H it can go back on the shelf. We can't do that with the Boundless stuff.

Communication is key with the subs. It's easy enough to tell who is having a hard time financially versus who is just lazy. The body language is very different. We will encourage subs to pare down their list if we think they are in over their head. We don't shame them about the purchasing, we frame it as whether they are really enjoying title X, Y, and Z right now, and give them the ability to dump those titles without having to say they can't afford it. Most of the contact with absentee subs starts with us reaching out like "hey, you hadn't been in in a while. There's a new miniseries coming out for Deadpool and we wanted to check whether you'd like us to hold it for you so you don't miss out". It opens the dialogue with something other than "hey deadbeat are you gonna buy your stuff or not". Ultimately we strive to grow the hobby, and part of that is not having people pause their collecting on bad terms. If stuff is going on and they need to take a break, we don't want to build a shame spiral for them that might push them to not return to the hobby. Because whether they buy from us or someone else in the future, we don't want to be the reason they quit the hobby. Those "new miniseries" calls have given us multiple chances to bring someone back into the fold, or to give them closure that wasn't a negative experience if they need to tell us "yeah, my car needs a ton of repairs so I need to put my pull on hold for a while".

There are certainly some advantages to Diamond's POS system. My understanding is that it makes auto-reordering much easier, and shortens the time on monthly orders by making data collection fairly easy. But ultimately it wasn't the right fit for us. We have roughly 7,000 SKUs at this point and growing all the time. Many of those come from Diamond but many do not. We currently have accounts with around 15 different vendors for everything from apparel to Funko to Magic to supplies to doormats. We needed a system that would let us manage all those categories and vendors with the same level of insight. We happen to be in one of the states where Square is able to handle payroll, so we wind up using them for POS, Inventory, Payroll, Gift Cards, and our Loyalty program. It makes our switching costs astronomical (as the people from FirstData found out when they came by to pitch us Clover), and there are things about the ecosystem I don't like. But having all those bundled together cuts my personal time investment tremendously when it comes to the back of house functions. Square's inventory tracking and reporting is robust. There's definitely a learning curve but we get a great deal of data at our fingertips. And having the Loyalty program has meant that we do no discounting at all. None. I'm not saying we won't haggle a bit on wall books. And we do offer automatic discounts for active duty military, first responders, and educators. But we don't give discounts to pull customers on their new books. They are in the rewards program the same as anyone else. And customers rave about the loyalty program far more than they ever would about getting 10% off this or 15% off that.

Had we gone with Diamond's solution, we still would have had to find vendors for the other functions. Likely would have had to piecemeal them together. And the end result for our customers would not have been as good.

Edited by lighthouse
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
13 13