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As many know, I work in a local comic book store. We've been around for a quarter decade now and about a year ago we had new ownership, a new name and pretty much relaunched the store and became slightly more aggressive in the local comic book market. In the past I've talked about the various up and down sides to this business, what it does to my mental state and the array of lunatics we've dealt with, that won't really be the focus of this thread as I want to keep a positive theme going here. If something highly amusing happens I will share it but only if it has a positive ending. Business is booming. Our comic sales are higher than they have been in years with month to month growth for the last 10 months. Comics, trades, toys, it's all selling like crazy. We have a constant stream of new customers coming in with each major film and many of them are sticking around. But I'm greedy, I want more. More of the local market share, more reasons to bring people in the doors. So I want to start this off with asking all of you, what is the best thing your local shop does that makes you keep shopping there? Discount? Product variety? Back issues? Service? Pretty girls that work there? The need for social interaction aside from your parents? (I kid, I kid). And what does your local shop not do that you would like to see? In addition if you have any questions about comic book retail in general I would be happy to answer them.
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Mar 7, 2016 06:41
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 03:19 |
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Ferrule posted:Good back issue selection is always a high priority for me. Sure, I have my pull list, but I often browse the old stuff. Whether it's filling collection holes or something I heard about that I want to read. We have a very extensive $1 back issue selection, I will get some pics of the area later today. The only place with a large selection is Half Price Books but they put their price stickers directly on their books! We also bag & board everything, even the $1 books. Kids stuff has been a headache for me. I used to have an enormous kids section, multiple spinner racks, two bookshelves and two half boxes of cheap stuff. And it amounted to roughly $100 worth of sales in 2014 so we broke it up and shelved the all ages books in with the regular comics and sales have tripled. We do have a segregated section in our graphic novels for that stuff but sales on those are kind of weak at the moment. Teenage Fansub posted:Do people really give a poo poo about variant covers? Any customer collect the full set of Deadpool meme ones? Yes. We have numerous regulars who are all about variants. Deadpool variants are always selling out. The Hip Hop variants are kind of a flop. Pricing variants is always a headache but the best bet s to go by Ebay price+shipping and that tends to work.
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Mar 9, 2016 15:54
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BACK ISSUES 57 long boxes, 52 of which are $1 back issues. Ferrule posted:Ya know what - I do have a question for you guys who run/work at Brick-And-Mortar Stores: Some shops require you to buy the issues that are already ordered or have a credit card on file so they can charge you for the books you haven't picked up. We're pretty laid back, add and drop whenever you like but don't get pissy when a book you dropped suddenly heats up and back issues are scarece. The best thing you can do is keep your shop informed if you want to quit stuff or altogether. The way we deal with no shows is simple: You need to come in at least once a month for you books. If I see that you have 4 weeks or more of books not picked up I pause your pull list. You then have 4 more weeks to show up or else I put your books out on the stand and ill your pull. Edit: Additional Pictures Our Graphic Novel Section (one side)  One of our aisles for new books  STUFF 
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Mar 16, 2016 01:53
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Card games are major money but the profit margins are much smaller. For comics we pay roughly 1/3 of the retail price for singles. MTG on average we pay 2/3 of the retail price for booster boxes. Board games we pay closer to 50% of srp. Now that said, our store does mad sales in MTG. Fridays when we run events it's not unusual for MTG to account for 1/4 of our sales for the day and all of that is usually done in 2-3 hours. Yugioh, Pokemon, Vanguard and Force of Will have a combined sales total that comes to roughly the same as MTG.
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Mar 17, 2016 18:50
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Squizzle posted:Hello Rhyno, I think this could be a v. entertaining thread, but also one in which we all learn a little something. Thank you for posting it!!!!! We don't really carry the super weird stuff out of previews, no Anime statues and nothing super mature because that's pretty much throwing money away on unsold merch. I did have a guy get ask for those super hero dildos a few months ago.
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Apr 7, 2016 19:18
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Squizzle posted:Did he make the request as you were ringing up his giant stack of Owly books or anything I honestly don't remember what he bought at the time. I had an older guy who shops at the store, he came in every week with a hand written list, picked and bought his books without a word. We've tried talking to but he never made a sound. Then he stopped showing up. Found out later that he had passed away and when they cleared his home they found 8 old fridges in his garage where he stored his comics.
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Apr 7, 2016 20:53
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like that?
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Teenage Fansub posted:Did you get the Plutona sweatshirts? I want one of those dumb pears. We did not. The book isn't a big seller for us sadly.
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Apr 7, 2016 21:20
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We sell a ton of single MTG, YGO and PKM cards. They definitely helps with the bottom line on CCG sales. We opened a box of Pokemon last week and got a $150 card out of it (which we sold) which covered the cost of two whole booster boxes. Like I said, we run weekly MTG and a dozen special events a year. And we have events for the Japanese TCGs 48 weeks out of the year.
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Apr 7, 2016 21:55
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Non Sports Cards are a really good way to flush profits away!
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Apr 7, 2016 22:34
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Squizzle posted:Related question, what would you say is the most useful stat for a comic book shop guy: Strength, Intelligence, Energy Projection, Mental Powers, Fighting Ability, or Speed? Would endurance be under strength? The ability to put up with small children with a smile on my face might be my greatest power. Are farts energy projection? My boss has that one.
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Apr 7, 2016 23:15
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A lot of the larger stores often have direct accounts with Hasbro, Mattel etc as it's sometimes easier to go direct than to rely on Diamond and their "Maybe we'll get this, maybe we won't" policy. Like the Absorbing Man Legends wave. They allocated orders for 70% of stores and now suddenly those orders were filled. I tend to get my Transformers through work because it beats going to 17 stores looking for a single bot but sometimes the shipping times are so wonky.
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Apr 7, 2016 23:42
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Lightning Lord posted:Alliance Game Distributors handles toys and collectibles as well, I believe. It might have been from them. Which store was it by the way? Diamond owns Alliance. They do carry some items but they don't keep the same selection in their warehouses that Diamond does. The Alliance hub is 6 miles from our store.
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Apr 7, 2016 23:45
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Lightning Lord posted:Hmm, for some reason I thought they were a separate company. Jesus Diamond really does have a monopoly. They control the bulk of elfgame distribution too. There's actually quite a few other game distributors that carry the same product. ACD is better to deal with but it's hard to beat Alliance when you need a game ASAP. There have been critical days (birthdays) where I've driven to the warehouse to pick up a $20 game just to make a mother happy.
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Apr 7, 2016 23:52
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Aphrodite posted:Hey Rhyno, what percentage of your sales are Pops? It seems like when that bubble crashes, half the comic book stores I've ever seen are going to go down with it. It's tiny overall but I'd say it's a quarter of our overall action figure sales.
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Apr 8, 2016 18:52
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Currently Marvel outsells DC. Our DC sales are composed of 70% Batman books.
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Apr 10, 2016 15:52
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Walking Dead does well for us as well. Sales on Saga are slipping a bit. Batman is (was) my best seller overall. Followed by JL. But I've had 12 preorders drop Batman since #50 and numerous people are asking when the JL arc is over so they can bail for Rebirth. Marvel sales are all over the map but Invincible Iron Man is the current top dog for us looking at today's sales figures.
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Apr 10, 2016 19:00
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I've heard that G&M is hemorrhaging money pretty badly and that a lot of stuff is prices way over SRP. I do want to get down there and check it out though.
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Apr 10, 2016 19:39
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Our overall comics sales are dominated by singles. We still sell a lot of trades and keep a healthy amount in stock. I am off today and don't have the numbers but I think they're below 25% of comic sales overall. And 5% of that is probably me oh god I have a problem and I can't stop.
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Apr 11, 2016 19:56
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LordPants posted:What do you use for pull list management, and inventory and the like? I know my CBS just has a giant excel file they use with all the titles people are getting, is there dedicated Comic book inventory software? There are a few services but nothing beats the good old excel file. Comixology has a nifty retailer portal but only about 30 of my customers use it.
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Apr 12, 2016 14:01
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Heathen posted:How good is your relationship with Diamond? Excellent. Our rep is a cool dude and we don't rock the boat.
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Apr 12, 2016 18:21
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twistedmentat posted:They're not shipping millions of copies of 25 different variants, and they have a lot of other revenue streams beyond the floppies, so no. Say huh? The first 300 copies were free if you ordered by the deadline. After that they were 50 cents a pop. My invoice shows zero in the cost column. And supposedly we're getting a freight credit for them as well next week.
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Apr 12, 2016 22:22
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So, FCBD is next weekend! So let me give you some advice. If you ever have the opportunity to work in a comic shop, no matter what the incentive, do not help out a local library with their won FCBD event. Because when the books are initially announced DC and Marvel keep their poo poo secret, some years they haven't even released the titles until well after the fina order cutoff. So this year we once again helped out the library and they wanted 500 of the gold level DC title. Cool, that's easy. Except that it ended up being a reprint of N52 Suicide Squad #1 and now they're declining to take them because of the name of the book. Fine whatever, I will sit on them and give them away this August during the release of the film. But now their event coordinator is being a pain in the rear end and she wrote off a long lovely email to Diamond about it and since we're not technically allowed to be supplying books to outside sources we got a super lovely email from our Diamond rep. Massive headache.
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Apr 29, 2016 01:32
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In happier news, I'm giving away 1000 comics during the Civil War releases next week! I love theater events, very chill and everyone is super excited.
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Apr 29, 2016 04:43
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I promised I would try not to rant in this thread, the library thing just really pissed me off as their behavior has been very unprofessional.
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Apr 30, 2016 01:53
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Aphrodite posted:Did they know you were breaking the Diamond rules for them? They did. Which is why them contacting Diamond pissed me off so much. We had another call from them today and I told them that due to their behavior they'd could go elsewhere in the future if they want to do a FCBD event.
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Apr 30, 2016 03:41
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But enough of that! So my store buys comics. We do it a few different ways, one of which is blind buying long boxes. You bring in a long box, we give you $30 cash. We don't look what's inside until we give you the cash. It's a good way to bulk of our $1 books quickly but lately people have been wanting full price outs and payment based on that. Which often times doesn't make a difference. Well today a gentlemen brought in a box and opted for the $30 quick route. I went through the box and while it was 99% crap there were these three gems in there  The Spectacular #2 isn't really all that special but it will complete a customer's collection. Hulk #182 is the second appearance of Wolverine and the What If is suddenly hot poo poo because of Jane being Thor these days. Not a bad score really.
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Apr 30, 2016 05:09
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Sadly I rarely see that stuff but if anything comes across my path I will let you know.
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Apr 30, 2016 17:44
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Today's score! Third Print! 
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Apr 30, 2016 21:01
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We did a 4 per person limit and that worked out well. Final count was 1538 people through the door and we made mad money, highest dollar amount for a FCBD yet. I sadly had a large number of guys complain about the DC Super Girls book, had to tell one dude to get lost.
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May 9, 2016 00:04
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Just to give a little perspective, The Marvel, DC, IDW, DH and Image books cost retailers 25 cents each (plus shipping). The smaller press books range from 35-60 cents per book. So in cases like 200AD and Love and Rockets, the cost of those books is much higher for the shops. And let's be real, CA is going to outsell L&R at 99% of comic shops and there was a major film scheduled to drop so the choice was pretty clear on where the money was going.
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May 9, 2016 02:55
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twistedmentat posted:It was more my store had so many comics they had comics on top of each other I just missed it. I don't have any good pictures of our table setup but every book had at least one stack, the larger releases had multiple stacks. I spent a good ten minutes every hour straightening the stacks to avoid problems like that.
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May 9, 2016 05:10
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twistedmentat posted:My store is a hole in the wall so they had limited space. I get that. We're a split store, 1/3 comics, 1/3 gaming, 1/3 sports merch. We had to take over the sports section for the day to fit our free tables. Everything else was outside.
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May 9, 2016 05:31
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Ferrule posted:So this makes me wonder - since you have to pay for the "Free" comics, is the day a financial success for retailers? My shop seems to do well. Do you get a lot of new customers out of it? Or at least additional sales in other march that day? It's been going on for 15 years so something must be going right. Sorry, I didn't notice a new post in the thread! Our expenses this year amounted to less than 20% of our profits, we crushed it this year. Every year since I took over the organization it's gotten bigger and more successful for us. I'd say we get quite a few new curious faces each year and many stick around and keep coming back for new comics. On another topic, DC is on track to kicking major rear end this summer, the Rebirth launch books are all selling out left and right and going back for 2nd prints. It's a great time to be a DC fan!
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Jun 6, 2016 00:41
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That's unfortunate. I'm always sad to hear about shops closing. Unless it was Dennis Barger's shop. gently caress that guy.
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Jun 6, 2016 01:21
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twistedmentat posted:Yea, my Local store sold out of the regulars before i grabbed a copy, and only had variants left. I grabbed Green Lanterns and Batman, and will probably grab Wonder Woman when it comes out. It's nice to see people actually excited and enjoying DC rather than just seeing those who will buy anything Batman related. Give them a call, all three #1s and the returning Action and Detective have all sold out at Diamond already. You might want to guarantee your copies!
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Jun 6, 2016 02:31
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Heathen posted:Rhyno, what helpful advice would you give to someone who wanted to start their own store? Seek psychiatric help. Seriously though, it is very hard to be a profitable business by just focusing on comics. You have to expand into toys, MTG, YGO, Pokemon, board games etc. I know for a fact that a major store in Chicago is barely clearing enough month to month and one two occasions this year employee checks have bounced. You hear all sorts of horror stories about retailers having second jobs to make ends meet. The only reason we do as well as we do is we are a 3-way split on product, Comics, Gaming and Sports merch. We're dealing with a few different issues at the store right now. Someone has just put up signage for some sort of business on the opposite side of town. Their logo is a ripoff of the new logo we adopted 14 months ago and we're trying to figure out what the gently caress is going on. In the meantime we've had a dozen people ask us if we're opening a new store because of it. Issue two is stolen comics. Not from us (I was missing 3 copies of Batman Rebirth at final count though) but from people in town. I caught a thief a few years ago and the owner got his books back. A former longtime customer of mine contacted us last week to ask us to keep an eye out for his collection. His storage unit was broken into and 25 long boxes and 10 short boxes were stolen. Sadly there is an incredibly shady dealer here in town who sets up at flea markets who is known to not give a poo poo about stolen books but there is no proof he has dealt with them in the past. Related, I had a guy int he store who claimed that several books on the wall were stolen from him in the last year. I pressed him for a timeline because I know exactly when certain things were bought but he was being very vague so it seemed as if he was lying. He demanded we return "his" property so I asked him to bring me a police report detailing his stolen books and that seemed to discourage him.
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Jun 8, 2016 04:43
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Today a dude came in with a complete Preacher and I was pretty hyped because they are selling for great money right now. But while looking them over and checking for any damage I smelled the cigarette smoke on the bags and even after taking them out you could still smell it. That's potentially $600+ worth of comics he absolutely ruined.
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Jun 11, 2016 04:22
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twistedmentat posted:It's amazing how easily smoking ruins everything. Boxes should have warnings on them "warning, smoking will make all your poo poo worthless." No joke. Paper is done for once exposed to smoke. My girlfriend had a friend over one night and they hung out on our patio which is accessed through the den and they left the door open while her friend smoked and I was like "MY BABIES!" when I saw it wafting in towards my bookshelves.
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Jun 11, 2016 04:41
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Starsnostars posted:Are the smokey comics worth anything at all? We'll find out. I currently have #1 siting in an airtight bin with 4 dryer sheets to see f I can neutralize the smell somewhat.
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Jun 12, 2016 00:23
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That BW Doctor Manhattan book was 100% speculation because somebody decided that was the first appearance of the New 52. Then Rebirth dropped and it was revealed that it wasn't a new universe and everyone stopped caring about BW again. As it should be. We had 12 of them in the $1 bins and I grabbed them, put them in fresh bags and sold two on Ebay before the plummet. Now we're engaged in a buyer dispute with one of them because of the price bottoming out again.
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Jun 12, 2016 01:28
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