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I work PT at my local one, and I think because we're in a fairy family area, plus there's a lot of foot traffic in the area when its nice out (we are in Toronto's Beaches) we sell a lot of kids books. Not to mention Pokemon. Variants are kind of odd. We tend to get them in, but what sells is hit and miss. I personally bought the Hip Hop cover for Ms Marvel and All New Wolverine, but for the most part they languish on the rack until someone who needs that issue breaks down and buys it because its the only copy we have. We don't have a huge back issue section, because sadly, its a smaller store and we devote a lot of space to collectables because they are major movers. The Marvel Legends, DC Icons and of course pop move like crazy. We are actually known in the city to being a good stop for pops. The backissues we do have are generally stuff from the last few years. We do have a rack for interesting back issues that are relevant to something that's going on. And of course the more valuable stuff. Something I'm always amused by is someone who comes in and complains there's too much non-comic stuff. Too much Magic and Pokemon, too many statues, too many toys, too many board games. Dude, in this enviroment you are lucky if you can survive on just comics. Plus I''ve been going to comic stores since the early 80s, and they've always had statues, action figures, D&D and miniatures in addition to comics. Something that makes me really happy though it the variety of people who come in the store now. We have a lot of young kids, who mostly want to buy batman, spider-man, and Deadpool. Lots of young women now too, who come in looking for Paper Girls, Lumberjanes but also interested in other stuff (i've gotten a few to pick up Hellcat and Squirrel Girl). I miss our regular Magic and Heroclicks nights, but the Pokemon sunday mornings with the kids is pretty amusing. I've learned more about pokemon in the short time I've been working there than the 20 years since it was released.
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Mar 12, 2016 08:06
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It was weird as I was in one of the big stores in Toronto and saw they had the newest 3.5" Marvel figures, and almost bought the Captain Marvel one but decided against it because I could just get it when we got it in and I could get my discount. When I asked the manager, she told me that the orders for that set were canceled and Diamond now has the set TBA. So I'm left to wonder where the other store got theirs. One of the most amusing things I deal with are people calling in, looking for super rare figures and being surprised that they're expensive. Yes a Star Wars Darth Malak is going to go for a lot of money, yes i know you bought a Revan for 12bux 8 years ago, but things go up in price. Or just in general when people ask about LE statues and figures, or collected items and are surprised at how expensive they are. Yes this 3.75" Bruce Lee is $85 becuase its a LE figure imported from Japan.
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Apr 7, 2016 23:34
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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? The Snail of course. One of the niftiest things Diamond has is their scratched and dented boxes; for 75bux you get a box full of random stuff, mostly pops and figures with damaged boxes, but sometimes you get a jackpot, like a black series first order tie fighter.
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Apr 8, 2016 01:00
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trashbuilder posted:Silver Snail has a bunch of special contracts with distributors, I don't know the ins and outs of it. That might explain it. And yea, its very likely they are contracts from before Diamond had such a complete monopoly over everything.
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Apr 8, 2016 19:23
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Rhyno posted:Currently Marvel outsells DC. Our DC sales are composed of 70% Batman books. Yep, us too, though wonder woman does fairly well too. Star was marvel is super popular here out of the Marvel titles. But yea you have to be connected to Batman to sell if you're a DC title for the most part. Walking dead and Saga are the best selling titles that aren't part of the big two.
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Apr 10, 2016 18:09
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Rhyno posted:Walking Dead does well for us as well. Sales on Saga are slipping a bit. Saga has the problem with being very inconsistent. Trades are pretty much by order only for the first few weeks of release becuase they're so popular.
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Apr 11, 2016 02:12
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Lots of people only buy trades. Its probably because most books cost 5bux + Canadian, and you can get 6 issues for around 15-25 (depending on the publisher) which saves lots of money. I intend on doing this for the DC stuff I missed because I really want to read the nu52 Batgirl, Batwoman, Green Lantern titles and a few others. Stuff like Saga or Sex Criminals are mostly trades, as they're so good, people just don't want to wait month to month for each issue.
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Apr 11, 2016 19:48
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We recently got the Diamond RMS system that has peoples pull lists in the system so It tells us who gets what. A cool feature is that it will pop up with the current pull list stuff when you bring their name up. It's also super easy to edit their pull lists too, though you need to know the exact title of the book to add it. You can't just put in Spider-Man if you wanted to add Amazing Spider-Man to someones account, you need to put in Amazing Spider-Man.
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Apr 12, 2016 19:35
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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. Here is some BS though; Because DC didn't get all its Rebirth stuff done in time for Previews, they put their own out. Okay, fair enough, but they slapped a big FREE on the cover, though each book costs the stories 50cents, they sent a ton without asking and they expect the stores to just eat the cost. Yea it's only a few bux, but still DC what the gently caress?
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Apr 12, 2016 21:20
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Mine had 3 limit, grabbed the Cap, Civil War 2 and Bobs Burgers, normally I grab the Simpsons/Futurama comic. I went to a bigger store later in the day and all they had was Rom. I didn't find out there was a Love and Rockets until i got home.
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May 9, 2016 02:41
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It was more my store had so many comics they had comics on top of each other I just missed it.
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May 9, 2016 05:07
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Rhyno posted: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. My store is a hole in the wall so they had limited space.
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May 9, 2016 05:25
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Rhyno posted: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! 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.
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Jun 6, 2016 02:26
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I hear "I wish comic shops would just sell comics" so much, but anyone who says that has no idea that selling toys and games are what keeps most stores afloat. Those also tend to be the kind of people who just browse and never buy anything. Like the people who complained that record stores sold dvds tended to be the kind of people who'd hang out all day, listen to a dozen cds and never buy anything. Though I honestly, in over 30 years of going to comic stores across North America, I can say I never saw one that didn't also sell games and toys. So those people are clearly dreaming of something that never existed. About stolen, one of the other stores, a kid got his entire Magic collection stolen. He had brought the whole thing in a binder, and someone had run off with it during FNM while he wasn't looking. He posted a bunch of the rare cards he had, and not a few days later, a guy comes into our local store and tries to sell this collection. When told "well, it will take a few hours to go through the binder and see what we want. Leave it here and your number and we'll call you when its done". The thief bought it, and the manager was able to find the kid who had it stolen, and gave him the number of the thief and that he could come and pick up his collection. If you have really valuable comics, get them added to homeowners insurance. It makes it a bit easier to track them down if they get stolen.
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Jun 8, 2016 05:09
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It's amazing how easily smoking ruins everything. Boxes should have warnings on them "warning, smoking will make all your poo poo worthless."
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Jun 11, 2016 04:37
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Dr Manhattan Before Watchmen shot up, and I was excited to sell it, and then it came back down to where it was again. I'm pretty sure the only comics that I have that are worth anything are some of the New 52 #1s, the Lenticular covered Harle Quinn issue and the first appearance of Spider-Gwen, but I don't think any of those tops more than $100 at best, most even lower.
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Jun 12, 2016 01:10
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So how is Civil War 2 selling at other peoples stores? Mine, its like crap. They've gotten 20 copies of 0 and 1 and barely sold half of them. I told the manager today that if it wasn't Tony vs Carol I'd not be buying it. Rebirth on the other hand has sold out on every issue, except for the variant of the first comic, but thats because it was 10bux vs 2.99. I've got the 1 of Green Lanterns and Batman in my box, and I'll be grabbing Detective and probably Wonder Woman once they are released.
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Jun 15, 2016 01:03
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Only the Rebirth 0 variant was 10bux, the rest are cover price.
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Jun 15, 2016 01:11
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These go great with some JCNOs and frosted tips.
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Aug 9, 2016 23:52
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When did Pull List become the nomenclature for the books held for you? When I was a kid, you had an account, or some stores the comic club, but in recent years, its pulls or pull list. I never hear anything but Pull List in any media about comics currently.
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Oct 20, 2016 22:13
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When I sold music, people would openly say they were going to download the albums and movies we sold. But that was literally talking about stealing stuff, rather than legal downloading and streaming.
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Oct 20, 2016 23:27
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Rhyno posted:We have a few guys like that. "Oh I'll just download it." At least one of them was arrested for shoplifting elsewhere. We took away our listening stations that any CD could be listened to (we kept the ones that were locked into specific cds) because people were literally listening to cds to see if they were worth downloading. What the hell? I mean that's like walking into a store and picking up a trade and stating you're just going to sit down and read it rather than buying it.
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Oct 21, 2016 01:44
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Rhyno posted:I have an epidemic of people who just sit on the floor and read stuff. When I shoo them away they say they'll just go rad it at B&N. Fuckers. Assholes. Like as I said, if they're kids, you can kind of forgive it, but adults, its basically stealing. I swear my LCS is kept afloat by pokemon currently. The sudden influx of people buying it and showing up for the sunday morning gaming has increased sales massively.
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Oct 25, 2016 01:38
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I cannot imagine there are many comic stores like they were when I was a kid around. You know, the cluttered stores with long boxes everywhere, the new comics racks where the only part of the store that had any organization; statues, figures, cards, and back issues everywhere. Run by some guy that comparing them to Comic Book Guy would actually be disservice to the Simpsons character.
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Nov 12, 2016 23:12
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lifg posted:I seem to find them everywhere. The store I grew up with was like that, dark, dank street level store with poo poo everywhere. Lots and LOTS of statues of famous monsters and stuff like that which was there for years. The owner, while not looking like a CBG, certainly acted like one. Then another store opened up, while still fairly cluttered, was still organized, you could find stuff easily, even though it was in a basement it was brightly lit, and the guy who runs it was like your cool uncle who had all the neat stuff that was more than happy to talk with you about it. There's a reason it won best comic store ever in Wizard Magazine.
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Nov 15, 2016 00:59
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My LCS is moving to order only for comics. Unless you have an account, you're not getting any new comics. Sales for them are not enough for them to justify having a large rack right at the front of the store. The Manager told me she's going to bring in a few of the best sellers, so highly anticipated #1s or consistent sellers like Batman or Avengers stuff, but no more floppy rack. Members will get free Previews so they will know what's coming out so you can keep up to date with new books, but yea no more "this looks interesting" and picking up random stuff. The store has seen a massive surge of Pokemon recently, like when It was warmer you could barely get into the store for all the kids clamoring around the cash trying to look at the binders and case cards, that they actually need more space for it.
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Nov 25, 2016 14:48
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On average 40-50% of the days sales are pokemon. It's a wealthy area with lots of young kids so, yea. Hopefully it won't crash but that happened to magic this year.
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Nov 25, 2016 16:24
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Well, it's not like they're moving it out just for pokemon, it was just a joke between us that the new comics rack would be removed to make space for Pokemon, as that's what's hot right now. But they're still selling trades, back issues, classic comics, action figures, statues, pops, rpgs, art books, all the normal stuff, just that the new floppies are taking up too much space in proportion to their sales, as most of new comic sales are from people with memberships already.
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Nov 26, 2016 06:13
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Jordan7hm posted:Wait, they're keeping back issues but dumping new issues? Uhhh Yea, the current back issues they have, they're not going to throw them out or something. Basically the majority of people who buy new comics get them as part of a membership, and she's constantly stuck with 17 copies of Rebirth Blue Beetle or NOW Foolkiller, and it's a waste of money. note: Those are not real numbers, just meaning she has tons of extra books that don't sell and take up space. So new comics won't be dropped, just they will be ordered to fill memberships and nothing else.
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Nov 26, 2016 18:03
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Rhyno posted:All DC Rebirth books have been 100% returnable so that is not a valid excuse really. There are 2 staff and both are women in their 20s.
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Nov 27, 2016 00:39
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Jordan7hm posted:I mean, that's fine, but it's not a sustainable business model if the business model involves selling comic books. (there is perhaps a larger question about business model here, though the stores in my city seem to do pretty well) Books in Canada cost a lot, and the store sells lots of other stuff besides comics, where new comics are not a big seller so they don't deserve a giant space in the front of the store. As I said, if you want new comics you get a membership which nets you a discount and some other benefits. Trades do really well there, so their space is justified, as do action figures/statues. Again I stress, they're not getting rid of comic sales, they're just not going to order beyond what they need to fill memberships with some exceptions. But yea, I thought you could return all Rebirth stuff until recently, but I was told they had too many of some rebirth titles. I'll has to inquire about that.
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Nov 27, 2016 06:26
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Endless Mike posted:I dunno, man, a comic shop that doesn't sell comics doesn't sound like the sort of thing that's gonna last very long! They sell comics. It works like this, if 10 people have AN Wolverine on their pull lists, they order 10 copies. Before they'd order 15 or 20, and end up stuck with a bunch of extras. I'm not sure why this is a hard concept for you to grasp.
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Nov 27, 2016 07:48
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Maybe, I mean it was a discussion between the Manager and the Owner, and they felt there was too much floor space devoted to new comics that just didn't sell. I am not privy to the books, but I doubt this is a change they decided on . Rarely did people come off the street and grab a random comic, randos off the street almost always bought trades. I mean, none of us can predict how this will effect the store, but new comics bought off the rack did make up at most 10% of daily sales. And they're not 100% getting rid of their non-membership new comics, just won't order everything, that will be the managers discretion.
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Nov 27, 2016 18:39
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Aphrodite posted:Going to pull list only for new comics is something a lot of stores think sounds good as a cost saving measure but it can end up hurting business for the reasons described. Keeping your big names is probably a good idea. Yea, they'll have the Batman, Detective, Spider-man, Avengers, Saga and X-men titles and their like, but they probably won't bring in any Young Animal stuff beyond what's ordered or small print run indie stuff for the most part. If there is a highly anticipated new title that's getting a lot of buzz, they'd probably bring in some extras as well. It's just the big rack at the front of the store is going away and new comics won't be as front and center with a smaller selection. And I worked for HMV when they started to transition from pure movies and cds to having large amounts of collectables. Canadian retail is brutal, it's hard to be really successful these days because prices are so drat high for everything, and when it comes to, for lack of a better word, nerd stuff, it's hard to just sell one thing and say afloat.
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Nov 27, 2016 20:46
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Roth posted:Pretty sure they're talking about people who wwren't going to buy anything in the first place. Yep. Some one who comes in and leafs though New Frontier to see what its like is different from someone who picks it up and reads it cover to cover.
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Dec 10, 2016 00:11
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I've heard stories of people finding valuable comics in bargain bins, mostly because they buy some collection and it's mostly filled with 90s xmen or pop stained 70s batmans, so they go in the bins. They miss the handful of valuable stuff because it was 2 comics out of a full longbox and there's poo poo to do and they don't have time to go through hundreds of comics. The stories I've heard are either someone who is way to helpful pointing out "oh hey there is a Hulk #180" and letting the staff know they have a valuable comic on hand. Or they try to buy the Batman #428 and the staffer realizes what's going on and takes it saying "Mistake!" and when the customer demands it be sold for a buck, they're denied, because really, that is a mistake and valuable comics are money in the bank. It's kind of lovely customer service, but it's not like comics are a super lucrative business that you can let a comic worth hundreds of dollars go for discount prices just to satisfy someone that was clearly trying to pull one over. Though I've certainly heard of people who have grabbed a bunch of bargain comics and mixed regular back issues into them hoping the cashier won't bother looking at what they're ringing in and just see the pile is a bunch of Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen comics but miss the mid range priced back issue.
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Dec 16, 2016 04:31
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Rhyno posted:This happens almost every day I work. I'm not surprised in the least.
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Dec 16, 2016 22:34
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I have more Pops that I care to admit. Mostly I see them as less expensive figures of characters I like. A 15 pop vs a 60 Marvel legends Spider-Gwen for example.
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Jan 6, 2017 03:12
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I am old enough to remember when you could buy DC and Marvel comics in supermarkets and drug stores, and my mom would rather buy me a comic than a chocolate bar when we went so at first i just got what looked cool, but eventually I'd realize that X-men or Spider-man or Batman were cool and would focus on them. As I grew older i went to one of the two comic stores that were around, one that was run by a douchey guy and the other run by an old guy who was not happy kids would be in the store. So I never enjoyed going to either one. Then a new store opened that was friendly, the owner was friendly and very much encouraged reading more comics. It was great and that store helped cultivate a love of comics that was there, but just needed to be fanned by someone who was actually pleasant to deal with. It's amazing how much an owner can effect how a store feels. It does amaze me how many comic stores are run by shutins who don't want to deal with people. Like why start a retail store?
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Jan 6, 2017 18:58
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trashbuilder posted:Aren't you from toronto? The silver snail has been dope for over 30 years I grew up in Halifax, and yea, the Snail's pretty good, also is the Beguiling and others. My LCS is one of the Planet X locations which is good as well. Skwirl posted:I think some comic stores are started by people with a little bit of capital whose only idea is "if I start a comic book store I can spend all my time reading comics and also make money" without realizing that owning and running a business actually takes work. Also, leases for business space will sometimes be for over a decade so if they're an old store they're probably paying a lot less per month than a new tenant would. That's what kills a lot of niche businesses, the lease expires and depending on how much gentrification has happened in the area the landlord wants between 2-10x as much to lease the same space. That's what I figure that the people who started them in the 70s and 80s; "If i start a comic store, I can get my own comics at a discount and read comics all day" not realizing they're going to need to deal with kids, clueless parents, complainy pants adults and others.
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Jan 7, 2017 12:36
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