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The shop over the hill from me in Livermore, CA: http://fantasybooksandgames.com/ doesn’t seem to be struggling at all. Unfortunately, the owner is getting older and has limited mobility, so it’s not the most well-organized place on earth, but it has a pretty vast selection. And it stays busy, I was far from the only customer browsing on a random Thursday in November. As his homepage indicates, it is something of a well-known destination for East Bay people, but having a national laboratory in town also means there’s a robust local market for geek stuff. A few years ago, I snagged a vintage-1993 Star Trek: DS9 shirt off a discount rack the owner had set up, and at the time he described to me how he had downsized to just the one shop from having a warehouse and two or three other East Bay shops during the 90s. But I got the impression that had more to do with his life circumstances than any market weakness, especially in one of the most tech industry/driven markets in the country. I do have to wonder how much unsold inventory weighs on the business model. The guy who had a shop right across from the high school here in my town about 10 years ago was sitting on a bunch of manga volumes and expensive board games when he finally went out. But that was also when Barnes and Noble was still in town.
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Jan 2, 2022 23:08
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 02:05 |
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