This is going to be really long, and probably not even remotely interesting to non-comic collectors, but I wanted to answer this question in a separate thread:
Sorry for the hijack, but I’ve always been curious – how hard is it to start and run an RPG/comic/card shop? I’d swear there’s not enough margin/volume in it to survive, but apparently some do okay.
Starting is relatively easy, surviving is a bitch. It’s not a coincidence that the strongest stores are the ones that started in the '80s or even the late '70s. These folks opened their stores as a retail business first and foremost, and by the time the speculator nonsense came around they already had an established customer base and years of experience in running a business. Extra money they made during this period was mostly gravy, and when it all vanished they still had their basic business savvy and a small group of loyal customers to fall back on.
Not everyone made it - I know of a few well known stores in the Seattle area that crashed during the speculator boom. They made some bad decisions, expanded when they shouldn’t have, and lost everything as a result. There were dozens of new stores that disappeared when it was all over, and I suppose I must be one of these, even though I quit by choice and not out of financial necessity.
It started for me when I first moved to the Seattle area in '89. I was low on cash (real low) but still made a point to check out a comic convention in the Seattle Center. I was blown away. I had been reading and collecting comics since I was 4, and even though I purchased a new copy of Overstreet’s guide every year, never really thought I would ever see the big money. I saw dealers making money left and right, and since I brought my comic collection with me when I moved to Seattle, I decided to give it a try.
I learned the promoter’s name after the show, gave him a call, and bought a table for his next event some six months or so away. I arrived with four long boxes of comics, a copy of the newest edition of Overstreet’s price guide, and tried to be charming. When it was over, I had made a little over two hundred dollars. “Hm,” I thought, considering my minimum wage job at the time. “Maybe there are some possibilities here.”
During the show, I chatted up one of the dealers next to me and asked some more details about the game. He mentioned there were two wholesale distributors in our area, Capital City and Diamond Distribution, though he recommended Capital over Diamond. (Shortly afterwards I found Diamond to be more reliable than Capital City, and years later Capital eventually went under altogether. But I digress).
So I started an account with Capital. They had several account tiers, basically amounting to the old rule of the more you buy, the bigger discount you would receive. I started an account at the lowest level, which meant I would commit to purchasing $250 worth of merchandise per month at a 40% discount of the retail price. Shortly afterwards, I learned the challenge of doing business at a quantum level. I’ll explain.
The new comics you see a store selling today were all ordered three months ago. Storeowners need to anticipate how many copies they’ll need to sell 90 days in advance, but they not only need to plan for their current subscriber base, but also for potential new customers. The goal is, of course, to get as close to selling out as possible. But then you have to factor in the products you’ve ordered that ship 3-6 or even 12 months late, products that get canceled, or even products that defy all the laws of retail physics and arrive early. Adding to the confusion is the fact that you need to do this on a monthly basis, and plan for shipments arriving on a weekly basis. Clearly, some forecasting and inventory skills are required here.
Then once you finally do get the merchandise, you’ve got to deal with customers who were impatient and ended up buying the product they promised to get from you somewhere else. Or worse, you’ll end up receiving three months of product at once, and customers aren’t able to afford it all at once. The distributors don’t care, you need to pay for the product they delivered. How you get rid of it is YOUR problem.
Granted, the above couple of paragraphs are not news to those of you involved in game distribution; you all have the same challenges. But these were all revolutionary concepts to a young 20-something just looking for some extra cash.
More to come later.