SO YOU WANNA BE A RETAILER?
Comics scribe and former comics retailer Sean McKeever (THE WAITING PLACE) gives us the low-down on how to open the ideal comics shop.

I am going to tell you how comic book retailing should be. But first, some background. I began my life of comics retailing back in 1987, at the age of 15.I kid you not. And it started because of The Rack.

The Rack was a 4-foot, 9-tier magazine rack I found at the back of a grocery store in my tiny hometown of Eagle River, WI (pop. 1286). The instant I spied The Rack, I knew what I wanted to do: I was gonna sell comic books.

I had the perfect way to do it, too: no overhead. See, my parents owned a large hardware and sporting goods store and, with their help, I set up an account with a distributor (M&M Distribution out of Illinois-just one of many distributors I would use over the years) and began my journey into the marvelous world of direct sales.

Look, I don't have any delusions about this. What I had was not a "real" comic-book store. Even when The Rack expanded to 250 square feet, and the business was made legally separate from the hardware store, I was still only a 250 square-foot kiosk-style business in a hardware store. I ran it during the hours I worked for my parents. I didn't even place orders every month during my college years.

Still, for nearly a decade I was in the trenches with other retailers through some of the most interesting times in comics retailing. I had developed a pull list of around 30 customers. (That's more than 1% of the population of Eagle River and the surrounding areas-like having 1,000 pulls in a city of 100,000!) Tourists from Milwaukee and Chicago wished my store was at their disposal year round.

So, yeah, that's my way of letting you know I'm qualified to speak about comics retailing.

Okay, now back to The Business of Selling Comics. If I opened a store today,(and I'd do it somewhere other than Columbus, Ohio-we have a brilliant comics shoppe called The Laughing Ogre) I would first make damn certain I had some sort of business training. Even though I grew up retail, and a great deal of learning is doing, there's so much more knowledge to be gained by a formal education. I'd also make sure I had a sizable amount of startup cash-you know, enough to pay all the bills for a year or two without profit.

The smart money's on opening a store in a location that will attract a lot of potentially-interested consumers. A mall location is a bit expensive to lease, so I would go for a storefront near another entertainment/leisure entity: a movie theater; a coffee shop; a record store.

While staying clear enough for passersby to see into, my windows would showcase available product and promotional items (stand-ups, posters, etc.). A good mixture of known quantities (media crossovers like BUFFY and STAR WARS and, yes, even a small amount of SUPERMAN/BATMAN/SPIDER-MAN) and intriguing mainstream unknowns (collected STRAY BULLETS and FROM HELL and 300 spring to mind) is important. People will be drawn to the mainstays, and the unknowns will further pique their interest. I'd rearrange the storefront often, not letting any one display or poster remain for any longer than a month or two.

As for the inside: the walls are lined with new comics racks on both sides (enough for 2-3 issues' worth of each title), with any posters and/or videos racked in back with the usual "new this week" section. Above the new comics racks I would create displays for lots of apparel featuring comics, entertainment and pop-culture subjects, with the shirts folded over square boards to display the images (you've probably seen this in record stores). That's right-no "hot" or "classic" comics, as is typically found above the new stuff.

That covers the walls. But what about all that empty square-footage in the middle? Well, I'd put in a few rows of 5-foot racks that would hold nothing but collected works. That's right. TBPs, HCs, SCs and GNs. Racked by genre and then by title, with the endcaps displaying related works like Marvel's black-and-white TPB program, or all the TPBs written by Ellis, Moore, Busiek or-someday-McKeever (I'm referring to Sean, not Ted). The foremost endcaps would display newly released collections.

"Damn," you say, "that's a lot of money sunk into collected works!" And you'd be right. But, as they say, it takes money to make money. And, if you doubt the potential of the collected edition as profit center, just ask Brian Hibbs of Comix Experience or Gib Bickel of The Laughing Ogre and they'll set you straight.

(As an aside, I should point out that I'm not saying that collections will someday replace the periodicals as the American comics format. I do predict, however, that collections will one day be the dominant money-maker, and that periodicals will serve to fuel the market with cash flow and future collection material, the two living side-by-side in harmony. This town IS big enough for the two of 'em.)

You'll notice I have just about run out of room and have yet to address back issues. That's because I wouldn't carry back issues. "WHAT????"

Now, I'm not denying that the collector's market is significant, and I'm not saying it has no place in comics. All I'm saying is that back issues would have no place in my comic-book shop.

What would I do with my back stock? I'd sell it, of course. The unsold books would be sold at a loss either to a "Weekend Warrior" (someone who sells comics, but only at shows) or to a liquidator, like Odd Lots or Half-Price Books. Appropriate books would be donated to charities for a tax break. Of course, the losses would bite, but the cashflow increases, and the lack of sole reliance on periodicals to make a buck coupled with tight ordering of periodicals would keep me in the black.

Let Holiday Inn conference rooms and other comic-book stores take the time and space to sell "collectibles" and old periodicals from publishers who don't have the sales to justify-or, sadly, the brains to make-collections. Heck, it's been my experience that the dealer shows could use the business. I'll even gladly send my customers looking for back issues to the stores that carry them. Will I lose customers to the competitors that way? Maybe, but I'm pretty confident in my ability to create an environment that customers will want to return to again and again and again.

If you have that confidence, a brain for business and some money from that Internet IPO you bought at $10 a share, go for it. Steal my ideas. You'll only be helping the industry to climb from the trenches and claim victory.

Sean McKeever, who writes THE WAITING PLACE, a dramatic series published by Slave Labor Graphics, realized that he's really only glossed over the subject of retailing comics, and suggests that you spend lots and lots of time learning all you can about comics retailing-even if you never, ever plan to open a store. You know, because "knowledge is power" and all that. He also suggests you drop him a line at sean@seanmckeever.com or-better yet-stop by his message forum, where he has started a thread on this subject.

Back

Attitude | ProFile | Industrial
Interviews | Reviews | Pi Comics
Talkback | Archives | Gallery