I should elucidate what I think are the major markers of a bubble.

 

1.) Allocations. 

2.) New business's and expanding business's. Everyone jumping into the pool.

3.) Price increases to slow demand.

4.) Separation of product into winners and losers. Dumping the losers. 

5.) Stock at manufacturers and distributors going out the backdoor.  Literal hijacking of product. 

6.) Mainstream media coverage.

7.) Scalpers buying up all available product in mass market. (This should be #1, actually.) Fights in the aisle. 

8.)  Schools banning it because of disruptions. Fights in the schoolyard.

9.) Everyone insisting it isn't a bubble and it's different this time and that they aren't buying for the money but because they really, really like these: pogs, beanie babies, sports cards, Pokemon cards. Also shouting down people like me for being negative. 

10.) Original purveyors complaining but going all in anyway because they think they'll outsmart the market.  

 

I'll add more as I think of them... 

 

Had to go in on regular hours to put the last batch of books away. We basically got three weeks worth of books this week because of delayed shipments. It took me four hours of dodging customers and I couldn't help but feel that it interferes with business. It moves people out of the way no matter how I try to avoid them. Worse, I think it distracts from Sabrina paying full attention to the customer.

An hour after I left the store, sales had doubled. 

So I will, for the rest of the summer do two things.

1.) Order 90% of the product from Ingram to arrive within one or two days.

2.) Go in early during off hours to put books away.  

Still on pace for a record month. 

The dreaded "B" word.

Okay, I've been wondering. Should I start using the B word?

Our sales on game cards has more or less doubled, and they had increased dramatically for the previous years as well. We're selling out our allocations. The prices are increasing with every set and there are lots of people in the game.

So you can't keep exponentially growing for long. People's incomes aren't doubling and doubling. 

The allocations are happening because everyone is trying to get a piece of the pie.

We went all in on Final Fantasy Magic. I thought it would be a bit of gamble, but it paid off. However, I was hesitant to go that deep on the next two waves: Spider-man and Avatar. 

I needn't have worried. My allocations are much smaller, so I can only do what I can do.

So should I be using the B word?  I didn't have enough information. TCG cards are a sideline for us. As an example, it too me way too long to understand that actual players were focusing on Commander Decks. I was ordering very little of that. Nor did I understand how Collector boosters had supplanted Play boosters as the main focus of collecting.  

Well, this morning I listened to a podcast by a big game store guy. And it was like reliving the the sports card market of the late eighties/early nineties. I mean, almost word for word, what this guy was saying was the same kind of thing I was saying back then.

He revealed information I just didn't have. And the conclusion was pretty clear. 

We are in Bubble. 

Thank God I'm not that guy. Thank God TCG's are a sideline and not the main focus of our store. 

I'll need to be careful, and I can't avoid running some risk. The Bubble is only about 50% inflated in my estimation, which is a wild guess. But that means there is only about 20% left in the bubble to be doing things the same old way. 

I'll need to watch carefully and not wait too long.  

Told myself to start waking up earlier, thinking around 7:00 or 7:30 would be about right. My ratbag brain apparently went, "Oh. You want to wake up earlier?  5:30 it is!!!"

 

I think going in early to put away books is so enjoyable because I'm able to accomplish so much without the stress of dealing with people at the same time. (Dealing with people is a full time job, heh.) Displaying product in as clever a way as I can come up with has always been a creative and satisfying thing for me. There is something peaceful about an empty store, half-lit, full of cool stuff.   

 

Had a semi-slow day, which at almost any other time in the store's history would have been a good day. My heart sank. 

You'd think after 40 years I'd be immune to being whipsawed by daily totals, but if anything, that feeling is reinforced by the number of times it was a warning. 

Next day, sales went back up again. Still, it bears watching. (Though the only real danger is that I won't keep breaking record sales...) 

Good thing about ordering daily from Ingram is that I can keep firm control over the budget and adjust accordingly.  

I think in some ways, the non-communicative nature of other retailers helped me find my own way. I mean, I was aware of general trends. Over time, I learned on my own to separate the myths from the reality of retail. 

But the "secret sauce" as one retailer said to me when I inquired a little too inquisitively about what was working for him, that remained cloaked. 

Kinda silly, really. I mean if something works for one retailer, it doesn't hurt them if it works for another retailer. In the end, we're individual units dealing with the public. How we deal with the public will be different. A different vibe. 

I know, that's a little muddy sounding, but I've been trying to figure it all out for decades. 

I decided that there is very little I could reveal about my business that would actually hurt us. I've seen only one drawback to being candid with another retailer: I have to be careful not to use anything they say to me in a way that detracts from them. Not that I think it would, but I don't want there to be even a whiff of that.  

I never asked for specific numbers, though that would have been hugely illuminating. But I was curious about general trends: What do you think works here? What doesn't work there?

Unfortunately, my worst experiences with a competitor was at the beginning (40 years ago), a guy who decided to try to take us down by predator pricing and bad mouthing. It was such an extreme example that I worried every time a competitor opened a store. I would try to take a hands off approach, but I would eventually go into their store and greet them as friendly as I could be and tell them I'd be sending people their way any chance I got.   

Honestly, how well another store does doesn't impact on me. But that's not the way most people think. I firmly believe we can co-exist and thrive. The trick is to do your own thing. 

 

How refreshing. Made an order with Ingram on Monday, put the books away today. Replacement copies I know I can sell.

Meanwhile, I'm supposed to get orders I started building three weeks ago from the publisher/distributors over the next few days. 

That's it. That's just too long to wait. I'm using Ingram the rest of summer, probably doing an order every day. Every book they have in stock that I want, I'll order. 

There are perennials that I can order from the four publishers that can be backstock, but I only order backstock when I'm ahead. It's a bit of a luxury. Right now, I can't afford to lose the Summer traffic. 

It's a flaw in the system for sure. I tell you, if Ingram would give me a larger discount for non-returnable books, they'd get most of my business. For some reason, they don't have that option.

I went into the store at 8:00 this morning, which a few years ago would have been inconceivable. I have a set time I go to bed: 12:30. Any earlier and I awake early and can't get back to sleep. But lately, I've been waking up early anyway. 

It's a lot less stressful and much more productive to do the stocking while the store is closed. I can keep my concentration, I can move freely around the store without dodging, or worse, dislodging the customers, and I can make changes without worrying about disrupting the flow. 

 

Made the order and it even qualified for the secondary warehouse. I know they will arrive before this weekend, not two weeks from now. Enough chasing discounts. 

I also rediscovered something I once knew. It's twice as fast to order from one website which is functional than assembling two websites and three emails. Duh. 

So that's what I'm going to do for summer. I will continue to throw backlist orders at the publishers, but everything else is going to be faster from now on.  

I'm nothing if not inconsistent. 

After all my going too and fro about timeliness vs discount, the third element of the equation has come to the fore: accuracy.

I tried to do my budget this morning as I usually do on Tuesday and the truth is, I can't tell how much I owe Simon and Shuster, Scholastic, and Harper Collins. All I've got is a blizzard of invoices, some with as little as one title, and a couple of "statements" that make no sense to me. The dates seem all wrong, and the accounting is indecipherable, at least to me. I'm sure they make sense to an accountant, but it might as well be Algebra 2, which is the  only class I ever failed in high school. (I just quit going after the first few weeks because I couldn't begin to understand it, even when I had my friend Steve Davies try to help me.

I've added up every bit of money I think I owe and I've added 5K to my reserve fund just in case. But I'm not sure I can go on like this. All I want is a simple statement each month: You Owe X Amount Of Money, so I can write out a check for X Amount of Money. Is that too much to fucking ask?

I went around and around with the credit rep from S & S and we didn't seem to understand each other one little bit. "How much do I owe?" I ask.  "Which claim are you paying?" she answers. "How the hell do I know? You tell me!" and so on. 

So I've made a drastic decision. It's Ingram for the rest of the summer until the smoke fades. Sure I get 10% less discount but by God, I get the product the very next day (not two weeks!) and I know exactly what I've spent. I've always chosen timeliness and accuracy over discounts, all things being equal. 

So the quandary continues.   

No wonder Amazon is eating up the book world. Their search engine is a marvel and they get stuff to you promptly. Doesn't help me, as a retailer much. I mean, obviously, it hurts. But I can understand why it's happening.

The Big Five are still in the stone age, as far as I can tell. 

Penguin Random House at least has a way for you to order online directly with them, and know exactly what is in stock. But then...they split the damn order into a dozen little shipments with a dozen little invoices that come in on a dozen different time schedules. So they're halfway there. 

But the others? Might as well be writing them letters.