Ah, yes. Advertising.

D.K. asked a pertinent guestion about my overhead costs: what about marketing/advertising?

I don't do any advertising. I am listed in the yellow pages under a number of categories, but only as a line listing. Other than that, I rely on 'word of mouth.' Now, in the old days, that would've been enough. People who were interested in what I carried could ask around town and there was a good chance that the person they asked would know about my store and what I carried. Especially if it was a 'fad .'

For instance, when I started carrying Beanie Babies, it was as if every collector told every other collector and they'd magically appear at my door. Fads have amazing conductivity of information. I would almost immediately hear about any new development in sports cards; in fact, one of the dead giveaways that sports cards wasn't the hot thing anymore is when that imformation stopped flowing.

I've often said, that when I first bought the store, No One knew who we were, five years later, Everyone knew who we were, and ten years after that I was back to: "I didn't know you were here." The Bulletin statistic from a few years ago that 75% of the population has been here for less than 5 years explains some of that.

I've tried advertising, of course. Everyone who starts a business thinks that advertising will magically produce customers, and lower prices will magically produce sales. Neither of which are true.

I found that advertising was like throwing a pebble in the middle of a big lake, and hoping the ripples miles away from shore will bring in the driftwood. You could get lucky, you could hit on the magic phrase or formula, but chances are....nothing will happen except your bank account will shrink.

In fact, every month I advertised heavily I was short the EXACT same amount of money as I was being billed for advertising......And the shortage disappeared when I quit advertising. "Doctor, it hurts when I do this." "Then quit doing it!"

I was also taken for a ride by some of the radio stations and other advertisers who charged me top dollar but couldn't deliver. I wasn't experienced or tough enough to get a deal.

As I gained experience, I tried to apply logic. What I came up with is this; my product appeals to at best 3% of the populace. I'm paying the same rates in the newspaper or T.V. as people who have product who appeals to 50 - 100% of the populace. I.E. Clothes, food, shelter, transportation, etc. etc.

Not very effective.

Now if I could come up with an extremely creative and effective ad; and I could find enough creative and effective people locally to create that ad; and I could find a way to come up with the money to run that ad long enough to have an effect? Maybe.

It keeps coming back to the very basic fact that it ain't cost effective.

I've been considering a bit of advertising, lately. (This is not an invitation to advertisers, by the way. I've found if I advertise even a little bit, every marketeer in the frakkin' world comes out of the woodwork.... a small advantage to not advertising.)

Because I'm tired of the comment: "I didn't know you were here!" Or; "I thought all you carried was comics!"

But for 500.00 dollars I could duplicate the top 50 bestselling graphic novels in my store, or I could buy 7 measly 1" ads in the Bulletin, or maybe a bit more in the Source, and then eagerly ask my customers if they saw the ad, and get a 99% negative reaction.

I think I'll buy more graphic novels....