I know when I'm being bullheaded. When I'm being just flat out stubborn. When I'm trying to impose my will on the consumers. When I'm not backing off my buying in the face of slowdown.

I've always wondered how important willpower is the the success....or failure....of a business. I know that I started morphing the store to meet my own tastes and standards almost from the beginning. It is very easy, when you are fully immersed in a culture, to get ahead of your customer. But if you wait for the customer, it might be too late. A very find line.

For instance, I've been looking at the designer toy movement for quite awhile. The 'urban vinyl' movement are toys that are wild and personal and quirky in design, and limited in numbers. They aren't attached to an particular popular media license, but are one-of-a-kind inventions and inspirations. I even tried to bring some of them in, but was foiled by the prices and the very selective availability. And I found that when the toys were dispersed through the store, they lost any impact they might have had. I backed off.

This month's Previews has an entire new section on designer toys, which means that the art toy movement has finally moved front and center to the rest of the pop culture world. I'm going to be all over it, and finally buy that glass cabinet to display them.

The above scenario has happened over and over again, over the years. I brought in pogs 2 years before they took off. I sat on Pokemon for 6 months before they started selling. I was carrying Beanie Babies 6 months before they took off.

It's all a big drag on my cash-flow, let me tell you. But I'd rather be fully engaged than take the cynical view that I"ll need to wait for my customers.

There aren't any particular brands where this is happening right now, more just the broad range of cool stuff that I think the store should have, but which I know I'm probably going to have to wait for people to find and appreciate.

That's where I'm being stubborn. There have been days in the last two weeks when I could have gold and diamonds on the counter, and selling them for 10%, and I wouldn't have enough people coming the the door to buy them.

Ah, well. As I've said before, I buy when they are available, and just hope and pray that when the busy seasons come, customers will respond. Sometimes it never happens. I have a HUGE number of art books that almost never sell, but I'm still a sucker for them. I guess one way to look at it, is that they are my own personal collection. If I ever have a bigger store, I'll be able to put a larger percentage of them face out. That would be most impressive. As it is, they are all scrunched together, spine out, which is a pretty silly way to sell an 'art' book.

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Bit and Pieces: I wrote a second draft of my daily novel last night; which is against the rules I was planning to follow. But since it's the beginning of the book, it'll be rewritten over and over again. In some ways, it's the most important part of the process.

The Stephen King comic came in yesterday, and it's a very impressive production.