Lazy Fisherman

To continue my Lazy Fisherman analogy (In case you didn't realize, I'm trying hard to de-motivate myself): I'm already feeling a bit lazy because of summer. It wouldn't be too difficult to just go along with the feeling.

To visitors, just about everything in my store will look new and good.

One more week of taking it easy, then on to a strict budget for 8 weeks, with maybe a skip week somewhere in the middle.

This the battle to fight, right now.

A year ago, the battle was getting in enough boardgames and new books to create credible product lines. When I look at my sales, it's as if I designed them; each category is producing as much or more than I wanted.

Except, oddly, comics. Which I just think is going through one of its ebbs. I never really changed what I was doing with comics -- in fact, because of the discount situation, I've actually increased orders a tad. Unexpectedly, my comic customers seem more impacted by the local economy than my casual and or tourist customers are affected.

Anyway, comic and graphic novel sales are currently running at 40% of my total sales, (down from a 50 - 55% range last year) which I don't believe has happened since the height of baseball cards. Partly, I suppose, because comics are down a bit, but also because I've been successful at adding enough other product to smooth out the flow.

So far this month, we are running even with a very good month last year, which means that all the other product lines have picked up the slack.

So it turns out that not only weren't new books and boardgames too far a reach, but they have finally turned my store into a more stable business.