Drumbeat......tah, da!!!!
Well, we were down about 6% for the year, if you count daily totals. Add that to the 14% we were down the year before, and we're down 20% from the peak year of 2007.
Not bad, really, especially since it happened slow enough to make adjustments. I expected and planned for up to a 35% drop, and feared up to a 50% drop (which I could have survived, but not pleasantly.) By working the first 9 months of the year alone, I more than made up the difference.
Books and Boardgames added up to 25% of the total sales, up from 18% the year previous, and 14% the year before that. Adding in card games, and the total goes up to 34%, a good solid part of the store.
Comics and graphic novels combined were roughly 50% of the business. Which is comfortably where I'd like to have it. (I'm uncomfortable with any single product line being more than half my business....)
Comics were down slightly, which considering I couldn't make reorders for about 2 months while my supplier changed warehouses, I'd have to say we broke even.
Magic sales were down.
Toys and sports card sales were down.
Looking at trends, we were up over 2008 in September, October, November and December, so I'd had to say we hit 'bottom' in August. I started hiring part-time help again around the same time, so I think I guessed right.
Longer term, I don't expect to be able to get back to previous levels for another 2 or 3 years, especially if you count what would have been normal growth.
All this fits with what I expected before the downturn. These things actually were somewhat predictable -- a 6 or 7 year curve from top to bottom and back up to top again. If not predictable, at least not totally unpredictable. Because I'd seen it before. A bubble pops, and business drops in half overnight.
But the extent of the downturn was only predictable if you were willing to look into the DARKNESS. And very few people seem to want to do that. Much talk of "positive thinking."
But you know what? I prefer the results of "reality thinking."
Like I said, it was at least possible to see this coming....but you had to be willing to stare into the abyss. Small business should always be willing to stare into the abyss, I think.
I say this as an incorrigible optimist.
I've already ramped up my buying to previous levels, because I take satisfaction in the quality of my inventory. If I can't do the job right, I'd almost rather not do it at all.
As I said yesterday, more on the inventory later.
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2 comments:
"But you know what? I prefer the results of "reality thinking."
Good for you -- so do I.
But if you try to inject a dose of reality into the thinking of most folks in Bend you'll find yourself a social outcast. People are more addicted to "positivity" here than anyplace else I've ever lived.
HBM, Does this make you a social outcast?
The great Journalist Seldes said "Tell the truth and Run".
That all humans are dogs, and that if you tell the truth or rub reality (SHIT) in the face of the pack they will banish you.
A single black dog in a see of white dogs is a pariah and hated, ... maybe in the sense of Seldes this is why you call yourself 'black-dog' who the fuck knows why HBM does what he does.
I'm bilbo because I'm an old-fart and I travel the world, but I come back to Hobbiton to talk shit. But my Bend shire is now more like Mordor than the old Bend that I knew. The Shire Bend has long been destroyed by the Orc's ( calis ).
Positivity sell's, Sex Sell's, Bend is ONLY a town about selling. Like the current bendbubble3.blogspot.com today, Bend has now reached its zenith a town permanently and forever mired in 'FRAUD'. Will COVA change the PR? Hell no, will reality set into the mind of the downtown Bend shop-keeper for what Bend really is? Hell No. SELL, SELL, SELL comic books, ... SELL burgers, SELL homes, ... Just keep fucking selling Bend,and that takes one positive mother fucker to SELL a town of fraud.
Kisses HBM, I go back to 'hawaii' in a month, ... how about you?
HBM how much for graphic-novel "V for Vendetta?"
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