Wednesday, November 23, 2011

The store I want.

As I've created my store -- and that's what it is, an act of creation -- I've pretty much had in mind a pop culture oasis, a jewel in the high desert. A store that would stack up to any store in a bigger city, with the space limitations taken into account.

In reality, this is kind of silly to try to do.

For instance, I rarely sell independent graphic novels. Books that are well reviewed in the New York Times, and which every comic web site in the world thinks your a 'fanboy' shop if you don't carry. All well and good, but the truth is they don't sell all that great.

Same with statues, same with deluxe editions, same with heritage collections, same with designer toys.

Yet, I carry a full selection.

Lately, I've even replenished the manga and anime sections, though they more or less died off several years ago. (I've just brought in every Miyazaki movie I can, as well a Studio Ghibli, and some big movies like Steam Boy and Patlabor).

I've been keeping up the sports card and nonsport card sections for years, even though they are extremely erratic in sales.

In other words, I've created the store as I THINK IT SHOULD BE, rather than perhaps what the dictates of the marketplace would suggest.

Because the marketplace is fickle and unpredictable and ...well, I'd even have to say, treacherous.

What I'm trying to do, in some ways, is impose my own reality on the store. By force of will, I'm saying: "This is what SHOULD sell."

And I find, that indeed, if I really do an informed and curated job, that it more or less works out that way -- sometimes by accident, sometimes because I'm there to push it, sometimes because we get enough people from elsewhere who are appreciative of what I've done.

Because it's so much more satisfying this way.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

SLOW-DOWN dunc, others have even said what I have said,

Your stricken by fear when you walk by that the place could down on you and be suffocated by product.

Small children are terrified of the thought of entry, whereupon at entry the sign reads "He who's past this point knows no return", a maze it is, a sky-high monte-python skit of sky-scrapers out to devour mankind.

The store you want, the store you have.

But it's you dunc, and for god's sake be different, I'm not bashing your store just point out visual impression,

I would rather take dunc's model than the sterile FASCIS model of starbucks that everyone follows. Hell even mcDonalds folows the starbuck model, or maybe the other way around, you know empty, clean, and clean-toilets ... how un-ameriKKKan.