The weather has turned, so we're probably in for some slower days. I'm not going to order as much unless we have at least average summer days if not better.

But it will still be a record, just not as much as I'd hoped. We'll still be caught up on all bills and with the amount of savings I expected. Mid-month, I was hoping for more, but changing the goalposts because we were doing so well wasn't really fair. 

We could have saved more, but we'd be out of some valuable inventory and we'd probably have had make bigger orders to replace product in Sept., so this is more realistic.

We have to reach normal "fall" sales this week to break-even, which should be easy enough. If we can do a little more in savings, I'll keep it. I'm not going to make any orders until next Tuesday morning. I'm going to just rest on my laurels. 

I've done the job. As I said, we could have saved more by not buying so much Pokemon and Magic, but that stuff is going to sell over the next year and I'll be very glad to have it.  

 

So next year. The project will be to maximize profit, while not going backward on inventory. To do so, I'll have to pay a lot of attention to which books I should be ordering quickly from Ingram and which books I should be ordering for more discount from the publishers. 

I'm now fully convinced that I am better off ordering from Ingram at 42% margins, but getting replacements within a couple of days than I am ordering from the publishers at anywhere from 52 to 55% margins but not getting them for more than 10 days. 

But what I can do is both. A hot title reordered from Ingram every time it sells, but also ordering from the publisher at higher margins as back stock. It's a completely intuitive process and not completely predictable, but I feel as long as I'm paying sufficient attention, I can do it.

This works especially well when we have a long series or an author's full bibliography. That is, I can order to fill holes and wait because I've already got a large selection for the customer to buy from.  Other than the occasional customer who needs a specific number or title, that works fine. And if they request it, then I can order from Ingram then and there. 

So, for instance, we have about 15 PKD books in stock. We could probably add another 15 books of his we don't have, but there is already a good selection of books for the customer to choose from. I can take the extra time to order from the publisher for the higher discount.

This also takes care of the space problem. Money and time aren't as big of problems for us as space is. So I'm constantly having to figure out ways to fit things in. What to let go of and what to add. Adding titles to space already dedicated to a series or an author makes all kinds of sense.

No more time for experimenting or for long-term projects (which I have always done over the last 42 years). I'm quickly coming to the end of my tenure and then it will be for Sabrina to do as she sees fit. A year and a half away, but time is moving so fast... 

 

 

Apparently, I (Pegasus) did make the news. A short clip where I say the tariffs haven't had much of an effect on us, that I could see. I did get to say my favorite phrase. "I've owned the store for 42 years and we've been here for 45 years." I sounded calm and reasonable, which was what I was striving for.

 

I've been saying for awhile that a good portion of our customers are passersby. Yet...when I open early or stay late, there is a constant stream of people walking by. I hit the officially open hours and people start coming in.

Could I have been wrong about this? (Interesting concept...nah.)

"This store was made for me," a customer says as he saunters out of the store empty handed except for the coffee he came in with.

 

 

Guy says, "The word Nazi is used too much."

I turn and mutter, "A Nazi is as a Nazi does..."

I think he might have heard me. 

 

Seven hours. I'm just not used to that. Usually Sunday in the winter is 4 hours, I lengthened that to 5 hours officially in the summer, and I've added two more hours while business is booming. But it seems like a big difference. Add in the hour an a half before opening and the hour of commute. 

 

 

 

Even getting here early, it's taking me four hours to get the daily shipment put away. Also refreshing the Magic and Pokemon and doing some cleaning and straightening. 

That seems to be about average now. Considering I'm coming in every day and the extra hours on Sunday, I'm at the store 30 hours a week.  I figure I spend another four hours per day making orders, say five times a week, and I'm suddenly working 50 hours. 

So much for practicing retirement.

But what is happening right now is unusual and it won't continue for much longer. Not sure what sparked it, but I'll take it.  

We're so busy, it's almost scary. I think I can safely say that this past week was the busiest we've ever been outside the weeks before Christmas. We've kept up the quality and stock, but only by upping our hours at the store. Turns out, you do more business---you do more work. 

I spent a ton of money on backstock in Magic when I realized that all the old stuff is starting to disappear. Our competitive feature is that we have a whole bunch of different releases of Magic going back years. They sell slowly but steadily. But once they're gone, they're almost impossible to replace. 

I checked all over the internet to see what kind of prices were happening and discovered I was slightly too high on a few releases but far too low on others. I just wasn't paying attention. Today I'm going in early to adjust prices accordingly. 

I'm certainly glad that I went on a Pokemon splurge. Everything I was offered and everything they would allow me to buy. I bought from a whole lot of places I've never bought before. 

We've been rewarded for our efforts. 

Same thing with books. I'm not even hesitating to buy books that sold or books that look interesting. I'm ordering almost everyday now, and getting them in fast. I'm going in early almost every morning to get them put away. 

Again, we've had a good response.

It was very possible that I could have spent too much money--way too much, at that--but I could sort of sense the trajectory of sales and trusted my instincts. (My experience...)  

I know this probably won't last more than a week or two more. The moment there is a whiff of Fall in the air, people switch thinking from vacation buying to school preparing. 

I'm not sure it being a little slower will be a bad thing, as long as I control the budget. 

Oh, and this is fun and energizing to see. Very gratifying to see the results of all our efforts.  

This may be the best 7 day stretch, outside of the week before Christmas, that we've ever had.  I think we might be able to maintain that average over the next four days, Thurs, Fri, Sat, and Sun as well. (Yep, today on Thursday, we are well over our best average.)

Did I save oodles of money? Actually, the opposite. I spent most of it. I've ordered books every day and I've ordered as much Magic and Pokemon as I can. So if you count the inventory, I did actually make a lot more money, but it won't appear until later. 

It's the way I've always done it when things are going well. Spend to keep the momentum going so that when it drops you still have enough to last you through the lean times. It seems to have worked so far. 

Right now we've gone from struggling to keep two viable Pokemon booster products in stock to having nine viable booster packs. We've gone from about four total sets to more than twelve. I've also bought every box of older Magic that my main supplier has. I am starting to use a couple of large online outfits to order more Magic and Pokemon, which I've never done before.

A bubble? Maybe, but it's still summer and Christmas is coming. 

My sense is that the current demand for these cards is drying up the back supply that was always there. My main supplier has maybe a quarter as much as they used to have.

I'm basically not even trying to make savings goal this week. I'm going to try to make it up in the fourth and fifth weeks of summer. (I'm attributing the first Tues. in Sept. to summer, which still leaves the usual four weeks for Sept.)  

 

Meanwhile books pile up with every shipment, but by the time the next reorder comes in, there is space again. A really healthy trend. We get tons of compliments. (I think probably all bookstores do....)

 

I happened to check my main supplier again after writing the above to see what kind of boosters of Magic they had. They only had about 20 or so brands, most of them newer brands and/or brands no one wants. This is different even from a week ago, when I know I could have ordered at least a dozen brands that have now suddenly disappeared.

This supplier is the canary in the coal mine. They've always on top of things and if they're running out, Oh, Boy. When this happened with Pokemon, I immediately started scouting for product and accepting all allocations and weekly specials and that has proven to be a hell of thing.

This spurred me to check online to see what was available there. Long story short, I ended buying a huge amount of Magic from the three places. Every brand I could find that still fit into our pricing scheme.

Wow.

But when you see product dry up my main supplier, it means it's going to dry up everywhere else too. Most stores only carry maybe ten releases of Magic. With this latest batch, I wouldn't be surprised if are near 100 or so.

It's the one thing that works for us. We can't sell boxes and make money. We don't do tournaments or have play space. We don't do singles. Booster packs are what works for us.

It's the same thing I did with Pokemon, and I think that has really paid off.

I want to be a store that everyone comes to because they know we'll have it. And this summer has been so good, that even this big batch of orders is well within the budget. 

Can a store get too many customers? 

I think this answer is yes. We have been absolutely swamped the last four days or so, this after an already very busy month of July. (Third best in sales ever, but without a doubt the month we've had the most people in the door.) It's fun and exciting and....exhausting.

The usual reaction would be to expand the space and hire more employees. But that ain't going to happen. The reason we have so many customers is because of the space we have and where it is located. As far as hiring more employees, I've been adding hours for Dylan as fast as I can. 

Thing is, it's seasonal. Taking on more overhead now will backfire for the half of the year that isn't so busy. 

What a strange problem to have.  

I believe we've managed to keep up the quality, mostly by increasing both Dylan's and my hours. I'm grinding it out by going in early and more often and then spending most of my time at home making orders. Luckily, this is the week that Linda is off to church camp so I'm spending as much time as I can muster in the store.

Budget? Gone with the wind. I've never been one to let a moment go to waste. So far, the biggest cost, beside wearing me out, is small inefficiencies that would normally really bother me. I've always gotten stuff out in front of the customers as rapidly as possible. I've always tried to made sure I didn't duplicate orders. I've always tried to keep series complete. And so on.

These things are slipping, though probably not in such a way that the customer will notice. In fact, I'm ordering more stuff not less, it's just not quite as targeted as before. (Which can have some unexpected benefits: if I always do things the same way, how do I know that doing it different might not help?)  So things sell a little more unexpectedly.

The goal is to keep this momentum without taking on too much work or spending too much money. But we're so busy it's harder for me to take a step back and take a measure of what I'm doing.

Like I said, a nice problem to have, and one that will soon solve itself when school starts and the tourists slacken.