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.  

This will be our third highest month in 45 years of business. It looked for awhile like it would be our best month ever, but sales on card games fell off in the second half of the month. It's turned into a bit of a stalemate. Prices are so high customers are hesitating, but the replacement cost so high that I can't lower prices. 

We're on course with the savings I was shooting for. I've spent a bit more on product than I originally intended, but this will set us up well for the rest of the year. Our store has always tried to have more variety in card game boosters than anyone else and that supply is drying up in the wholesale market so I'm making some investments now. 

Going with Ingram has been much easier than ordering direct from the publishers. Of course, the publishers are now suddenly offering even higher discounts promos, so instead of foregoing 10% in margin, it's more like 15%. Still, until I've gotten clear statements from all the publishers, I'm going to keep ordering from Ingram. Not to mention, I love getting replacement product so quickly. 

When I try to fudge the difference by buying both from the publishers and Ingram, we end up with a lot of duplication. Which isn't totally bad if the books are perennials, just not as efficiently "Just In Time" as I'd like.  

As I suspected, once I got an up-to-date statement from Simon & Shuster, I owed quite a bit less than I'd been accounting for (worst case scenario.) I think the same thing will probably be true with Scholastic and Harper Collins. 

 

We've turned our attention to back-issue collectable comics and it's really paid off. I've kind of delegated Dylan to make that effort; keep reminding people of our back issues and direct them toward where they can find them. We've gone from having very few collectable comics to a big surplus, so much that people can dig in and find some treasures. 

 

Sometimes people compliment me on our curation of books, and up to now I've always agreed out loud but in my head I'm thinking (Well, we have what sells, which is what everyone sells.) But really, it is becoming more and more true that our selection is unique. I keep ordering books that are interesting but not best-sellers because we can afford do, and the more of these midlist books we carry, the more interesting the store. At least to me.  

 

I'm curtailing the experiment of going in early. Yes, it's quicker and more efficient, but...physically, it's wrecking me. I've had a sleeping pattern now for probably 40 years. Go to bed at 12:30,  wake up around 8:30. Once I programed myself into getting up "early" my ratfink brain decided I meant 5:30 or 6:00 and that's too damn early. 

I went in yesterday afternoon and put away 10 large boxes of books. Yes, it took all afternoon and yes, it was stressful and inconvenient. but at least I got my beauty sleep.  Plus, I think I was missing the conviviality of being around my people. 

The volume of books we're selling is intimidating. I reordered for just three days and it came to 10 pages from Ingram and a hefty order from PRH. It's amazing when it comes in and clogs the hallway, because we sell books in small batches and never quite see how it adds up until we start reordering. 

I was considering going in to Pegasus after closing and putting away books then, instead of trying to wake up so early in the morning. But I kinda know that wouldn't work. I'd be in the store with the lights on, like a goldfish in a bowl. It's not comfortable, plus I'm a night person, but not a social night person. When I used to go home at midnight after staying late, I always told myself to avoid werewolves. (Drunk belligerent people...) I really can't face it. 

So I'm pretty much stuck with the volume with three options. 

Spread the putting away books over shorter timespans, which would mean going in nearly every day.

Going in as early as possible, getting it done before opening, going home and crashing.

Staying late. (Not going to happen.)

Or put away books while customers are in the store.

 

I think I'm going to go in early, but not crazy early. Say get there by 9:30 or even 10:00, and then if still able to work for the first hour after opening, do that. If I get interrupted too much, quit and go home, which will mean getting up earlier the next day, and so on.

Honestly, I never expected this to be a big problem. Turns out when you do more business, it means more work! Who'd have thunk it?  

By the way, it wouldn't be quite as much work if I was willing to delegate, but I'm already asking Sabrina to do everything else and I'm the one who has the schemes of what books to order and where to put them away. And except for the frustrations of not being able to do it WHEN I want, I really enjoy the process. 

Got interviewed over the phone (I don't like being on camera) by KTVZ about downtown Bend about, of all things, tariffs. Told the reporter I hadn't noticed anything. (I wish I'd added that I didn't think it was a good idea...")

She seemed fascinated by the fact I'd owned the store for 42 years. (It's 41, but I misspoke and didn't feel like correcting myself.) So she kept asking questions.

Thing is, the feature is going to be short, and I'm not the only one interviewed, so I'll probably only be quoted for a couple of sentences, if that. You just never know what they're going to select. 

It's going to drive my friend Tyson crazy. He's been trying to get me interviewed by KTVZ for years and I've always refused. At this point, it's like I'm the Great White Whale he can't quite catch. But fair is fair, I wasn't on camera, which is the part I always wanted to avoid.  

Accomplished a lot yesterday and I'm tired as hell. After a week or two of waking up at 6:30 in the morning, I slept until 10:30 this morning. That can't be healthy.

Got to work at 8:30 yesterday so I could park near the back entrance of the store and fill the car with all the excess boxes and packing material. There wasn't a single parking space. At 8:30 on a freaking Sunday morning! This town has gone crazy.

I parked in front of the store, which meant I had to haul the stuff through the store, which is inconvenient but possible. 

Then I decided it was time to increase the Rom-Com section by integrating the "Classic Mystery" books back with the regular mystery books. Putting Dasheill Hammett and Raymond Chandler and such into it's own section didn't move the needle a bit. Meanwhile, Rom-Com continues to performs even though the display was chaotic. 

Opened the store at 11:00 and worked a very busy six hour Sunday (expanded by two hours over the rest of the year) so ten hours overall. 

It all had to be done, but wow, it was exhausting.