The Final Fantasy Magic cards haven't been a flop. They're selling at about the pace I hoped for, maybe a little faster, though it's the beginning of the run so that seems right. I haven't been at the store so I don't know exactly what's selling. 

Meanwhile, new books continue to sell. It looks like this will be the sixth month in a row where we'll beat last year. In fact, we're on pace to have our best year ever. 

I can't believe how much more work it's taken to catch up from taking a week off. Pretty much spent all of today doing book orders--and I'd already done about 40% of them before today. I'm not sure I'll ever dare do a skip week again. 

Everything comes down to the budget. I'm finding it nearly impossible to keep track of what I'm spending with my three new publishers: Simon & Shuster, Harper Collins, and Scholastic. Unlike Penguin Random House and Ingram, they don't give me totals, and it would add a hell of a lot of time to add them up one by one. I count them, and round them off to a certain number that I'm pretty sure is slightly higher than they actually are. But it's inexact, and I'm been caught flatfooted a couple of times. Nothing dangerous, but slightly off putting.  All those years of living week to week without credit or reserves made me very careful about how I spend the money. 

I figured out a budget that would work within a 20% range of my high estimate in sales and the 20% range of my low estimate in sales. In other words, a firm number I stick to every week. It's hard to see progress on a day to day basis, but I know it's probably starting to accrue. I don't need to change the budget unless there is a radical change in sales, up or down.

Yeah, it only took me 40 years to figure it out. 

This new Magic release is going to be an interesting experiment. Today is going to be a test, though it may be too early to draw conclusions.  

I can't think of a time when we've had all these particular circumstances at the same time.

The eternal retail conundrum: Supply and Demand. 

On one hand, we have a supposed "hot" product that I have been able to order a lot of; as I've always said, selling hot product isn't hard, getting enough material in stock to sell is the hard part. I have this weird feeling that while most stores are not getting as much material as they usually can sell, I'm getting more material than I can usually sell.  

So it's a gamble. Already today, the day of release, the prices seem to have moderated online. However, it also seems to be sold out most places and we have plenty in stock. Not everyone wants to buy in advance, not everyone wants to buy online.

One good thing about ordering so much product is that I can sell a large part of my order at "regular" prices. I'm always more comfortable at SRP. But with hot product, you have to be careful. Another saying I have--it's better to have product at higher prices than to not have any product at all. But preferably, we can have both SRP and sufficient supplies. 

Sure FOMO exists (Fear of Missing Out). But conversely, everyone will always have the fear that they are paying too much and prices will drop. That fear is why people are willing to pay in advance, but that fear is also why they might also want to wait and see.  

During Covid and more recently after Pokemon seemed to suddenly sell out everywhere, my experience told me to buy everything I could get, every chance I got, even at higher prices. That worked very well at the start, but lately I've noticed that I'm able to get more than I'm actually selling. Which would seem to be a warning sign to back off. 

I've also ordered extra product outside normal channels at higher prices. So far, every time I've done that, it's been a step too far. So I think that is where I need to draw the line.  

There is a possibility that it could all be a flop. I'm betting otherwise, but I've certainly had that experience before. Back when I was doing sports cards--the nearest example of what's happening now--I would often itch to buy tons of some product and then only see it flop. But just as often,  the product would be a hit. My general sense was that they cancelled each other out. 

What saved me was that I didn't have the money to gamble all that much.  

This time I do. 

My main supplier has proven somewhat reliable in offering more material over time--but it's spotty. Some product they continue to offer and some is never offered again, and damned if I know which is which until I've already committed.  

All of this stuff will sell over time. I don't know, maybe Sabrina will benefit more than I will. However, I have no problem with handing over a thriving store to her.  

 

Went on vacation for five days and decided to do a skip week.

Oh, boy. I came back to a swamped store and a swamped schedule. Summer is hitting hard all of a sudden. I looked at Sabrina and said, "With the amount of stuff I'm doing off the clock, you're probably going to need a full time employee."

One of my jobs at the store is to just go around and straighten everything. A seemingly simple job that is actually really important with a packed store like Pegasus. It would be so easy for everything to get out of control, to become utterly chaotic, impossible to find anything. Overwhelming.

I spent most of today just doing that; going around, checking to see where we had holes and what was missing or filed incorrectly. Meanwhile, Sabrina was dealing with customers and the register and she's being nearly overwhelmed. 

By skipping a week in orders, I didn't save any work. If anything, more stuff arrived this week than ever before, especially with the huge Magic and Pokemon orders, as well as boxes from Harper Collins and Simon & Shuster on top of the usual Penguin Random House and Ingram. 

Meanwhile the usual six or eight pages of books sold that need to be reordered ballooned to about twenty pages, single spaced pages, books that have to be looked up, to check to see if we have them in stock, figure out which publisher carries them, and enter all the information.

I do this mostly at home, but that's becoming more and more difficult too with the multiple publishers and random arrivals of stock. I make more mistakes if I can't see what the store actually has. 

I think Sabrina has pretty much decided that she'll need a Point of Sale program to keep track and I have to agree though I shudder how hard it will be to get up and running.  

The bright side is: this is all due to success. We're doing very well, sales-wise, and that just requires more effort to keep up with. Peak business, I'd say. Any more and we'd have to completely upend our single store person model and that brings its own headaches. Frankly, having more than one person in the store at a time means we're often stumbling across each other. I try to stay out of the way, but I can't help overhearing discussions where I can add my two cents worth. 

We've got time to try to work out a way for Sabrina to get all this done. I'd like to hang around a little if possible, just be an unobtrusive worker bee, if that's possible. But she's be in charge and I'll need to do what she wants. If she'll have me. 

If not, then...full retirement. Hint, hint, she's been telling me I need to "practice retirement..." 

Getting into the weeds about my budgeting process.

I'm still dealing with the consequences of moving from a timeliness/accuracy model of ordering to not so timely or accurate, but higher discount model. Still working out the kinks, though I'm beginning to get a handle on it. Over the course of the year, the higher discounts should make us more profitable.

I think. 

We get an extra week for budgeting each month, The first three weeks divides almost all the large overhead costs (wages/rent/wages) and leaves the fourth week to pay down on whatever debt we might have accrued, or if no debt, a chance to order something we don't normally order.

Each quarter we get on fifth week, which helps even more.  

I have spent four times as much money as normal this month on Pokemon and Magic, so I'm applying the fifth week to June, even though the accounting Tuesday falls on the first of July. (Tuesdays are when I do all my figuring.) 

I budget week to week. It took years to arrive at this solution. Monthly was too long a stretch and daily is too short a stretch; weekly seems to be the right number to keep accurate track of both sales and budget.  

My budget is planned for when I make the orders not when the monies are due, so I have a lot of leeway, which I try not to abuse.

This week I skipped ordering books. This is almost the first time I've done this since I became a full bookstore. 

It doesn't really matter because we've had huge shipments arrive yesterday and today and probably tomorrow. I can no longer keep track of when books will arrive, except from Ingram. They just keep flowing through the door.

So budgeting has really come down to doing a rolling average of what I spend. This is a change, because until now I've been matching spending to sales pretty accurately. Now that I'm ordering from five different sources for books, I can't really keep track of that. So the focus is on the budget. As long as I budget correctly, the rest should work out (assuming sales continue to be close to what they've been.)

Because of the skip week, I'm moving up my accounting on books to the actual week I order instead of the following week. I don't need to do this, but it does feel more like I'm top of things that way.  

We've been rolling along selling books and cards, and we've turned some of our attention to back issue collectable comics, which we suddenly have a good supply of. As usual, whatever we turn our attention to gets a boost in sales. I finally feel like I have the two major legs of our store on a solid footing so I'm trying to get comics back to being a good solid third leg to the stool. 

 Anyone get this far? It fascinates me, if no one else.  

Because I'm on vacation anyway, I decided to do a skip week on books. We're a little overloaded right now anyway. Of course, it won't matter if I end up ordering the same number of books and get them in one week instead of two, but I'm hoping it will inspire me to be a little pickier for once.

We've got so many good books and we're mostly up to date. Also, the minimums numbers for the secondary publishers have to be reached anyway, so it's only the dozen or so bestsellers that came out this week that we'll be missing. As you've heard me say many times, we're a midlist bookstore, not a New This Week bookstore. 

We're getting the most Magic that's we've ever gotten. Now I have to hope Final Fantasy is a hit. We can be pretty moderate on pricing, at least compared to what I see online, so we can afford to sell a lot at a lower price  

June 8.

Going to walk the one mile Hiouchi trail down to Jedidiah State Park today while Linda tries to attend zoom church.  Jasper is motionless, crouched over a gopher hole in the meadow outside the trailer. He can stay like that for a long time. He's already master of the RV park, wandering around with his leash but without anyone holding the other end of the leash. Tail straight up in the air, head held confidently high, he'll approach anyone who shows the slightest interest, including dogs. With his gear on and upright posture he absolutely looks like a dog from a distance. I've always said he is our Cat/dog.

We did absolutely nothing yesterday. I think I napped three times. Such behavior at home would feel disgraceful, but here it feels just right. (Which only raises the question: Why is it disgraceful at home?)

 

Crossed the highway and found the trail easily. There was a couple in front of me, blasting their radio. Inexplicable! What kind of fucking idiot brings a fucking radio on a nature walk!? I waited to let them get ahead of me. Started walking, immediately came upon a doe who just stood there while I took its picture and talked softly. Didn't run off until I started walking toward it. 

Got sidelined partway to the park. An offshoot of the trail that led down to the Smith River and a gorgeous rock pinnacle over the water where I'm now sitting on a handy seat-sized rock. I will make it to the park yet--I do want to see the Redwoods, but meanwhile I'm going to just take this in. 

 

I'm already relaxed and the sound of flowing water is just layering on another layer. I brought donuts with me. (I know, I know...what kind of idiot brings donuts on a nature walk!) Just going to sit here and imbibe nature and artificially sweetened donuts. And...can't I just enjoy nature without a running commentary? Well you can take the boy out of writing but you can't take the writing out of the boy.

I forgot my hat for this trip, again, so the sun is really beating down on me. I've moved to a less comfortable but shady rock. I think once we really start doing this on a regular basis--which, I hope is pretty much starting now (I'm 'practicing' retirement!) --we'll work out the kinks. Linda brings way too much food and books, I bring work stuff that I'm never going to get to. 

Interestingly, it turns out that a large percentage of people in this RV park are permanent residents. You know, I don't think I would find this kind of living to be all that bad. Maybe a bigger rig than a our Catbus, but...

Toby and Felicia have been making noises about moving to Brookings: she wants the coast and he's adamant about staying in Oregon, so a permanent set up in an RV park in Hiouchi would be great. A vacation home, so to speak. 

Rafters coming by...I'm such an awkward fella, I never know how much to interact or when to wave.  

Guy in the first raft was friendly, people in the second and third raft ignored me. I know, I know...who keeps score but an awkward introvert! Linda and I talk about this all the time; she is a natural, it's second nature, she doesn't think twice about it. I have to admit I'm getting better at it--the trick for me is not try so hard.

Also brought some beef jerky which got got in my teeth. Pulled some grass stems and used them as toothpicks. Real nature boy.

I believe most of the trees along the hills above the river are fir trees. Interesting to be only a mile from the Redwood stands, but no Redwoods. Climbing up some fairly steep rocky terrain. I have to constantly remind myself that I'm an old man--not because I feel like that, but because I don't. I objectively know that my balance, while still good, isn't probably what it used to be.

I think I'll move along to the park, and maybe stop off at this spot again on the way back. I tell you, if I lived in Hiouchi, I'd be down here every day. Maybe getting my writing going again... 

 

Started seeing Redwoods about five minutes from the park--so, probably already the park. They stood among the firs, and weren't the really big ones, so I kept going. Then...relative civilization. Big trees, but also paved roads, cabins, campers, cars, sewage disposal, rangers, the whole shebang. Did a loop, took a few pictures, almost got lost, and headed back.

Took another offshoot, but couldn't quite reach the river without taking a chance. (Someone had even coiled a rope at the top of the slope, but that was more of a warning than an enticement.) I tell you what, though...if I lived here, I'd probably walk this trail every day, especially the offshoots. Only a couple minutes on foot to get to the head of the trail instead of an hour's drive from Bend to get anywhere truly nature and private and not a "No Trespassing" zone. To be fair, there are public trails like the Hiouchi trail a lot closer, but tons of people these days. This trail is relatively quiet. It's just the right length, two or three miles overall, for a relaxing walk. 

Aside from the radio buffoons, saw only two fast moving old men on the trail. Heh. A quail scooting by, leading me away from the nest. That's it. Glorious. 

 

 

I may have overreacted to the shortage of Pokemon. We'll have plenty for summer, and if summer doesn't pan out, then we'll have inventory for the foreseeable future. It's a bit of FOMA: Fear of missing out. But it's also our one competitive advantage: the depth and width of our inventory. We don't do in-store play, or tournaments, or singles, or full boxes at a discount. We sell packs. And more packs. And we can sell packs as long as the trading card games are viable.

There is zero sign of weakness in the market, besides a few grumbles, and there are always grumbles. The prices are being pushed to maximum frequency and price, which may mean people will buy less, or some people will quit, but the game itself will go on. 

I went all IN on Final Fantasy Magic the Gathering. One good thing about having an account with the the same wholesaler for 35 years is that we get a nice allocation of shorted product. In fact, most of the time I don't even take the full allocation.

This time I did....+ every additional chance to order.  It remains to be seen if it was a mistake, which just points out the conundrum. The failures in ordering come from the same place as the successes. The same reasoning, the same planning. It depends sometimes on whether the upside outweighs the downside.

Since we have resources and aren't in debt, the upside tips the balance. When I was broke and in debt, the downside controlled my decisions. Success breeds success, failure breeds failure.