Most things sell out...eventually.

It's interesting when Dylan reports on a day at the store. He'll give a subjective feeling about how busy it was which often doesn't match the actual sales. But in some ways, that subjective feeling may actually be more accurate as to the health of your business. You can feel when people are interested, even if they aren't spending money. It's much harder to know if people are losing interest but they are still spending money. 

If that makes any sense. You probably have to be a store keeper to understand. I do remember early on reading that the customer count was a better measure of how a store is doing than the actual amount of money taken in.

Imagine, if you will, that you are a small store with a few customers that you cater to and who, when they come in, spend a lot of money. But you're using an inordinate amount of time, energy, and effort to satisfy them, including discounts. Are you a healthy store?

I'd say you are on dangerous ground. Whereas, getting a wide variety of people in who seem interested in your business even if they don't actually spend much, is maybe a better sign that you're healthy or in a position to get healthy.

I'd rather have a hundred people spending $10, than ten people spending $100 dollars, but the latter is very seductive until two or three of them quit, while the first store can lose ten or fifteen people and still have better sales. Not to mention attracting other customers and the word of mouth that is engendered. 

I always had a sense of whether we were moving forward or falling back. Sometimes I'd make changes that I instinctively knew were working even when sales didn't at first reflect it. And I could usually tell when a fad was starting to cool (I learned the hard way to cut orders sooner rather than later.)  

Pokemon is currently a good example of that. Sales totals are still pretty good, but I get the feeling that it's fewer people buying more and older people instead of kids and young families. That it is older people makes me feel like they are motivated by FOMO. 

When I check online, sales have moderated, but not by much. So there isn't much incentive--yet--to lower prices.

The difference between this time and the days when fads ruled the market is that I'm only spending what I actually have in hand instead of ordering stuff in advance and hoping it pans out. The second difference is that I'm pretty secure that Magic and Pokemon will continue, even if it slows down, which means everything will sell eventually. 

Maybe not when I'm in charge, but everything will inevitably sell out given enough time.  

Islands of neatness.

 

I keep having anxiety dreams about the store ever since I decided to reorganize it yet again.

It's always a situation where I find that I'm involved in an offshoot of the store that I don't remember. Last night it was the Book Barn only it was called Frankenstein Books. 

Somehow I'm a minor partner, supplying used books. But the books look like crap, so I want to reorganize them. By doing so, I start straightening up the other books and the more I do that the smaller the selection looks, because I'm shedding dead product and consolidating and straightening viable product and that means they become little islands of neatness in the midst of emptiness. 

I'm making the situation worse.

I think that's the anxiety I'm feeling about the changes I'm making. I'm taking a highly functioning store and messing with it. Adding more capacity may be the wrong move. I guess I'll go ahead and take the new fixtures in and see how they work, but be willing to see that it's not working and remove them if needed. Ask Dylan and Sabrina if they work and take their advice.  

Even though this is my last year, which already seems to be accelerating, I can't seem to stop doing what I've always done. Improve the store every chance I get, even if it costs me time, energy, and money.  

Discount vs everything else.

I was taking a break from ordering from publishers, except for Penguin Random House. Despite the extra 10% to 15% discount I would get. 

During the summer and Christmas, I even avoided buying the PRH unless Ingram didn't have a book in stock.

The results? Wildly successful summer and Christmas, far beyond what I would have ever thought possible. 

I think it's been proven that timeliness and reliability and ease of use far outweigh the extra discount. I've started ordering books almost every day from Ingram so that I'm rarely out of a good-selling title.  

Yes, I could probably order large orders from publishers of books that I know will sell forever, but it's just too annoying not to know what the publishers have in stock, how long it will take to show up, and trying to decipher their billing. 

So I'm done. I'll spend the rest of my career ordering mostly from Ingram, a one or two day shipment away.  

My favorite part of owning my own store.

The two new bookshelves didn't fit where I intended. So I put one of them somewhere else in a less than ideal location and brought the other home.

Then I measured again, searched the internet, and found two fixtures that I think will work better. I hope. 

The fixture I put in the "less than ideal spot" will also be replaced by a better fixture. 

Meanwhile, two/thirds of the poplar planks I purchased have found a place in the store, so I don't feel like I wasted my money. 

All this moving around has thrown the store into a bit of chaos, which is why it is being done now in January and February, historically two of our slowest months. Should all be done by March, after which there'll be some finessing around.  

All this rearranging has added up to a lot more linear feet of shelving than I originally expected. I thought at most I'd get about 20 feet, but in the end I ended up with about twice that much, though some of it is so high up the wall that it can only display a few art books face out. Still, better than before.

For some reason, I get great enjoyment out of doing this kind of thing. It's always been my favorite part of owning a store.  

The magic of ergonomics.

I keep thinking that I've used up every inch in the store. And I do mean inch. 

Then I get a brainstorm. Often it's consolidating and moving stuff around, but every once in a while I actually figure out how to put a new shelf or a new bookcase in. It's very labor intensive because the store is packed and it requires a lot of lifting.

I bought two new fixtures for the front of the store, but after I got them in I realized that I hadn't measured right. I thought since they were thin bookshelves they'd fit, but they are 15" wide instead of the 12" I was expecting. You wouldn't think 3" would make a difference, but it makes all the difference. The shelves also weren't adjustable, which also made them less than ideal.

So I basically blew $200 buying the wrong thing. I'm going in early today to see if I can squeeze them in or not. If not, I've already researched a couple of bookcases that would probably do the job better. 

In order to fit all the books I'm getting into the store, I'm moving farther up the wall. It's not ideal, but there is nothing else I can think to do. Any book that is at eyesight or below (except perhaps a bottom shelf) will sell better than any book above people's heads. 

There was a period of time when I was putting up slatwalls, and I wish now that I'd basically covered the entire store that way. The old-timey brackets just don't have the adaptability that slatwalls have.  

But it's always been that way. Leftover fixtures, used fixtures, weird sized fixtures. Whatever I can squeeze in. Ironically, when I consolidate and move stuff and even add stuff, it looks like I've cleared away space. That's the magic of ergonomics. Making more look like less. (Instead of the way I spent the first half of my career---making less look like more...) 

Gambling ain't good for you.

For some reason, I've always had an antipathy to gambling. It never came up in my family as an issue growing up, except perhaps a slight disdain and a feeling that it was foolish. But the strong reaction I have to it is something that has no genesis.

Unless...it's sports cards. I have a slight case of PTSD over sports cards as anyone who reads this blog knows. I felt attacked by the sports card collectors, often over doing what I thought was the ethically correct things.

Yet here I am, selling comics and cards and knowing that some people are gambling on them. I try to be a moderating influence, but really...it's impossible to stay completely detached. I didn't set out to cater to this urge people have to gamble, but I haven't been able to turn away completely. 

I try to moderate prices, to keep it within "collector" range prices instead of speculator pricing, but it's a hard path to tread. I'd be perfectly happy if I could just buy wholesale and sell retail, and this is what I try to do as much as is possible. 

Thankfully, books haven't become a gambling product. I don't carry used books, so the idea of "First Edition" and "Rare" books doesn't really come up. I've never treated graphic novels or game books as collector items and have kept them at normal prices. I know for a fact that some of these books and games sell for more online but I don't care.  

I think the culture at large as gone off course with all the gambling. It ain't healthy, but I don't partake myself, so it's none of my business I guess. I mean, I could be wrong. I don't think so, but... 

 

I'm always looking for ways to improve the store.  What's stopping me isn't the lack of money but the lack of space. As a result, I basically spend even more money on trying to make use of the limited space than I would have to spend if I had open space to fill. I'm not sure if this will make sense for most of you, but I'll try to explain.

I measured some of the jury-rigged bookshelves I have and realized that because I had been using whatever shelving I could find, I was wasting space. I'm talking inches here. I could add six inches of length to one shelve, three inches to a couple of others. I can put three eight foot shelves across a slatwall instead of two. I can squeeze in two small bookcases as endcaps. I can use a shelf for books instead of toys if I prop it up. And so on.

I just spent so much money on planks of wood that I could have bought four pre-made bookcases. But it would have meant removing what's there and rearranging the store. Instead, the new shelving is going to probably add a grand total of maybe half a dozen feet of linear display space. A hefty expense for a such a small improvement. But that's what I have to do; squeeze a few inches here and a few inches there. 

We will also end up with another sixteen linear feet of display, but because this space is too high on the wall to do anything but display some art books face out, it isn't a vast improvement. But it is a bit of an improvement. 

I just keep finding an inch here and an inch there. 

I've also decided to stock up on the perennials and make sure they are always in stock. Each of these books already have a spot dedicated to them, so getting extra copies doesn't use up any more space but makes sure that space is always occupied. 

I have to admit, I think that because of the struggle to find display space, I've stumbled on to some techniques that I wouldn't have discovered if I had room to spread out. For instance, I generally place about two books face out on every level of the bookcases. These are placed in front of the alphabetically filed titles/authors, which you would think would hinder the sales of the books hidden behind them.

But what I found out was that people who are searching alphabetically can easily move the face out books to one side and grab what they need. Meanwhile, if the face out books are proven sellers, they will sell again and again and again. 

Take a bestseller and file it alphabetically and it will sometimes stop selling. Take a mediocre seller and place it place out and it will usually start selling. I realized one day that I kept seeing these same books on the sold lists, again and again. In my own mind, I came up with the figure that half of the books we sell are face out.

As an experiment I asked both Sabrina and Dylan what percentage of books that sold in the store were face out, and they both separately also came up with the figure of 50%. II would never have discovered this if I had had more space to place these books face out within the filed books like most stores do.

Roughly speaking, each face out book if mixed into alphabet would eliminate space for six or so titles. Twelve title per shelf, seven shelves per bookcase, multiplied by all the bookcases in the store adds up to a hell of a lot more titles I can carry.  

Here's the hard and fast rule. The more books I carry, the more I sell. If I had a bookstore twice my size, I'd still be trying to squeeze every book I could into it.