July results.

I've been playing it cautiously this summer. After 7 months of beating last year, we dropped slightly in May. That seemed odd to me, so I cut back on my spending plans to take a wait and see approach.

Good thing I did, because June was worse. Again, I scaled back on my plans. I was already being moderate in my spending, because I was hoping to garner some cash profits over the summer. Instead, I was making a small profit, and sales weren't improving.

I've learned one thing over the last couple decades. Don't doubt the downturn. React as quickly as possible, and hold off any other changes. Which is what I did.

So, without further ado, here are July's results.

We were down 13.2%, which isn't fun, but not nearly as bad as the 33% we were down as of the 15th of July. The first half of July was just a conflagration. The second half was actually pretty good, matching last year, but the store couldn't overcome the crappy first half.

So 13.5% looks relatively decent, what with lowered expectations.

What would have happened if that had been reversed? What if the first half of July had been as good as last year, and the second half was the awful half? I probably would've overspent. I would've thought things were on course, that the small downturn in May, and the bigger downturn in June were a blip and due to bad weather.

So the fates conspired to have me fully warned and vigilante. So we managed to come out of July with the credit cards paid off, and all the bills paid. This should have happened by June, frankly, but I'll take it. Breaking even being the new black.

It still gives me a chance to make some money in August, and...further down the road...at Christmas. But my hackles are up, and I'm delaying purchases until they are truly needed, and putting off the inventory expansion I had planned until I can do it within cash flow. (I'd planned to got ahead and use credit, but I've had second thoughts.)

The thing is -- I can always increase my buying, but once committed, it's almost impossible to decrease my buying. So a wait and see attitude is the right attitude right now. Basically, 3 down months in a row is my double dip recession, whatever the economists might say.

First the good, then the bad.

Comic sales are up, surprisingly. I have a blog I'm going to post about that tomorrow. Graphic novels were down slightly, but the two combined were still healthily above last year. It shows that my local regulars are hanging in there.

Books sales were good. Last year was spectacular, so we didn't quite reach those numbers, but still really good.

Game sales were even better. The increase more than matched the small decrease in books, so overall, my two newest categories were over last year.

The Bad.

Magic sales dropped precipitously. I'm guessing that chainstore stocking and online discounters are taking the lion's share of business, these days. This is eerily reminiscent of sports cards in their declining years, and I'm reacting accordingly. I'm keeping the product stocked, but sticking to my price and ordering small amounts.

Toys were down quite a bit. I think this reflects what was the weakness of the tourist dollar this year, since these are mostly off-the-street impulse buys.

Sports cards were down, as well. Just didn't have those several boxes of sales I usually get from tourists.

Overall, surprisingly, I feel like the local economy is holding up it's end, but the tourist economy has been worse than I expected. I think, perhaps, last year there was still the hope that things would recover quickly. Maybe it's really sinking in that vacations are not to time to go crazy buying things.