How much?

I got word that a store in another nearby town is going to start carrying comics.

Now, ordinarily I wouldn't comment on competition, but there were a couple of things about this that I thought interesting.

My second blog entry today will be about all the mistakes I've made over the years, and how I'm not sure I could do the same thing today and still survive. The comic business has become much more expensive.

Anyway, to start. My reaction was mild. I've found that competition usually doesn't have as big an effect as I fear, or the lack of competition as big a benefit as I hope.

Secondly, it's far enough away that it will have even less impact. Really, any store more than 20 miles away is probably not going to encroach on my territory.

Third, we all have to live by the same rules -- margins, overhead, location. Much will depend on how much space and money they're willing to devote.

So I was kind of shrugging it off, my informant told me how much the other store ordered up front.

I kind of just stared at him. "How much?"

The guy repeated the figure, and I sort of just winced, "He might want to scale down his expectations," I muttered.

O.K. A couple of things. I started crunching numbers. In order to get a minimal 50% discount from Marvel and DC, the other store will have to order fairly large numbers --every month.

So, while the other store will need to build inventory, they'd be better off doing it on a monthly basis because they are going to have a hard time selling enough monthly comics to meet the minimums at first-- unless I miss my guess.

So the figure wasn't over-the-top if it was an investment -- that is, beginning stock. But you can't sell stock and still have stock. The other store will still have to overlay a monthly amount of comics that is going to be hard to reach.

But the really interesting part was that that the competitor thought he was going to order this stuff on credit.

"Really?" I asked. "Did they give him credit?"

"No."

Here's the thing. I don't think Diamond Comics would give credit to the Queen of England if she got a sudden hankering for Incredible Hulk comics. They probably say, "Try them for a few months, Queenie, and see if you like them...."

Not only will they probably get C.O.D. terms, but they may very well get Cash C.O.D. terms. Diamond doesn't take a whole lot of chances these days.

These days I just sort of step back and watch with some bemusement when I see competitors open. Good luck.