If I was a Corporate CEO, I'd have been fired long ago.

Once again, I've gotten a ton of material in, and by logically consolidating, I was able to fit it in, and in some ways even streamline the store.

It's amazing, though, how thousands of dollars worth of merchandise can simply blend in, disappear into the inventory.

Diamond has a Blizzard Sale every year, where I can save 10% to 20% on premium product that I'll sell throughout the rest of the year. As well as stocking up on Christmas.

It's an invitation to spend too much.

I'm buying all this stuff on faith that I can keep the trends going that I saw in the July through October period, but not level of business I'm doing in November. If the Jan. through May period next year falls back to last year's levels, I will have definitely overspent.

In a way, I'm trying to force the issue. Buy so much good product that it will do the positive numbers, not the negative numbers.

One of the things that the limited space of my store has done has made me use every foot of the store to try to generate sales. Every category is backed to the fullest extent; even categories that haven't been doing as well lately.

Earlier in the year, while I was concentrating on comics and graphic novels, as usual, and building on new books and board games, and trying to keep up with Magic, I was letting collector cards, anime and manga, and toys sort of coast.

So over the last few months, I've started to turn my attention back to these product lines. They do will enough to keep them in the store -- what I'm trying to do now is make them do better by resupplying them.

There is always a bit of doubt; that I'm just throwing good money after bad.

It doesn't matter how much stuff you have, or how good it is, if people aren't coming in the door.

But that's my business model these days -- get as much material as I can at affordable prices and hope it sells.

That's retail.