Beating last year.

We've been beating last year pretty handily. Nearly 20%. For 12 months straight.

July was the 13th month. It was the first month where we had to beat an earlier increase, so it was a real test.

Overall, we beat last July by 16%. Up until the last week, we were well over 20%, but had a significant drop. No explanation. (Olympics? Hard to believe, but...)

Anyway, I'm thinking that about half the increase in business has been through the fortunate and lucky (and perhaps not totally sustainable) increase in comic sales.

The other half has been due to the still improving book and game sales, as well as more recently, improvements in all the other categories. (As I turned my attention to the laggard categories -- toys and cards -- they began to get better.)


COMICS: +22%. In another couple of months, we will be reaching the beginning of the "New 52" effect, so it may be harder to maintain these increases. We might even see a drop because the newness of the venture has faded a bit.

USED BOOKS: I include these in the overall BOOK category, because I only separated these stats at the beginning of 2012. However, we saw a pretty good month in these, more than double our average. It helps to have them on the sidewalk, I think.

CARDS: Triple last year's sales. This category is pretty erratic, and relatively small. (5.6% of the months sales.) It can be swayed by just a couple of box customers. Still, I'm encouraged that I've gotten a response to my efforts to carry a bit more of this stuff.

CARD GAMES: -1%. This is turning into one of my most steady categories -- and yet, I'd say a large percentage of customers off the street (or reading this blog) still haven't really heard of Magic - the Gathering.

GAMES: -15%. I admit, I'm disappointed in seeing any kind of drop in sales of these, but I am definitely getting the sense that these are showing up in places like Target. I'm still happy with this category, but it bears watching.

BOOKS: +10%. These had the biggest drop off that last week of the month, which would tell me that we had fewer tourist in the store, for some reason. Still growing, though.

TOYS: +17%. As I said, I've been focusing on this category (and cards) more this year, and am seeing steady improvement.

GRAPHIC NOVELS: +32%. O.K. Not sure why I had a big increase in these. I keep this category stocked to a very high level at all times, so it's just a matter of who comes in and buys, I guess.


I was hoping for 'only' a 10% increase, (because we had a higher bar of beating a previous increase) so we did a bit better than that. July has turned into my second best month of the year (after December), and for some reason August has really dropped to third, maybe even fourth. Last year, there was a 13% drop between July and August, so I'm hoping I can continue my streak of beating last year into the 14th month.