Keeping up.

I haven't written about the store for awhile.

I'm bound and determined to get through the slow months without slowly building debt.  I've always said,  'I make money four months out of the year, lose money four months out of the year, and break even four months out of the year.'

Reading the reports from other comic shops about the Christmas season, it really clarifies just what a tourist town Bend is -- most shops don't have quite the boost in summer and Christmas, but also don't have quite the decline in the spring and fall.

The two slowest months of the year are now November and January, which bracket the busiest month of the year, December, which is pretty inconvenient.  It means if I want to stock up for Christmas I'm almost bound to spend more in November than I'll make and I risk losing money in January and February.

So I'm trying to avoid that this time.  I'm making crucial reorders, but not stocking up beyond that.

I've spent the last decade building the inventory in the store -- that last two efforts were boardgames and new books.  Sometime last year, I more or less reached the limit of the space available.

Maintaining a store is much easier than building a store, and I think I'm finally ready to do that.

As I mentioned, December sales were down by 13%, but we made much, much better profits.  Even better, we made it through November and January without losing money.

As much as I'd like ever increasing sales, I think I'll like better profits even more.

I'm making sure we're stocked with everything we're supposed to be stocked with -- but not worrying about expanding or experimenting.  That makes life twice as easy, frankly.  It's only possible because I've already done the hard work of diversifying over the last decade.

If something new comes along, I won't ignore it, of course.  But I haven't really seen anything that I think would fit.  I still have some improvement to make with Toys and Cards, so I still have some work to do there.

But the rest of it is mostly keeping up.