The "extra" is fun.

Some of the big stores in the big cities are talking on the comics retailer forum about huge increase in sales this year.  Well, I'm not seeing it.  Still, it's a hopeful sign, because I've found in the past that big trends filter down to me three to six months later.  We don't live in a vacuum, just a little pocket at the end of the bubble.

Sales are down this year, but it is all according to plan.  Well, it would have been nice to have sales increase despite my plan, but I sort of expected it not to happen.

The usual pattern in this store is that I slowly lose money over the first six months of the year, then use the summer profits to catch up on taxes, slowly lose money in the fall, and pay off debt at Christmas.  If I'm lucky, I'll break even, if not I carry a little debt into the next year.

And the next and the next.

So I wanted to see if I could avoid debt this first half of the year, and I knew I'd probably be trading sales for profits.  Profits are what count.

What usually happens in this scenario, though, is that I may cut 20% in orders, and drop 15% in sales and so I end up with no debt but lower sales. This is versus spending 20% more than I should, and having sales maybe rise 10% and slowly bleeding money.

So I'm trying to avoid the latter.   I only dare do this because the store is already so healthy that I don't think it hurts.  No one can accuse us of not having inventory.

It means not buying the "extra", basically.

I love the "extra."  The "extra" is fun.

But it is, bottomline, "extra."