2022 at Pegasus Books.

I always love doing the end-of-the-year reckonings at the store. It clarifies where we are and where we need to go. I'll be somewhat vague about totals, but nevertheless I'll be honest about how things are going.

Overall, we were up 3% this year. But to put that in perspective, 2021 was a monstrous year for us: we were up 56%  from the previous high total in 2020. So to be able to do even better than that is impressive.

We would have been up 7% if not for the last two months of the year. We started to see a slowdown in November, which continued though not as far down in December. 

We were down 6% at Christmas, which for a corporation would be serious but for our small business is more of a rounding error. We managed to save (for taxes) exactly the same amount as last year, plus extra. When we reinvest the extra saving, our inventory will be back up to normal. 

Can't do much better than that, I think. 

Books and Graphic Novels are now about 2/3rds our total sales. I've tried to keep them as separate categories, but over the last few years that has been become almost impossible. I order a huge number of GNs through my book distributors and I tend to categorize them as books when ringing them up. 

What we've basically done is overlaid the equivalent of a second store over the existing one, while maintaining the same overhead. 

But that isn't to say that comics, games, and toys aren't also a critical part of the store. Probably the difference between break-even and actually turning a profit. 

Things are probably going to get tighter from here on. Overhead is definitely going to increase and I do believe there were be a recession in the coming months, but if budgeted properly, this shouldn't hurt us too much. We are well above the break-even point these days. 

Downtown is doing great, and the customer count continues to grow. More and more customers are discovering our book selection, and that is a welcome thing. We've probably reached peak capacity as far as inventory goes, but we can continue to  increase the quality of what we carry. 

In other words, there is no reason to make major changes. 

Most importantly, it's fun these days and I'm hanging in there as long as I can.