I was interviewed by a Bulletin reporter yesterday about the changes downtown. I don't want to step on her article by talking about that until it comes out. Never know what is going to be written about.
One last night of putting up shelving. I'm really sore this morning.
Used my new power saw yesterday. No matter how old I get, I still have kid tapes. I've always stayed away from power tools because I always have that worry in my head that I'll cut my fingers off, or something. It's my version of the CHRISTMAS STORY's , "You can't have a BB gun....you'll shoot your eye out!"
All that work, and the new shelves easily absorbed the excess inventory. It will takes weeks, even months, before the space is used most efficiently -- there is a intuitive, natural process of finding just the right spot for just the right product. In the meanwhile, it has forced me to move around a bunch of stuff, and so I'm hoping that some of it will get noticed.
All these changes, and all the new product, recharge my batteries. I'm enthused, I come to work thinking, "I really like my store. This is the store I wanted when I started." This is the closest that I've ever come to fully inventorying my store in every category. I'd love to have more room to display everything properly, but it requires alot of creativity to make do with the space you have. I find that there is almost always a solution if I think about it long enough.
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
I was up late again, putting up more shelving in the back of my store. Amazing to realize that I probably stayed late at the store about every other night for the first 10 years I was in business, before I decided that, if I can't get a job done during store hours don't even start.
But for renovations, there is no choice but to stay late. I love planning changes, I almost always like the results of changes, but actually doing them is stressful. Fixtures don't quite fit, (usually by a maddening half an inch or so), product falls all over, and every time I reach for the tape-measure, it's missing.
I believe I have now completely, utterly filled every inch of my store. But I'm going to have 69 feet of shelving to put my toys on, which will create a bunch of room in the front of the store. I've got one more night of hard work, and then it will probably take a couple of weeks for product to find their proper niches.
One of the reasons I know that my circumstances are different that most downtown owners, is the amount of set-up time these new owners give themselves. They put paper in their windows, and two or three months later THEY STILL HAVEN'T OPENED. It is unfathomable to me that they have enough money to eat rent like that.
There is a saying in business, that one should expect to not make money for two years.
Huh?
I have ALWAYS needed to make money, from the day I opened. It was all or nothing. I've always said that anyone who owns a small business who has a viable alternative, will eventually take the alternative. Knowing that it is all of nothing has a way of focusing the effort. If a guy doesn't have money to fall back on, if he knows that working for Walmart is the alternative, then he is going to fight and claw to survive.
I've decided that everyone's business is hard; if it was easy, someone would've come along and sliced the margins a little thinner. Therefore, business is always on the edge, which is an uncomfortable place to be. You have to work harder, stay longer, have better ideas than the other guy. So, after a while, your little dream business is no longer the fun you thought it would be. In fact, it is even more work than the job you left, and for less money!
I actually like that challenge. And I really don't believe I'm suitable to work anywhere else. It is comforting to me that all of us live by the same rules -- and that having tons of funding for your store can be as much a drawback as an asset. In other words, you can't buy your way to success. Eventually you have to get down in the trenches with the rest of us poor shlubs.
But for renovations, there is no choice but to stay late. I love planning changes, I almost always like the results of changes, but actually doing them is stressful. Fixtures don't quite fit, (usually by a maddening half an inch or so), product falls all over, and every time I reach for the tape-measure, it's missing.
I believe I have now completely, utterly filled every inch of my store. But I'm going to have 69 feet of shelving to put my toys on, which will create a bunch of room in the front of the store. I've got one more night of hard work, and then it will probably take a couple of weeks for product to find their proper niches.
One of the reasons I know that my circumstances are different that most downtown owners, is the amount of set-up time these new owners give themselves. They put paper in their windows, and two or three months later THEY STILL HAVEN'T OPENED. It is unfathomable to me that they have enough money to eat rent like that.
There is a saying in business, that one should expect to not make money for two years.
Huh?
I have ALWAYS needed to make money, from the day I opened. It was all or nothing. I've always said that anyone who owns a small business who has a viable alternative, will eventually take the alternative. Knowing that it is all of nothing has a way of focusing the effort. If a guy doesn't have money to fall back on, if he knows that working for Walmart is the alternative, then he is going to fight and claw to survive.
I've decided that everyone's business is hard; if it was easy, someone would've come along and sliced the margins a little thinner. Therefore, business is always on the edge, which is an uncomfortable place to be. You have to work harder, stay longer, have better ideas than the other guy. So, after a while, your little dream business is no longer the fun you thought it would be. In fact, it is even more work than the job you left, and for less money!
I actually like that challenge. And I really don't believe I'm suitable to work anywhere else. It is comforting to me that all of us live by the same rules -- and that having tons of funding for your store can be as much a drawback as an asset. In other words, you can't buy your way to success. Eventually you have to get down in the trenches with the rest of us poor shlubs.
Monday, December 4, 2006
THE FUNK CONTINUES:
Of course, the funkiest part of old downtown were the owners. When the viable shops downtown fled to the malls, it was 40% vacant. That feels like a bomb zone. So what happens?
Like weeds, a scruffy bunch of bo ho's move downtown for the cheap rents. Little by little we build it into something unique and special. Others come along, and say to themselves, "I want to be part of that." Rents start to rise, buildings are sold and tenants evicted. A classier group of businesses come downtown.
And the funk is lost.
I always comment the Jackson Pollack went the Hamptons BECAUSE IT WAS CHEAP! Before that, artist congregated in Greenwich Village, and then SoHo. In Portland, it was the Pearl District.
The Bulletin just did a glowing story about Joyce, of the Curiosity Shoppe. Joyce was a downtown institution before she was forced to leave. My next door neighbor for 20 years, Jerry of the Sole Shop, was what would be known as a 'character'. Rena at Birkenstocks has retired.
In fact, there is almost no one left from when I started.
The casual customer doesn't realize that almost everyone downtown has been there for a relatively short span. These aren't the trailblazers, the risk-takers, the individualists that brought downtown Bend back from the brink.
A real estate agent was recently quoted as saying, "It wasn't the Mom and Pop businesses that brought downtown Bend back, it was the beautiful old buildings and the river."
Well, the river was there when downtown was tottering, and the old buildings were there (though they are rapidly disappearing.) It was nip and tuck, for awhile. In hindsight, it looks like downtown Bend coming back was a sure thing, but if you lived through it, it was far from certain.
I miss it.
Of course, the funkiest part of old downtown were the owners. When the viable shops downtown fled to the malls, it was 40% vacant. That feels like a bomb zone. So what happens?
Like weeds, a scruffy bunch of bo ho's move downtown for the cheap rents. Little by little we build it into something unique and special. Others come along, and say to themselves, "I want to be part of that." Rents start to rise, buildings are sold and tenants evicted. A classier group of businesses come downtown.
And the funk is lost.
I always comment the Jackson Pollack went the Hamptons BECAUSE IT WAS CHEAP! Before that, artist congregated in Greenwich Village, and then SoHo. In Portland, it was the Pearl District.
The Bulletin just did a glowing story about Joyce, of the Curiosity Shoppe. Joyce was a downtown institution before she was forced to leave. My next door neighbor for 20 years, Jerry of the Sole Shop, was what would be known as a 'character'. Rena at Birkenstocks has retired.
In fact, there is almost no one left from when I started.
The casual customer doesn't realize that almost everyone downtown has been there for a relatively short span. These aren't the trailblazers, the risk-takers, the individualists that brought downtown Bend back from the brink.
A real estate agent was recently quoted as saying, "It wasn't the Mom and Pop businesses that brought downtown Bend back, it was the beautiful old buildings and the river."
Well, the river was there when downtown was tottering, and the old buildings were there (though they are rapidly disappearing.) It was nip and tuck, for awhile. In hindsight, it looks like downtown Bend coming back was a sure thing, but if you lived through it, it was far from certain.
I miss it.
BRING BACK THE FUNK! WE WANT THE FUNK!
First, on the personal. I spent 7 hours last night moving bookshelves from one end of the store to the other. Tripping over tons of books littering the floor. At the end, I gained....one measly bookshelf, or roughly 12 linear feet of room. But every square inch of space is gold, anymore. I really need a space about 3 times bigger than I have, but now that the downtown has matured around me, and I have an affordable lease for a few more years, I want to stay and take advantage.
The funk. Downtown Bend has had a mix of old and new, nice and junky, ever since I can remember. As far as I'm concerned, the mix gave the area character. The first wave of investors downtown after the Reagan Recession, in the mid-1980's, actually made the effort to RESTORE the look of the buildings they bought. The Old Postoffice, the O'Kane building, were brought back to life looking like their old selves.
What are we getting now? One faux 'craftsman' building after another. There is something really monstrous about turning an architecture style that was meant for bungalows into giant edifaces. And when every building downtown looks like the St. Clair building, or Franklin Crossing, than how are we any different than Old Mill? It's fake, and boring. The Firestation kept a few bricks in front, but is essentially a different building. I suspect when they are done with the building across from me (and one benefit to this slowdown is maybe they won't get to it during my current lease) and the building next the the Brewery on Bond, and that awful building that is being planned for Brooks Street, but which is so far a pile of rubble, we'll have a nice uniform style that will look dated in 20 years and we'll have to start all over.
First, on the personal. I spent 7 hours last night moving bookshelves from one end of the store to the other. Tripping over tons of books littering the floor. At the end, I gained....one measly bookshelf, or roughly 12 linear feet of room. But every square inch of space is gold, anymore. I really need a space about 3 times bigger than I have, but now that the downtown has matured around me, and I have an affordable lease for a few more years, I want to stay and take advantage.
The funk. Downtown Bend has had a mix of old and new, nice and junky, ever since I can remember. As far as I'm concerned, the mix gave the area character. The first wave of investors downtown after the Reagan Recession, in the mid-1980's, actually made the effort to RESTORE the look of the buildings they bought. The Old Postoffice, the O'Kane building, were brought back to life looking like their old selves.
What are we getting now? One faux 'craftsman' building after another. There is something really monstrous about turning an architecture style that was meant for bungalows into giant edifaces. And when every building downtown looks like the St. Clair building, or Franklin Crossing, than how are we any different than Old Mill? It's fake, and boring. The Firestation kept a few bricks in front, but is essentially a different building. I suspect when they are done with the building across from me (and one benefit to this slowdown is maybe they won't get to it during my current lease) and the building next the the Brewery on Bond, and that awful building that is being planned for Brooks Street, but which is so far a pile of rubble, we'll have a nice uniform style that will look dated in 20 years and we'll have to start all over.
Sunday, December 3, 2006
TOURISM
I never got around to talking about Bend tourism yesterday, so here it is;
Growing up in Bend, it was pretty much a 1 and 1/2 industry town. Lumber was king, and tourism was a far second. I started skiing up at Bachelor Butte (as it was called back when we weren't quite so grandiose) the year it opened. The lodge and the parking lot was tiny, and the lifts were a t-bar, a rope tow and poma lift.
Meanwhile, Brooks Scanlan and other smaller mills provided most of the employment in Bend.
(It is has always been amusing to me that the "OLD MILL" district has tried to create some sort of nostalgia about the mills. They were ugly, smelly, dirty, dangerous, noisy and toxic. Anything but charming. The 'bungalows' on the west side was were the poor people lived, the rich (such as there were, doctors, lawyers, businessmen) lived along Drake Park or the West Hills.
40 years later, we are still a 1 and 1/2 industry town. Tourism is king, and I'd have to say the combination of construction and resort/retirement industry is second.
Couple of problems with this: Tourism doesn't pay all that well. And if anything, it is even more vulnerable to economic shocks. After 9/11, the sales in my store dropped over 20% for three straight months, almost exactly the same drop that the Redmond airport saw.
The construction industry seem to me an industry that is chasing it's tail. If the growth of Bend depends on construction, but construction if based on the growth of Bend...well, you see the problem. I shudder to think of all the bank, mortgage, title, insurance, and contracters jobs there are in Bend.
Still, tourism is important to my business. I make money four months out of the year,; July, August, December and June/or March. I break-even four months out of the year; Sept., April, May, and March/or June. I pretty much lose money four months out of the year. Oct., Nov., Jan. and Feb.
Without tourism, we'd probably trend toward breaking even five or six months out of the year and lose money four or five months out of the year, and maybe make money one or two months of the year. My store would be much, much smaller, with much less inventory. I might be able to survive, at Minimum Wage, but it would be tough.
Resort or retirement living? Well, I keep hearing that there are some very wealthy people here, and I do believe it. But I NEVER see them! I suspect that if they are older, they are past their funky consumer years, or if they are young and wealthy they probably buy in the cities or online. Who knows? All I know is that almost all my customers are of humble means. So when I look at all the fancy stores downtown that seem to be designed to cater to the whims of the wealthy, I just wonder how much success they are having.
The look of prosperity is extremely misleading. In my building, we lost 3 long-term, established businesses (a shoe repair shop, 25 years, an engraving, trophy shop, 22 years, and a bike shop, 5 years.) They were replaced by a fragrance shop, and art gallery, and a jewelry store, all of which LOOKED more properous. Yet the fragrance shop and art gallery are already gone, replaced by the expansion of the jewelry store and a new dress shop, which look even more prosperous than the last businesses, and so on.
I call it failing upward. It is happening all over downtown. Meanwhile, we are losing the old funky good feeling that was attracting people to downtown in the first place. That's what I want to talk about tomorrow.
I never got around to talking about Bend tourism yesterday, so here it is;
Growing up in Bend, it was pretty much a 1 and 1/2 industry town. Lumber was king, and tourism was a far second. I started skiing up at Bachelor Butte (as it was called back when we weren't quite so grandiose) the year it opened. The lodge and the parking lot was tiny, and the lifts were a t-bar, a rope tow and poma lift.
Meanwhile, Brooks Scanlan and other smaller mills provided most of the employment in Bend.
(It is has always been amusing to me that the "OLD MILL" district has tried to create some sort of nostalgia about the mills. They were ugly, smelly, dirty, dangerous, noisy and toxic. Anything but charming. The 'bungalows' on the west side was were the poor people lived, the rich (such as there were, doctors, lawyers, businessmen) lived along Drake Park or the West Hills.
40 years later, we are still a 1 and 1/2 industry town. Tourism is king, and I'd have to say the combination of construction and resort/retirement industry is second.
Couple of problems with this: Tourism doesn't pay all that well. And if anything, it is even more vulnerable to economic shocks. After 9/11, the sales in my store dropped over 20% for three straight months, almost exactly the same drop that the Redmond airport saw.
The construction industry seem to me an industry that is chasing it's tail. If the growth of Bend depends on construction, but construction if based on the growth of Bend...well, you see the problem. I shudder to think of all the bank, mortgage, title, insurance, and contracters jobs there are in Bend.
Still, tourism is important to my business. I make money four months out of the year,; July, August, December and June/or March. I break-even four months out of the year; Sept., April, May, and March/or June. I pretty much lose money four months out of the year. Oct., Nov., Jan. and Feb.
Without tourism, we'd probably trend toward breaking even five or six months out of the year and lose money four or five months out of the year, and maybe make money one or two months of the year. My store would be much, much smaller, with much less inventory. I might be able to survive, at Minimum Wage, but it would be tough.
Resort or retirement living? Well, I keep hearing that there are some very wealthy people here, and I do believe it. But I NEVER see them! I suspect that if they are older, they are past their funky consumer years, or if they are young and wealthy they probably buy in the cities or online. Who knows? All I know is that almost all my customers are of humble means. So when I look at all the fancy stores downtown that seem to be designed to cater to the whims of the wealthy, I just wonder how much success they are having.
The look of prosperity is extremely misleading. In my building, we lost 3 long-term, established businesses (a shoe repair shop, 25 years, an engraving, trophy shop, 22 years, and a bike shop, 5 years.) They were replaced by a fragrance shop, and art gallery, and a jewelry store, all of which LOOKED more properous. Yet the fragrance shop and art gallery are already gone, replaced by the expansion of the jewelry store and a new dress shop, which look even more prosperous than the last businesses, and so on.
I call it failing upward. It is happening all over downtown. Meanwhile, we are losing the old funky good feeling that was attracting people to downtown in the first place. That's what I want to talk about tomorrow.
Saturday, December 2, 2006
POP CULTURE. POP POP. POP CULTURE.
Much as I like writing my little essays, I'm beginning to realize that might be some heavy going for casual visitors. I'm going to split this blog into two parts every day. The first will be about what's going on in my business (or my life, which is usually the same thing.) The second part will be one of many of my hobby horses. Anyone who has been a customer of mine for long has probably already heard my screed.
The fun thing that is happening at the store, is that I have been adding NEW books. I've got limited space, so I'm picking the very best books I can; books I've read and loved, books that get enthusiastic recommendations from readers, books that have a cult following. I've established accounts with a couple of new distributers, which has opened up a whole new world of possibilites.
I've always been partial to fantasy art, from the first time I saw the Frazetta cover of a Conan book and the first Hildebrant Lord of the Rings Calendar. But it used to be extremely difficult to find much. I slowly accumulated about 500 coffee table art books, which sold rarely, and once sold were difficult if not impossible to replace. Suddenly, with access to mainstream book distributers, the floodgates have opened.
I moved from fantasy art to pin-up art, to pulp fiction art, to retro-futuristic art, pop-bot art, to cartoonists like Edward Gorey and Charles Addams, to children's books, and so on. I've got a category of books that I've been trying to figure out a name for: goth books, funky books, whimsy? My best selling series right now, for instance, is ME WRITE BOOK, and IN ME OWN WORDS, by Bigfoot. I just know what I like when I see it, or hear about it.
Impossible to organize. By artist? By category? By author? By publishing imprint?
I've been trying to be intuitive about it, but most of the material is being overlooked even by customers who I know would like it. Having a store four times my size would be one answer, but I'm reluctant to leave downtown now that is actually works as a retail center. So the vast majority of this wonderful pop-culture material is sitting on my shelves, spine out, being ignored by my regulars and by casual browsers alike. Frustrating.
I'm noticing an interesting reaction by the customers. New books like LISEY'S STORY, by Stephen King, THE RUINS, by Scott Smith, and THE ROAD, by Cormac McCarthy are considered mainstream by most people, although by any real definition they are genre books.
For instance, I was talking to a customer yesterday about JONATHON STRANGE AND MR. NORRELL, a book which she loved, and which I was lukewarm about. But when I called it a fantasy, she objected. "I don't read fantasy."
So: I don't read fantasy.
I read JONATHON STRANGE.
Therefore JONATHON STRANGE isn't fantasy.
I've been trying for years to break through these pre-conceptions, without much success. As far as I'm concerned, it is all one big continuum, from books with all words and no pictures, to books with all pictures and no words, to everything in between. WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, is as great a read for an open-minded adult as it is for a kid. The Carl Bark's UNCLE SCROOGES read almost better for an adult than for a kid; in any event, it is pure overlooked genius.
So I try to convince people to being open-minded, and at the same time try to remind myself to be open-minded.
Much as I like writing my little essays, I'm beginning to realize that might be some heavy going for casual visitors. I'm going to split this blog into two parts every day. The first will be about what's going on in my business (or my life, which is usually the same thing.) The second part will be one of many of my hobby horses. Anyone who has been a customer of mine for long has probably already heard my screed.
The fun thing that is happening at the store, is that I have been adding NEW books. I've got limited space, so I'm picking the very best books I can; books I've read and loved, books that get enthusiastic recommendations from readers, books that have a cult following. I've established accounts with a couple of new distributers, which has opened up a whole new world of possibilites.
I've always been partial to fantasy art, from the first time I saw the Frazetta cover of a Conan book and the first Hildebrant Lord of the Rings Calendar. But it used to be extremely difficult to find much. I slowly accumulated about 500 coffee table art books, which sold rarely, and once sold were difficult if not impossible to replace. Suddenly, with access to mainstream book distributers, the floodgates have opened.
I moved from fantasy art to pin-up art, to pulp fiction art, to retro-futuristic art, pop-bot art, to cartoonists like Edward Gorey and Charles Addams, to children's books, and so on. I've got a category of books that I've been trying to figure out a name for: goth books, funky books, whimsy? My best selling series right now, for instance, is ME WRITE BOOK, and IN ME OWN WORDS, by Bigfoot. I just know what I like when I see it, or hear about it.
Impossible to organize. By artist? By category? By author? By publishing imprint?
I've been trying to be intuitive about it, but most of the material is being overlooked even by customers who I know would like it. Having a store four times my size would be one answer, but I'm reluctant to leave downtown now that is actually works as a retail center. So the vast majority of this wonderful pop-culture material is sitting on my shelves, spine out, being ignored by my regulars and by casual browsers alike. Frustrating.
I'm noticing an interesting reaction by the customers. New books like LISEY'S STORY, by Stephen King, THE RUINS, by Scott Smith, and THE ROAD, by Cormac McCarthy are considered mainstream by most people, although by any real definition they are genre books.
For instance, I was talking to a customer yesterday about JONATHON STRANGE AND MR. NORRELL, a book which she loved, and which I was lukewarm about. But when I called it a fantasy, she objected. "I don't read fantasy."
So: I don't read fantasy.
I read JONATHON STRANGE.
Therefore JONATHON STRANGE isn't fantasy.
I've been trying for years to break through these pre-conceptions, without much success. As far as I'm concerned, it is all one big continuum, from books with all words and no pictures, to books with all pictures and no words, to everything in between. WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, is as great a read for an open-minded adult as it is for a kid. The Carl Bark's UNCLE SCROOGES read almost better for an adult than for a kid; in any event, it is pure overlooked genius.
So I try to convince people to being open-minded, and at the same time try to remind myself to be open-minded.
Friday, December 1, 2006
Gosh, nothing is more exciting than talking about the population of Bend! But I started the darn topic, and I'm going to finish it.
When I say that some of the stores in downtown Bend are TOO specialized, I'm really talking about simple math. If it takes 8000 customers a year to keep your store alive, and you attract 5% of the population of Deschutes county, you are going to come up 500 customers too short. That is, your store will come up short a couple customers a day -- day after day, week after week, month after month.
There are always exceptions; owners who out-perform the market through dint of efforts or charm, or marketing. But eventually, all business owners want to get away from 60 work weeks, or the need to be super charming, or the efforts to find another ingenious guerrilla marketing scheme. The exceptions just don't prove the rule. (Though, if you look closely at almost any business in Bend that has lasted longer than 8 years, they are almost all exceptional businesses. Average retail doesn't survive in Bend.)
By sheer math, my store should be fine. There are 3500 comic shops in America, so the 150,000 population of Deschutes County ought to be enough to make me at least average in sales. But, even after all these years, I come up about 1/3rd short of that number. (From the day I bought the store, comics alone haven't been enough to carry my store to profitability. I've added 7 other product lines, since, most of which I would term 'sidelines', but all of them together account for almost 50% of my total sales.)
Why?
Excluding the possibility that I'm just doing a lousy job, (I see all kinds of shortcomings, which I'm trying to deal with) I've come up with a few reasons.
1.) Isolation. Go 100 miles in any direction and you hit sagebrush or pine. Despite the mass media and the internet, it still takes the locals a couple of extra months to catch onto product that is super hot everywhere else. (Which is better than 20 years ago when the time-lag was more like 6 months to a year.)
In all my years of operation, I've never been visited by a rep from any of the products I sell; the same reps who routinely visit other pop culture stores. It makes sense; they would have drive all the way over the mountains, to visit one measly shop, when in the same time span they could visit dozens of shops along I-5. Which brings me to reason number....
2). No interstate. Highway 97 is much improved from a few years ago. But the route extends from Bigg's Junction, to Madras, to Bend, to Klamath Falls. Compare that to I-5, which extends from Portland, to Salem, to Eugene, to Medford, with shouting distance to Corvallis, etc.
3.) No real 4 year college, and/or military base. Add either of those to Bend, and my demographic base probably doubles.
4.) Demographics. My prime audience is 20 - 35 year old guys, the more educated the better. For a while, a significant percentage of my graphic sales were to the guys who work at the local Sony development group. Young, hip, and urban. Instead, Bend is heavily weighted toward retired and wealthy, or young families, both of which I have a pretty hard time selling to. I've turned almost half my store into an effort to attract the non-core customers, without great success. I have to turn my store into more of a 'general pop culture' store, rather than a specialized 'comic and graphic novel' store.
5.) Synergy. There are no cross currents in Bend, like you might find in Portland. No way to generate excitement in one store, which travels to another store, is amplified and moves back. It is hard to explain, but I suspect that if my customer base is 2% and static, that the bigger the population base the more energetic the interaction and the more likely a new customer will develop.
During the peak of the baseball card boom, I had a store in Sisters and Redmond, a store in the Mt. View mall, and the store downtown. What I discovered was, the smaller the town, the more dependent you are on a small group of customers. I discovered that having two stores in Bend actually made more sense than having all of Redmond to myself.
What all the reasons above mean to me is that there is a glass ceiling to how big my store can become. The same store in Portland for 26 years, run well, would have a chance of taking more than it's average share of the customer base. Here in Bend, even being the only comic shop, I'm limited by the math.
The one saving grace for my store, and for most retail in Bend, is tourism. Which I'd like to talk about tomorrow.
When I say that some of the stores in downtown Bend are TOO specialized, I'm really talking about simple math. If it takes 8000 customers a year to keep your store alive, and you attract 5% of the population of Deschutes county, you are going to come up 500 customers too short. That is, your store will come up short a couple customers a day -- day after day, week after week, month after month.
There are always exceptions; owners who out-perform the market through dint of efforts or charm, or marketing. But eventually, all business owners want to get away from 60 work weeks, or the need to be super charming, or the efforts to find another ingenious guerrilla marketing scheme. The exceptions just don't prove the rule. (Though, if you look closely at almost any business in Bend that has lasted longer than 8 years, they are almost all exceptional businesses. Average retail doesn't survive in Bend.)
By sheer math, my store should be fine. There are 3500 comic shops in America, so the 150,000 population of Deschutes County ought to be enough to make me at least average in sales. But, even after all these years, I come up about 1/3rd short of that number. (From the day I bought the store, comics alone haven't been enough to carry my store to profitability. I've added 7 other product lines, since, most of which I would term 'sidelines', but all of them together account for almost 50% of my total sales.)
Why?
Excluding the possibility that I'm just doing a lousy job, (I see all kinds of shortcomings, which I'm trying to deal with) I've come up with a few reasons.
1.) Isolation. Go 100 miles in any direction and you hit sagebrush or pine. Despite the mass media and the internet, it still takes the locals a couple of extra months to catch onto product that is super hot everywhere else. (Which is better than 20 years ago when the time-lag was more like 6 months to a year.)
In all my years of operation, I've never been visited by a rep from any of the products I sell; the same reps who routinely visit other pop culture stores. It makes sense; they would have drive all the way over the mountains, to visit one measly shop, when in the same time span they could visit dozens of shops along I-5. Which brings me to reason number....
2). No interstate. Highway 97 is much improved from a few years ago. But the route extends from Bigg's Junction, to Madras, to Bend, to Klamath Falls. Compare that to I-5, which extends from Portland, to Salem, to Eugene, to Medford, with shouting distance to Corvallis, etc.
3.) No real 4 year college, and/or military base. Add either of those to Bend, and my demographic base probably doubles.
4.) Demographics. My prime audience is 20 - 35 year old guys, the more educated the better. For a while, a significant percentage of my graphic sales were to the guys who work at the local Sony development group. Young, hip, and urban. Instead, Bend is heavily weighted toward retired and wealthy, or young families, both of which I have a pretty hard time selling to. I've turned almost half my store into an effort to attract the non-core customers, without great success. I have to turn my store into more of a 'general pop culture' store, rather than a specialized 'comic and graphic novel' store.
5.) Synergy. There are no cross currents in Bend, like you might find in Portland. No way to generate excitement in one store, which travels to another store, is amplified and moves back. It is hard to explain, but I suspect that if my customer base is 2% and static, that the bigger the population base the more energetic the interaction and the more likely a new customer will develop.
During the peak of the baseball card boom, I had a store in Sisters and Redmond, a store in the Mt. View mall, and the store downtown. What I discovered was, the smaller the town, the more dependent you are on a small group of customers. I discovered that having two stores in Bend actually made more sense than having all of Redmond to myself.
What all the reasons above mean to me is that there is a glass ceiling to how big my store can become. The same store in Portland for 26 years, run well, would have a chance of taking more than it's average share of the customer base. Here in Bend, even being the only comic shop, I'm limited by the math.
The one saving grace for my store, and for most retail in Bend, is tourism. Which I'd like to talk about tomorrow.
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