"Business Insider" says Bend will be the best housing market over the next five years.
Uh.....if you say so.
I'm posting this so that I might get some second opinions from some of the other bubble bloggers. This seems based on nothing more than the fact that we've dropped so far....which seems like a dubious reason.
What say you?
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Two stores, ten times the work.
Interesting article on a Bend downtown business opening a second store in downtown Redmond. "Extending The Blvd." Bulletin, 12/8/11.
I won't presume to second-guess this decision. (Well, one small quibble -- if they just opened the Bend store in July, 2010, that's awfully quick expansion.) I will assume that they have a solid plan and are well capitalized.
What caught my attention was this statement: "...it is fairly unusual to have a local store in Both Bend and Redmond..." In fact, they could only name one other small business -- Bella Moda.
I would add, that I know several businesses that actually have second outlets in Eugene and Portland.
I can speak with some experience here -- I had a store on 6th St. in downtown Redmond in the early 90's. (As well as stores in Sisters and the Mountain View Mall.) This was mostly due to an absolutely red hot product --that turned out to be a bubble in the end, but had some busy years. (See Andy -- I didn't mention sports cards....oops.)
Anyway, the idea at the time was to spread the copious inventory I was accumulating. I'd buy cases of cards to get the best price, and it made sense to spread the risk.
What I didn't see was the old 20/80 rule: 20% of your product will make 80% of your profits. Turns out, the 20% wasn't so easy to get or easy to spread out, and no one really wanted the other 80%. Turns out, as well, that the costs of managing the stores ate up all the profits.
Turns out, each store will provide one to one and half incomes -- less than the old Mom and Pop, model actually. So when Linda has one store, and I have another -- it works.
Anyway, when the sport card bubble collapsed, I retrenched to my downtown Bend store -- doubling it in size so it wouldn't look like a complete defeat. We managed to sell the mall store, which was still profitable.
Funny thing was, I learned that having a store in Bend and Redmond is a little bit like An Appointment at Samara: you try to avoid your fate, but it happens anyway.
I would spend a morning going to my Sisters and Redmond stores -- supplying them with material -- and then drop by the Mountain View Mall store and see my Sisters and Redmond customers at the counter....
I will admit, it was a very different time. Back then, Redmond was much, much smaller. But then again, the competition level was lower as well. The chainstores didn't really store stomping in to Central Oregon until about 1992 and thereafter.
Anyway, thems the fruits of my experience.
I won't presume to second-guess this decision. (Well, one small quibble -- if they just opened the Bend store in July, 2010, that's awfully quick expansion.) I will assume that they have a solid plan and are well capitalized.
What caught my attention was this statement: "...it is fairly unusual to have a local store in Both Bend and Redmond..." In fact, they could only name one other small business -- Bella Moda.
I would add, that I know several businesses that actually have second outlets in Eugene and Portland.
I can speak with some experience here -- I had a store on 6th St. in downtown Redmond in the early 90's. (As well as stores in Sisters and the Mountain View Mall.) This was mostly due to an absolutely red hot product --that turned out to be a bubble in the end, but had some busy years. (See Andy -- I didn't mention sports cards....oops.)
Anyway, the idea at the time was to spread the copious inventory I was accumulating. I'd buy cases of cards to get the best price, and it made sense to spread the risk.
What I didn't see was the old 20/80 rule: 20% of your product will make 80% of your profits. Turns out, the 20% wasn't so easy to get or easy to spread out, and no one really wanted the other 80%. Turns out, as well, that the costs of managing the stores ate up all the profits.
Turns out, each store will provide one to one and half incomes -- less than the old Mom and Pop, model actually. So when Linda has one store, and I have another -- it works.
Anyway, when the sport card bubble collapsed, I retrenched to my downtown Bend store -- doubling it in size so it wouldn't look like a complete defeat. We managed to sell the mall store, which was still profitable.
Funny thing was, I learned that having a store in Bend and Redmond is a little bit like An Appointment at Samara: you try to avoid your fate, but it happens anyway.
I would spend a morning going to my Sisters and Redmond stores -- supplying them with material -- and then drop by the Mountain View Mall store and see my Sisters and Redmond customers at the counter....
I will admit, it was a very different time. Back then, Redmond was much, much smaller. But then again, the competition level was lower as well. The chainstores didn't really store stomping in to Central Oregon until about 1992 and thereafter.
Anyway, thems the fruits of my experience.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Exposure. Thanks for nuttin.
Once again I'm hearing the old 'exposure' argument from my business 'partners' further up the food chain.
Exposure of comics in the digital realm will lead customers to comic shops, they tell me.
This is one of those ideas that sound pretty good on the outside, but are complete bullshit.
I've heard it presented as an excuse for my suppliers to give special consideration to outlets bigger than me -- mass market or internet and now digital -- a hundred times over the last 30 years, and it has NEVER happened.
It doesn't work that way, except in the most general sense of -- the bigger the scene, the more likely I'll sell something. But what happens most often is, the smaller stores like mine actually develop the market until it's big enough for the larger entities to take over. NOT the other way around.
If the product is in bigger stores, than that exposure turns to sales in bigger stores. It doesn't make people turn around and go shop at the smaller store.
Exposure? I had hordes of folk in my store buying beanie babies, and pokemon, and pogs -- but as soon as they were through buying them, they were gone.
Comic exposure? With all the media attention and the big tent movies, anyone who doesn't know that comics are here has three slabs of concrete around their brains and nothing short of a wrecking ball will break through. (And yes there are a number of those people.)
It's much the same reasoning as the downtown festivals. "Sure, you lose sales on the day of the event, but you are 'exposed' to new customers!" I'm told, to which I want to say -- "Wait. They are there. They are downtown. Nothing is keeping them from buying on that day and they don't. But they will turnaround and remember you in a week and make a special trip to the store they passed over while they were there?"
Customers will buy where they see something and where they are. Fine. Don't pretend that it's good for me that Walmart has it....
Exposure. Blech.
Exposure of comics in the digital realm will lead customers to comic shops, they tell me.
This is one of those ideas that sound pretty good on the outside, but are complete bullshit.
I've heard it presented as an excuse for my suppliers to give special consideration to outlets bigger than me -- mass market or internet and now digital -- a hundred times over the last 30 years, and it has NEVER happened.
It doesn't work that way, except in the most general sense of -- the bigger the scene, the more likely I'll sell something. But what happens most often is, the smaller stores like mine actually develop the market until it's big enough for the larger entities to take over. NOT the other way around.
If the product is in bigger stores, than that exposure turns to sales in bigger stores. It doesn't make people turn around and go shop at the smaller store.
Exposure? I had hordes of folk in my store buying beanie babies, and pokemon, and pogs -- but as soon as they were through buying them, they were gone.
Comic exposure? With all the media attention and the big tent movies, anyone who doesn't know that comics are here has three slabs of concrete around their brains and nothing short of a wrecking ball will break through. (And yes there are a number of those people.)
It's much the same reasoning as the downtown festivals. "Sure, you lose sales on the day of the event, but you are 'exposed' to new customers!" I'm told, to which I want to say -- "Wait. They are there. They are downtown. Nothing is keeping them from buying on that day and they don't. But they will turnaround and remember you in a week and make a special trip to the store they passed over while they were there?"
Customers will buy where they see something and where they are. Fine. Don't pretend that it's good for me that Walmart has it....
Exposure. Blech.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
What? Says the N.Y. Fed. There was a bubble?
If these are the guys in charge, we're in big trouble.
See, I thought the following was a given. Acknowledged by all. Understood.
But, then again, I watched the Bubble from Ground Zero -- Bend, ever-lovin Oregon.
"Flip This House”: Investor Speculation and the Housing Bubble
Andrew Haughwout, Donghoon Lee, Joseph Tracy, and Wilbert van der Klaauw
The recent financial crisis—the worst in eighty years—had its origins in the enormous increase and subsequent collapse in housing prices during the 2000s. While the housing bubble has been the subject of intense public debate and research, no single answer has emerged to explain why prices rose so fast and fell so precipitously. In this post, we present new findings from our recent New York Fed study that uses unique data to suggest that real estate “investors”—borrowers who use financial leverage in the form of mortgage credit to purchase multiple residential properties—played a previously unrecognized, but very important, role. These investors likely helped push prices up during 2004-06; but when prices turned down in early 2006, they defaulted in large numbers and thereby contributed importantly to the intensity of the housing cycle’s downward leg.
Really? Who'd have thunk it.
It was a Bubble, big guys. What part of the phenomenon don't you understand?
They act as though, the fact that "prices rose so fast and fell so precipitously" was a big mystery.
And that they are surprised, surprised I tell you!, that investor speculation was a main factor.
"...previously unrecognized?" Good lord.
In my experience, Speculation is the Major cause of any and all Bubbles. And the speculation in the housing market wasn't just investors in multiple houses -- it was buyers making bad deals and buying bigger houses than they could afford, with the idea that the house would increase in price and allow them to afford it later. Speculation, whether acknowledged or understood at the time.
Are the Fed really so clueless?
Or is this some kind of P.R. bullshit?
See, I thought the following was a given. Acknowledged by all. Understood.
But, then again, I watched the Bubble from Ground Zero -- Bend, ever-lovin Oregon.
"Flip This House”: Investor Speculation and the Housing Bubble
Andrew Haughwout, Donghoon Lee, Joseph Tracy, and Wilbert van der Klaauw
The recent financial crisis—the worst in eighty years—had its origins in the enormous increase and subsequent collapse in housing prices during the 2000s. While the housing bubble has been the subject of intense public debate and research, no single answer has emerged to explain why prices rose so fast and fell so precipitously. In this post, we present new findings from our recent New York Fed study that uses unique data to suggest that real estate “investors”—borrowers who use financial leverage in the form of mortgage credit to purchase multiple residential properties—played a previously unrecognized, but very important, role. These investors likely helped push prices up during 2004-06; but when prices turned down in early 2006, they defaulted in large numbers and thereby contributed importantly to the intensity of the housing cycle’s downward leg.
Really? Who'd have thunk it.
It was a Bubble, big guys. What part of the phenomenon don't you understand?
They act as though, the fact that "prices rose so fast and fell so precipitously" was a big mystery.
And that they are surprised, surprised I tell you!, that investor speculation was a main factor.
"...previously unrecognized?" Good lord.
In my experience, Speculation is the Major cause of any and all Bubbles. And the speculation in the housing market wasn't just investors in multiple houses -- it was buyers making bad deals and buying bigger houses than they could afford, with the idea that the house would increase in price and allow them to afford it later. Speculation, whether acknowledged or understood at the time.
Are the Fed really so clueless?
Or is this some kind of P.R. bullshit?
Make way! Make way!
Another digital brouhaha in the comic world. Dark Horse announced same day and date release of their comics, following the examples of DC and Marvel and several other smaller companies. But they implied they were going to sell their digital versions cheaper.
After a day of outrage from the retailers, Mike Richardson released a statement that comics wouldn't decrease in price for the first month. (But retailers still pointed out that they are selling most of their print comics for 3.50; and because Amazon wants prices to end at -99, they will be selling most comics for 2.99.)
Anyway, the general thrust is pretty clear. The handwriting is on the wall.
I still think that the comic companies are making a huge mistake actually facilitating this change, instead of delaying it, but it doesn't matter what I think.
Each of the companies are going about it in a slightly different way; Marvel is enclosing digital codes in it's comics; DC has contracted with a specific company to set up an account with; Dark Horse and IDW and others are more open, to Amazon among others.
I think that if this weren't being pushed, that reader erosion would be minimal for the first few years. Even with the pushing, I still don't believe it will be a landslide. But, yeah. If you offer it, they will come.
My response is to recognize reality and move on. Make way for another way of doing business. That doesn't mean I've given up, or anything.
It reminds me of the sports card debacle. When the card companies started offering product cheaper through the mass market (this was pre-internet, but it was the same dynamic or worse), I encouraged my fellow retailers NOT to buy this product from them. To cut their orders to only what they could sell. To not engage in cut throat, suicidally competitive practices. As far as I know, I'm the only card dealer I know of that made the necessary steps early on. Most just went off the cliff.
Ironically, my response has been to double down on the other product in the store; games, toys, cards, anime and manga, and especially new and used books. It's ironic, because most of these product lines are already in the marginal zone that I expect comics to be in five years or so.
My response is to make maximum use of the fact that I'm in a downtown tourist zone, by carrying a wide and deep variety of material -- even in product lines that have been thoroughly exploited by the internet and the mass market. I need to have the possibility of a sale to anyone who walks in the door, and make sure those someones actually walk through door and see something they want.
It's not an ideal solution, but I have a lot of confidence in my ability to pick the kind of stuff that people will buy -- even though the internet and the mass market might already have it. I have to be smart in my buying and my selling. The hill just gets a little steeper every year, but you know what? It's always been that way.
After a day of outrage from the retailers, Mike Richardson released a statement that comics wouldn't decrease in price for the first month. (But retailers still pointed out that they are selling most of their print comics for 3.50; and because Amazon wants prices to end at -99, they will be selling most comics for 2.99.)
Anyway, the general thrust is pretty clear. The handwriting is on the wall.
I still think that the comic companies are making a huge mistake actually facilitating this change, instead of delaying it, but it doesn't matter what I think.
Each of the companies are going about it in a slightly different way; Marvel is enclosing digital codes in it's comics; DC has contracted with a specific company to set up an account with; Dark Horse and IDW and others are more open, to Amazon among others.
I think that if this weren't being pushed, that reader erosion would be minimal for the first few years. Even with the pushing, I still don't believe it will be a landslide. But, yeah. If you offer it, they will come.
My response is to recognize reality and move on. Make way for another way of doing business. That doesn't mean I've given up, or anything.
It reminds me of the sports card debacle. When the card companies started offering product cheaper through the mass market (this was pre-internet, but it was the same dynamic or worse), I encouraged my fellow retailers NOT to buy this product from them. To cut their orders to only what they could sell. To not engage in cut throat, suicidally competitive practices. As far as I know, I'm the only card dealer I know of that made the necessary steps early on. Most just went off the cliff.
Ironically, my response has been to double down on the other product in the store; games, toys, cards, anime and manga, and especially new and used books. It's ironic, because most of these product lines are already in the marginal zone that I expect comics to be in five years or so.
My response is to make maximum use of the fact that I'm in a downtown tourist zone, by carrying a wide and deep variety of material -- even in product lines that have been thoroughly exploited by the internet and the mass market. I need to have the possibility of a sale to anyone who walks in the door, and make sure those someones actually walk through door and see something they want.
It's not an ideal solution, but I have a lot of confidence in my ability to pick the kind of stuff that people will buy -- even though the internet and the mass market might already have it. I have to be smart in my buying and my selling. The hill just gets a little steeper every year, but you know what? It's always been that way.
Monday, December 5, 2011
All the beautiful books.
Oh, man. There are a lot of books.
I am resistant to 'best-seller' lists, but I'm a sucker for 'best-of' lists.
I go to sites like Flavorwire or Shelf Awareness, and they show the cover to a book and I want it. They list books in a theme, and I want them all. They mention a book that is "like" other books and I got to have it.
I have a feeling that there is some quid pro quo going on in some of these lists. Reviews and ads do seem to coincide a lot. But if they seem cool, I guess maybe that doesn't matter.
Just looking at the liquidation sites, it's amazing how many cool books seem to have fallen between the cracks of publishing and selling. Good looking books, with interesting subjects, but obviously they didn't sell enough.
There's room for only a few at the top -- and they aren't always the best, obviously. In fact, the reason I don't look at the best-sellers lists is because they are mostly atrocious. I'd say about half of the books are readable, and maybe thirty percent are good. As a general rule.
Pulp, and faux literature. (This is not to say, genre -- to me genre can be as good as anything Oprah recommends, and often better -- no, I'm talking about the lowest common denominator of these types of books.) The hardest thing for me to do is not roll my eyes when someone says they like a horrible author. (And here, I'm not actually talking about the quality of the writing so much as the sleazy, jump on the bandwagon, calculating nature of so many best sellers.)
Meanwhile, there's a book over there that is totally original. But I can't sell it, because the customer has never heard of it.
I can't read all these books -- but I can get a general sense of them. I use that instinct to buy books, and my store reflects that. If I'm right, I'll sell enough of them. If I'm wrong....
Well, I can't be wrong.
I am resistant to 'best-seller' lists, but I'm a sucker for 'best-of' lists.
I go to sites like Flavorwire or Shelf Awareness, and they show the cover to a book and I want it. They list books in a theme, and I want them all. They mention a book that is "like" other books and I got to have it.
I have a feeling that there is some quid pro quo going on in some of these lists. Reviews and ads do seem to coincide a lot. But if they seem cool, I guess maybe that doesn't matter.
Just looking at the liquidation sites, it's amazing how many cool books seem to have fallen between the cracks of publishing and selling. Good looking books, with interesting subjects, but obviously they didn't sell enough.
There's room for only a few at the top -- and they aren't always the best, obviously. In fact, the reason I don't look at the best-sellers lists is because they are mostly atrocious. I'd say about half of the books are readable, and maybe thirty percent are good. As a general rule.
Pulp, and faux literature. (This is not to say, genre -- to me genre can be as good as anything Oprah recommends, and often better -- no, I'm talking about the lowest common denominator of these types of books.) The hardest thing for me to do is not roll my eyes when someone says they like a horrible author. (And here, I'm not actually talking about the quality of the writing so much as the sleazy, jump on the bandwagon, calculating nature of so many best sellers.)
Meanwhile, there's a book over there that is totally original. But I can't sell it, because the customer has never heard of it.
I can't read all these books -- but I can get a general sense of them. I use that instinct to buy books, and my store reflects that. If I'm right, I'll sell enough of them. If I'm wrong....
Well, I can't be wrong.
The book I want it to be.
I've decided to hold off writing the last chapter to my book, until I've rewritten all the chapters that lead up to it.
For one thing, the ending incorporates creatures and characters that still need to be fleshed out. Actually, some don't even exist yet, except as a general idea.
Holidays are a really tough time for me to write, especially because I'm in retail. I've gotten a humongous amount of product at the store over the last couple of weeks that I've been dealing with. Holiday party for writers group, the article in the paper -- doesn't take much to throw me off.
So I've decided to spend the month making notes --which has to be done anyway -- and then sitting down in the first 10 days of 2012 and rewriting.
I've got all kinds of aspirations for the second draft -- which is a start at least. I think you kind of have to have to aspirations before you can have the results.
A book spends a lot of time in my mind as a entity that doesn't exist, full of fun and emotion and suspense -- the image, in a vague way, of what I WANT it to be.
The actual book is a whole nother thing -- but I think it's important to have that image in mind.
For one thing, the ending incorporates creatures and characters that still need to be fleshed out. Actually, some don't even exist yet, except as a general idea.
Holidays are a really tough time for me to write, especially because I'm in retail. I've gotten a humongous amount of product at the store over the last couple of weeks that I've been dealing with. Holiday party for writers group, the article in the paper -- doesn't take much to throw me off.
So I've decided to spend the month making notes --which has to be done anyway -- and then sitting down in the first 10 days of 2012 and rewriting.
I've got all kinds of aspirations for the second draft -- which is a start at least. I think you kind of have to have to aspirations before you can have the results.
A book spends a lot of time in my mind as a entity that doesn't exist, full of fun and emotion and suspense -- the image, in a vague way, of what I WANT it to be.
The actual book is a whole nother thing -- but I think it's important to have that image in mind.
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