This is a great thread with a tremendous amount of good advice-- I echo the "don't do it" sentiment and if you do, change your mind about the online aspect of it as that takes your customer base from the 100s that walk by to the millions all over the world. Packaging is a lot less work than filing bankruptcy papers.
My experience comes from retail grocery where I worked my way from a bag boy to a divisional vice president, my duties included opening new stores and investigating why failing stores were not performing and then taking steps to turn them around or to close them. Grocery stores operate on tiny margins, so they are extremely difficult to make profitable, but look around, there are a lot of them, so it can be done.
The biggest reason I saw stores fail: Poorly trained staff, cleanliness issues, lack of customer service, hours that didn't match customer needs.
One of my closest friends owns one of the largest comic shops in the Northeast and he retired at 45 from day to day activity at the shop and has a staff that runs it for him. He and I would spend a lot of time talking retail and it's not far from the retail grocery world.
For the past 15 years I've been a full time comic book artist, working for a variety of clients most of whom no one in the comics world has ever heard of because quite simply I don't love superheroes so that puts me out from mainstream American comics, my wife does currently work for Marvel as the artist on Spiderwoman so I'm in tune with them too.
We do several cons all over the country and I've traveled to comic shops from east to west and I see some that are great and some that are still just as bad as the dank old comic shops of the 80s that used a cigar box instead of a cash register.
I strongly agree with the poster that said watch the music or WHATEVER you have playing on your PA system. I was in one shop that had horrible rap music blasting, another had droning folk music and still another had the most obnoxious comic book promotional video playing over and over again on the TV-- all of these drove me running out of the store. You know why big retailers play that Musak ? Because shoppers barely notice it. That background music should be white noise.
All right so from there-- approach your store like a customer, if you have a wife get her insight too. Too many shops are run like boys clubs, what you might see as a "cool fun place to hang out" I see as a place where the regulars are all engaged in conversation and I'm ignored.
Gamers are a necessary evil because they provide some small revenue when your comic sales are off but set them out of the way of your main store and make sure they behave themselves.
I walked into a comic shop in Northampton Ma one day, and it's a nice enough shop with a big discount TPB section and in the middle of the store was a table with about seven gamers packed around it-- they were eating chinese food and basically acting like a bunch of should be adults who live in mom's basement and were out of that setting for the first time in years-- yup, you guessed it, I didn't spend much time there-- counter this with the $200 I dropped the previous time I was in and guess what-- no gamers that day.
In my experience the stereotypical "comic book guy" of Simpson's fame is actually a gamer. Most comic buyers seem like pretty normal folks, it's the gamers who don't seem to understand the magic of soap and deodorant.
If I were opening a shop I would offer gaming but it would be in some kind of annex and they would have strict rules about conduct or they'd get tossed. Too loud and obnoxious-- bye bye. No food, no drinks in the store.
A Mom's opinion is priceless. At another store I was at-- a big well run store by the way, I was browsing and a mom walked in with her son who was about six years old. The kid at the counter walked them over to the new comics section to show them the latest issue of Daredevil because as she had explained that the new Affleck movie (yup a few yeas ago) was too violent for little Jimmy to go see, but she'd heard it was based on a comic book so she decided to get him one of those. The clerk just pointed her to the latest issue and the mom said thanks and started to take it to the register.
I stopped her and explained the new DD had very adult content (I think there was a rape in this one) and that she would be better off getting one of the old books out of the back issue section-- we went over and found a Gene Colan one from the mid 70s. She ended up buying 3-4 of those.
So what's the point? Staff was poorly trained. The clerk merely took her to the DD Comics without listening to what she said. Had that woman bought the issue he recommended the store would likely have an angry ex customer. Instead we have the potential for a lifelong new reader.
At another store I went to I was impressed by how much like a "real" store it was, but it had strange operating hours. It was closed Sunday and Monday and then open 11-5 on Tues 10-8 on Wed 11-5 on Thu & Fri and 12-4 on Saturdays.
How can your customer remember these hours and who are you serving? 11-5 is pretty much a working day for 90% of your base. Worse, by having different hours each day you run the risk of turning away a customer and trust me they don't always come back.
In the past I've done some retail consulting and I once encountered a store owner who changed his hours from 10-6 to 12-8-- he found much more business with the same amount of hours. He said he likely lost no business because mornings were so slow. I set up a camera that pointed to his front door for while he was closed and over the course of three weeks we counted 30 customers who had come to his door during those closed hours and left. He's now open 10-8. The extra business has allowed him to hire two part time clerks.
Speaking of those clerks-- how do they perform when you're not there? Send in relatives and friends to check and then hold them accountable. That same retailer I consulted for had a clerk he called his "right hand man" when I came in after the owner was gone I noticed he was giving free packs of magic cards to his friends.
Not a great right hand.
As I said, great thread. My strongest advice based on years of retail is do not open a brick and mortar store. Do cons, do online, do everything but. But if you really want to do it be prepared to lose money for the first 3-4 years and expect to work 365 days a year.