OT: Running an efficient LCS

[Issa]

From a technology standpoint, what makes an LCS efficient?

 

My Local Comic Shop (LCS) writes down all the books they order, actually receive and sell in a single spiral notebook. All they record is the title of the book of the book and a number. It is a horrible to idea to try and maintain these separate lists.

 

Can you guys recommend a way to catalog and maintain all items on-hand and sold in an LCS?

 

Any information is appreciated.

 

-Issa

[MightyBeanComics]

excel?

[HouseofComics.Com]

Dan Shahin at HiJinx Comics in San Jose developed his own software for ordering, etc. that he gives away for free to other stores. http://www.hijinxcomics.com/

[PokerKid]

It's a tough balance. When I used to buy stacks of books on a trip to one of my stops, the owner would write down the name of each book, its number and price. He had an incredible assortment of stuff, but I knew I couldn't go in there unless I had a lot of time to spare. Checking out took forever.

Whatever system you go with needs to work for both you and the seller. Good luck.

[Issa]

Thank you so much! ...Hijinx comics looks really useful. I'm going to setup a linux box this weekend and try and get it running. I work for a very well known .com company so hopefully, I don't embarassing myself by messing this up.

[sckao]

 

Some shops use what's called a Point of Sale system. Everything's barcoded which allows them to mine sales data for all kinds of valuable reports.

 

Moby is one that is frequently mentioned for comic shops. (Their website is down currently.)

 

 

[Schmakt]

Diamond has a POS available that links directly to your shipping lists...

 

I talked to one of the sales reps at HeroesCon, and she mentioned that the lists are actually downloadable and usable with 3rd party software. I was going to look into it but never got around to it...

 

I am in the process of giving my comics UPC labels on the back issues... I can't wait.

[CAP Freak]

This is not really an off-topic post,

[spoonerism]

I opened my shop in January, and I use MOBY, which is incredible. (thumbs up)

 

The guys who developed and support it are great, friendly and available. We just upgraded to 5.0, and the new features make ordering easier.

 

For example, you import Diamond's Previews data file, and you can set up your order in MOBY, seeing, as you scroll through it, pictures of covers, Diamond's data, _and_ your last 8 issues' sales data for the title! Then you export your order and upload it to Diamond.

 

The best thing is that I run it on a Mac, with all the cool Point of Sale hardware you can imagine.

 

It's not completely problem-free, or heaven, or anything, but before I opened my shop, I looked at:

- Microsoft POS (which, before Diamond started pushing it, had been modified by a shop I talked to in DC)

- All the different dozen or so Mac-based point of sale systems (the number of SKUs and constant tracking, linking of items into a series, et cetera, were just not easily doable)

 

Several home-grown systems from shops I visited seemed interesting -- some of which used COMTRAC (?) the old DOS-based system, or modified Hijinx, I'd guess. I thought of speccing it out and writing it myself, but I knew I'd never finish. So I was looking at outsourcing to Indian companies.

 

Finally, I did some final searches the week before I was going to press the button for the Indian companies, and found articles by Brian Hibbs (whose book I'd read) of SF's Comix Experience (right?) and he was -- that week -- getting into MOBY, which I'd never heard of, surprisingly.

 

It was everything I wanted and a whole lot of stuff I never would have thought of until I'd used my system for a while.

 

Plus, it's cheap, compared to a lot of POS systems. It was developed for Star-something comics in St. Louis, and they still use it there, so they feel your pain if there's a problem.

 

I think they have about 50 shops using it now, so its future is fairly solid, as well.

 

Just my two cents (or half-dollar as the case may be).

 

This is probably the longest post I've ever done.

 

Oh -- and I'm not related to the guys, an investor, or anything like that, either. I'm just a very happy user.

[mikephoen]

I just got back from the Vegas Diamond Retailer Summit, and I reviewed the new Diamond POS system Comic Suite. I had a half hour private session where I got to ask questions and run through the program a bit. I came away somewhat unimpressed. It looked like it did a LOT of different things, but it seemed a bit overly complicated. There were some simple things I was looking for that it wasnt capable of. So much of the developement seemed to be aimed at tracking customers and their purchases. I have no idea why I would ever care to look up which customers bought a specific issue of Amazing Spider-Man years later, but if I wanted to, I could with Comic Suite.

 

What I was hoping for was something that would simplify reorders, without adding a lot to a customer's check out time. It might have helped with reorders... I still have questions about that, but I fear it would have slowed checking people out to a crawl. That might not matter on a Tuesday afternoon, but on a busy Wednesday or Saturday, it would be a nightmare. The way it handled special orders looked awesome... almost good enough for me to give it a try. But at $4K+ for the system, I think I need to keep looking for now.

 

We also have a few custom programs that help us with various things, like pull lists, and we still do some things the old fashioned way.

 

Perhaps I will look into MOBY next.

[the blob]

$4K seems like a lot for a comic shop to spend unless you have 8 stores or something.

 

 

[mikephoen]

$4K seems like a lot for a comic shop to spend unless you have 8 stores or something.

 

 

Actually if you have 8 stores it will cost you $32K. You have to buy a license and copy of the program (and hardware) for each store. Or even each till, if you have a store with multiple tills.

 

A few years ago I priced out some systems which werent even customized for comic stores and it was in the 10 to 20K range, so comparitively, this isnt so bad.

 

 

[spoonerism]

My MOBY system was something like:

$1200 iMac

$1300 MOBY (I thought it was cheaper, but that's what it says on their site)

$800 Various POS hardware

 

How was the Retailer Summit? I planned to go, but couldn't make it.

[mikephoen]

My MOBY system was something like:

$1200 iMac

$1300 MOBY (I thought it was cheaper, but that's what it says on their site)

$800 Various POS hardware

 

How was the Retailer Summit? I planned to go, but couldn't make it.

 

It was my first time. I've been a retailer for over 15 years now, but I've never bothered to go before. I basically went just to see Comic Suite, but it turned out to have a bunch of other good stuff. Got to talk to some upper management Diamond people, and generally found them to be a lot smarter than the lower management people.