Good or bad time to start an LCS

[DarkKnightReturns]

My LCS is actually more of a hobby shop that has a comic section in the back. I don't think they could survive with comics only. My advice would be if you really wanted to open a store be prepared to have manga,models,board games etc and not just comics.

[Silver Surfer]

Always wondered how much profit does a LCS net when selling one new comic?

[joe_collector]

It's about 50%, right, maybe higher with some discounts?

[fantastic_four]

Always wondered how much profit does a LCS net when selling one new comic?

 

I hope we get a more accurate answer than this, but I believe they pay about 40% of cover price--after operating expenses their actual profit would obviously be far less than the difference.

[buttock]

My LCS is great. Mostly comics, very little fluff. 3 stores in the area, great back issue selection, knowledgeable, good guys.

 

They still exist. I'm not sure how much of an exception to the rule they are.

[mschmidt]

Always wondered how much profit does a LCS net when selling one new comic?

 

I hope we get a more accurate answer than this, but I believe they pay about 40% of cover price--after operating expenses their actual profit would obviously be far less than the difference.

 

It depends on which company publishes the book & what specials Diamond are running at the moment, but on average you pay about 45% of cover price as a dealer.

[Mio]

Avoid a physical retail location. Stay internet/comicon based or you'll lose your shirt.

[BaltimoreLauren]

This thread has been more helpful then I can ever say.

 

I was thinking of opening a physical location comic store, but just by observation of my local economy alone, it would never survive, and I'm not too keen on scrapping by.

 

So, thanks guys.

[Silver Surfer]

It's about 50%, right, maybe higher with some discounts?

 

Actually that is much higher than I would have ever guessed and not bad considering the price of frickin moderns these days. A decent sized LCS with regular traffic can probably pay the rent and then some through weekly sales. I recently bought all 3 variants of Cap #600 [don't ask why, just because] and another 25 or so recent issues just to catch up.

[marvelcollector]

I've felt that the last 12 months or so were an excellent time to start a business in general.

 

A strictly comic shop ...not so much....

[ChiSoxFan]

Where I live -- the New Orleans metro area -- is a good example of how the number of local comic shops have dwindled over the years. Back in the mid-to-late 1990's, there were at least 8 stores that were purely focused on comic-sales, with another 2 or 3 that were hybrid-stores (ones that had started out as a sports card or gaming store first, and then branched out) -- many of them with multiple locations. Now? It feels like there might be 8 stores total in the entire Gulf South. I envy those in the Chicago area if there's as many stores to go into as has been said.

 

I was one of that group, having owned my own store back in the late 1990's. We had two locations, which helped in ordering enough to get bigger discounts from Diamond, Which had ended up as the sole distributor by the time our store had ran its course.

 

I can say from personal experience that I never enjoyed anything in my life as much as I did running that store. The combination of being the "boss", shaping my store's direction, and doing so in a business/hobby I've loved for some time was incredibly fulfilling, and I regret none of it.

 

However, I'd never recommend someone following in my footsteps to open a store, particularly from scratch. Anyone who does is going to need time to build a customer base and deep pockets to absorb heavy losses in the meantime -- even if no one's coming into your store, you still need to have the product there to convince someone who does that you're serious about what you're doing -- and that's going to mean losses for a while before you get any sort of traffic coming in.

 

Because you'd be surprised as to how much overhead there will be to keep your store running -- and not just in rent and new orders. There's supplies (for the maintenance of the store, not the supplies you sell), utilities (not to mention the deposits you'll need to put down just to open your business accounts), shelving/display cases to purchase, licenses, etc. -- all paid up front before you have your first customer. It adds up and quickly.

 

Even if you get all this going and have the "perfect" store, that still may not be enough to put you in the black, and you'll need deep pockets if you want to survive. When my store was open, we carried new books, one of the larger stocks of Silver Age in the area to go with a ton of back issues, toys, statues, t-shirts, collectible gaming cards (MTG -- which turned into our 2nd best income source), we even sold snacks and drinks and a profit. We ran Magic tournaments on the weekends after we closed (with the winners getting store credit) that garnered us extra income, we participated in pre-release tournaments (going as far away as to Houston), and traveled to MegaCon in Orlando to sell our high-priced stuff -- all profitable endeavors.

 

We had, by all accounts, one of the cleanest, nicest stores many people said they'd ever been in. We had a pretty solid base of repeat folder customers, parents came by with their kids all of the time, we were in a good location (a large space in a strip mall that we'd gotten for a really good rental price when we'd opened) in a good neighborhood, we offered discounts as large or larger than our competitors or a selection that was as large as anyone else's, and we had a reputation for outstanding pricing, grading, and customer service for our folder customers. And yet, we still found ourselves closing as the decade came to an end. Dropped folders (people who lost their job or moved, people getting out of the hobby weren't replaced by new ones -- a problem that has continued to worsen, if sales figures for new books are any indication), a worsening local economy (which was still far better then than what we're looking at now), increased rent -- all of these helped to force us to close in time

 

Why? Well, as I said, we could never get out customer base as large as we needed to. The overall customer base has been shrinking for years -- and getting your share of that base, much of which tends to be loyal to what they're familiar and comfortable with already -- is sometimes a near-impossible task. There's nothing more frustrating than hearing from a customer that "The shop where I have my folder didn't pull this for me like I requested -- and they never get my pulls right -- and they give me a terrible deal on what I buy. I hate going there. Move my folder here, you say? Errr ... uhhh ... no thanks, I don't need to." And that happens more often that you could possibly believe. Dealing with the distributor Diamond? Well, I'd rather have someone give me about 50 well-placed kicks to my privates than ever deal with those again. And then there's the economy, which is pushing people to cut down on "extras" -- which, let's face it, comics are. Not to mention the on-line retailers who can probably sell what you do, and maybe more, but cheaper (my biggest mistake was not seeing the on-line movement sooner, and getting our store's business expanded there -- an on-line presence seems vital today to a majority of stores for their survival).

 

All said, while I wouldn't recommend it -- I do wish you luck and success if you want to open your own store -- IMO, while it's not impossible for someone to make a go starting from scratch, the odds are going to be stacked heavily against you (like they are for any new business that's just opening). In the best case, you're working your tail off (I was working 7 days a week, 10+ hours a day when I had my store) to make less than you could at a normal job. At worse, you end up in debt (despite some incredibly profitable periods while we were open, when my store closed, I was about $20,000 in the red overall).

 

Good luck in whatever you choose.

 

[Mio]

This thread has been more helpful then I can ever say.

 

I was thinking of opening a physical location comic store, but just by observation of my local economy alone, it would never survive, and I'm not too keen on scrapping by.

 

So, thanks guys.

 

Glad you were saved from a bloody path. A physical retail location carries all kinds of risks/obligations you can avoid by doing business by internet/special events. You can also focus on a specific niche without worrying about massive volume esp. if you do it solely as a side-gig.

[precodekeith]

My :it's a bad time. You'd have to have deep pockets in reserve, and you'd have to have a variety of merchandise other than just comics.

 

Around here, I've seen a couple stores that opened in the last few years go down rather quickly, unable to find even a foothold among the scant number of shops that have been around some 20 years or so.

[Flaming_Telepath]

Where I live -- the New Orleans metro area -- is a good example of how the number of local comic shops have dwindled over the years. Back in the mid-to-late 1990's, there were at least 8 stores that were purely focused on comic-sales, with another 2 or 3 that were hybrid-stores (ones that had started out as a sports card or gaming store first, and then branched out) -- many of them with multiple locations. Now? It feels like there might be 8 stores total in the entire Gulf South. I envy those in the Chicago area if there's as many stores to go into as has been said.

 

I was one of that group, having owned my own store back in the late 1990's. We had two locations, which helped in ordering enough to get bigger discounts from Diamond, Which had ended up as the sole distributor by the time our store had ran its course.

 

I can say from personal experience that I never enjoyed anything in my life as much as I did running that store. The combination of being the "boss", shaping my store's direction, and doing so in a business/hobby I've loved for some time was incredibly fulfilling, and I regret none of it.

 

However, I'd never recommend someone following in my footsteps to open a store, particularly from scratch. Anyone who does is going to need time to build a customer base and deep pockets to absorb heavy losses in the meantime -- even if no one's coming into your store, you still need to have the product there to convince someone who does that you're serious about what you're doing -- and that's going to mean losses for a while before you get any sort of traffic coming in.

 

Because you'd be surprised as to how much overhead there will be to keep your store running -- and not just in rent and new orders. There's supplies (for the maintenance of the store, not the supplies you sell), utilities (not to mention the deposits you'll need to put down just to open your business accounts), shelving/display cases to purchase, licenses, etc. -- all paid up front before you have your first customer. It adds up and quickly.

 

Even if you get all this going and have the "perfect" store, that still may not be enough to put you in the black, and you'll need deep pockets if you want to survive. When my store was open, we carried new books, one of the larger stocks of Silver Age in the area to go with a ton of back issues, toys, statues, t-shirts, collectible gaming cards (MTG -- which turned into our 2nd best income source), we even sold snacks and drinks and a profit. We ran Magic tournaments on the weekends after we closed (with the winners getting store credit) that garnered us extra income, we participated in pre-release tournaments (going as far away as to Houston), and traveled to MegaCon in Orlando to sell our high-priced stuff -- all profitable endeavors.

 

We had, by all accounts, one of the cleanest, nicest stores many people said they'd ever been in. We had a pretty solid base of repeat folder customers, parents came by with their kids all of the time, we were in a good location (a large space in a strip mall that we'd gotten for a really good rental price when we'd opened) in a good neighborhood, we offered discounts as large or larger than our competitors or a selection that was as large as anyone else's, and we had a reputation for outstanding pricing, grading, and customer service for our folder customers. And yet, we still found ourselves closing as the decade came to an end. Dropped folders (people who lost their job or moved, people getting out of the hobby weren't replaced by new ones -- a problem that has continued to worsen, if sales figures for new books are any indication), a worsening local economy (which was still far better then than what we're looking at now), increased rent -- all of these helped to force us to close in time

 

Why? Well, as I said, we could never get out customer base as large as we needed to. The overall customer base has been shrinking for years -- and getting your share of that base, much of which tends to be loyal to what they're familiar and comfortable with already -- is sometimes a near-impossible task. There's nothing more frustrating than hearing from a customer that "The shop where I have my folder didn't pull this for me like I requested -- and they never get my pulls right -- and they give me a terrible deal on what I buy. I hate going there. Move my folder here, you say? Errr ... uhhh ... no thanks, I don't need to." And that happens more often that you could possibly believe. Dealing with the distributor Diamond? Well, I'd rather have someone give me about 50 well-placed kicks to my privates than ever deal with those again. And then there's the economy, which is pushing people to cut down on "extras" -- which, let's face it, comics are. Not to mention the on-line retailers who can probably sell what you do, and maybe more, but cheaper (my biggest mistake was not seeing the on-line movement sooner, and getting our store's business expanded there -- an on-line presence seems vital today to a majority of stores for their survival).

 

All said, while I wouldn't recommend it -- I do wish you luck and success if you want to open your own store -- IMO, while it's not impossible for someone to make a go starting from scratch, the odds are going to be stacked heavily against you (like they are for any new business that's just opening). In the best case, you're working your tail off (I was working 7 days a week, 10+ hours a day when I had my store) to make less than you could at a normal job. At worse, you end up in debt (despite some incredibly profitable periods while we were open, when my store closed, I was about $20,000 in the red overall).

 

Good luck in whatever you choose.

 

Quality post!

 

Thanks for the time you took to type this up. (thumbs u

[dekeuk]

 

 

Around here, I've seen a couple stores that opened in the last few years go down rather quickly, unable to find even a foothold among the scant number of shops that have been around some 20 years or so.

 

Maybe the key is to take over a moderately successful comic/cards store with established customers, a situation where the current owner wants to retire, etc.

 

And make it better.

 

If a person insisted on having an actual store. I still think internet sales and cons are the best way to go.

 

 

[codfish]

I agree with much of what ChiSoxFan said. The most fundamental things you need for any business is very deep pockets, a very good business plan, and very good business acumen. Knowledge of your product helps but that should only help you a bit with inventory control and selling the product in store.

 

IMO basing a shop strictly on one product and its related items will more than likely fail unless you fill a gap in your city's market lace that NO OTHER store is currently doing. Profit margins on new books is slim maxing out at MAYBE 40% IF you can hit the highest discount plateaus.

 

Online/mail order is a good presence but that is no guarantee of bigger profits as you need everything a B&M store would need, namely, a business plan, deep pockets, etc. Since people are not coming into your store you also need a reputation. Online stores are a dime a dozen and it certainly make it easy to get into the business but just because some of the overhead is lower it doesn't ensure success. IMO the online subscription market is parading right towards the same problem the B&M market had in the late 90's namely too many stores and not enough customers. This time though when the online stores start tanking there will be nothing to pick up the slack.

 

I would NEVER go back into business for myself because I simply do not have the business acumen or cash to do it.

[DawgPhan]

I figure opening a LCS is about the same as opening a restaurant for foodies. Anyone that gets into it for any period of time thinks that it would be fun. What has always kept me away from opening a BBQ joint is the idea of working 14+ hour days 7 days a week for the next 20 years, if I am lucky.

[joe_collector]

You want to make some quick cash, start a Chinese food take-out joint and post VERY long hours - hard work, but you can really rake it in.

[CAP Freak]

You want to make some quick cash, start a Chinese food take-out joint and post VERY long hours - hard work, but you can really rake it in.

I love those places.

[Lego]

You want to make some quick cash, start a Chinese food take-out joint and post VERY long hours - hard work, but you can really rake it in.

 

That's the strangest (and possibly most sensible) business advice I've ever heard.