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12442739 No.12442739 [Reply] [Original]

Is their any chance starting up a comic book shop in a small town could succeed? I've always wanted to open one, but I know its a very niche thing and is hard to make money on.

>> No.12442756

>>12442739
Depends how small of a town you're talking. In any case you'd have to host geek events, etc., not just sell books

>> No.12442758

Of course not

Maybe if you were the only one in the town and all the youth play trading card games

>> No.12442772

I don't see it working under almost any circumstances based solely on the fact that literally no one reads or collects comics anymore even ironically. The Gen Z'ers are onto totally different things.

>> No.12442781

>>12442756
Well I live in a town of around 40,000 people. I'd want some kind of comic store that would also have maybe a few arcade machines.

>> No.12442785

>>12442739
Your main money will be in snacks. Not kidding.

>Buy comic stuff in bulk for 8% discount, requires purchase contract
>Sell for full price
>Pay 20-25% taxes on 8% margins

versus

>Buy freezable food/soda/water in bulk
>No regulation to keep inventory because it can go bad for various reasons and just with time
>Sell a majority of it in cash
>Dodge taxes
Even if you pay taxes on it like a responsible human being (you will lose to competition who doesn't), the margins are still better when buying food in bulk than when buying comics/books in bulk, specifically because it does go bad. And you can write off the stuff that goes bad on your taxes if you do file.

>> No.12442789

there's one in my area that does really well because it hosts meetups for /tg/ card & board games. its really popular for magic tournaments. not my thing, but i have to hand it to them. they did so well that they could pack their shop on a friday night inside a totally dead mall

>> No.12442848

>>12442739
If you sell homemade comics, and have a commercial tier printer so the quality is decent. Then you could potentially attract additional customers i.e. the "artists" who have made a comic book and come by once in a while to talk about how well they are selling or want to see their comic in the stand.

>> No.12442895

>>12442781

a town of 40,000 people could support a comic store, IMO, if you have console game nights, etc.
Have you ever been to a bar that has game consoles? classics and newer ones.
that's an idea to consider.

>> No.12442908

>>12442895
Also, sell coffee during the daytime.

>> No.12442954

>>12442739
I work in a comic book store. We make 80% of our stores revenue through online sales (mostly magic cards) and barely turn a profit selling physical goods. This is a labor of love scenario OP, you will at most just enough money to scrape by and continue running a store and at worst barely enough money to scrape by.

I hope you like kids because your store will live or die depending on how many little shits you can have shipped to your store every weekend. Their parents will basically use your store as a free daycare in exchange for making sure they have spare allowance money to buy cheap garbage with. Also you better not plan on being a "comic shop" that exclusively sells comics and doesn't do any gaming. Nobody buys comics anymore, they all just read shit online where it's free or order online because it's cheaper if they want physical. You also need to make sure if you have a player base that's fairly large. Go on Google and search to see if there is any other gaming stores nearby. If there isn't go to the closest and look at their forums/reviews/whatever and see if people are saying they're from your town and wish there was one closer. Go to said store during a big event (such as a pre-release or tournament) and talk to people. If a bunch are from your town then you might have a good playerbase ready for you.

Also make sure you put up flyers in schools, public places, advertising is key because you NEED to let your audience know you exist. These are not the kind of people that go out of their way to look for you.

Good luck

>> No.12442965

>>12442785
this

I had a friend who had an internet arena something like 15 years ago. His money was coming mainly from sandwiches and drinks

>> No.12443501
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12443501

If you do something you love you will never work another day in your life again never rang truer anon.

>> No.12443538

>>12442739
Only if you already owned a monster collection of shit you're willing to sell off. Those are the people who can usually pull it off, especially if they're known to hold some rare items. But if you're starting from scratch, you're gonna get fugged. Comics fucking suck anyway, the only people shopping there would be 30 yo basedboy boomers and they would stop once the superhero fad dies.

>> No.12443550

Local nerd shop here makes their money back from hosting MTG/weeaboo card game tourneys every few days. That and food would be where the margins are at.

The same shop used to have a console game tournament every few days, but converted the space to card games. Unlike consoles, people need to keep buying packs of cards, so it's double the revenue streams.

>> No.12443669

Pretty sure that the place I spend $100 a month at only keeps the lighta on because of Funko shit.

>> No.12444066
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12444066

>>12442785
This. Also OP the valid question being - can you get a loan for it in the first place? It won't be cheap to start it and I can see no profit to be made in the first 1-2 years anyway. Can you finance it? YES? Do it! The worst that can happen is a corporate bankruptcy or you sell it to some other dumbass.