Behind the Counter
So, I don't have some big bag of tricks, or a neat topic to discuss this month. Instead, I have decided to just let you behind my counter for a bit, give you a peek behind the curtain so to speak.
Titan Games is a retail store in Battle Creek, Michigan. Battle Creek has about 100,000 people in it and the surrounding county. In Michigan, the economy is depressed more than just about anywhere else in the country - and I mean it is so bad, that they say we have at least another 8 years of down economy ahead of us, and then maybe 8 years of sub-average growth.
In this town alone, we have lost over 30,000 jobs in the past 12 years. Kelloggs (Cereal company) employs far less people now due to consolidation, automation, and moving some manufacturing jobs elsewhere. The place my father worked when I grew up moved to Brazil. The average income here is lower than a lot of places which have a lower cost of living than Michigan. So, the economy is not very good, is what I am saying. This I bring up just to give you some idea of the retail environment.
And, as we all know - you can buy games anywhere now. It used to be that you bought games at a game store, or you could probably find a D&D book at Walden Books. Maybe. Now, you have the internet and lots of discount outlets, and of course Barnes & Nobles, and other retailers, have Yugioh, Magic, D&D and other RPGs. My local B&N has a nice section of WotC, White Wolf and other RPG titles - including Shadowrun, Serenity, A Game of Thrones, and others. I must admit, it is a nice selection.
Okay. Now about Titan. We have a main retail area of 2200 square feet. Well lit, and clean. Good carpet. Nice fixtures. Well organized. We have 1000 RPG books on our shelves, and about 600 board games. We have 5000+ music CDs, 2400+ DVDs, 7000+ records, 1000+ VHS movies, 300 comic titles, 30,000 comic back issues, 200+ puzzles, 3000+ Video Games, plus miniatures, CCGs, paints, rare coins, coin collecting supplies, snacks, Tshirts, hats, and more. It really is a shop that has something for everyone. All of our used merchandise is shrinkwrapped, and we do not look like a pawn shop or second hand store.
Off the retail floor, we have another 6,000 square feet. 6 desks with computers for selling online. A dedicated station for shrinkwrapping and pricing our used merchandise. A huge safe to keep our coins in, and about 4500 square feet of storage space for our online merchandise. The facility has 24 rooms in it. Some are used as office space, most are used as storage spaces - this was a bank in the 50's through 80's, and so there are actually 4 vaults, a strong room, and an outside walk up teller window room (back before drive through tellers). All of these are stuffed to the gills with product.
Over the years, we have changed a lot. We used to do 40+ conventions a year - now we will do 7 this year, I think. Our store is finally growing to the point our retail sales will sustain us - but it's taken us a long time to get to this point. And, our online presence has changed too - though we are still doing a substantial amount of business online through our own two, websites - we also sell a considerable amount of merchandise on eBay. We currently are shipping 300+ packages a week.
And, we are still primarily a family owned business. My three kids work here. My fiancee works here. We have one seller who does our eBay stuff on commission. And, that's it now.
It really is a lot for us to manage.
Just looking back at the last month, some of the things we have been struggling with include:
1. CDs. I decided the dump bins we used to display our CDs were not doing the job right. Our sales of music CDs sucked, and the gray bins and once-nice fixtures looked nicked up and out of place in my store.
So, we built two new wall unit displays for them, had to move our used novels into a different position, and affix these two heavy and huge CD racks to the wall (concrete walls; it's a bank) and this took about 4 days of heavy labor to move, resort, get the old racks out, the new ones in, the books moved, etc. In the end, our shop looks a lot better, and CD sales are up.
2. Comic Books. Man, do we have comic books. Thousands of them, and we keep buying. It's a pain to store them all between comic shows, but how we do this is we buy all used comics at a dime, and the good ones we price and put out. The crappy ones we take to 3 comic shows a year, and dump them at $1 each (which means that after travel, booth costs, and other costs, I gotta sell 2000+ comics per show to break even).
But, the comic shows are fun, and I often get to meet folks at the comic shows - like the time I had lunch with Gates McFadden (Doctor Crusher from Star Trek - The Next Generation). Not that I am some big dorky Trekie geek. I prefer the term TrekER, thank you very much.
Anyway, we have over 50,000 comics in storage that we don't put out for sale, and I am happy we are approaching the next comic con - the Novi Comic Con, we attend in May. We are currently bursting at the seams on comics, and need that comic show to move the crap we have left to sell.
Meanwhile, we have been gearing up for Free Comic Book Day - a national day of free comic goodness, which is on May 5th every year
(I always wondered what Cinco De'Mayo meant - it means Free Comic Book Day! ... Kidding!)
Anyway, we have been working on getting ready for free comic book day, and preparing for our twice a year ½ price comic day, which is on April 24th!
3. Coins. I have always wanted to deal in rare coins. I am a coin collector, and as a child loved to go to the coin shops with my Dad. Yea! This year, I started buying and selling rare coins. This meant having a safe to house them in at night. Moving that safe into my office was a 4 guy and a engine hoist, 6 hour job. Yeah. Then, the combination didn't work, so it was a long 2-day process for the locksmith to get the safe open, and reset the combination. Wow. It was painfully difficult to get this off the ground, but we made it.
4. A Huge Shipment. Then the UPS driver shows up with 122 parcels. Okay, it was actually two UPS trucks, one completely full just for us. And one with about 30 more boxes just for us. Yeah - this is what you get when someone calls and says "Do you buy used games? Can I just send them to you?" And, you foolishly say "sure".
In actuality, we buy about 200 boxes of used games a month. 4 to 10 UPS boxes a day, usually. Sometimes as many as 30. But, on the rare occasion, someone sells us a major collection, or the remnants of a store - and doesn't tell us all about it first, they just ship them. I like when this happens - but nobody else does. See, the boxes have to sit in an aisleway stacked high, and takes several days to process. The boxes also showed up in the middle of the CD rack change over (see above!), so it was a real mess.
5. New Mail Carrier. Our mail carrier changed. Not a big deal for most people, but we need to be picked up last each day. Our mail carrier decided that since we were a business district, they would pick up here at noon. Uh, yeah - I got 300-400 shoe box sized parcels to ship. If the mail carrier shows up at 5PM, we can fill her truck completely. If she shows up at noon - we overfill it, cause she still had several full tubs of things to be delivered.
Can you imagine spending $50,000+ on postage in a year? We do. And, we figure that such would entitle us to a bit of service. Oops! Another new mail carrier - and this one picks up at 5PM.
I love my mail carrier and, to prove this we never make her carry anything! Never. She has parcels to drop off? We carry them in for her. She has 300 boxes to pick up? We carry them out for her. It's a hot day? We give her a free soda. Really, I love my mail carrier. I never knew how much a simple thing like my mail carrier changing could effect my business. We are going to pamper our carrier from now on!
6. A Small Water Leak. Ruined $25,000 worth of merchandise. Not covered by insurance. Ouch.
7. Adopt a Pet. My daughter, god love her, rescued an abandoned cat, named Charlie. But, her landlord said she could not keep it - so, now we have a shop cat (does not get onto the retail floor, only allowed in the storage areas). Charlie needed a check up, and - who'd'a thunk it -Charlie is a girl. But, she is a good girl, and never misses her litter box, and is affectionate to everyone. Pretty, too. Can I write off the food and litter as a business expense?
(Kidding, I was kidding).
Still, Charlie is as good a security measure as the local police department. Last year when we were broken into and the thieves stole over $15,000.00 in merchandise the police didn't even ask the neighbors in the residential area, the three houses that face our building, if they saw anything.
So, Charlie is as good a deterrent to crime as the local police. (Not kidding!)
8. Personnel. Had my packer - the guy who essentially packed all our parcels - quit with no notice after more than a year here. Wouldn't have been such a surprise, 'cept it was my best friend, who had begged me for the job when he needed the money. Left me a bit short handed - but, I actually enjoy packing the parcels, so I am back to it now.
9. Hey, Where'd the Key Go? Someone lost the key to the gumball machine. That's gonna be fun to fix. (Hmmmm, should I use the manual, a drill, buy a new lock, and try to fix it correctly? Or, should I use the sledgehammer?)
10. Lights. For no reason I can tell, a light fixture quit working. Called the electrician. The light fixture in question has no power to it, and running back the wires, it has not been hooked up in years. Puzzling, it worked last week. Better call another electrician.
11. Water Heater. Water heater stopped working. Call plumber. 2 hours of working on it, to find out it works better if you pay the gas bill. Ugh, yeah. Whose job is it to make sure the utilities are paid? Oh. My ex-wife did that job. Oops. Okay, pay all the bills, quickly, and make up a new system for tracking those things! Call ex-wife and fuss at her for not making sure my gas bill was paid. Huh, she didn't find that as funny as I did. (Yes, she probably still reads my rantings on here, but that's okay, she's a good gal, mostly, and likely still has a sense of humor).
Well, that is enough. I have more, but some of the stuff is not fit for public consumption, some of it is just not funny, and I can't find a way to say it funny.
Anyway, here is my point, if you are still with me: your local retailer is just some guy, like me. They have things to deal with. They don't play games for a living. But, like me, they do value you coming into their shop, spending some time, and some money, with them. Over the years, my customers have been instrumental in my life. Such as:
A. Wayne, a really nice gamer who comes in far to seldom, and who came in the day my father died -- and hugged me.
B. Blaine Pardoe, the author, who was my Dungeon Master when I was a high school kid, who still comes in when he is in town.
C. I could name a hundred others. Maybe 500. Customers who have helped me move a fixture, or who sold me stuff, bought stuff from us, have been a large, or small, part of Titan Games. They make it worthwhile.
Somewhere there is probably a retailer who thinks of you that way.
Marcus King
Owner - Titan Games
637 Capital Ave SW
Battle Creek, MI 49015
