What standards to you use to determine success?

Bigger is often a symbol of success – the rich man drives the big car, owns the big house, gets a big pool. Even further back, in fact much further back, people wanted to be fat because it was a sign of wealth—you could afford to feed you and yours and didn’t have to work all day in the fields to do so. But does bigger always signify success? I guess it depends on what type of success. If your goal is to have a big store, or be the one who has the most stores, then being the biggest means you’re the best. But if success is measured by something else, maybe not.

Why this strange tangent? Because I don’t believe that the success of a comic book store, or stores, can be based on how many you’ve got or how many square feet they are alone. Someone came in the other day and referred to a particular store as “the most successful in the area” simply because they’ve got a couple of locations, and it made us a bit mad. I’m not going to mention any names specifically, but those of you from the area probably know the places I’m referring to. There’s a store not to far away that has 3 times the square footage we do, but rumors are that since the upgrade in size the “success” of the store has gone down. Now, I have no actual proof of this, but it’s the word on the street. There’s another store that has several locations – that does signify some sort of success, to be sure: success of being able to maintain the status quo for a couple of decades. But have you seen the status quo? Is that really success? What about growth? What about improvement? What about people loving to visit your store? Truthfully the comic book industry often seems to be quite content with the status quo. However, in today’s economy and marketplace I don’t believe the status quo will really be able to be survive. Stores are closing all over the place, as people turn more to movies and video games and 200 cable TV stations and the internet… over comics. And as the price of a comic book continues to grow, while publishers crank out books that are only OK. We retailers have a lot of choices to make, we take big risks on inventory since nothing is returnable should it not sell, our profit margins are quite thin in retail standards, and only about 5% of the US population reads comics, where in places like Europe and Japan it’s closer to 20%.

Maybe success is having people walk into the store and say, WOW (which has happened here more than one time). Maybe success is seeing growth month to month and year to year. Maybe success is having people leave other stores and decide to shop here. Maybe it’s having kids beg their moms to bring them here, and having women feel comfortable shopping alone in the store. Maybe it’s hearing from people out of state saying they wish they could shop at THIS store all the time. Maybe it’s having friendly and informed people working in the store, maybe it’s presenting merchandise in an atmosphere that’s clean and well lit and fun. Maybe it’s hosting artists and writers for people to meet and talk to for free. Maybe it’s promoting diversity and taking a risk on lesser known publishers and writers and comics in order to help the industry grow in a way that makes it more appealing to a broader variety of people. Maybe it’s getting recognition in the industry as someone taking positive steps to improve the industry. If success is these things, then we’ve got it down. We’ve blown away the competition. WE ARE SUCCESSFUL! Sure, we’re only 1200 square feet with one store, but give that time…