View from the Game Store is a column by Marcus King, Director of Retail Operations at Troll and Toad Games & Comics in London, Kentucky.  This week, King talks about how FCBD went and discusses competitive advantages which may not always seem so to the customer.  

This past Saturday, May 7, 2016 was the 15th annual Free Comic Book Day, or FCBD, as industry folks sometimes refer to it.  We had about 2,500 comic books, at a cost of around $1200.00, to give away.  For those who don’t know, Free Comic Book Day is the first Saturday of every May.

To promote this event, we notified local newspapers and radio stations.  We ran ads on Facebook daily for two weeks.  We sent out three weekly emails to our subscribers.  We had cosplay/costume contests for both kids and adults.  We had our local Starbucks in London, Kentucky donate 10 gallons of coffee, cups and two loaves of lemon loaf.  And, we gave away about 2,300 comics in a 10-hour period, which was supposed to be 14 hours, but was cut short by a bad storm that knocked the power out.  It was a good day, and if not for the storm, might have been our best sales day this year. 

We also had a store wide “Buy One At Marked Price, Get One Half Off” sale.  We had about 100 pounds of free candy.  My staff dressed up in their favorite geek/nerd culture characters.  And, we had a lot of fun.  We had a great day of sales, as well.  It was our best sales day to date this year.  But, will likely be surpassed with fall sales on Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Black Weekend sales and our annual “Sunday Before Christmas” sales. 

Cut to Monday morning. I came into work and the store was a shambles - because the power went out, and we couldn’t clean up.  We clean up and my mood is great -what a good FCBD we had!  Then, I get a customer complaint from one of my main subscribers, withdrawing from our subscriber service because he can get his comics 10% cheaper 15 miles away. 

Now, I know how to compete with a competitor.  I actually have a proprietary document called “Marcus’ Rules of Competition.”  It details things like being open earlier, stay open later, have a better looking sign, have a cleaner store, have better lighting, etc.  But, what I don’t know how to compete with is the mindset that cost is the most important factor.  I mean - if your car gets 30 miles to the gallon, and you are paid $10 an hour - I figure it costs you $12 to go to the nearest store (15 miles away) due to cost of time (and your time is worth $10 an hour) and gas.  To save an extra 10% on your comics you’d have to be spending $120 a week to cover that cost. And, this customer spends less than half that. 

Still, a good customer for sure, but he won’t save money trying to get it cheaper.  Sometimes cheaper is just cheap, not necessarily less expensive.  Cheap is having fewer open hours, and fewer days.  Cheap is not having staff to help customers, and not getting your comics out on time.  Now, to be fair: I’ve never been in this competitor’s store, and from what I understand he’s a fine fellow.  But, with the money we make on comics, I actually employ people who are great at their jobs.  And, I can do that because we don’t discount.

Part of owning a mature store is managing expectations of customers - and I may not be doing that very well.  I need to learn again.  About every time I think I have this “retail” thing down pretty well, I get handed a humble-pie to eat, and this is one of those times.  We lost a good customer because I didn’t handle his expectations well, and clearly did not earn his continued patronage with service and selection that eclipsed his desire for a discount.

Okay, back to improving my store.

If you liked my column this week, follow me on Facebook.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.