Glen Soustek of Westlake Cards, Comics & Coins, Inc. in Roselle, Illinois shares his store's Free Comic Book Day experience.

Well, what can we say about Free Comic Book Day 2011?  We had 850 people come through the door and we gave away several thousand comics.  Both of which were records for us.  We also set a retail record for a FCBD.  It's tough to pinpoint why it went over so well this year.  We'll leave it with some combination of a general upward trend in our business the last few years, the economy, attrition and apathy on the part of competitors, promotions on social networks as well as our boyish good looks and general enthusiasm for life.

The Thor movie wasn't a major factor.  We had one customer complained that he fell sleep twice during the screening he went to.  Green Lantern was a major topic of discussion amongst old-fans as well as new, leaving Captain America in the dust.  

We saw a higher level of interaction between customers than ever before.  Kids talking to other kids, parents clustered together--all talking about comics, very positive sign, at least for us.

The big winners:

1)  Comics in general.  Besides the thousands given away, we sold over 200 trade paperbacks and close to 1,000 new and back issue books.  Not a bad day, especially when you've got people driving 50-miles or more to check us out.

2)  Yu-Gi-Oh!  We stock it and do pretty well with it, but FCBD got us several dozen new customers.  A record day for Yu-Gi-Oh!

3)  HeroClix.  The Green Lantern HeroClix figure giveaway found us with a number of new (to us anyway) HeroClix customers.  Selling 200 boosters of new and old HeroClix was probably some sort of record as well.

4)  Sports cards and rare Coins.  We do all three categories: comics, sports cards and coins.  The sheer volume of people generated several leads on vintage sports cards and coin collections, as well as scrap gold sellers and people buying both cards and coins.  This was the first time a FCBD day has generated any level of crossover action for our company.

Overall it was about as good a day as you can hope for.  Exhausting to be sure, but as positive and upbeat an experience as any FCBD has been to date.  The retail totals alone give us hope that many of those 850 people will be back, regularly and not just when we have something to give away.

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

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