Life is a gamble. But the only gambler you should trust is yourself.
Mike Banks learned that lesson the hard way. Banks was a teenage comic collector who poured his entire collection and some cash into a Phoenix store called Comics and Stuff to get a 10% stake in the store. The problem? The other 90%.
"The owner used to make frequent trips to Vegas," Banks says wistfully today. "He was a big gambler and he ran the store in the ground and closed it up. I lost my collection. I lost my money. It kind of soured me on collecting and comics retail, so I got out for a while."
Banks worked construction for a bit until he saw that another Phoenix staple, All About Books and Comics, was hiring. Banks took the job, worked his way up to general manager of a three-store chain, and spent 10 years there before he decided to roll the dice for himself.
Banks tried to buy in to All About, and when the deal didn’t pan out, he almost bounced into a stock brokerage job. Outrageous fortune (see below!) led him almost immediately back into retailing, this time on his own. He opened Samurai Comics on Memorial Day weekend, 2002, and today operates three stores in the Phoenix area. Along the way, he’s learned a lot, good and bad…
THE GOOD
DON’T BE AFRAID OF CHANGE!
Banks changed locations on his original store as the real estate world was in its 2006-2008 meltdown.
"My lease came up then, and, I was like, ‘All right, I am just going to be an idiot, and instead of trying to negotiate a lower lease where I'm at, I'm going to go rent a bigger spot.’"
The change was a positive catalyst for Samurai. Banks got 2.5 times his existing square footage, at a very favorable rate owing to tough real estate times.
"And we just moved that store again a year ago," Banks says. "Similar‑type thing, my lease was up."
Banks says the moves and expansion have allowed him to bring in new product lines and find new customers, while all the while his existing customers have remained.
"It’s nerve-wracking, and you ask yourself all these questions: Is this smart? Do I have the money?," he says. "But I guess the end story of all this is, don't be afraid to change; don't be afraid to expand. It's worked out for us in every instance."
RESEARCH YOUR BACK END
"I think a big mistake a lot of people make, is saying, ‘Hey, I love comics. I'm going to open a comic store.’ They don't think about what the back‑end part of it is."
Banks immediately went to research, meeting up with SCORE, a free small business mentoring association.
"I was able to learn a lot about lease negotiation, credit card processing, choosing a storefront, looking at hidden costs," he says. "A lot of things that other retailers made huge mistakes on with their store, we were able to avoid by doing research."
Banks’ advice?
"Take advantage of any resource you can," he says. "Now ComicsPRO is around. I wish they were around when I first opened, because there's so many guys there with such a wealth of knowledge and experience. You need more than just enough money to buy some stock and fixtures to open your doors. You need knowledge."
ROTATE YOUR PRODUCT LINES
Anime and manga was an emerging market when Samurai opened (hence the name) and half the floor was devoted to it. The store had a massive manga selection, did anime DVD rentals, and more.
"We bought in Pocky, Japanese candy and soda, everything," Banks says. "There was only one Asian market in Phoenix that carried this stuff. Nobody else had it."
Manga and related was a huge profit center for Samurai, but things changed. Big bookstore chains started carrying manga, and viewing habits shifted.
"One day I told a customer, ‘Hey, we just got the new Naruto DVD in,’ and that person told me, ‘I'm already two seasons ahead watching it online.’"
Banks was quick to react, knocking down his anime/manga stock and looking for the Next Big Thing. His kids were heavy into Minecraft. Banks took a look, and went heavy into Minecraft merch before it went mainstream.
"Constantly evolving the store has been a strength of ours," Banks says. "While comics is always going to be the backbone, we're not afraid to try new things and keep the store fresh and exciting, to keep new people and keep families coming in."
THE BAD
DON’T ORDER BASED ON HOPE
Banks had a strong 2017, and was looking to continue the vibe into 2018 with… Marvel Legacy.
"I'm like, ‘I’m doing well, but I really need a strong Marvel. If Marvel will come back, then we're going to kick ass. 2018's going to be awesome. This'll be like a DC Rebirth thing.’"
Legacy fell flat, and Banks learned a tough lesson. "You've got to watch and order what you know you can sell, not what you think you can sell," he says.
Banks knows the over-order problem is endemic, particularly in comics.
"It's not like a lot of other industries where stuff is evergreen," he says. "You've got such a short window to sell stuff. You've got to keep a really close eye on your inventory controls and not get carried away, because just a few months of bad ordering can put you out of business pretty quick."
DON’T MICRO-MANAGE!
"When we had two locations, I could split my time half at one store, half at the other," he says. "When we opened the third location, I learned quickly that I couldn't sustain that model. I had to let go and I had to let people do their own thing."
Banks admits it’s tough, but is finding great rewards.
"Now that I'm doing that, I've got some great managers in place. They've got great ideas, great merchandising, and it's helped business grow overall," he admits. "It's almost like ‘less is more.’ Less of me in the trenches has led to more, because I can do more behind the scenes."
SHED OLD MARKETING
Banks knows the old is the old, and the new is the new. But doing away with the old… can be tough.
"Early on, one of my big pegs was marketing,” he says. "I’d send out press releases and get in the newspaper all the time."
Banks saw the world moving to digital, but in his own words, "waited too long" to ditch old media.
"I was still paying for that Yellow Pages ad when I saw the online presence growing," he says. "I was too steeped in the old ways. Just a year, two years ago, we were paying $400-$500 a month for that Yellow Pages ad that was just wasted money."
Banks saw the light, and is playing catch-up as fast as he can.
"We were slower than we should have been on social media. Now that’s where most of our focus is these days, and we’re doing great with it," he says. "That’s where you grow ‘family.’ We get so many more engagements through that, and legit friends-of-friends who come into to the store. But we were too slow to react to that."
AND WHAT ELSE?
"I was freaked out, didn’t know what I was going to do. My then-fiancée, now-wife, Moryha, said, ‘All right, just open your own damn store.’
"So I did. I took out the equity in the house. We opened Samurai. Moryha already worked at Charles Schwab, and she was making good money, with great benefits. So I thought, all right, this is perfect. I've got enough money in reserve to keep the store afloat for a year. We can lose money, but we can have enough to pay rent, pay the bills, and we can get married.
"We opened the store. A month into it, she gets a phone call and gets informed that she was laid off. We just got married, just opened the store. We were counting on her to cover our mortgage and everything, so needless to say, we were kind of freaking out a little bit, but it all worked out. She never had to go back to work and we have built it up to what we have now.
"It's a huge focus for us now, to get families. I don't want it to be an old‑school comic store, where dad is there to buy his comics while mom is looking at her watch and the kids are tugging on her leg, going, ‘We want to go. We don't care about these comics either.’ We've tried to build a store where everybody in that family will find something that they want.
"Actually it's funny. Now [post-Legacy] Marvel stuff is on the upswing. It’s selling really well for us, and I'm selling out and having to order second and third prints, and that's okay. It’s okay to sell out of stuff. I'd rather sell out and know I made money on a product than sit there and stare at long box after long box of overstocked comics."
Click Gallery below for pics of the Samurai Comics stores!
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