Sharpening the Sword is a regular column by John Riley, who owns Grasshopper's Comics, a 1300 square foot comic and game store in Williston Park, New York.  This week Riley applies the concepts of angel and demon customers to comic retailing:

Last time I ruminated on how the concept of 'angel' and 'demon' customers might apply to the gaming end of our stores, which really involves how you deal with promotions and groups of gamers.  This week we cover the comic end.

Let's start by looking at how Best Buy applied this concept to its stores.  Whenever anyone I know mentions Best Buy it's always for the same reason: cheap DVDs, really cheap DVDs.  Their primary 'demon' customer ended up being the person who came in solely to buy that one ultra-cheap, on-sale item with no add-on sales whatsoever.  Super bargain hunters tied up the time of sales people, inventory people, ordering staff, managers, cashiers, etc...but were buying either items with almost no margin, or nothing at all.  But that one 'angel' customer buying a plasma screen TV, a surround sound system and installation produced the same amount of profit as literally hundreds of customers coming in to buy super cheap DVD's. 

For high-volume products like DVDs, Best Buy moved slightly away from the ultra-deep discount and special sales.  Sure they probably lost a few sales to people who would drive ten miles to save fifty cents on a DVD, but they also had to use far fewer resources.  They appealed to the customer who wanted a fair price and great selection, a customer with a higher average ticket at higher margins.  The company took these saved resources and concentrated on high-end customers and on the integration of home electronics.  They see the emerging convergence of home entertainment electronics and want to be the company you come to in order to make them all work together, again a sale with a much higher ticket and  margin.  The 'Geek Squad' was the first step in getting Best Buy people into your house.  Overall, the company's sales and profits jumped significantly.

So what about your store?  Well, to start with who's your ideal 'angel' customer?  On the comic end mine is definitely a reader with a wide range of tastes, someone who loves the artform.  This customer comes in weekly and buys a certain number of books and trade paperbacks.  On a light comic week they'll definitely add trades to have something to read and is constantly searching for that undiscovered gem.  With this in mind, it really doesn't make much sense that my back issues take up twice as much space as my new issue display, does it?  Our efforts at the moment are geared at making the store appeal even more to these readers.  We're expanding and reorganizing our new issue display, providing even more information to customers regarding current and future releases, expanding our trade paperback display even further, and generally making exploring our world of sequential art as easy as possible.

Perhaps your angel customer is someone who comes in regularly to buy expensive back issues.  If that's the case, is your store formatted to fully appeal to that person?  Maybe your store should take on the appearance of an expensive gallery.  You could create an invitation-only mailing list to notify customers of your new acquisitions.  You might want to weed out the cheap comics so you can concentrate on the high-end feel of your establishment.  You can create a 'broker' feeling, establishing a club of preferred customers for high priced books.

Perhaps your angel customer is someone who buys tons of inexpensive back issues.  You may want to reorient your store to encourage people to dig through your bins as much as possible.  Maybe you assign secret tags each week to books hidden within your bins.  Perhaps you provide bulk discounts to customers who purchase more than a certain number at a time. 

The core idea here is to format your store and your efforts to enhance the experience of your existing angels and create an environment that similar customers find attractive.

So what about those demons?  Well, in my opinion the first step is accepting the fact that you may lose some of them.  Like everyone else I hate to lose any customer, especially those I consider friends.  And that is especially true now as more and more of our customers have to cut back or quit the hobby entirely due to the current price of housing (another column entirely).  I'm not sure what your demon customers may be.  Do you have the guy who buys one comic a week but takes up a half hour of your time for that $2.99?  Do you have the guy who goes through your back issues for five hours armed with a Wizard and an Overstreet to buy $8 worth of books?  It's people like these who place demands upon your resources that simply aren't justified by their purchases.  And these are the same resources, namely your time and money, that could be used catering to and attracting more angels.

What you choose to do about these people is up to you.  But consider this: the customer who talks to you for half an hour each week for his Superman comic takes up 26 hours of your time annually and contributes about $82.00 in profit a year, or $3.16 an hour for your time.  If you didn't already have customers that weren't incredibly more profitable for you, you wouldn't be in business.  Concentrating your efforts to appeal to angel customers may naturally disenfranchise these demon customers who feel that you aren't paying as much attention to them, and this is something you have to be prepared for.