Broken Frontier

Comics fans and pros know Randy Lander best for his tenure as the editor-in-chief of Psycomic and for the smart, insightful reviews he’s posted over the years at SnapJudgements.com, The Fourth Rail, and, currently, ComicPants.com.  But Randy has worked for years on the retail end of comics, and in February 2007, he took the big plunge, buying the Dragon's Lair in Round Rock, Texas, which he renamed Rogues Gallery Comics and Games.

Last month I had the pleasure of visiting the Rogues Gallery as a guest for the store’s one year anniversary celebration.  Randy’s well-lit, well-stocked, well-staffed store struck me as an almost perfect local shop, with a great selection of mainstream comics, indie books, graphic novels, and manga arranged in a clean, clutter-free, family-friendly environment.  Randy joins us today to talk about running a comics store -- read on for one owner’s perspective on everything from shelf arrangement to kids comics to preordering considerations to (of course!) favorite comics.

Note: All photos courtesy of Randy Lander.  Used with permission.

Greg Pak: So congrats on the first year anniversary of the Rogues Gallery!  Looking back on it so far, what three pieces of advice would you give to anyone thinking about opening a comic book store?

Randy Lander:  First, everybody's experience is different, so make sure and get advice from lots of store owners in lots of different areas.

Second, graphic novels and manga are a hugely important piece of a modern day comic book shop, make sure to stock both.

Third, make sure you know the difference between ordering what you like and ordering what will sell. The former, untempered by the latter, is a recipe for bankruptcy.

And fourth, I've only been at this a year, and so I'm just barely qualified to give any advice in this area, so really pay attention to my first bit of advice.

GP:  And what three things do you hope to work on for the future?

RL:  I'd like to get our events a little more widespread publicity, to be known as a cool local spot the way, say, Isotope Comics or Rocketship are known online.

I would really like to get some sort of graphic novel reading club started, especially one that welcomes non-traditional comic readers, female comic readers and other more casual graphic novel readers as well as the diehard comics fans.

I'd like to make better use of the Internet for sales and promotion in general.

GP:  Your shop has an awesome section on the wall of recently reordered material and you display back issues of hot storylines directly alongside the new issues.  How did you come up with those ideas and what other nifty tricks in display and store layout have you developed?

RL:  The "Back in Stock" idea came along because a reality of weekly comics is that it's a huge guessing game, and every week there's stuff that sells out too early. By doing "Back In Stock" signs we both indicate a general intention to reorder anything that sells out and a good overview of stuff that's not new, but newish, meaning that new merchandise has a bit more time in the spotlight and our customers know that if we don't have what they're looking for, we're dedicated to getting it for them.

The story arc and first issue/jumping-on point displays were a creation of myself and manager Dave Farabee when we first opened the store, and I think it might have been a case of having a lot of room in a relatively empty new store and a desire to show off books that we were enjoying. Basically, it lets us extend the time books spend on the new wall, which is where they sell more frequently and where more people take chances on new books.

I know that some retailers don't believe in the new comics wall philosophy, but it's one that always worked for me as a customer (it's been a deciding factor in where I shopped at least twice) and it's one that works well for us and our customer base.

We were also very pleased to be able to expand our Vertigo faced out section so that we can display the entire line of Fables trades and Y The Last Man trades (two of our best-selling series) all the time, and the same for Walking Dead. Having those faced out all the time in regular spots has helped turn already strong sellers into books that we sell every single week.

GP: As in many other stores, a good chunk of your floor space is devoted to games.  Is that personal preference or is that essential for making the store work financially?

RL: A little of both, with a dash of "inherited from the previous store owner." I'm a gamer as well as a comics fan, I run a D&D game every other week or so (as increasingly busy adult schedules allow) and actually game with a couple of comic writers like Matt Sturges and Paul Benjamin, so that aspect of the business does align with my personal interests, even though in my heart of hearts I'm more of a comics guy than a dedicated gamer.

The store split is definitely 50-50 comics and games, although these days it might be a little bit more 60-40 comics and games, and one lesson I took away from the previous store owner was that diversity in product mix and constantly keeping an eye out for new product lines and revenue streams is a way to keep your business healthy and not too dependent on one product or type of product that could suffer a downturn at any given time.

GP:  You have a very kid-friendly store -- what's it take to build a customer base of kids (or parents of kids)?

RL: Part of it is just lucky geography. Round Rock is a family area, we're next to a Cici's Pizza Buffet, an independent toy store and an Outback Steakhouse, so we get a lot of family traffic. But we made sure that the kid section is right up front, so that families coming in know it's a priority, and we keep that section organized and fresh, chockfull of the many kid-friendly offerings like the Marvel Adventures and Johnny DC digests, plus surprise indy hits like the color Bone volumes, Artemis Fowl, Owly, etc.

A lot of it is just being open to the idea that kids do read comics, and being willing to spend a little time with parents helping to pick out comics their kids might like. As a parent myself, I have a little insight into what at least one kid likes to read in terms of comics.

GP:  Are parents and kids picking up one or two trades or collections and reading them again and again or are they turning into regular monthly customers? 

RL: Well, we sell a lot of Archies and Archie digests during the summer for long car trips, and I think those are returning customers who come in maybe every year or every six months. But we also have moms who bring their daughters in for manga every week, families that come in every weekend to buy their kids a comic as a reward, and the mixture of getting digest graphic novels or single issues is pretty varied. I would say that in general, like adults, kids who buy comics generally don't want just one, they want new stuff to read every now and then.

GP:  Does the industry need more comics for kids?  If so, what kinds of books do you think you'd be most able to sell?

RL:  Well, it's a tricky question. Yes, the industry does need more comics for kids, but there's a conventional wisdom on the Internet that is 100 percent wrong that there are no comics for kids. There are *tons* of comics for kids. It's just that a lot of Marvel and DC's superhero output, which in theory should probably be aimed at a kid-friendly level, has long ago switched to being aimed at a more adult audience. It's a shame, for example, that when kids were coming in hyped about Daredevil because of the movie, Bendis was doing a very good, but utterly kid-unfriendly and talky series, and the same thing happened with Ghost Rider. Marvel has gotten better about this by segregating their line, so that when Iron Man comes out, I can offer action-packed, well-written and fun Marvel Adventures comics from Fred Van Lente, but I would sure like it if there was a stronger focus on getting comics accessible to kids out not just to tie in with the movies but with all the characters they might like. As a retailer, I'd love it if there were a dozen Marvel Adventures titles including an anthology that featured smaller or more unusual characters done up in an action-heavy, old school, kid-friendly style.

That's the tough part about kids and comics, by the way. Much as I love Owly or Castle Waiting or other independent kid-friendly fare with excellent cartooning, kids tend to want characters they know. So what I need is more comics featuring characters they already know. We sell a crazy amount of My Little Pony cinemanga from Tokyopop, Sonic from Archie, Marvel Adventures and that kind of thing, but it's rarer to sell a really great indie comic that we all love but the kids don't know. There are exceptions, though, more and more of late. Bone Color has done exceptionally well, and Amulet from Scholastic looks like a promising offering as well.

I think the key is that kids want color comics, almost without exception, and that it's a lot easier to sell if it features characters they already know and like.

GP:  I had a great time at your anniversary signing -- and you seemed to have a good number of regulars who came in for the gaming (and pizza) the night before.  How many of these kinds of special events do you do a year and how critical are they to your business?

RL: That's a tricky question, since I've only been in charge of that for a year, but we're aiming now to do one every couple of months, or in the case of the next few months, something every month. We've got a comics trivia event coming up in April, Free Comic Book Day in May, a big game release for Dungeons & Dragons in June and we'll no doubt have more later in the year as well.

GP:  How much of your weekly business is regulars and how much is random drop-ins?  And what does it take to turn those random drop-ins into regular customers?

RL: Regular customers are definitely our lifeblood, and the regular comics guys on Wednesday, regular gamers on Friday nights and regular family visitors on Saturday makes up a pretty good chunk of our week's profits. But we have a pretty good walk-through traffic thanks to our location and a friendly and open environment, and we've had good luck with casual customers becoming regular because of a friendly and knowledgeable staff, a good product selection and an ability to special order most product we don't have in stock within a week.

I think that's the key to 90 percent of what we do, actually. If you're friendly and you know your stuff, and you've got most of what people want and can order what you don't have, there's not much reason for them to go elsewhere.

GP:  A quick review on how the business works -- you get the previews guides from the various publishers several months in advance, then you order comics from Diamond, the country's one big comic book distribution company, right? And those books are not returnable, so when publishers report sales, they're reporting sales to retailers, not to customers, correct?  Anything I'm missing, and any comments on how that system works for you in practice?

RL: Actually, the Previews is a big 500+ page book from Diamond that contains all the publishers (although Marvel has a separate booklet that comes with it). The sales reports are to retailers not customers, but most retailers are probably hitting an 85 percent or better sell-through on most of their books, or they're not going to be able to stay in business, so those charts should be a rough gauge of what's selling, except that it doesn't take into account books coming in and selling out too soon or anything along those lines. It measures the bottom of the scale relatively well, but doesn't measure the potential upper end as well, I'd say.

Ordering is a weird mix of gut instinct, experience, math and pure guesswork. It's an art and a science, and is maybe the trickiest part of comics retail. I take a weird sort of pleasure in it, because it feels like using honed professional skills and I feel like I'm accomplishing something when I get it right, but it's definitely a source of huge frustration for retailers in general. I'd rather have that than the pain in the ass of constant returnability, though. Brian Hibbs has it right that I wouldn't trade our higher discounts for returnability if I was given that choice.

The biggest change in ordering in the last few years is Final Order Cutoff, which allows us to adjust our orders on DC and Marvel product about three weeks before it ships to us, rather than two months, which is when we have to place our initial orders. That makes it a lot easier to adjust for unexpected demand or unexpected flops. I won't say I couldn't do the tricky job of ordering without FOC, but I will say that I give thanks for it every week.

Check back here tomorrow for part two. And please  click here to submit your questions for our Reader Q&A section and see you next time!

© 2008 Greg Pak.  All rights reserved.  For more about Greg Pak’s comics and films, visit www.pakbuzz.com.