Graham: Over the
last few years we’ve experienced quite a few problems with the shop. Initially,
we had a great time, businesses out in the UK were booming and here was no
different, we took over the shop and increased the trade almost 50%, but then unfortunately
when the credit crunch hit everything kind of went “tits” for a while. We
finished up struggling and everyone kind of changed the way they shopped, so
one of the biggest problems we faced was competing with Amazon. We even got to
the point where you have customers come into the shop, they’ll pick your brain
for 20 minutes who will then in front of you get your phone out, quote a price
on amazon and ask if you can match that, and you’re just like “errrrgh”, so its
very difficult to contend with the buying power amazon has.
Because of this we rely on the fact we have a product
knowledge we can offer to the customers, we have the services that we offer
with the standing orders, and we have to make it so people have a brand
loyalty, because otherwise there is no real reason why someone should shop
here, ahead of shopping online.
One of the other problems we have is we have a really
un-cooperative local council, you’ve got a white elephant out side in the form
of the new high street development, this was going to bring an awful lot of
customers according to them, but what its actually done is the complete
opposite, it cost us over £12000 worth of trade in 10 weeks, at one stage we
went 13 days without a customer whose name we didn’t know. It actually halved
our trade and the only people coming in were regulars who come in, browse and
buy stuff, or those with standing orders. It hasn’t increased trade at all. It
looks nicer now its done, but that’s as far as it goes.
Graham on Delivery 2:
Graham: The comic
industry is a bit of a weird entity, half my weeks trade is done in about 2 and
a half hours on a Wednesday, this shelf here, this time yesterday was
absolutely heaving. If you look at this list there were an awful lot of titles.
From about 2 till 4 on a Wednesday I get invaded, my regulars descend upon the
shop, and grab the stuff from the shelves. As soon as that’s happened I’ll then
go and fill up this box, where the rest of the customers who have standing
orders, tell me what they want on a weekly basis, I keep a record on the
computer, and I take what they reserve off the shelf and put it in this box. I
have a customer called Paul who has 7-8 titles a week, so I’d just get the
list, go along the shelf and take out all the titles he needs, and they’d come
in over the course of a couple of weeks, maybe every month and take what is
theirs. So at the end of Saturday I might have 15-20 comics left. Ordering is
done 3 months in advance, it’s a bit of a weird set up, we get a magazine every
month called previews, tells me everything all different companies are
producing over 3 months, and I basically have to predict what people will want.
As well as comics this magazine has extras from the shop, like collectables.
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