We have a presence as the “comic zone” at the THRIVE! Dream Factory Community Center in Phoenix. It is located at 2501 N. 7th Street, Phoenix, AZ 85006 (NE corner of Sheriden and 7th St, just south of Thomas).

Although THRIVE! was created as a means of making others aware of the benefits of Kangen Water, their goal is to do so in a community setting. They sponsor all sorts of games, and plan to host video game tournaments as well as role-playing games, including D&D, Magic, and many more. To find out more about their offerings, call Erin James, Gaming Specialist at (303) 913-6843, or visit them (us) on the web at http://thrivedreamfactory.com.

This is an exciting opportunity for us to give back to the community.

As you can tell, we haven’t made a blog post since August, and it was shortly after that when we knew we needed to close. We kept hoping against hope that we could avoid it, and I think we did pretty well to hang on for another 9 months. But it hasn’t been an easy 9 months at all.

When I first realized we would need to close, I felt really sad and depressed for a couple of months. We kept calling people and trying to work out deals to keep the store going, even if we were not involved, or perhaps not AS involved in it. We had lots of nibbles, lots of ideas were tossed around. We even hired a business broker to try to sell the business for us, but in the end, nothing has panned out, and we had to make a decision.

After planning to close the store at the end of December, then the end of January, then February, then March, we finally set a solid date to stay open through Free Comic Book Day and close at the end of May.

And that time is now here.

As I look back over the past three years – we had at least six months of planning before we even opened – I can say that I am really glad we did it. It’s been an amazing experience and we have met some primo quality people… our customers.

In thinking back over the past two and a half years, I realized that we have never had a bad customer in our store. Comic book fans are the BEST people! Intelligent, creative, appreciative, polite. More than anything, I have valued our customers, and more than anything, my heart is heavy for letting them down by closing.

One of the reasons I personally wanted to open the store was so that my sons, my partner, and I could own a business together and learn some of the ins and outs of being entrepreneurs. On this count, I would say that all four of us benefited greatly. It gave us a different mindset to take into the world, and into our next ventures. And for that I am very grateful.

I am also grateful for the opportunity to have worked with my sons in such a setting. It’s a different kind of bonding experience. Oh, it wasn’t all milk and honey, but for the most part, we could discuss and settle our differences in a satisfactory way. Our strength was always our individual gifts. Between the four of us, we had it all covered.

In looking back as to what we could have done better, I would say that our marketing was always our weakest link. We all knew that, and in fact, had hired three different consultants to help us improve on it, but alas, at the end of the day, we didn’t do as well as we possibly could have. If I had it to do over, I would have approached it differently. However, back then, I didn’t know what I know now.

Monday is our final day. I want to end it on a good note. We will be open from 10 am to 6 pm. We will have huge sales all day. We will have pizza, just like when we opened.

I could get all sappy here about how it’s felt like home to be here, how this has been OUR creation, and the joy that I got from that… and how much I will miss having the store. But honestly, there will be time to lament after we are closed. For now, I just want to make the most of the two days we have left.

Hope to see you on Monday!!!

Heart of the City

On that note, we had someone bring in some vintage comic books yesterday – from the 1940s and 1950s. Even in bad condition, these comics are worth something! She is going to try and sell them on her own, but if she can’t, we will be working out a consignment deal with her.

Whether or not we get them in our store, it was very exciting to just SEE these comics and touch them! What rare finds!

My good friend was kind enough to video the speech, so here it is in all of its raw glory:

After much preparation, the day finally arrived where we could set up our booth. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the week, I had been stricken with an abscessed tooth and, although on the mend, was still recuperating, so I didn’t participate in this part. Still, I was very encouraged to learn that we had a great opening night – making more money at the Con than we did in the store! This would continue to be the trend for the next few days, although I also noticed that store activity was also greater than usual. Comics were in the air.

On Friday, I had the privilege to work our booth all day, along with Avery and Sean. Andy manned the store for the few hours we were open. I really enjoyed myself! It was great to be a part of the energy, to watch the Con really gaining momentum, as costumes became wilder and more prolific as the weekend unfolded. The vendors were all gearing up for Saturday, purported to be the busiest day of the Con. I absolutely loved that we had the WorldWide Villains and Tosh Delaney in the booth next to us, since they have been guests at our store many times and it felt like home. Andy had also done some art in Tosh’s newest publication, so that was cool too.

We had a good Saturday, although I wasn’t at the Con during the day. I was at the store from 10 am till 7 pm; and we had a pretty good day at the store too! I actually enjoyed hanging out there, although my thoughts were constantly with our booth at the Con – the guys were all so busy, they didn’t update me on anything until almost closing time!

After I closed the store, I headed out to the Con so that Avery and I could attend the Guests of Honor Dinner. The table settings were festive and impeccable. The food was great. The company was superb! We got to sit with Tony Parker and a few others that we hadn’t met before. I was sort of surprised that there were no speakers or introductions of the Guests, but all in all, it was a fun night.

Sunday morning, I headed out for the last day of Con – I had a couple of hours before the store opened. Things were already gearing up for the final day. We had decided to run a blow-out sale which moved a LOT of merchandise for us – something that we really needed to do. So, again, a great success.

When I closed the store, I headed back for the inevitable loading. It got complicated. I think the system may have been the best it could be, but it broke down in a few places, and I was stuck waiting for over an hour. We finally worked everything out, loaded up the car with all it could hold in all of 5-10 minutes, and Avery and I headed back to the store. Andy and Sean waited for Sean’s friend to come with the truck for the bulk of the boxes.

I still need to enter the sales and we still need to put away the comics we still have left, but all in all, it was an awesome weekend!

You can see pictures at our Facebook page.

Well, this past Friday didn’t go as planned. For one, it was my BIRTHDAY! Did I really want to be working HARD on my birthday? As a matter of fact, yes, I did. I love Comic Zone and anything I can do to make it successful makes me happy. So, I was really okay with that part. However, because it was my birthday, some friends took me to lunch, and afterwards, I didn’t feel so well. I’m not sure why – all I had was salad and hummus – but for some reason, I was feeling blech. Hanging out in 100˚ heat didn’t sound like as much fun. But, Comic Zone prevailed, so I bit the bullet and we headed on down to 5th St.

When we got to the shop, no one was there, so we just set up on the lawn as normal. Then, just as we finished, our friend’s new partner arrived, and said that he wanted to set up there and we’d have to move. Lovely. At that point, I wanted to go home. I began to think that maybe I hadn’t been feeling well because we weren’t meant to go to First Friday this month.

But, again, Comic Zone prevailed, and we moved everything over to the other side of the sidewalk, on the lawn between the sidewalk and the street. And we waited.

Business doesn’t really begin to pick up at First Friday until about 9 pm. Between 6-9, there are lots of people looking and a few small purchases, but we really don’t get going until later – and then it is non-stop for 2-3 hours! But if we don’t set up by 4 pm, all of the streets are closed off, and we don’t get a good parking spot.

So, there we sat, and waited… helping a few customers, answering lots of questions, etc. Two guys came up with clip boards, and asked us if Comic Zone was our store. We said yes, and then they proceeded to tell us that we were not allowed to vend there due to zoning laws, that we had to be associated with a shop. We told them that our friend rented the shop we were in front of, but he said that wasn’t enough, that we couldn’t even have an exchange of money outside. It all had to be done inside. Who knew? We asked why all of a sudden, and they said that the vending was just getting out of hand and that they had to reign it in. He gave us an hour to take everything down.

Well, our friend wasn’t there that night – just her partner. We told him, and he didn’t say a word. The zoning folks went in to talk to him too. We packed up and left.

So, no more First Fridays for us in downtown Phoenix.

It was fun while it lasted, for sure, but I am really okay with not peddling comics on hot summer nights anyway.

In the meantime, we are exploring other gigs, other possibilities, so stay tuned.

As of May 1st, we will be sponsoring Superhero Parties – mostly as birthday parties, but we will accommodate any kind of party. We are working in partnership with buzzberry’s to offer these parties.

Here is our current flyer announcing our parties:

SuperHero Parties

For your party, call us and we’ll walk you through the process. Just think of how much your little one will LOVE having his or her favorite comic book hero at the party! What a hit! And Mom and Dad, no cleanup! We do it all!

As a comic book store owner, however, sometimes you have to make some hard decisions. After a long hard effort to make our webstore successful, we finally had to admit defeat. We were using Intuit’s POS webstore – which interacted with our point of sale system and with our accounting system and paying a hefty $150/month for it. It’s been 15 months now, which means we have paid a total of $2250 in monthly fees, not to mention the initial set up fee of something like $200. That’s enough. A small, family-owned store like us just can’t compete with the Amazons and the folks selling private collections on e-Bay for 80% off cover price and free shipping.

In over a year, we have only had two orders through our webstore, and didn’t really make much of a profit on either one. Thus, the decision to discontinue it.

We are brainstorming ways that we can continue to have some sort of ordering system, even though we don’t have the fancy, integrated POS webstore any more. We do want people to be able to order from us. For now, all I can suggest is emailing us at info@comiczoneaz.com with your requests and we can let you know if we can get them for you, how much it will be, etc. We can always take a credit card payment through paypal or over the phone.

The best part of meeting with the counselor was finding out all of the things we are doing RIGHT as a small business. And there is more to come, so stay tuned….

So, as soon as we left, we started researching, and found that no, they are not being recalled at all, but they ARE going to be changing the future printings, as there is a page that can be conceived as very controversial in the current issue. You can read more about it here. Apparently, Marvel had their letterer fudge in some content to the blank protest signs, and the result is this snafu.

My first reaction as a retailer was to go out to eBay and find out if we can snag some more copies quick, but most folks have already raised prices to $9.99 with all sorts of dramatic comment about how they are being recalled, pulled from shelves, etc.

If there is a wave of demand, we haven’t yet seen it – just that one customer – and by the time we could get our hands on more, it will probably have blown by.

Retailers are always up against challenges like this. When Amazing Spider-man #583 came out with Obama on the cover, it was all the rage, so we ordered extras of that one, and of some of the other Obama comics that were out at the same time. And now they sit on our “Obama” shelf, the frenzy passed.  Would the same thing happen to this one, should we get more copies?

For me, I am just as happy as can be that comics are making the news. All attention helps.

Five people came to offer their opinions and assistance, and shortly after the group ended, another came and gave us incredible suggestions! We are so grateful to everyone who attended: Rhia, Howard, Aaron, Vivian, Tom, and Leroy, and a special thank you to my dear friend, Linda Simpson, who ran the group for us.

Some of the more interesting conversations involved the anatomically incorrect drawings of comic book heroes, especially the women. And yet, as it was pointed out, the male super-heroes are more fantasy than not also. The idea is that these are the artists’ fantasies of ideals. At some point in the near future, I will devote a whole blog post to this subject, as it fascinates me.

Some great ideas that were presented to us are things that we really wanted to do anyway, and now we have clearer avenues. I have wanted to do more regarding using comics in education for quite some time, and we had two teachers in the room, one was a teacher of English and the other of special ed. Both saw the role of comics in their particular classrooms as very different, whereas one would use them as a springboard for teaching about symbolism in literature and the other would use them to interest students in reading. I advocate both usages and I am excited to be a part of making this happen.

I really learned a lot, and even managed to video-tape segments of the discussion, so stay tuned to our site for showings.