Some retailers try to give themselves a hedge by soliciting orders ahead of time from their customers. Catalogs announcing upcoming titles provided by the distributors facilitate the process. "If you do that," notes Schwindinger, "then you're safe, but you've also missed an opportunity to make the extra sales on a product that becomes hot, and you've prevented yourself from bringing in a new customer." While as many as 90% of all comic-book stores offer subscription or reserve ("pull and hold") services to their customers, Comic Attitudes made a deliberate decision not to do so. Before opening his stores Schwindinger polled 50 owners who offered those services and learned that 80% or more of the reserve customers come in at least once a week. "Those customers are so interested in the material that they're going to come in anyway," he says.
The key for retailers is to have tight inventory tracking and order systems in place. Thompson estimates that roughly a quarter of all comic-book retailers in North America use a personal computer to run their stores, and more-sophisticated software is coming down the pipeline all the time. Comic Attitudes has spent $21,000 to date on automation and has a point-of-sale computerized inventory-management system in the works. Schwindinger firmly believes automation will provide Comic Attitudes a competitive edge over other retailers, but with large companies like Marvel and Blockbuster possibly entering the fray, how long that competitive advantage will last is anyone's guess.
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Try telling that to Mullen and Schwindinger. They are both single-minded in the pursuit of their goal, blocking out any obstructing or worrisome facts. "There was definitely a time when I would have probably been very happy with a few stores, increasing their sales, and making it work," says Schwindinger. "But over time you become obsessed. Because our lives are the business."
Mullen concurs. "We don't go anywhere or do anything that's not Comic Attitudes related." The couple are planning a vacation to Disney World this year, and just as soon as Schwindinger decided they would drive to save airfare, Mullen presented him with a plan for what malls they would be stopping at along the way. Whenever they get in a car, he drives and she reads management books aloud.
Last September Mullen, who's currently president of the New Jersey chapter of the grass-roots trade group Comic Book Retailers International, co-organized the first retailer-run trade show. (Most in the industry are sponsored by distributors.) The event attracted 100 retailers ("fewer than I wanted," she says), but increased Comic Attitudes' profile in the industry.
On the eve of the opening of the film Batman Returns, Schwindinger arranged for a private preview in one of the Menlo Park Mall cinemas. He bought out the entire theater, 225 tickets at full price, and sold them to favorite customers for face value, handed out Batman buttons and trading cards at the door, and, after the screening, raffled off a few posters. True, the promotion generated more sales of Batman paraphernalia, but like Mullen's trade show, what it really generated was more word of mouth and goodwill for Comic Attitudes. "There was a real sense of community," he recalls.
Schwindinger's and Mullen's determination is expressed on the walls of their office/warehouse. Among the numerous superhero and fantasy-character posters lining the walls are two large sheets of paper with neat capital letters printed in magic marker. The first sheet delineates Comic Attitudes' mission statement in a three-part outline: To be the first and dominant national chain of comic-book specialty stores; to provide customer service that ensures customer satisfaction; to maintain comic books as an entertainment medium. The other sheet enumerates the essential components of "a great company," which Mullen lifted from the forward of Beyond Entrepreneurship: Performance. Impact. Reputation. Longevity. For Mullen and Schwin-dinger, those words define a strategy.
Performance. At Comic Attitudes performance is monitored daily. Cash registers tally sales for the day at closing time, and store associates enter the figures on a calendar that lists that day's sales from the year before, as well as the target sales goal for that day. The numbers are then discussed at weekly senior-staff meetings.
Sales-to-salary ratios, rent, debt, and inventory costs are also discussed openly with Comic Attitudes' staff at the meetings; particularly thorny terms and equations are not only spelled out on a blackboard but typed up on sheets to be added to the associates' policies-and-procedures manual. Mullen is shooting to have $9 in sales for every dollar spent on payroll and thinks sharing that number with associates is key to providing them with a frame of reference. Toward that end, associates are encouraged to spend no more than 10 minutes with a customer; any longer is "just idle chitchat, and you're not likely to make a sale," Mullen says.
Revenues at Kilmer Square are now running 18% ahead of last year's, and Menlo Park's are up 85%. Mullen and Schwindinger are counting on the latter figure to attract more financing. "We want to be able to say, Here's the prototype and it works."
Impact. Comic Attitudes seeks to make an impact through the design, layout, and cleanliness of its stores -- the associates are even supplied with uniforms: custom polo-style shirts with the company insignia -- as well as through customer service. Schwindinger describes the approach as an "attentive" sell as opposed to a hard sell.
Reputation. Like impact, it is hammered home through superior customer service, special promotions and trade shows, and the breadth and depth of Comic Attitudes' merchandise mix. "We don't want to turn anyone away," says Schwindinger. "We want to be viewed as the source." To help employees uphold what he and Mullen believe is Comic Attitudes' growing reputation for quality in merchandise and service, a communications book in the back of each store serves to update sales associates and remind them of areas they need to work on and of upcoming company events.
