Prior to this weekend's MoCCA festival in New York City, I wanted to take some time to sit down with one of New York City's newest comic shopowners and talk about what it's like to open up one of the new breed of comic stores that are happily spreading across the country. Along with Rocketship and Desert Island, Bergen Street Comics has served as an immersive education for me, both as a reader and as an amateur industry watcher, on what a comic book store can look like, what it can offer, and how it can succeed. There's a bit of laziness involved too--Bergen Street Comics is within walking distance of my home, and it's one of the (sorry guys) few stores that my non-comic fan wife had an interest in returning to after the initial "you gotta check this out" visit.
Maybe it's the lighting design and comfortable chairs, maybe it's the friendly couple jockeying the counter...or maybe it's because the place just oozes "the right way to do things." I can't be sure. Either way, I'm grateful that Bergen Street's owner and primary shopkeep, Tom Adams, took the time to sit down and answer some pretty mundane questions, courtesy of yours truly. I'm more grateful that he answered them as incisively as he did. But the majority of my gratitude is reserved for his delightful wife Amy, who was more than willing to handle the store while Tom took the time to blow an hour with me.
Totally Sinking: What's your five-minute background? What brought you to comics, and then brought you to comics retailing?
Tom Adams: I've pretty much been a comics fan for my whole life. Like a lot of people, I drifted away from most mainstream comics during the 90's. Certain creators kept me coming back for more, kept me always checking shops, seeing what was going on. But the same things that drove me away were what kept most people away during the "bust". Speculation. The glut of low-quality comics being put out into the market. Guys who were in the business of selling baseball cards running comics shops. Those kinds of things kept me on the periphery. But certain creators, like Alan Moore, Garth Ennis, Grant Morrison--that kept me coming back to the shops. More and more, around 2000 or so, there was this huge output of great quality comics, and I was living closer to some great comic shops where I got to check out more. Around 2005, I started seeing shops like the Isotope in San Francisco, and it started to occur to me that actually running a shop could be something that I wanted to do.
I've always been a process guy--well, maybe not process, that's not the right word. As a music fan, I've always loved knowing about the music industry, as a movie fan, I've been fascinated by the movie industry. It's the same thing with comics. I wanted to know about the industry.
TS: From both sides? The creative side as well as the retail?
Adams: Yes. Absolutely. Again, reading about James Sime's
Isotope store online, reading the
column that he wrote for Comic Book Resources, the coverage he started to get, finally getting to visit [Isotope]--it really opened my eyes to what could be done with a comic book store.
TS: You were New York based at the time?
Adams: Yes. [Isotope] was also an opportunity to take my wife to a store, to open her eyes to the possibility of what could be done with running a shop. No matter how much I could describe what I thought could be done with a store--what she always pictured was...
TS: The white long boxes.
Adams: Everything that's always used to describe [stores] negatively. The clubhouse atmosphere, the blacked out windows so you couldn't see what was going on inside....
TS: Stained carpet.
Adams: Yes.
TS: YES.
Adams: But more than that, I wanted to show her a store with personality, with personalities running it. Amy [Tom's Wife] was really impressed with something as simple as somebody commenting on something I was purchasing, engagement, as opposed to just an exchange of money, coming and going.
TS: There was a record store when I first moved [to Brooklyn] that was predominately based around selling vinyl, but it was the kind of place where they could respond to whatever you were purchasing without just saying "Oh, this is crap." I miss that place.
Adams: Right. It's something that should be so simple, it should be common sense to a retailer. Just like a bartender upsells--you like this drink, you might like this alcohol. It's something that should make sense as a retailer, to engage your customer. Common courtesy as well as common sense. And ever since I've been working in shops, or worked in this shop--I'm always asking a person what they thought about a previous volume, or a previous issue. Trying to gauge what it is they like, trying to find out what they're reading that I might not be aware of. I think that would be common sense for any retailer to engage their customer. You can't be in denial, pretending that a customer isn't aware of Amazon and online discount trade services--if all they're going to get is "Customers Who Bought This Also Bought This", they can go online. They can read random reviews from people they've never met who give a book one star or someone who gives a book five stars and try to see if they can make sense of that.
But if you actually engage with them, back-and-forth, "what are you reading, what do you compare this to, what are you looking for, what are you in the mood for"...it's just like you said, organically growing the business. Engaging your customers. I've worked in very busy comic shops, and it can be very difficult. You want to engage a customer, but the customer behind is checking his watch as if to say "How much longer are you going to talk to this guy? We gotta move on." And then it becomes you taking their money, "hope to see you again". But if a customer is paying full price, what are they getting out of this exchange? Why shouldn't they go online and get it delivered to their house for less money? There has to be something more than just buying the book. The comic shop experience has to be more than that.
TS: How did you select this area? I already knew the street because of Babeland's expansion from Manhattan, it's a choice spot.
Adams: We lived in Park Slope for a couple of years, so we knew that the neighborhood had a lot of things we were looking for...parents, children, neighborhood with a good school system, so you tend to have parents who both read, parents who encourage reading. It's very diverse, a slice of all of New York, including people who have moved to New York. I'd like to say that we knew just what we were getting into before we moved in, but we really didn't discover until after we moved in how many creators there are that work in this neighborhood. Amy being in advertising, she knew how many creative types lived here--copywriters, art directors--but we've been pleasantly suprised by how dominant the creative community is in this neighborhood. It's an international community, a real cross-section.
Picking a neighborhood was something we didn't rush into. We'd been scouting locations for years, back when rents on 5th and 7th avenue were skyrocketing, and we couldn't find anything reasonable. No matter how we crunched the numbers--you would have had to sell a lot of comic books to make those rents. We were also intentionally limiting our merchandise--I'm not carrying action figures or statues, not carrying the merchandise. We're carrying comics. Just comics. So to make the rent, it had to be reasonable. We considered a couple of different neighborhoods, because we thought it was going to be impractical to find something in Park Slope. But we saw the "For Rent" sign in the window, we'd seen this block really pop up...it used to just be Melt and Big City Subs. Now we've got Babeland, Bump, Eponymy, Private Stock--and when we spoke to the landlord who owns the storefronts on this street, we thought he had a great vision of what we wanted the block to become. We wanted to be part of it. He was excited for our type of business to be a part of it. We had done enough research to know it was a good spot, that it was a crossroads between three different neighborhoods--Park Slope, Prospect Heights and Fort Greene. It was just an amazing location--it's so close to BAM, the Atlantic Hub, the Museum, Prospect Park. We've been really fortunate.
TS: How long had you been planning the store? The idea obviously goes back a ways.
Adams: Yes, the idea goes back a ways. We loosely started to put together a business plan back in 2006, 2007. But in 2007, when I quit my ad agency job--I was managing a post-production facility--and I quit that and went to Midtown Comics to see if running a store was something I really wanted to do. Knowing that taking that wasn't going to pay the bills on the long-term, but to determine if this was something I wanted to do. Interacting with the customers, that kind of thing. It was a great experience, I think it was the right way to go. That's when I would say we put the plan into action, 2007. That's when we drew up the business plan, figured out what our numbers would be for inventory, that kind of stuff.
TS: Was part of going to Midtown so you could learn the Diamond system of ordering?
Adams: No. I've been learning that on the fly. It's cost me a couple of times.
TS: You have a sales rep you're dealing with and everything?
Adams: Yeah. It's getting better.
TS: Ha! Well, let's hit some of these bullet point/popular bloggy-type questions. First up: How's the economy affecting your business?
Adams: It's hard for me to tell. We opened right in the mouth of the meltdown. If anything, it affected my initial financing. We were going through the finance process back in October, during the actual meltdown, and that changed a lot of the initial plans. It caused me to be more conservative than I would have liked to have been. In the long term, that was probably a mistake. I would have been better served to have been a little bolder, take a few more chances--you know, ordering deeper in my inventory, so I didn't sell out of things as quickly. Re-orders were difficult because of Diamond's move, so my first month...I think I did a pretty good job with what my initial inventory was, the types of books that I would carry. But when I sold them out, getting them back in was difficult. I know I lost a lot of sales. It would have served me better to have dived right in and ordered deeply. But, you know...things being what they were? Everybody knows the deal with Diamond, the books are not returnable. You're paying for that book up front, and if it doesn't sell in the next few months, you're going to have a tough time buying books for the next couple of months.
TS: Pointless question number two: have you seen any impact on people's purchases due to the Marvel price increase?
Adams: ....No? I don't think I have, short answer. What seems to be going on with Marvel & DC is the continued...the fans are getting the impression, more and more, that they "have" to read everything, that it's all interrelated and connected, and you get the sense that some fans are thinking that "if I can't read everything, I might as well read nothing." I think it's served me well that I have a store where customers can come and sit to read books. I've noticed more and more customers reading titles, putting them back on the shelf, and then just buying a few titles. Frankly, I'd rather have that then have them drop the entire line. They look at a book and say "If it's 3.99, I'm going to read it and see if it's worth buying." If that's what they want to do, so be it. Obviously, if I'm not selling that book, I'm going to cut my order, and maybe I won't have a reading copy available--but I'd rather people buy something they want to buy than get home and find out that what they bought wasn't worth their time or money. But again, the prices haven't changed that much since I opened.
TS: Can you gauge how many of your customers are coming in on a Wednesday or a Thursday, knowing which comics came out? Can you tell when somebody is coming here because Battle For The Cowl #3 came out or Captain America #50, the trade for 20th Century Boys...
Adams: Every customer is different. You'll notice a customer come in who has the comiXology app open on their phone...
TS: Ha.
Adams: ....or they'll have a list prepared, and they'll see a missing book and say "Hey, this book came out, how come you don't have it?" Thankfully, sometimes I can point out that they're looking at a second printing. But when I'm sold out, I get nervous that a customer isn't finding what they want and I'll ask "Did you find everything you were looking for"....and a lot of times, they'll say they were just checking the wall and grabbing what's out. You have some who have a shopping list for a specific date, but I'd say more than half my Wednesday customers come in for the impulse buy. I think that's what they enjoy. They like the surprise of not knowing what's coming out. And sometimes you've got people who come in every week and ask for the next installment of Old Man Logan. I'm sort of in the middle--I like having a list, asking for stuff that sold out, but sometimes you just want to come in and grab whatever.
[We paused to watch as Tom's wife dealt with a phone call. It was someone calling to find out if their husband was at the store. Not seeing any men wearing blue shirts, she told them no. I thought that was kind of amazing. After that, we gossiped about other comic book stores and distributors.]
TS: What's your biggest concern/complaint with the big publishers? The DCs, the Marvels?
Adams: Not specifically to either company: the bulk of my sales comes from the collected editions, the trades and the hardcovers. Right now, DC has the worst reputation, with the delays, not having prompt release dates for their collected editions. I'm really getting fed up with the books only being available in shrink-wrapped hardcovers. That makes them very difficult to sell. You feel compelled to have them in stock, because that's the only currently available format. But customers come in and they balk at it. They see the price point, and they know if they wait a little while, they can get it for a better price. If somebody wants to flip through the book, you have to take off the shrink wrap...and then if they decide not to buy it, the next customer doesn't want a book that isn't wrapped in shrink wrap...I guess I "understand" all of that. I'd like to see collections released in very short order after a story arc concludes. After a six-issue story arc ends, put out that trade in two to three months tops. I know that people are concerned about leaving the monthlies...but that doesn't really concern me. I want to sell the book in whatever format it's going to move in.
TS: And most other industries are moving towards that. 24 releases its DVD collection the day after the final episode airs, films are on television on the same time they're in theaters for pay--and both formats are selling.
Adams: When we end up with a new iTunes style format for comics, where they are available legally online--we can't pretend that these things aren't happening. I was reading Calvin Reid's write-up at Publisher's Weekly about this past Book Expo, and the thing is...the comics industry can't make the same mistakes as the music industry. To say that you're not going to release a book for six months--or longer--after a storyline's wrapped up, to keep driving the serialized comic sales...I don't see the point of that at all.
TS: Who buys that argument? There's no popularity of bottom of the rack comics, and the idea that the back-issue market is something that should still be store-driven...
Adams: There's some stores that can do well with it because they're the only ones in town still doing it. But I sell my books until...well, hopefully, I'm keeping an eye on my cycle sheets, I'm keeping an eye on my numbers and I'm pretty much sold out by that time the collected edition hits. If not, I'm selling them for a quarter, or I'm selling them in bulk to somebody who wants to sell them at a con. Get them out anyway I can. I don't have the space or the time.
TS: And it wouldn't work for the look of the store.
Adams: It's not worth paying rent to store a back issue of something that isn't something anybody wants now that the collection is out.
I think DC has a worse reputation for getting the collections out right now. Something that doesn't really affect me, but seems to bother some of my customers, is that they'd like to see Marvel have a consistent format for their collections. There's these different sizes for hardcovers, premiere hardcovers, digest sized, trade paperbacks, and there doesn't seem to be an order for that release. While it wouldn't necessarily bother me as a reader, I just want it at a reasonable price...but I do lose sales because a customer wants the "Direct Market" edition instead, because it has a specific spine that looks better on their bookshelf. That costs me money in the long run. And if Marvel is going to make it available in those other formats, it makes it hard to argue with the customer. They want a specific format, and that can cost me sales.
TS: What about the other publishers? Do you have complaints with the smaller houses?
Adams: I don't actually. I've done well selling Fantagraphics books in particular, but they are exclusive with Diamond now, and that makes me nervous for the future. Other publishers, smaller publishers that I can order from directly, the ones I can get through Baker & Taylor--but I've got no complaints with them. Fantagraphics is one of those companies where you can sell it based off the company's name.
TS: They aren't pushing something out every week.
Adams: I do fear for their serialized stuff a bit. Was
Tales Designed To Thrizzle #5 the last one? Is it all going to move online? We'll see.
TS: Besides opening the store, what's your proudest moment so far?
Adams: Besides opening?
TS: I'm just assuming that opening was the proudest moment.
Adams: I'd say Free Comic Book Day was a great day all around. It was really gratifying the way everything came together. We had a huge turnout during the day--kids, new customers, and a big bump of new customers following that day. My Wednesday business got a great bump after that, we had a huge party with 15 different artists, creators from Act-I-vate hanging their work, and we had a huge turn out for the party. But it's way too early to be celebrating our success.
TS: That's going to take years.
Adams: Yes, we don't have any idea how it's going to go. But the party was our first chance to take in how far, and how quickly, we've come. To share that with friends and family, to share what we've been describing for so long. It always makes us proud when somebody says that this type of place defies their expectations of what a comic shop can be. I take pains to make it clear that this is NOT a revolutionary idea we came up with, that it's a new wave of stores that we're a part of. It's the natural progression of how these stores need to be. You've got Desert Island, Rocketship. James Sime recommended that we check those out, as well as Jigsaw, which used to be in Alphabet City.
TS: I knew Jigsaw! That place was insane.
Adams: I never got a chance to check it out. But I remember when he was moving the store down to some strip mall in the Carolinas, he made a good point. A lot of people think they have to open these kinds of stores somewhere in New York or San Francisco or Los Angeles. But there's a huge market for stores like this in any part of the country. Any part of the country can support a store like this, it's another specialty bookstore...I just think comics have broken through to the mainstream in recent years. People always refer to the movies as if that's how it's broken through to the mainstream, but for our store, stores like this? It's things like the New York Times' acceptance of comics, serializing comics in the Sunday Times, cover stories on comics....you know? That is our customer base. People who read the Sunday Times, people who aren't necessarily comics fanatics, but are into music, books, movies, art...and comics are a part of that. I think that can get overlooked by shopowners. Super-heroes are breaking out and supporting super-hero movies with a budget of $100 million dollars and that's increasing awareness and reminding people that these books, these characters are still out there, sure. I don't want to get too into it, because everybody always does, but comics are upside down. Super-heroes are considered the mainstream in comics, but they're actually a fraction of what's available. Here, there's a balance. People come in and pick up
Berlin, they'll pick up
The Photographer--books that are reviewed in the Sunday Times, featured on Rachel Maddow. There's a lot more people watching that then there are reading Wizard magazine.
TS: Thank god. So, what's your long-term ambition right now?
Adams: Long-term? [Laughs] We've got nothing but short-term ambitions right now. Installing our POS system is our highest priority right now. That's going to make things run more efficiently. The other short term goal is to hire somebody, hopefully this month, so I can get some help in here. I think the store is suffering from my sheer exhaustion, burning out in a very short period of time. I'll have a customer walk out of the store and realize, wow, that was a missed opportunity. I could have been a decent human being and interacted with them. The focus of the store is contingent on me being conscious. So hiring help, getting someboy in here to improve where we're headed, that's important. Growing the inventory is a big goal as well. I'm happy with my inventory, but I'd like it to be deeper, more diverse. I'd like to grow the manga stock, the European translations...I really want to diversify the stock, especially as that serialized percentage of my dollar decreases. I want more creator events. We're planning our next one now, a Sunday Brunch on July 12th with Mike Dawson, Alex Robinson, John Kerschbaum--they're going to do a reading and a discussion. We're planning a summer event with people who do mini-comics, self-published stuff...there's so many artists and creators we've met in this neighborhood that are doing really great stuff, from every level, people who have been at it for years to people who are doing their first work. I really want to keep working with creators, that's one of the main drives of doing what I'm doing. I want to interact with the people I'm inspired by. My wife wants to focus on improving the space as a gallery space, that's a passion of hers. After the work from the Act-I-Vate artists comes down in the next two weeks, we'll be hanging up work by Tim Seely and Chris Burnham. It's really a dream come true. It's inspiring and a large part of why I wanted to get into this.
TS: I'm not sure that I have anything else to ask.
Adams: That's okay. I haven't done a lot of interviews.
TS: Neither have I. I want to buy this copy of The Losers, by the way. Oh! Human Target!Tucker Stone's writing may be found in print in Comic Foundry and online at The Factual Opinion, where he frequently reviews new releases.
This Ship Is Totally Sinking is © Tucker Stone, 2008
Prior to this weekend's MoCCA festival in New York City, I wanted to take some time to sit down with one of New York City's newest comic shopowners and talk about what it's like to open up one of the new breed of comic stores that are happily spreading across the country. Along with Rocketship and Desert Island, Bergen Street Comics has served as an immersive education for me, both as a reader and as an amateur industry watcher, on what a comic book store can look like, what it can offer, and how it can succeed. There's a bit of laziness involved too--Bergen Street Comics is within walking distance of my home, and it's one of the (sorry guys) few stores that my non-comic fan wife had an interest in returning to after the initial "you gotta check this out" visit.
TS: Ha! Well, let's hit some of these bullet point/popular bloggy-type questions. First up: How's the economy affecting your business?
Adams: I'd say Free Comic Book Day was a great day all around. It was really gratifying the way everything came together. We had a huge turnout during the day--kids, new customers, and a big bump of new customers following that day. My Wednesday business got a great bump after that, we had a huge party with 15 different artists, creators from Act-I-vate hanging their work, and we had a huge turn out for the party. But it's way too early to be celebrating our success.
