September 19, 2011
OWNER/MANAGER: Rick Shea
YEAR OPENED: 1994
NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 3
STORE SIZE (Sq. Ft.): 2,600
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Melbourne, FL's Famous Faces & Funnies
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Favorite Recent Comic Book: Image Comics' The Walking Dead and Invincible, DC Comics' Green Lantern and Secret Six.
Products Carried: Comics (New, Back Issues, Imports), Magazines (Domestic & Imports), Graphic Novels, Toys (New, Vintage, Imports), T-Shirts, Other Apparel, Models & Statues, Trading Cards (Non-Sport), CCGs, Prints, Posters, Supplies (Comic & Non-Comic)
Community Involvement: Free Comic Book May, Mini-Free Comic Book Day every November, 24 Hour Comics Day every October, 8 Hour Comics Day a few times a year, Free Comic Book MAY - Free Comics every Saturday in May! Cross promote with local libraries, schools, movie theaters, restaurants, Roller Derby, Zombie Walks & other local businesses.
How was your FCBD event? Awesome! This was our first year of Free Comic Book MAY and every Saturday in May was two to five times an average Saturday's sales. 500 to 800 people every Saturday in May! Will do it again next year.
What did you like about the Retailer Summit? It's great to interact with other retailers, and see what works for them, and what ideas are worth incorporating into our own store.
What aspect of your store makes you the most proud? I think we have a fun store that's become a lot more than a place to buy comics. We've watched a lot of friendships be built up in our store over the last few years as many regulars realize they have a lot more in common than just their taste in comics. Our Monthly Comic Talk Roundtables have been a big part of that. My staff and I have made some fantastic friends with so many great customers.
What do you do that is innovative within your store? Our Monthly Comic Talk Roundtables have been one of our most successful promotions, drawing 35 to 40 people to our store to discuss what comics they're enjoying, as it lets our customers do some additional selling for us, promoting their favorite books and it helps promote books we might not have pointed out to everyone. We have free pizza and soda, but it always pays off in getting new people into the store, and gets them even more endeared to our store, and more interested in our store events.
What has been your best in-store promotion? This year, we thought using Free Comic Book Day as Free Comic Book MAY forced customers to come back several weeks in a row to get more free comics each week. We gave out a free graphic novel from some of our favorite volume ones like Y The Last Man and The Walking Dead. Several of those people came back and bought the next several volumes and have now become regular or casual customers instead of just seeing them once a year for FCBD. It worked out great and is well worth the effort and money we spent.
What has been your best out-of-store or cross-promotion? Promoting super-hero movies with free comics has worked out great. Zombie Walk helped hook a lot of people on The Walking Dead, and we always sell a good mix of graphic novels at Roller Derby. We will cross-promote anywhere we can. We got a local theater to show new episodes of AMC's The Walking Dead every Sunday night for free, and managed to push WD comics to the entire audience of 150 to over 200 every week, while running trivia and other fun events to a captive audience before each episode start. They've committed to all 13 episodes of Season Two as well.
What recent changes have you made in the store? We have a game night every Thursday, and continue to use it to get new people in the store every week. We have a constantly evolving DC and Marvel timeline to let readers catch up on all the big events of the last decade in each universe. Just enough to not be intimidating, but they usually try a few and then come back for more. We also introduced an Annual Geek-Off Trivia contest, covering hundreds of questions from comics, sci-fi, TV, movies and more, and everyone had a great time.
What are your plans for the near future? We are about to start a graphic novel rental program based on Feedback from our friends at A Comic Shop, and from our customers, who seem pretty interested, including some lapsed readers who have shown a lot of interest. We are also moving around the entire store to coincide our FFF Relaunch with DC's relaunch in September.
How did you choose your store name? Our odd name came from the previous owner, when we used to sell autographed memorabilia and comics. Haven't sold autographs in ages, but kept the odd name. Also, FFF is easy to abreviate.
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