SALES TO ASTONISH #28 - DECEMBER 2024 & YEAR IN REVIEW SPECIAL
Yes it’s that time again where it’s a double header of your standard STA and a look back over the shoulder to what happened in general in 2024 and a quick glance into 2025
December 2024 followed a similar pattern to the last few years of trading as The Unreality Store and I am sure that many other online businesses tread a similar path this time of year. The beginning of the month is busy as people buy presents but as soon as as the last week before Christmas arrives and the chance of a present not arriving by the big day, focus tends to shift to gift buying from bricks and mortar stores or Amazon Prime. Whilst this is frustrating it’s understandable, and this year I decided that I would forego a final Saturday Mini-Drop on 21st December and go away to the North East to spend some time with family. Accepting this and seeing it play out as suspected was still disappointing. Whether I would have picked up a handful of sales from regular customers who wait for new stuff to drop in store isn’t clear but one thing is certain, if I don’t have any new activity on site regardless of the time of year sales decrease but more on this in the Year in Review section
Every December I always think I should try and get more graphic novels into the store as they do seem to make ideal Christmas presents for the casual reader. This year was no exception and I sold a nice bunch in early December including some limited edition hardcovers. The challenge with graphic novels (or trade paperbacks as I would call them if they were just reprinting comic issues) is that it’s often as easy to pick them up new for just a couple of quid extra from Amazon than it is for me to make a small mark up on them buying them in second hand. For the Marvel and DC trades I tend to put them up for sale in Brackley Antiques Cellar at £7.50 each or 3 for £20 where they go quite well rather than on the website.
One of the things I have noticed over the 5 years of trading is that every time I run a sale it’s generally better than the last time. In part due to the fact my stock has improved and in part due to the fact more people are continually finding out about The Unreality Store.
This years Boxing Day Sale was GIGANTIC
So much so that it took me a week to pick, package and send out all the orders. Two things came to light as a result of the sale - I need to be better prepared next time round to meet demand and I need to tell people there may be a delay in receiving their order.
The last few days of December felt very much like after the Lord Mayors Show. A few sales from the Mini Drop on Saturday 28th December and then nothing…. (At the time of finishing this that really worrying trend has continued into January) but despite that sharp drop off December was my best month ever and a fitting way to end 2024!
2024 Year In Review
Marvel rules the roost with DC a distant second
I sold a lot of Marvel back issues in 2024 and almost certainly could have sold more if I had multiple copies of Amazing Spider-man and Uncanny X-Men issues from the 70’s-90’s. Marvel back issue sales remain the cornerstone of the business and I am always on the look out for collections spanning those decades. I tend to steer away from Silver Age books as I’ve never really had a market for them and I do begin to wonder whether the fanbase for these issues is dwindling as people from the 60’s give up this mortal coil or newer readers seek the stories out in cheaper reprints or digitally. Let’s be honest the art in many issues is pretty basic and the stories (especially DC) can be a bit twee. That said I am sure that slabbed key issues from the Gold to Bronze Ages will soon start trading at auctions like fine art or vintage wine opening up a new collector base that has no interest in comics but sees them as an investment.
No all Marvel titles move, things like Thunderbolts, Ultimates and the multiple Avengers titles by Bendis and then Hickman are pretty much dead in the water. 90’s superhero titles like Captain America, Thor and Iron Man move at £2-£3 an issue even if the art on some titles hasn’t aged that well. One much derided story arc back in the day always sells when I have issues in store - Capwolf!! 🔥🔥
As for DC it’s Batman all the way followed by Superman and Flash (but oddly not Vol.1). All other DC titles sell intermittently with the exception of any Bronze Age horror. House of Secrets, House of Mystery, Ghosts etc all sell well. I should also tip my hat to the longevity of the popularly of John Constantine. I regularly sell issues from the first fifty issues of Hellblazer and #1 moves almost immediately at £40. Sandman is still popular although the issues from 30-60 tend to move for £2-£3 only.
As for the best of the rest it’s Spawn for Image, Aliens, Predator and Hellboy for Dark Horse and that’s about it. Indies sell sporadically despite there being an absolute wealth of amazing titles from 80’s to present day.
Social Media is dead to me 😂 (has it had its day??)
I post on all social media platforms (including LinkedIn from time to time) and whilst my content is largely sales related posts or videos I have seen a steady decline over 2024 of the number of follows and likes on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Oddly I have the most engagement on Twitter but the fewest followers and find it very difficult to attract new followers on there. I realise that video posts generate more engagement but I have a similar challenge with TikTok as to how to increase my followers without losing sight of just doing videos that ultimately don’t lead to any sales.
Ultimately I have no intention of coming off any of these platforms but my expectations on them generating much in the sense of any meaningful revenue in future are low. That would of course be solved by regular advertising, but they would tell you that wouldn’t they 😂
Comic Cons are a waste of time (well most of them 😂).
San Diego, Chicago and New York have a lot to answer for. I’m no comic book historian so I don’t know which of these three conventions truly lit the blue touch paper for comic collectors each year but even though they are so much more than the comics now the title ‘Comic Con’ is a legacy of their success for all other similar events.
In the UK if attendees are going to fill their longboxes or find missing issues from their wants lists they will be disappointed as Comic Cons are everything but the comics.
I’ve tried, I really have. But the harsh reality is that out of a dozen shows I did in 2024 I made money at three, broke about even at six and lost money at three. People just do not attend to buy comics. There may be a couple of attendees that want comics and also a number of casual buyers but if there are a number of comic dealers present there’s only so much money to go round.
I heard an interesting conversation between a couple of toy dealers who were talking about the challenge they face selling legitimate goods against those that have been sourced by other dealers via AliBaba etc. The upshot was that as more cheaper items flooded the fairs, the true toy dealers could not compete on price, they stop attending, toy collectors stop attending and it becomes a case of ever decreasing circles. Apart from the fact that it makes no sense really to counterfeit a comic (unless it’s a major major key) the fall in attendance of comic buyers at these shows is very much similar. Next year I am booked in to attend Northampton Comic and that’s it. To put things into context in 2024 I attended two book fairs and took more money at those than at most Comic Cons 🤪🤪
900 5 Star Trustpilot Reviews
I was amazed to reach the giddy heights of 900 5 Star Reviews on Trustpilot during 2024. A huge thank you to everyone who took the time to leave a review, it’s always nice to get feedback like this as a measure of how happy people are with the service I provide. Even more so when, as a business,
I don’t utilise eBay and therefore it’s crucial for new buyers to have some form of reference to how good my customer service is, whether they are happy with my grading, pricing and so on.
I’ve been contacted by Trustpilot directly to say that I am one of their best in category for the number of 5 Star reviews I have and to discuss ways how I could further leverage this to attract new buyers. Sadly their costs for an improved Trustpilot presence on the website are astronomical so for now that’s on the back burner.
2000 Emailer Subscribers
Another milestone I reached in 2024 was 2000 subscribers to my weekly emails. I’ve long been of the belief that this is one of the most important forms of communication with people interested in buying from, and wanting to know what’s new with The Unreality Store.
I must confess that up to about 12 months ago I used to put a lot of additional content into the emailers such as reviews and other things I thought people might be interested in. They became a bit of a labour of love and I didn’t feel that there was much interested in the extra bits so I have largely scaled them back to be more of a sales announcement.
Most Thursdays and now Saturdays they generate a reasonable amount of sales but when I scratch beneath the surface it looks like only a small percentage of subscribers (between 5-10%) most weeks open the email and then that number is further reduced by those who actually click through to the collection page. Now I’ve signed up for lots of the emails in the past when I’ve placed orders or for a promotion and there are lots that I immediately delete or view occasionally when they drop into my inbox. One of my aims this year it to not only get to 3000 subscribers but more fundamentally increase the number of readers and people who click through to content. If anyone has any helpful suggestions on how I can achieve this please let me know 😎
Outlets Work If You Put The Work In
When I launched The Unreality Store I naively thought that all I had to do was set up a website, do a little bit of Facebook advertising and the sales would start rolling in. Little did I realise just how huge the internet is and how things like website set up and SEO can aid or hinder your chances of getting on the first page of Google. These things require work, work and more work. The same applies to the success of offering stock in outlets like Vintage Guru and Brackley Antiques Cellar - you restock regularly, tell people about it and you have a better chance of selling stuff than you did if you just left a bunch of stock there for months on end. It’s very easy to make excuses not to go and restock but these outlets provide an opportunity to sell different stock to the website - £1 comic boxes, manga, large bundles, lead RPG figures and so on. The more you visit the more successful things become.
The Days of Zero Sales
Despite having traded for over 5 years now there are still days where I don’t sell a single item. I often tend to imagine that it must be similar to a brick and mortar store where the door doesn’t open from 9-5 and you sit there longingly looking at the people who walk past. Except online sales are different and the website is accessible 24 hours a day which means people can shop during their commute, on their return from a late shift, at the dinner table, in bed etc etc. And yet during 2024 I had over 20 days where I didn’t make a single sale. Not one comic. Someone helpfully suggested that I may want to try WhatNot and of course there’s always eBay but having these days of zero sales even with 2024 being my best year to date remain a bitter pill to swallow which is a nice segue into the 2025 look ahead 😎
2025 Look 👀 Ahead
One of the things I have planned for 2025 is to try to be less emotionally invested in the business. Whilst I think the website looks good and performs well and I try and improve the stock on a twice weekly basis (at least) I take every abandoned checkout personally and wonder what has stopped the person from buying. Plus whenever I run a sale there are always people who only ever buy when prices are reduced and I need to get less irritated by this and bemoan the fact they don’t buy stuff at full price and understand they are buying within their own budgets and with me rather than somewhere else. You can always flip the narrative. My mental heath is something that I am continually working on. I could never have been a manager at January Sale time at DFS - it would drive me mad 🤣🤣🤣🤪
I’m also very conscious that my consistency of approach to releasing stock on to the website does have its downsides. When I need to take a break for personal or family reasons and I miss a release there is a direct correlation with a downturn in sales. It’s fantastic that people wait online on Thursday and Saturday morning for new stock but how can I attract new buyers to the store who will buy regardless of new stock or not? Looking back this need to keep the website updated with new stock meant that in 2024 I even found myself listing stock in the canteen of Leicester Infirmary! That kind of thing simply has to stop in 2025! So there maybe a slightly less structured approach to new stock releases in the future
Finally there is a plan to move The Unreality HQ in 2025 to the North West. Logistically this will be a challenge not only of buying and selling a house but also to move the Unreality Store stock and find a place large enough in the North West to store it. The exciting part of this is that the move may open up new opportunities to have a more permanent face to face retail offering to sit alongside the website.
Watch the skies.
Keep looking.
😎😎
