SALES TO ASTONISH #31 - MARCH 2025

When I sat in the Ford garage last month there was a large dividing screen that separated waiting area from the meet & greet desks. The picture on the dividing screen was one of those arty landscapes shots with an empty road running down the middle, mountains and scrubland either side, and the road disappearing into the distance. Not a soul, or car, in sight but typically thought provoking about driving somewhere (in your Ford of course) and discovering something new. But I was thinking about why the road was there, what was the history of the trail that would eventually become the road, where did it lead to and how many of those original pioneers veered off course and didn’t even end up at their destination. Some of those questions made me think about my time running The Unreality Store.

When I set the website up I wanted to be able to eventually say that I was the proprietor of the best website in the UK to buy back issue comics (and other items).

I’d done some research prior to choosing the e-commerce platform that I would use and who I felt my competitors would be, my target market and so on. That desire remains to this day. To use the landscape scene in the Ford garage in almost six years of trading there have been a lot of stumbles along the way, some veering off the path, some unexpected rest stops and recoveries but a sense that I remained on what I thought was the right path.

That was until 2025….

March continued the steady decline in sales from the heady days of November and December 2024 and I began to wonder whether I might have to plan an exit strategy for the business.  I had the opportunity to chat at length with a friend of mine who is the owner of a local barbers about current business trends and what the future may hold. His view was that we would be heading into some tricky times in the coming months as employers grapple with an increase in NI for employees and potentially look to mitigate that by reducing their workforce numbers (he’d already had a couple of clients that were facing redundancy). The knock on effect being that there would be less money around to spend on life’s luxuries like regular haircuts and in my case, back issue comics. Now he has the benefit of a face to face customer base and talks with his clients during their cuts & shaves so he’s able to pick up these nuggets of information from across the employment spectrum. I’m far more limited in my intelligence regarding my customer base, in fact most of the time I’m operating in the dark so to speak and when a regular client pauses buying for a while I have no idea whether it’s down to the stock I am offering, my prices, their personal circumstances or heaven forbid, their health.

Which is an excellent segue into staying healthy. Just as I wrote last month about not wanting to fall ill when you are self-employed, this came back to haunt me in March when I suffered with kidney stones. Excruciatingly painful, thankfully no long lasting effects but managing myself through this time meant that I lost a couple of days of productivity. In order to get these back as soon as I was back to full health a bit of burning the candle at both ends was in order.  Which in turn is no good for any length of time…

I am also aware that each week I cannot offer everything to everyone and therefore my sales will be somewhat limited by the genre, publisher and even more so by the title. The case in point in March was a Thursday release of some West Coast Avengers issues as the main headliner.  I’d sold some issues earlier in the year almost as soon as they had hit the store for around £3 a pop so I thought that I’d give them another outing. They bombed and it was my quietest Thursday product launch for over 3 years.  Thankfully the following Thursday saw a nice collection of Bronze & Copper Age Spectacular Spider-man issues drop which resulted in most of the key issues being sold by something ridiculous like 7am in the morning! The early bird catches the worm they say 😆

Whilst sales were sluggish at best in March, I have noticed that there’s been an overall increase in website visitors over the last 3 months compared to the same period in 2024. This is great as my current financial situation does not allow for any expenditure on internet advertising so all visitors are either existing buyers or people who already know of the website or new visitors as a result of my ranking on certain search terms on Google and Bing.

Readers of last months column will know I touched on the challenge of engaging with customers who visit the website a lot but don’t buy anything. The Dunstable person from February has disappeared but has duplicated and morphed into Bedford person and Egham person. Multiple visits on a daily basis and no sales. If anyone is reading this and wants something that they cannot see on the website or wants any advice etc about what I sell then please drop me a line. Don’t stay in the shadows…..

There are two other critical areas to the business that will need to be addressed in the coming weeks - IT infrastructure and acquisitions

I’ll start with IT as this is probably the most crucial. Essentially my iMac is on its last legs. It is 13 years old but has served me faithfully especially in a world where consumerism is geared to getting you to regularly replace or upgrade things like phones, gaming consoles, computers etc. Luckily as I use Shopify as my sales platform, this is web-based and therefore I don’t really need the laptop to do much more than handle product photography and input product details. However, not only is it showing signs of age, I am sure that were I to get a new iMac then I could look at ways to increase my efficiency and productivity which could enhance the business output.

The second point, and probably of more interest, is that I need to start buying in new collections. However, in order to do that I need to sell to buy. A bit like Manchester Utd in the coming summer transfer window, the likes of Rashford, Anthony, Sancho, Shaw, Maguire, Mainoo and Garnacho probably will be sold before the start of the next season in order to generate funds for the manager to buy players in his own image and improve their chances of winning the Prem. For me it’s shifting the likes of the existing stock of Image, Dark Horse, Indies, DC and in some cases some of the slower moving Marvel titles to generate cash to buy in stock that people actually want on a regular basis. Then there’s the actual negotiation over the acquisition - clubs will know Manchester Utd are keen to buy their players and therefore may put a premium on their price. Buying comic collections is slightly different and in the past for every one that I have acquired there’s been many lost where I’ve been used as leverage against other offers or sellers have wanted retail prices for their collections leaving no uplift for me. In a couple of occasions I’ve actually paid people more than they were expecting simply because I think it’s good business practice to be honest. So I’ll need to face into this challenge as the back stock is dwindling..  oh and by the way I don’t support Manchester United 😀😀

There’s one final observation I think it is worth noting this month but it’s actually been something that has been occurring regularly for the last year or so - Fridays are the quietest day of the week by far.

And I have no idea why. This month for example saw two of the four Fridays register zero sales. I rarely get a ‘Friday Payday Bounce’ at the end of the month and when I look at other platforms such as Facebook Marketplace sales in some of the comics related groups there are unaffected by this Friday malaise so I’m puzzled as to why this has become the norm for me. Answers on a postcard??

There were some nice sales in March which are outlined below and it’s worth mentioning that sets seem to sell really well when priced sensibly. Thinking back to the photograph of that road that disappeared into the distance I wonder whether I’ve veered off track this month or whether I’m still heading for the destination??

Time will tell…..

March Key Sales

Wizard Magazine #1 NM- @ £70

Uncanny X-Men #98 FN-  @ £50

Spectacular Spider-man #1 FN+ @ £40

Spectacular Spider-man #101 FN+ @ £40

Saga #1 NM- @ £135

Hellblazer #1 VFN- @ £40

Iron Man #282 VFN- @ £50

Giant Size Spider-man #1 VFN- @ £35