COMICS, MARKET REPORT, SALES TO ASTONISH - December 3, 2025

SALES TO ASTONISH #39 - NOVEMBER 2025

The Pub Regulars.

Waaaaay back in the 1990’s I worked in a pub in London that was close to the old Arsenal ground, Highbury. Due to its proximity to the stadium as you can imagine on match days the pub was packed, especially before the match. This was back in the day when the majority of league matches kicked off at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon and therefore allowed for a good 3 hours of drinking prior to the match. Strangely we were never that busy after that match as most people only had a pint before embarking on their homeward journeys. The pub itself was located on a back street so the time prior to the match was when it took the most money, by far. Make hay whilst Arsenal are playing at home so to speak.

Outside of match days the pub was frequented by a number of regular customers who came in around tea time and from time to time there were the occasional discos/karaoke on a Saturday night and a pool team that played at the pub once a fortnight. It was these people and activities that just about kept the pub ticking in between match days.

The challenge for the pub was not only to negotiate the summer period when there wasn’t any football, but more importantly how to keep the regulars propping up the bar and how to make the occasional new visitors into regular patrons.

Now this might sound simple and I am sure that there are similarities for most retail or hospitality environments but it can be incredibly complicated at times, especially when you need to cater for a mix of society. For example for a while the ‘premium’ beer in the pub was Lowenbrau. It didn’t sell that well and eventually it was taken out but it was interesting to see a correlation between certain people no longer frequenting the pub when their favourite beer wasn’t available. Equally, whilst it was predominantly a male orientated environment, on the occasions when there was some family function or entertainment it was important that women and children were made to feel equally as welcome as the regulars. Things like free pool for the kids or even (believe it or not!) air fresheners in the ladies and telling people to mind their language went a long way to subconsciously attract people back.

The reason for the historical tale is that I’ve had similar experiences over the years running the Unreality Store. Regulars come and go - for example this month I sold some comics to a couple of people who bought regularly when I first started out but either completed their wants list or scratched the comic itch and hadn’t bought for a number of years. But the more telling statistic is that my returning customers in November were down by 40% on October.

I think the most important lesson I have learned this year is that of keeping a balanced stock offering. I know I have written previously about which publishers and titles sell more than others but there will always be times when I’m well stocked in certain areas than others so it’s important that when I’m low on X-Men, Batman or Spider-man that there’s a plentiful amount of Superman, Star Wars, Avengers, Indies etc etc to help cover the gap. I’ve perhaps not been as successful at this during 2025 as I would have liked but I’m glad that I’ve reached that conclusion so I can take it forward into 2026.

The other important point is to present well. Difficult to do in an online retail environment but when I worked in the pub the bar was always kept clean and free of glasses, ashtrays were emptied and or course the cleaning was done morning and night. I always judge a pub by its toilets these days 😆

Similarly when I worked in property, making sure that not only the presentation of the show home/flat was immaculate but the journey to it from the moment someone entered the development to the time they left went a long way in subtly influencing the decision making process.

The best correlation I can offer with The Unreality Store is making sure the website is well stocked, things change on the home page collections regularly and when someone orders something the package arrives promptly and as everyone gets something free with their order that they look forward to seeing what that is just as much as the item(s) they have ordered. This kind of approach I hope goes some way to move people some initial buyers to regulars. It’s not a quick process though and seeing that dip in the returning customer rate in November feels like my customer base is somewhat in transition at the moment.

November is always an odd month, the nights draw in, it kind of gets colder but more importantly from a retail perspective it constitutes for a lot of people, the final pay day before Christmas. Now the online (and now high street) retail powerhouses have cottoned on to this in the form of Black Friday/Cyber Monday which now starts mid-November and ends the first week of December so it’s not really a weekend anymore. And the knock on effect for me is that I realise that comics and vintage RPGs aren’t really on the top of people’s Christmas lists so I don’t participate and keep my power dry for the Boxing Day sale I’ve run successfully for the past few years.

It’s probably just as well that the end of November kind of fizzled out as I spent the best part of a couple of days at A&E with a fractured ankle. God knows how I did it but I’m sporting my first ever Moon Boot 🤣 Just what impact it will have on the business in terms accessing stock to list on a regular basis, fulfil orders and posting them out remains to be seen.

As we move into December and Christmas beckons I’m hoping for an uptick in sales to take some momentum in 2026 where I have a few ideas that I might trial in January & February, but more on those soon. 🔜