Hello again, I hope this first month of 2024 has treated you well.
December was a great month for the store. We welcomed many new customers and we’re very happy to report that January has been stellar too! We’ve even had some customers return for more than one order! That may sound pretty quaint to the more seasoned dealers out there, but hey… it made me smile.
Thank you to all our customers, I sincerely hope we did a good job, and you were happy with your order.
On that note I’ve also added judge.me reviews to the store. If you’ve ordered with us and feel like we did a good job, we’d really appreciate a review. Alternately, if you weren’t so happy with things, we want to know how we can do better (though we’d appreciate if you reached out first so we have a chance to correct the issue).
We’re a new business and without a brick & mortar location it's tough to build a customer base. I understand anyone who comes to this site and is skeptical about ordering (though I should note we are a Shopify Pay store and your payments are protected by their policies). Reviews through a verified 3rd party such as judge.me will hopefully ease some fears. We'll happily take any reviews on Google, Facebook, etc. too.
Speaking of Physical Sales… (it’s almost like I planned this out). This time last year I was making my final plans for the store. One of my goals was to be selling in person somewhere by the end of 2023 or early 2024. I’m happy to say that things are on track!
We will be a vendor at the Trenton Punk Rock Flea Market on Saturday April 6th, 2024. This event is held a few times a year at the Cure Auto Insurance Arena. I’ve wanted to participate in this show as far back as when it was held in the Historic Roebling Machine Shop. I’m super excited about this and I’m just a tad scared shitless too.
My plan is to get out before then and start doing some one-day pop-ups at the two outdoor markets in the area: Columbus and Berlin.
The weather is really tough to predict this time of year in NJ. There could be a foot of snow on the ground Wednesday, and it will somehow be 68 degrees on Sunday or vice-versa. So, it's going to be a "we'll see how it is that morning" kind of thing to start. I bought a nice tent, a warm coat and I’m ready to get out there with some boxes of books. It will be a nice chance to meet some of the other dealers in the area and work out any kinks in my POS system.
New books are being added to the store every week, both new releases and back issues we’ve acquired. If you aren’t following us on socials, please check us out! New Releases are posted there early in the week (Mon-Tues), so you’ll be the first to know!
I’m working on getting Pre-orders set up for Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels. There are some nuances in how it has to be handled (in terms of both back-end code and logistics) and I want to make sure it's a good experience for anyone who shops here! Anyway, you don’t want to hear about that stuff, its boring.
I’m going to cut it off here. Thanks for checking and as always for your support!
Steve
