A comic shop about an hour from me is doing a gofundme to stay in business. They have a ton of stock and the goal for the money is to pay staff but continue to buy new comics and new collections.
I don’t know how I feel about this. They tend to have high prices. When they have sales it seems that it’s not books purchased in the past two weeks (but every thing seems to be purchased in the last two weeks) and even then the prices seem to be in line with what things are on eBay. I was thinking of riding out and buying stuff. But the more I think about it the less I like the idea.
If you have a ton of stock and are in trouble, would you not try harder to blow out some of the stuff you already have? Or at least give customers a shot at a decent discount – have a “wheel of deals” or something as an incentive for visiting. There should be basic things they could try rather than ask for money.
I agree with you in the sense that I don’t like it either. I feel that the store should have a clearly marked price for whatever we want to buy—not just random boxes that are full of books priced at the counter. They are, in essence, making you price their books for them. It seems lazy and unprofessional to me. I find it to be in bad taste.
I agree but for one point. I supported a GoFundMe for someone at a comic shop I love who developed an illness. It was emphasized the money was for his medical expenses that insurance would not cover. I’d say 90% of the time he is the one who is there working hard at the shop (the other owners are more silent partners) but he had to take some time out for Chemo, recovery, etc. That is a GoFundMe I did not hesitate to support. If it were just a shop struggling, then I would definitely not support that. In the case of the shop an hour from you, I would not contribute, clearly.
Now, if the business had something unfortunate out of their control occur (theft, flood, fire) and it was a pillar in the community and needs help to recover, I get it. But why should anyone fund this…? It’s basically up pricing new comics and begging people to pay those prices so you can keep selling them.
Either the shop is in a bad location, or they made bad business decisions. Best to put them out of their misery rather than string them along. A go fund me is not a recovery plan that fixes the underlying problem.
Did anyone hear if they are continuing these DC x Sonic later printing covers? The last one came out in July and nothing on FoC. Someone posted an image on this site a while ago with all the covers they were planning to do, but I can’t find it.
Yeah, I enjoyed it as well. I went in with zero expectations as well, but I do that with about every movie now and honestly, it works out quite well nowadays.
