Pull List Delivery Service

I’m thinking of starting up a local pull list delivery service for comic shops in my area. Sometimes people don’t have time to head out to their shop so I figured why not bring them to there front door.

If this service was offered at your shop would you take advantage of it? I was thinking I could charge $5-$6 per delivery. Books would either left in a shipping box or bubble mailers. Still working out the kinks.

Who’s responsible for reimbursing for porch pirate loses?

For about a buck or so more the stores themselves could just mail over the comics with $50 free insurance in Regional Rate Priority Mail packaging.

As a store that offers Hold-boxes and shipping, I actually prefer seeing my customers come in to pick up because no matter what’s in their boxes, they almost always leave with more than the signed up for in impulse purchases for items they may not have even known they wanted if they hadn’t been here in person and seen it.

The interaction in person gives me time to inform about other items or specials that may be of interest while learning more about the individuals preferences which may result in adding items in the future they may have expressed interest in.

For $5 to $6… I could wrap that into a one time $10 monthly shipping from any online retailer. I could see it work for some but no so much for others, particularly the picky customers who hand pick their comics each week.

But to answer your question, no, it’s not something I’d be interested in myself but I can only speak for myself.

Thanks for the feedback guys. Ya I was thinking of doing it as more of a “I don’t have time to pick up my books” kinda thing. It’s happened to me a bunch of times over the course of the yrs and I was thinking to myself that I would pay for someone to bring me my books. Again this is all local. Not talking about delivering to other cities or towns. Figured I would do shops a favour by helping them clear out there pull list boxes. Any time I go into my shop I’ve noticed most people are just grabbing their books and leaving. Those are the people I would be targeting.

In the small town (Cortland, New York) I lived in before I moved out to Saint Louis there is a nice little comic shop that opened a bit after I left. The town is tiny and I’m happy it has a comic store, and they do pull-lists for people and have even offered to drop your books off at your house or place of business if you are too busy to stop-in and pick-up your books. I think part of the reason they do this that Cortland is so small it is easy to run people whatever comics they might want and another reason is I imagine such a small store operates on a thin margin where if a person misses a week picking-up their pulls it might hurt their bottom-line pretty badly (and on the same hand, some random person wanting to buy some trades is probably quite helpful to their income). I can see a situation like this working for dropping-off books for people where it is a really rural, small, and quiet town in which someone might want their books NOW and hate the idea of waiting for them to be shipped from a store that is a 10 minute drive away. Otherwise, it might be a tricky idea to implement, but I can see it MAYBE working. I mean, nobody thought Uber would work and look how huge it is. As long as it does not cost you too much to start trying your idea what do you have to lose?

I would expect same day shipping for the small store is easily achievable. The local Post Office has two slots for in town and out of town so in town if dropped off in the morning may get same day delivery. In State 1 day delivery with priority Mail is pretty common.

The small town thing also means I’m pretty much open 24/7 by request for people who want to pick up any hour of the day or night if they contact us by 7PM and sometimes if they just beat on the front door or ring the phone after hours. I have shift workers that sometimes pick up on the way to or from 3rd shifts.

There’s also the buddy system where a lot of my subscribers have buddies they frequently shop with so if one can’t make it, the other can usually pick up for them.

I actually considered setting up a Comicmobile to make rounds to the different surrounding communities on different days of the week to allow for delivery but it just doesn’t seem to be a real problem. People seem to like coming in, even if it starts at 9PM arrival times. I also do dumb stuff to give them even more reasons like grabbing maybe $4 to $5,000 from the DC COLLECTIBLES SALE Diamond sprung on us this morning. Great prices for a huge delivery expected in a couple weeks to add to the browsing opportunities for months to come. There’s a couple pieces I’m considering for myself.