I'm getting $4000.00 worth of retail reorder product coming on Tuesday. Completely restocking games, cards, and new books.
Last week, I completely restocked on graphic novels.
I'm also getting $3000.00 worth of regular shipments from Diamond.
And probably $1000.00 more in reorders by the end of the week.
That should be enough to satisfy even a spendaholic like me. That's about 2 to 3 times more than I should probably be getting on any one week, but it seems to be where and how the schedule of restocking fell.
Partly, I'm ordering the bulk of my material in the first quarter of every billing period, so I have most of the billing period in which to make sales.
This means, that if I sell something right away, it could be as long as 3 or 4 weeks before I get it back in, because I have to wait for the next billing period. Spot shortages, I call them, and they are the bane of my existence.
If I ordered a more equal amount of the budget each week, any spot shortages would be more quickly filled.
Still, I'm more comfortable with allowing the spot shortages to occur (and for the vast majority of product that doesn't happen) because the store is so full of other good stuff that I don't think I'm usually disappointing the customer. Eventually (actually it's already starting to happen) I save enough money by doing it this way that I can start ordering more than one copy at a time.
And there are the shipping costs to be considered. I have to order a "minimum" from each publisher, to save on postage -- so I couldn't divide my orders into four equal weekly shipments even if I wanted to. And for those distributors who don't have minimums (which cover shipping costs), it still saves to put most of the orders into one shipment.
This is wonky, I know, but it's nearly the essence of running a retail storefront.
What, when, and how much product -- and how much you pay, and how much the shipping.
Nuts and bolts.
Last week, I completely restocked on graphic novels.
I'm also getting $3000.00 worth of regular shipments from Diamond.
And probably $1000.00 more in reorders by the end of the week.
That should be enough to satisfy even a spendaholic like me. That's about 2 to 3 times more than I should probably be getting on any one week, but it seems to be where and how the schedule of restocking fell.
Partly, I'm ordering the bulk of my material in the first quarter of every billing period, so I have most of the billing period in which to make sales.
This means, that if I sell something right away, it could be as long as 3 or 4 weeks before I get it back in, because I have to wait for the next billing period. Spot shortages, I call them, and they are the bane of my existence.
If I ordered a more equal amount of the budget each week, any spot shortages would be more quickly filled.
Still, I'm more comfortable with allowing the spot shortages to occur (and for the vast majority of product that doesn't happen) because the store is so full of other good stuff that I don't think I'm usually disappointing the customer. Eventually (actually it's already starting to happen) I save enough money by doing it this way that I can start ordering more than one copy at a time.
And there are the shipping costs to be considered. I have to order a "minimum" from each publisher, to save on postage -- so I couldn't divide my orders into four equal weekly shipments even if I wanted to. And for those distributors who don't have minimums (which cover shipping costs), it still saves to put most of the orders into one shipment.
This is wonky, I know, but it's nearly the essence of running a retail storefront.
What, when, and how much product -- and how much you pay, and how much the shipping.
Nuts and bolts.