Hey, Folks!
Well, the day we’ve been waiting for is FINALLY here! Yes, Monarch Comics is currently having its new LED light fixtures installed! After weeks of dealing with lights burning out and leaving me in darkness I will now have brilliant illumination through out the whole store. It really is quite exciting and I feel like I am adulting hard here…lol. I’m not sure how long the entire process is going to take, but please take care if you come into the store during the installation and pardon our mess!
The only drawback to getting the lights upgraded is that it looks like I am going to have to wait until next year to replace the floors. This is incredibly disappointing to me as I have looked forward to having the floors done by FCBD and I am sick of looking at the current ones. After the lights started dimming and going out, however, I decided that it was probably more important for customers to be able to see in the store. I am, however, still planning on moving the racks and counters around in the next few weeks. I’m not sure exactly when that blessed event will occur as I still have to schedule the electricians in to help with the logistics of rearranging everything.
Speaking of racks, I want to clarify something for everyone who’s been in the store during my renovation projects. Many of you have noticed my work area in the front of the store where I have been diligently repainting all of the various racks in the store a flat black so that they match. Many times over the last few weeks people have come in and chuckled over the fact that I was still working on the racks. I didn’t think much of it until last week when I realized that everyone thought it was the SAME rack sitting there week after week with “wet paint” sign on it. At first I was stunned and then I just started laughing. While it is true that I really hate painting and I readily admit that I am not particularly good at it I now have to state that I am not THAT bad a painter…lol. I want to assure everyone that it has not been the same rack sitting week after week in the front of the store. When I decided to paint the racks one of my worries was the amount of time that product would have to be removed from the racks while they were being serviced. I didn’t want to have to fiddle around with constantly emptying racks and finding places to put the books while I want through the laborious task of painting, drying, and curing. With each rack requiring 2-3 coats and at least 2 days to cure properly the whole project was already taking more time than I had expected, so early on I cleared one rack of books (mostly Image trade paperbacks) and put them in a box and left them there for the duration of the project. Then once I finished my work on a particular rack I would choose the next rack I wanted to work on and then I would switch it out with the completed rack. So I have been slowly moving across the store and have been focused on painting all of the racks with purely wooden structures as it is easier to make paint stick to them. The final all wooden rack is now complete and I would have already swapped it out with another rack except that the lights are getting changed and I didn’t want to fart around with it while that work was going on. Once the lights are back on I ask everyone to walk around the store and see how many racks have actually been refurbished…lol.
So I know a lot of you have been following my attempts at introducing new types of merchandise into he delicate ecosystem of the store. This week I received an item from Diamond that I didn’t even remembering ordering…lol. As I pulled the item out of the shipping box my eyes grew wide and all I could wonder was exactly how much crack I had smoked before putting in the order. So please make it a point of checking the Rock Em Sock Em Game that came in this week! I know I had one of these when I was a kid at some point, but I was unprepared for the amount of nostalgic joy emanated off the box in waves. Seriously, I LOVE board games and it is taking all of my willpower not take one home and immediately rip it open, set it up, and commence with robot rocking and socking! We will see how well they sell and if you, my loyal customers, have an appetite for this kind of thing in the comic shop!
I have also been working hard at stocking Funko POP figures that I think will do well with the store. I don’t bother posting the POP figures that show up on FOC to solicit preorders anymore as I was getting a lot of orders that no one would bother to pick up after they were placed. Partly this is due to the fact that comic shops rate somewhere below convenient stores in Funko’s wave shipping system and many of the POP figures are available online or at big box stores weeks or months before we see our orders. I would like to reiterate for the record that I am more than happy to accept preorder request for POP figures, especially if they are placed before my FOC date.
Okily dokily…since I’ve been at the store since 7am I am way ahead of my usually Thursday duties and I would like to get everything up and running ASAP. Just to let everyone know, Brian (the new minion) has completed his Monarch training course and will be tackling his first solo stint in the store Friday afternoon. As a result I will be out of the store after 3pm on Friday and won’t be back until 3pm on Saturday afternoon. Please take it easy on him if he gets stuck on a procedure and I will take care of any problems when I get back into the office.
Have a great weekend!
Eddie