We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Mike Hermann. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Mike below.

Mike, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

In the Comic convention/Comic book industry neither are very kid friendly. We set out to change that, My team has always been dedicated to a full circle honest customer service experience, be the 2 year old or 102 year old. When we noticed vendors at comic cons being afraid and almost offended when children were brought to a comic con, we knew we had a huge advantage over the competition.

We have always been kid friendly and kids at heart, so we made sure that the first thing we said to kids or their parents was memorable and positive. We always practiced great customer service. Letting the kids know that they were welcome and safe just talking to our entire team at the convention, which started with just 2 guys over 6ft in height. Parents recognized this day and night comparison to the other vendors and would make our booth the first buying experience for the kids.

Over time the kids would come to more conventions and just run past the other vendors and yell, ‘the tall man is back here, the tall man is back here!!!’ So we decided that everyone who comes into our stores is a kid at heart and named the store what the kids called us. – and Tall Man Toys was born.

Mike, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

We realized that the average Funko Pop collectible store would only keep a small amount of inventory on hand, and would coincidently capture a small amount of the market. We opened with a huge selection of this collectible that would drive shoppers to make the store a destination rather than just another store carrying a small amount of product.

We noticed that the average collector would spend 5-6 hours a day driving from store to store looking for these collectibles, and then settling for the items they just found. Our store allows the customer to stop in and buy exactly the items they want while having the rest of the day.

This concept along with daily curation as well as a full inventory on our website tallmantoys.com causes people to drive hundreds of miles each day to visit and enjoy the experience of our home store.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

We opened the first physical store in 2018. When the pandemic happened we expected to take some time off and wait it out with everyone else. However we maintained that all items in the store be consistently added to our website. This action paid off big time as our store was setup for curbside pickup without doing anything. We ended up being the only comic book store open for curbside pickup so we exploded and ended up opening a larger store in the most historic building in downtown Knoxville.

Our competitors spent time trolling us on the socials and calling the police with false reports. We didnt skip a beat while they were closed with no hopes of reopening. They attempted to distract us during an unprecedented time. The public repaid us greatly with lines around the block when we reopened so we needed a larger place to serve them better.

There were many opportunities to stop and give up in the face of adversity.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

Our favorite marketing story was when we announced we had opened a store to support the website. We organized a collectibles swap meet in the parking lot of our store and had the store next to us be the host of the event. At an appointed time, we gathered everyone and unveiled the store sign and turned on the lights. It was a magical time and people still talk about it 5 years later.

Whenever we have special events people ask if we have another store to announce or something crazy like that last time. I wish we would have had a camera to record the reactions on their faces.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.tallmantoys.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TallManToys
• Twitter: @tallmantoys

Image Credits
Mike Hermann Matthew Shelton Mike Hermann Matthew Shelton Mike Hermann Matthew Shelton Mike Hermann Matthew Shelton