Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Eric Burke. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Eric, appreciate you joining 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?

There are two parts to this answer. The first is Tribe is what our group of friends called themselves. We also in our 20s we had dreams of opening up a production company. Chose a Logo (The red Hand we use now) even wrote a script. But as with most things of youth it fell to the wayside. Years later when Roy and I were going to opening up a Comic shop we tossed around a lot of ideas. I was very vocal that we should call ourselves Tribe no only in homage to our youth and our friends.

Also, and here is where the second part of the answer comes in, it really captures how we feel about our place in the world and our responsibility. We are just one big tribe, one big family. We strive very hard to treat everyone like the are part of our family.

Eric, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Tribe Comics and Games has been around 15 years this October. We are a locally owned Comic and Game store in South Austin. Previous to this Both Roy and I worked at one of the largest Comic and Game store chains in the country. I was the general manager and he was the Manager of our Flag Ship store.

I got into this business because I needed something to do during a semester I was not doing college work. I ended up loving working for a shop and stayed on instead of going back to school. I worked my way up to General Manager and drug Roy along with me for this journey. We eventually decided to leave where we were and go out on our own. We have not looked back since.

We are proud of so many things but I guess the thing that I am most proud about is that we never price hike. It is common in our industry, whether it is a variant cover or a hot magic set. We pay the same price no matter how hot the item is so we never mark it up because of hype to try and get more money out of people.

How’d you meet your business partner?

It is actually a somewhat amusing story. In my youth I was a pretty straight laced guy. Roy was a modern hippie. We just happen to be dating girls we were best friends in college. They wanted to hang more and decided to set Roy and I up on a play date. Weird thing to do for adults. I guess they assumed if we were hanging out they would have more time to hang out. It was an awkward meeting. Neither of us could see why they thought this was a good idea. On the surface we did not seem to have much in common. However after the girls left and we were forced to talk more we found out we both loved comics and Role playing games. We ended talking for hours about Marvel, DC, Vertigo, D&D, and other stuff. and the rest as they say is history.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

So getting the funding for the business was the hardest thing we ever had to do. Our group of friends loaned us some seed money. We took that around to several banks. We had a solid business plan and certainly had the institutional knowledge of the industry. We were turned down by four banks before a local bank agreed. They wanted us to put the seed money into a CD with the bank and then we started the loan process. This was in summer of 2008 right before the housing crash and subsequent financial crisis. After a few weeks of being assured that we were on track for the loan the bank pulled out for no reason we could see. In retrospect I am sure someone upstairs knew what was about to happen globally and was pulling back on loans. The gave us our seed money back and said thanks but no thanks. So everything looked pretty dark. But we pushed through and a combination of the seed money and borrowing from family got us money to start. However it was only 1/3rd of what we asked the business loan for.

As a result we were opening and buying things for the shelves but no where near the stock levels we wanted. As we sold stuff we used the money to build up our stock rather than pay ourselves. It took another year to get where we wanted to be if we had gotten the loan from the bank. Still we made it and now closing on 15 years.

Contact Info:

• Website: tribecag.com
• Instagram: @insta_tribecg
• Twitter: @Tribecag

Image Credits
Front Row left to Right Lee Bagley, Eric Burke Back Row left to Right Daniel Potter, Roy Carter