We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Eric Freitchen a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Eric, thanks for joining us today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.
We are a community store. I like to say that we focus on the 3 C’s: Comics, Collectibles and Community. What does that mean? In everything we do, we believe we are more than a business. We are a mom and pop shop; my wife and I have backgrounds in education and deep ties to the community. At the heart of what we do is advocate for kids, for youth, community programs, and advancing literacy. For every kid who comes in our store, everyday is Free Comic Book Day. Every day we give out comics to kids in an effort to encourage reading. We are proud to sponsor school events and contests to promote literacy. We make a significant effort to help under-resourced and opportunity youth.. We are huge supporters of Youth On Their Own, a local non-profit organization that supports continued education for students experiencing homelessness. In addition, we support youth who are engaged with the adjudication system We also support families with auctions and fundraising to provide financial support as they have a child dealing with cancer. We also support local artists and writers that are part of the local comic book industry. While we do need to keep our doors open, we wholeheartedly embrace community engagement and believe that if you can help, you should.
Eric, 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?
I started out in comics as a reader, like everyone else. Then in middle school I hung out at a local shop a lot, like a lot. I would be left there for hours. They started paying me in comics to do small tasks. When a location opened at an indoor swap meet I was given a job. I wanted to be a comic creator so bad. Something I joke about with Brian Pulido to this day, because he coached me up a bit when he was starting out. Then life happened…I played football, and served in the Army before I started teaching. Ten years ago my wife came up with the idea of selling some collectibles to then get new stuff. Well that turned into a huge undertaking. We created our company and began with pop up markets and swap meets. We joined the Comic Book Shopping Network and entered into a brick-and-mortar partnership for a few years. We opened our first solo brick-and-mortar in 2021, with a small storefront of 1600 square feet. We quickly outgrew it and after three years we expanded to a space that more than tripled our footprint and even have an in-store live stream studio. Even with all of this I still pinch myself weekly that this is actually happening. From the messaging creators, to being at a convention and the who’s who of comics in Tucson is hanging out in my booth. Our brand is representative of a family, and by proxy every customer and partner is part of the family too.. It helps to be nice to people and we do our best to treat everyone that walks in the door like they are at home. With this we have also taken in a few employees they call us mom and dad and we make sure they are taken care of like they are our own.
Have you ever had to pivot?
We entered into an informal business partnership with a brick-and-mortar shop that was in serious financial trouble. When we entered this partnership we had no idea of the extent of the financial ruin, but this person allowed us to believe that all was okay for a couple of years. Unfortunately, the financial problems that this person had been experiencing resulted in several months of revenue that went unpaid. While we initially worked well together and had similar visions, the business partnership soured and we had to make major decisions of walking away very rapidly. Moving away from this partnership was one of the best things we did for our business.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Let’s talk about COVID and what that did to retail businesses. At the time that COVID hit, we were in the above mentioned partnership and shut down for a number of months. During lockdown, since we could not operate our retail storefront, we pivoted to a focus on our online live streams and selling comics across the country. In this way, we tapped into a new customer base and expanded our reach. Our live streams sales kept us afloat during COVID and we learned to develop our online presence much more strongly. We have now been a part of the Comic Book Shopping Network since its inception and continue to complete live sales at least twice weekly.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.presidiocomics.com
- Instagram: https://tr.ee/plwkk03inK
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PresidioComicsTucson
Image Credits
Eric Freitchen/ Presidio Comics