Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Louie & Kathy Arbs. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Louie & Kathy thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think it takes to be successful?
We at Hero’s Corner Comics believe the key to long term success is providing an exemplary customer experience. Anyone can sell a product. Creating relationships with clients will keep them coming back time and again. With comic books we have a product with built in recurring business is done properly. People want to read their stories, or collect their favorite artist’s new cover or even those that speculate on books and hoping that next new character’s first appearance takes off on the secondary markets. Treating those clients with dignity and respect is what keeps them not only coming back but referring their friends. This interview itself is a result of that word of mouth referrals that can be traced back to a client/friend of ours going back 8+ years of interactions in the online community.
Louie & Kathy, 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?
We were not always retailers. For the longest time we were just collectors. I can really pinpoint our journey to store hood to when our local shop unexpectedly closed. They had our pull list and left us scrambling to find it a new home. We did with another local shop for a while until they started having issues. Rinse and repeat with other online retailers we started utilizing until we decided to take the plunge and get our own retail accounts. During this time we had built up a following in the secondary social media communities when we started selling off our extras and hunting local collections on Craigslist. Now we have a fully functional online based retail store and a healthy subscription service. Its been a fun, stressful, amazing journey so far and we look forward to the future.
We help clients get the comics they want at a good price. Many people do not have a local comic shop readily available to them or their local shops may not have a subscription program. We offer subscription/preorder services, comic back issues, comic book grading and the occasional store exclusive comic cover. Being online based we have lower costs than the traditional brick and mortar. By utilizing Previews Pullbox clients can manage their pulls online. THey can either subscribe and get the title until it ends or for a set period of issues. For instance you may want to add Amazing Spider-Man from the currently available to order issue on, you can do that. Or you just want to get it for a 6 issue arc you can do that to. It integrates with our ordering smoothly and we have you covered. You can also request one off requests for titles as well. For both subscriptions and one off pulls we offer a minimum of 25% off cover price with a bag and board included. We are also in progress of adding all of our back stock to our website, another difference between us and other stores. Once the project is essentially complete clients will be able to visit the website and virtually flip through our boxes anytime they like.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
2023 is the definition of a pivot year for us. There have been interesting trends in comics the past few years and without a doubt 2023 is a correction year in that market. For several years retailer exclusives had some sales appeal, especially if you could get a wholesale bundle from a store and sell at retail as well. That practice helped us gain a following and led us to the decision to start doing our own exclusive covers. For a while those were met with a mixed bag of successes and failures but overall positive. Throughout 2022 I noticed more and more were either barely breaking even or not performing at all. To the point where we cancelled all our future projects, well, we could afford it. Thankfully we did.
Early 2022 I started noticing a downward trend in not only our books performances but with other stores as well. Soon this spread to other collectible books, some of which had been hitting record setting high sales. Just a couple years ago an Ultimate Fallout 4 1:25 variant CGC 9.8 hit almost $40k. Now in November of 2023 you can get than book for $15k. Retailer variants overall faired much worse. This trend has continued throughout 2023 with many stores going under from poor sales performances. We pivoted to focusing on subscriptions and preorders primarily with some other books ordered for our weekly new release sale. Even now at the end of 2023 we are continuing to pivot and refine our processes to help with over ordering and clients downsizing pull lists during the down economy.
How did you build your audience on social media?
Social media is how we grew to be where we are today. I actually think is a pretty simple formula, even if i may stray from it myself from time to time. FIrst thing is to be authentic. just be yourself. If you are not being fake then you won’t ever be caught out of character. Second be honest. Be honest in how you present not just yourself but your product as well. In comic books, condition plays a large part in value. So if your book has some flaws it is key to be up front about them instead of trying to hide them. If a client knows an imperfection is there and accepts if before purchase they will be happy with the book. If the get the book and the imperfection is a surprise you may lose a client. Which brings us to my third point and provide the customer service you would expect to receive. Back to the flawed book example. Client may get the book and in hand the imperfection looks worse to than it did. Since they did know about it you could hold them to it but in our opinion pictures online for a collectible is subjective and if you are not happy with it in hand we can discuss it. It could mean a partial refund or a return. We want the client to be satisfied in the book they receive.
My last piece of advice for social media is also the one I tend to break the most. You really should NOT weigh in on divisive issues as a small business owner. You are likely to alienate a larger number of people than you will attract. Especially the more niche your market is.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.heroscornercomics.com
- Instagram: theheroscornercomics
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/HerosCornerComics
- Twitter: heroscomiccorner
- Other: Preview’s Pullbox: www.previewsworld.com/account/invite?r=03c610bc-cd54-462b-ade6-b14839dd1b0e