12/08 - Best month ever for us

[PSV]

We just had our best month in our 4 and 1/2 year history! We are also in the process of dropping about 5k down on expanding our for sale section, currently its only made up of a couple of bins with maybe 300 to 400 movies, we plan on expanding to a total of 18 bins. Our main problem with selling is people who walk in and ask if we have any movies for sale, they tend to look at our tiny section, laugh and walk away. This should make our sale section take up about 20% of our store...

Anyhow, just curious how everyone else is on their for sale section? How much of your store does it take up and how much in used movie sales do you do a month? (we only do about $800 to $1000 a month currently).

[IVR]

Sellthru is big for us and an area that along with games I feel most independents do a very poor job of merchandising. My stores averaged $10,078 in sellthru during the past 30 days and I attribute much of that to the fact that we give it the space it needs. Most stores seem to relegate sellthru and games to a very small area while giving the majority of the store to catalog rentals that generate in most cases very little revenue in comparison to other areas of the store. Our stores now use about 50% of the floor for catalog with the other 50% split between game and sellthru.

For me it's just a matter of calculating the percentage of revenue each part of the store generates and then giving each of the departments the floor space based on those percentages. Catalog rental does still get more than it should bt I don't know how to take more space away from it.

[steve]

Wouldn't it be better to look at the margin for allocating floor space and inventory $?  Sell-thru has a typical margin of 30-40% and already paid-for catalog is 100% margin.

[IVR]

Sellthru for us is used product. I've never been able to make much off of new so we just stick with our PV as well as what we buy cheap from customers. I'd agree with you Steve if it was just new product.

[steve]

Gotcha.

We are in the process of pricing all of our catalog (over 7500) for sale.  About half done and we are seeing a definite improvement in sales.  Games is another story...

[genx-mike]

We do about 80k a year in new sellthru at our store. The key, as always, is to have enough hard to find titles that a person is impressed enough to let you do special orders for them. And to make sure you have a good source of distributors so that you can get the special orders in quickly.  New sellthru has faded ALOT in the last couple of months but we are still get good margins on the dicsount stuff we are selling. 50% or better profit on a lot of it. We carry about 1000 titles for sale at any given time.

We keep the used sales seperate.

[houseofvideo]

Gen x, how close are you to the nearest wal M? best buy?  We have pulled the plug on most of our new catalog sell thru.  It just drives me crazy when i see titles in the sunday circulars for $2.99 on titles that would cost me $4.50 from distributors.  Our new sell thru business was just taking up space and not really moving.  We do great sell thru business on adult and PV.

[mcmarc]

My best seller of all time is the Alejandro Jodorwosky box set.  Gen X and I probably have the same type of clientele, so there's no fear of Walmart and Best Buy, especially with smaller titles being pushed off the shelf.

I have a $9.99 or 3 for $25 bin.  Instead of blindly ordering I pick and choose like TRUE STORIES or WHERE THE BUFFALO ROAM.  It does pretty well, but could do better.

Gen X, do you sell anime?  That's one market that I wouldn't mind tapping into but can't figure it out.

[genx-mike]

Anime used to be huge but is a dead market now. All the kids just watch it on youtube or the other million places you can see it for free online. It has seriously hurt the North America anime industry.

We have 2 WalMarts (soon to be 3) within a 10 minute drive of the store plus a Best Buy and a Future Shop (which is the Canadian equivalent of Best Buy and is actually owned by Best Buy).

We sell lots of offbeat stuff. I've sold 40 copies of Waking Life this year. I've sold 20 copies of Jacob's Ladder. Other big sellers include: The Goonies, Like Water for Chocolate, Babette's Feast, The Last Waltz, etc. Oh yes, Criterion.

These are all titles that if a fan sees them, they will likely buy it because it is pure impulse. We keep the stuff reasonably priced so that they don't feel like they have been ripped off if they do go to Best Buy or Wal-Mart (if those places even have the title). The reality is, though, that most of these people didn't even know they wanted to buy Nosferatu until they spot it on the wall and realize that they can finally own it.

Then, of course, you need to sell those people on the fact that not only do you carry the weird and wonderful titles that they have always wanted to get but that you can special order pretty much anything they want for them as well.

As I was writing this, I had a customer ask me if we had a copy of The Red Balloon (the original one) for sale. Well of course we do, so I sold it to him. Does Best Buy have one on their shelves? Who knows? But I did when someone asked. It is the fifth one we've sold this year.