Brian/Justin,
Do you have a brick and mortar presence currently? If not, do you feel you could benefit from a physical presence? I got back into collecting back at the tail end of 2022 and at that point jumped head-first into vintage. I'm a junk wax kid so I was starting from ground zero from a vintage perspective. I've made quite a significant investment and in order to keep replenishing the coffers I've been fairly active selling as well. Now that I've gotten a taste of the business side of it, my challenge has been finding inventory (some to possibly keep but generally for resale). I'm curious if having a physical presence could facilitate inventory coming to me. I realize this is additional overhead but curious your thoughts and/or experience.
Thank you.
--Dan
Brian/Justin,
Do you have a brick and mortar presence currently? If not, do you feel you could benefit from a physical presence? I got back into collecting back at the tail end of 2022 and at that point jumped head-first into vintage. I'm a junk wax kid so I was starting from ground zero from a vintage perspective. I've made quite a significant investment and in order to keep replenishing the coffers I've been fairly active selling as well. Now that I've gotten a taste of the business side of it, my challenge has been finding inventory (some to possibly keep but generally for resale). I'm curious if having a physical presence could facilitate inventory coming to me. I realize this is additional overhead but curious your thoughts and/or experience.
Thank you.
--Dan
Thanks for the question Dan. I currently have a private office in Santa Rosa that I work out of and see customers at. It's not a full-fledge retail shop just yet. I plan to grow into a larger space in time, though don't want to overinvest too early.
Having a physical presence definitely helps and more and more customers have been coming in these past few months. A woman just called the other day about a Babe Ruth autograph and I look forward to her bringing it in!
@bosstwinsnd one challenge I hear from bricks and mortar friends is if you want to be a "local card shop," you gotta have new product / sealed wax. Getting it in the first place is political / complicated, and not even all that lucrative until you are big (you have to buy lots of crap product to get the good stuff). I'm sure there are plenty of vintage shops--might need to get into memorabilia etc to make that fly? Yes, collections just walk in the store if you have a shop--but buying right is hard, and you also would realy need to know / learn modern because that's what most people are coming in to dump.
@chvadmin There's always a catch! Thanks for the feedback, Matt. Definitely a lot of nuance to consider.
Living in New York City, having a brick-and-mortar presence here just isn't an option. I don't see this aspect of the business for me in the future but I guess you never know. LCS's absolutely get more business over the phone and walk ins than I could ever generate myself.
