I live in an area where there’s a ton of vintage goods / collector’s shops. Many have been around for a long, long time, but a brand new one just opened up in a pretty high-traffic area. I went to check it out, and the shelves were totally sparse. Like I’ve seen more stock in a cramped comic-con booth than I have this entire store. On top of that, they’re only open 5 days a week.

I’ve been mulling over starting my own retail store and just starting to look into the costs associated I’m totally baffled as to how they could pull this off. It feels as though even if someone were to buy their entire stock in a day, they wouldn’t be able to make rent for more than 2 months.

Are some of these stores a base of operations for another business? I knew a comic book store like that didn’t make any money, but instead the owner held a monthly comic convention and he’d use the store to advertise it.