Paid a visit to Bristol’s Independent comic Store,Excelsior!,on Wednesday to find them quite busy. Apparently their games evenings are attracting more people as well. Interesting to see they have a hundred standing order customers now -and some pretty big SOs they are,too.
By contrast,I met up with Messrs Brown and Northall yesterday afternoon and later on Mr Brown and myself visited Borders while Mr Northall visited Forbidden Planet. After a while we went to see what was keeping him [but he'd already been in and out]. We were both surprised to find that,on Thursday [The busiest day in comic stores] at 5.30pm there was no one inside other than staff milling around. At that point I recalled how I’d asked the FP manager at the time whether they’d like to place a regular ad on CBO. He laughed out loudly and sneered:”This is Forbidden Planet -we DON’T need to advertise”.
Obviously.
I see more ex-FP regular customers in Excelsior! now but all complain that FP just isn’t a friendly store anymore. And complaints about changes instore [on which I cannot comment as I got fed up and left FP behind me in May].
Sad days but in a recession customers let their feet do the walking and they seem to like Excelsior!
Don’t forget,however,that Area 51 is still in Gloucester Road.
