Zia Comics Is More Than A Game Store

Originally from the East Coast, in Indiana, Zia Comics store owner Troy once resided before moving to New Mexico. In the early days, Troy’s first exposure to gaming started with his grandmother, who taught him Checkers and Chess. Once he was older and joined the military, he moved often and played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons. Magic: The Gathering would also pique his interest, so he learned how to play it.

Troy says he branched into gaming and opening a game store when the store in his area was closing. Moreover, he says there wasn’t a good comic store in the area. Ultimately, gamers were looking for a place to play. Currently, there are two Zia Comics locations: one in Las Cruces (the larger store) and the other in Alamogordo. According to Wizards of the Coast’s Store & Events Locator, it’s one of two stores in Las Cruces. It’s also one of two in Alamogordo. However, it is absent from the Store & Events Locator page.

Per New Mexico’s Secretary of State page, “Zia” comes from the red sun symbol on the New Mexico state flag.

The Early Lessons Learned When Opening Zia Comics

Before Zia Comics, Troy worked as a subcontractor at NASA. He continued for the first couple of years of the store as well. Yet, he would switch to full-time at the store once he could get health care without needing an employer. As of this writing, he’s been running the store for 13 years and counting since 2012. After spending 10 years running the first store, the second location came to fruition. Naturally, challenges exist when opening a store. However, there were no surprises the second go-around. Some examples of opening a game store include dealing with contractors. From his experience, contractors never hit a promised deadline. Moreover, “whenever you’re dealing with a city, don’t expect things to move quickly.” While there were no surprises the second go-around, these issues pushed back the opening of the second store.

Zia Comics’ four employees are all managers and split (2 to 1) between the two stores. Troy entrusts his employees to be capable of any task at the constantly changing store. For example, Troy shares that they’ve expanded into model building, arcades, and Warhammer Miniatures. However, they do not sell single cards. He notes that it was a huge time suck due to the time involved and discrepancy over card condition. Still, he’ll bring in new products if they’re performing well, but if they’re declining, he’ll remove them from the store.

“I’ve stopped by 3 times, made 2 purchases so far. Everyone has been friendly, and I’m happy with their stock.”

-Angel Rochel, customer review on the Zia Comics Alamogordo Facebook page.

How To Determine Which Products To Carry

Conversely, older comics in the store have better margins, and Troy sees some bleedover of those customers to gaming. From a business standpoint, Troy says, “Every square foot should be making you money.” Moreover, “every product needs to earn its keep.” If a product is not doing well, he asks himself two questions:

1. Is it something they’re doing wrong?
2. How are they displaying the product?

Troy tells us that Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon are huge at the store. However, he notes none of the new tradeable card games (TCGs) have had the “staying power.” He believes other TCGs copy and need employees or customers to champion them to bring them into the store. Furthermore, he says the community has asked him to carry more games.

Regarding the games sold at the store, Troy sells more board games than TCGs. Additionally, they host 15-20 people for board game nights. A key point regarding board games that Troy notes is “everybody always wants the new hotness.” He further states that the issue with this concept is the volatility around board games. Moreover, he believes the three things needed for a successful board game are:

1. It’s a good game.
2. It hits the “hotness scale.”
3. It’s available to order.

However, Troy does not sell allocations on board games like he does with TCGs.

Troy notes that bottlenecks with distributors exist. However, he believes “manufacturers should think long and hard about their distribution because that can make or break a game.” The focus is to solicit feedback from players and employees when deciding what to order. As such, these decisions go hand-in-hand with allocations from the distributor.

From Zia Comics To Owning Conventions

If running two game stores wasn’t impressive enough, Troy also owns three conventions. They are El Paso Comic Con, Anime El Paso, and El Paso HorrorFest. There are, however, several hidden costs to doing so. There was a fourth convention, Las Cruces Comic Con, however, it is no longer running. With the employees running the store, Troy manages paperwork for the conventions. This includes several contracts with multiple entities. However, he still visits the stores as often as he can. To help spread the word about the stores, Zia Comics is a sponsor of the conventions.

The conventions were small to start, which was important to keeping the operation sustainable. An example is using the same venue space for each event. Troy says he uses every square inch of space at the venue and doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel. If he sees something he likes at an event he attends, he’ll implement it at his events. One of the major expenses is paying the featured guest, which entails their travel, hotel, and per diem guarantee. Should the guest fall short on the per diem, Troy covers the difference. That said, not having other conventions in the area helps regarding attendance. However, he says attendees, vendors, and the featured guest must be happy for a successful convention.

Owning A Business & The Approach To Expansion

Owning businesses, Troy is always multitasking, and describes his responsibilities as a 24/7 job. Although time is his biggest challenge, he has to prioritize and plan a Saturday outing to take a break. Even though the store and conventions take a lot of time, Troy says the reward is seeing people enjoy themselves.

As to the likelihood of a third store, he won’t open a location where he’s competing with other stores. His preference is to open a store in an underserved area. Troy has four components when opening a new store: population, demographics, age range, and median income. His philosophy is to keep up with where the audience is and market to them appropriately.

Taking Care of Employees & Beyond Gaming & Conventions

Although the conventions are time-consuming, Troy is still hands-on with Zia Comics. He doesn’t like being unaware of what’s going on, but he works on letting his employees do things themselves. One struggle shared was letting go of ordering gaming inventory, although comics are still under his purview. Overall, he’d rather do the ordering himself so he can blame himself for any mistakes. Moreover, they have a point-of-sale system for tracking orders back to the store’s inception, except for Zia Comics’ first year. That said, Troy takes care of his employees. He will not tolerate anyone treating his employees poorly and would rather lose a disrespectful customer than a good employee.

Reflecting on Zia Comics, Troy is branching into avenues outside conventions and gaming. For the time being, he’s trying to maintain the status quo. However, he bought an old movie theater in Almogardo to transform into an eSports venue, and showcase independent films to cover costs. If that wasn’t enough, Troy plans to open a bar and has the building, which needs renovating.

Follow Zia Comics on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, or their website.

Would you like your store featured? If so, reach out to us via our contact page.