A post hit the top of r/smallbusiness this week that I have not been able to stop thinking about.

A comic and board game shop owner - 8 years in, mid-sized college town - wrote:

"The town doesn't know me. I've had people walk past the storefront for years and ask 'wait, this has been here?' Local newspaper has never written about us. Chamber of commerce doesn't include us in anything. The university's gaming club rents space at the public library when I would obviously host them if anyone asked."

He shows up at chamber breakfasts. He sponsors the high school robotics club. He runs open events. None of it has moved the needle on broader town awareness.

And then he asked the question that almost no business owner asks out loud:

"Maybe a comic and game shop is supposed to be a niche spot for the people who want it, and the town walking past us is just the deal."

That framing - "is it supposed to be this way?" - is actually one of the most valuable things you can ask about your business.

The two different businesses inside every niche shop

There are two completely different business strategies hiding inside that shop, and they have almost nothing in common.

Strategy A: Build a local institution. Get written up in the newspaper. Have the town know your name. Become the place everyone has heard of, even if they've never walked in.

Strategy B: Build a tight community. Serve the 60 people who love you with everything you have. Deepen the relationship. Let them be the marketing.

The owner has been trying to execute Strategy A while running Strategy B. That gap - between the business you have and the one you're marketing toward - is where a lot of energy gets wasted.

Here is the uncomfortable truth: Strategy A might never work for a comic shop, regardless of effort. A town that doesn't read comics is not going to start reading comics because the local shop sponsored the robotics team. The audience for comic shops, board game nights, and tabletop gaming is self-selecting. These people find each other. They already know where to go.

What "60 regulars" actually means

Let's run the numbers, because they're worth running.

If 60 customers come in monthly and spend an average of $50 per visit, that's $3,000 in monthly recurring revenue from that core group alone. Every other customer - the walk-ins, the tourists, the curious college students - is on top of that.

A business with 60 deeply loyal customers is not a failing business. It is a subscription business without the subscription.

The question isn't "why doesn't the whole town know me?" The question is: "Am I getting everything I can from the 60 people who already love me?"

That might look like:

• A monthly membership or loyalty program ($15-25/month for a free game night slot, early access to new releases, a discount)
• Private events for regulars (release parties, tournaments, paint-and-play nights)
• A simple referral ask: "You know anyone else who'd love this place? Bring them in, I'll throw in a free pack of something."

The math on deepening relationships with 60 people who already love you is almost always better than spending the same energy trying to convert 600 strangers who've walked past your door for years.

When "town visibility" is actually worth chasing

None of this means broad visibility is never worth it. It just means you need to be specific about what you're chasing.

The owner mentioned the university gaming club renting space at the public library. That is a concrete, winnable target - not "the whole town," but one group of 20-30 people who already do exactly what his shop is built for, and who apparently don't know he exists.

That's the kind of visibility that pays off. Not "chamber of commerce breakfasts" (the people there are not buying comics) but "the exact community that would walk through my door if they knew I was here."

Targeted visibility - showing up in the one Facebook group, the one subreddit, the one Discord server where your actual customer lives - beats broad local awareness almost every time for a niche business.

The question under the question

The owner ended his post by asking: "Did you eventually crack town-wide visibility, or did you stop trying? And which decision was right looking back?"

Most shop owners in the comments answered the same way: they stopped trying to be for everyone, focused on the people who already showed up, and the business got healthier.

There's a version of "making it" that looks like being written up in the local paper and having the mayor know your name. And there's another version that looks like your regulars asking if you'll still be here next year - and meaning it.

Both are real. Only one of them requires the whole town to care.

Source: r/smallbusiness, thread by u/[comic shop owner], posted April 30, 2026 - reddit.com/r/smallbusiness