Caveman opens second Springfield store

by Paul Schreiber

SBJ Reporter

pschreiber@sbj.net

Caveman is evolving.

The Springfield Caveman store at 2856 S. Glenstone will be joined by a north side location at 2631 N. Kansas Expwy. on April 24. The new store will be known as Vintage Stock, while the Glenstone address is called Caveman by Vintage Stock.

Ultimately, all stores will be rebranded as Vintage Stock by the end of 2005, said Monte McNew, vice president of The Book Barn LLC, the stores' parent corporation.

The new, 5,000-square-foot store in the Town & Country Center will have eight employees and is expected to turn about $500,000 in receipts by the end of 2004, said McNew.

The location is leased from Bill Jester with Town & Country LLC, and the lease term is five years with multiple options, he added. The north-side site was chosen to tap into a market the south Glenstone location wasn't reaching, McNew said.

The original Caveman store in Springfield was opened in the Fremont Shopping Center in 1992, moving to its current, 4,300-square-foot space in the Brentwood Center South in 1999, McNew said.

The eight-employee Glenstone location pulled in more than $1 million in revenues in 2003, he added, with 2003 revenues for The Book Barn's nine locations hitting about $7 million.

Store inventory consists of pre-owned items, such as video games, movies, music, sports cards and collectibles, clothing, posters, comic books and action figures, said Rodney Spriggs, president.

The target age demographic, while fluid, tends to be about 12 to 35, Spriggs said.

The Book Barn as a whole employs about 100 and operates eight Caveman locations and one Book Barn store, McNew said.

Vintage Stock

The Book Barn got its start when entrepreneur Ron Erwin launched The Book Barn store in Joplin in 1980. Erwin later established the first Caveman store in Springfield in 1992 with Ken Caviness. Over time, locations were added in Springdale, Ark., and two in Tulsa. In 2002, all five properties were sold for nearly $2 million to four of Erwin's employees, each of whom worked at various store sites, said McNew.

In addition to McNew, the firm's other principals are Spriggs, who worked at The Book Barn in Joplin; Ken Caviness, secretary, who worked at the Joplin store and did accounting for the firm; and Steve Wilcox, vice president, who ran the first Tulsa store, McNew added.

Caviness, a self-proclaimed "comic nerd," provided Ron Erwin with "seed stock to start selling baseball cards" in 1981. He also provided accounting services to Erwin through his Monett-based firm, Caviness & Company. "Caveman" derives from Caviness' name.

Following the 2002 acquisition, the Joplin-based company added four more Caveman stores in Tulsa, Okla.; Rogers, Ark.; and two in Overland Park, Kan. The new north Springfield store will be the company's 10th location.

Franchising

The Book Barn LLC is also considering franchising possibilities as early as spring 2005, McNew said.

Getting new people on board and operating their own stores is the immediate objective behind franchising options, said Caviness.

In the past, the idea of franchising was discarded as something better suited to larger businesses. But it began to make sense as a way to multiply a successful sales idea, Caviness said.

In franchising, the search for talent to launch new stores is simplified because "you've got your talent coming to you and paying you to train them."

Franchisees get the benefit of brand recognition and in-place operating procedures, Caviness said.

How franchising is finally done will depend, in part, on whether the principals want to offer single-unit franchise stores for sale or do an area development agreement, said Craig Slavin, president of 24-year-old Franchise Architects, a Bannockburn, Ill.-based firm, that is consulting the company.

Feasibility and assessment research is the first move to see where the company is and if franchising is a reasonable move, Slavin said. His audit examines where a company is in its operations, marketing, advertising, legal structure, sales, financial and organizational status, human resources, information technology, imaging and branding, he added.

Slavin has worked with resale businesses, including Play It Again Sports and Neptune's Closet, in developing franchise models.

Essential to the process is producing a "repeatable model that can be transferred to others," he said.

An advantage for The Book Barn is that it already has several stores in various locations up and running, so company owners know it's replicable, Slavin said.

Assuming franchising makes sense, a suitable model would be ready to market by early 2005, Slavin said, who does "value billing" for his services based on plan development, assessing what personnel he needs and other costs associated with establishing a franchise.

While not disclosing his charges to the company in particular, Slavin added that by the time it's all said and done a company the size of this one is probably looking at $200,000. Legal fees for document drafting usually come in at about $30,000.

Initial success with early franchisees buying into the firm are essential in selling the concept down line, Caviness said, adding that stores typically cost about $250,000 to get operational.

E-commerce

Expanding revenue is the idea behind adding Internet purchasing power to the company's Web site, McNew said. E-commerce will allow products to be offered online and sold from one store to another, he added. The company's Web site is www.vintagestock.com.

Jonathan Warren, owner of Springfield-based ilogic Solutions, set up the company for e-commerce. Securing Internet sales is determined wholly by how "determined they are and how much time they want to put forth on that to make the site successful," he said.

Warren likens himself to a builder who creates the structure, while it's the responsibility of the business to bring in the customers.

Warren said the charge for such services depends on the complexity of what the company wants and the work involved, but normally fees begin at about $1,500. After the system is established the company itself will maintain and update the e-commerce section of its Web site.