At The Counter: Online Retail And Auctions With Guest Retailer Jon “Hemmacuda” Hemmer

Welcome to At The Counter, Comicon.com’s regular retailer column where normally our Features editor Tony Thornley chats with Greg Gage of Salt Lake City’s Black Cat Comics. But this past weekend, Greg was at Salt Lake’s FanX comic convention, so Tony sat down with a retailer he’s made friends with in another way — Jon Hemmer, AKA TikTok’s Hemmacuda Comics (or Hemma for short).

This time around we get to talk about running a business in a completely different way than a traditional store, how trends affect his business and more.

Tony: Hey Hemma! Let’s start with a softball. What’s your geek origin story?

Hemma: Hey Tony! I got into comics from playing Marvel Rivals. My friend Matt that I play with works at a comic book store in Frankfurt, IL (Amazing Fantasy) and I’d always ask him about the new skins in Rivals and the story they came from in the comics. Late one Tuesday evening he was tired of answering all my questions and convinced me to wander into my LCS for new comic book day, and my latest hyperfixation was born.

Tony: How did that lead into getting into comics as a business?

Hemma: I was already making social media content playing a mobile game called Brawl Stars, but the whole time I wished I had something to sell. Monetizing social media content is extremely difficult and inconsistent, you’re basically asking for donations (gifts) or getting a small amount of ad revenue. Around this time I kept getting WhatNot ads in my TikTok feed. I was already doing the video game lives on Tiktok so I knew I could do lives. I approached Jay at MaximuM Comics (my LCS) about acquiring inventory for WhatNot and he graciously agreed to help me out and let me try it.

Tony: So comics retail is such an interesting business, with not just the traditional business concerns to think about, but also gimmicks, trends, speculation and so much more. So how do you launch a business in that environment?

Hemma: I try to break down larger problems I can’t solve into smaller problems I can. I think predicting trends or market moves is extremely difficult and I doubt my ability to do it. Selling comics online really just boils down to can I get traffic? If the answer to that is yes, the next question is what part of that traffic, if any, are buyers? And then it continues to expand from there, How much do they buy? How often? What’s my margin? etc. So my goal when I launched was just to start testing and answering these questions I had.

Tony: What led to your decision to start an online store?

Hemma: I just really wanted something to sell online, to insert myself into an already present stream of commerce, like selling cups of coffee. My friend Owen said that to me one time (He owns a coffee shop) and it stuck with me. People buy comics just like they buy coffee, I thought maybe they would buy from me? I was growing my presence online and I saw selling comics as a way to better monetize my content than ads or gifts.

Tony: When most people think of an online business, they think of either a traditional storefront, whether it’s one powered by platforms like Shopify, affiliate systems like Amazon’s, or an eBay storefront. That’s not really where you’ve found your niche though.

How did you start streaming auctions?

Hemma: Well it comes back to the original question I had, can I get traffic? I know I can get views on social media, but I’ve never had success redirecting those views to anything off platform. I’ve tried to get my viewers to watch me on Twitch, or go to my Shopify, or watch my WhatNot shows, and it just never converted for me in a meaningful way. The things that did work for me to gain traffic were running ads on WhatNot, and giving away money (doing $1 starts when I absolutely did not have the traffic to do so profitably). 

I left WhatNot because it wasn’t clear to me that the prices I was getting for the books would ever come up. And as much as I’d love to have offline sales on my Shopify, I don’t bother with it because I haven’t found a way to drive traffic there, so I just focus on what is working for me, live auctions.

Tony: Streaming is a lot different from a brick and mortar business. When you describe to someone how you run your business, how do you describe a retail business that’s a mix of live sales, retail and being an influencer in a way that makes sense to them?

Hemma: I think my only job is to create good content, if no one cares about my shorts or lives then I’m not going to sell any books. I think any business should ask themselves “when my customer is not here what are they doing?” And my answer to that is they’re most likely at home scrolling on their phones. If you want to reach your customers at home you have to make good content people want to watch.

Tony: What’s a typical day in the life of running your business?

Hemma: I spend most of my mornings wrangling my toddler (which I wouldn’t trade for anything, I love being a dad). My afternoons and evenings I spend reading comics (for content), filming content, or doing “lives.” I also do all the ordering of books, supplies, and one day a week my wife and I spend packing all the orders from the weekend. The in-between time, I spend stressing out about the business as any other good entrepreneur would.

Tony: So, obviously you have to run your auctions to make money, but I think the big question is what and how you run them. I know in your case, you run a new comics stream at the beginning of every week, but how do you schedule what else to run?

Hemma: Really my ultimate goal is just to do $1 starts every show. I hate pricing comics, it’s super time consuming and I believe it’s not a very good use of my time. I try to focus on things that scale. I’d way rather auction a $10 book for $5 than spend hundreds of hours pricing books. My problem right now is I sometimes have enough buyers to do $1 starts and other times I don’t, so for those shows I have to pivot to pulling specific titles for the buyers that are there and running those at cover price. But ultimately I don’t do any scheduling, I’m just trying to grow so I can $1 start everything.

Tony: What have you found the most success with?

Hemma: Videos? Telling comic book stories. Inventory? Back issues have the best margin. Lives? Being kind.

Tony: What’s been the biggest driver for you for sales — gimmicks like blind bags, variants, new inventory, vintage/back issues or focused shows?

Hemma: Blind bags for sure! I think the evolution of live selling is a big reason why the card market has been blowing up the last few years. Pokemon cards have grown at an incredible pace and I think a big reason for that is social media and live selling. People love ripping blind bags on stream the same way they love ripping Pokemon packs. I think it’s easier because you can see what cover you got before you buy another one, in a way that is not really possible in a shop.

Tony: What’s the #1 challenge you’d describe for someone interested in starting to do streaming auctions?

Hemma: Getting traffic for sure. Getting traffic is very hard. I remember when I first started the highest quality content I was able to put out would get a couple hundred views. But the good news is it’s free to make videos and start trying. You can iterate until you find something that works, and then double down!

Tony: Besides obviously getting paid, what’s been your favorite part?

Hemma: I’m a riff streamer. When I have a really good chat I really enjoy doing the live streams. Those streams, the auctions just become background to a really good discussion going on about stories or pop culture or whatever. So much fun. Also I’ve had a handful of people ask me to sign their comics, which is mind blowing to me that someone wants me to deface their comic, but I’m so humbled and grateful to be asked and I have so much fun signing books.

Tony: I know you’ve been on a few different platforms. Which one has become your favorite? Why?

Hemma: I actually don’t think WhatNot is going to make it long term. How are they going to compete with Tiktok or inevitably when Instagram starts live auctions? WhatNot has to pay to advertise on those platforms, and I’m sure the conversion of that advertising for WhatNot is far lower than Tiktok or Instagram just throwing you into their own live auctions. There is so much friction to downloading a new app and setting up an account and payment info. In my opinion, WhatNot is the best platform to sell on with the worst buyers. Tiktok has good buyers but is the worst platform to sell on. For example I know a guy that got banned on Tiktok for selling a reprint of absolute batman, because Tiktok doesn’t understand what a comic reprint is. They thought it was counterfeit. They use AI for all of their moderation and it’s full of false positives. You can’t get any seller support at Tiktok. It’s just a chatbot they let you talk to that’s always wrong. It’s really a nightmare. Those problems don’t exist on WhatNot but on WhatNot everyone is begging for giveaways and bargains. For me I already had a small audience on Tiktok from the Brawl Stars lives, so it made sense for me to go there, but it’s really pick your poison. I’ve been meaning to try ebay lives, although their fees are high.

Tony: What’s next for you in your burgeoning online empire?

Hemma: I honestly don’t have a lot of ambition, not like when I was younger at least. My priority is really on spending time with my family. I know I could put in more hours and very likely have a much larger business but I’ve just never been very focused on money. I hope I continue to grow but if this is my peak in social media, I’m fine with that too.

Tony: Thanks Jon, really appreciate the time you took to chat!

You can find Jon, as well as links to all his social media and shop locations at hemmacuda.com!