A Boston-based comic shop has opened its doors within The Westchester mall in White Plains.
Newbury Comics is more than just a comic book store. Yes, there are shelves stocked with the adventures of Batman, Spiderman and the like, but that”™s just scratching the surface of this new 5,000-square-foot wonderland of popular culture.
Graphic T-shirts printed with Star Wars characters or David Bowie”™s face line the walls of the novelty store. Pokemon, The Legend of Zelda and Harry Potter memorabilia each take up residence on separate tables, offering bobble heads, pillows and stuffed animals. Music lovers will be pleased to find vinyl records, with everything from The Beatles to Outkast.
The comic shop, which opened in August, traces its roots to a small storefront along Boston”™s eclectic Newbury Street. The store at 268 Newbury St. was founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology students John Brusger and Mike Dreese in 1978.
Initially, the shop solely supplied an array of comic books, though it soon expanded to offer music, clothing and other pop culture items.
“The key to us remaining competitive has always been driven by a respect for independent ideas and alternative forms of expression,” said company co-founder and CEO Dreese. “We embrace all artistic ideas and let our customers decide what they like.”
To maintain its success over the years, Newbury Comics relies on a system of trial and error, experimenting with new items and scrapping any existing products customers do not react well to, said Duncan Browne, the company’s COO. “Newbury Comics has always been very responsive to our customers’ tastes and interests,” he said. “We have a long history of anticipating, responding to and evolving with our customers’ interests.”
Browne credits this close relationship with the customer for the comic shop”™s longevity.
“Listening to them, finding things they want when or even before they know they want them, constantly trying new things and surprising customers with items they haven’t seen before,” Browne said. “(That) is what has kept us healthy and growing when others have not been able to move with the times and survive the changes in customer tastes.”
“We”™re the fun part of people”™s lives,” Dreese said.
Now a 400-employee company that recently celebrated its 39th anniversary, Newbury Comics ships its products to customers across the globe.
The company operates 27 stores on the East Coast. On Long Island, Newbury Comics last year opened a shop in Roosevelt Field, a mall that, like The Westchester, is owned by Indianapolis-based Simon Property Group. Dreese said the Garden City store has been “extremely well-received by the community” and its success led Newbury Comics to look to other nearby areas to expand its presence.
The Westchester store is roughly 10 percent smaller than the company”™s average-sized store, though shops range from 3,500 to 11,000 square feet. “We are able to operate in a fairly wide range of store sizes,” Browne said.
Browne said that while the Westchester store offers the same stock as Newbury”™s other locations across New England, from board games to onesies, the company refined its product selection to represent “the best of the best. This store has the best selection of items in those categories,” he said.
Dreese said the company is thrilled to open its doors within another Simon-owned mall in New York.
“Newbury Comics provides a highly stimulating, experiential pop culture environment, which I feel fits in nicely with Simon”™s bold vision for the future of the mall,” he said.
That vision includes a multimillion-dollar renovation project Simon is undertaking at the 890,000-square-foot, 12-acre mall. Earlier this year, Simon unveiled the mall”™s new Savor dining area, which sits on its fourth floor, along with a new children’s play area and technology lounge. Other enhancements at the 150-store mall include modernized elevators and lobbies, all new facades on major mall entrances and new landscaping and flooring.
