Rook's Comics and Games

As a business owner, I like to keep my eye on the commercial real estate market in Bozeman. One interesting thing I have found is demographic research by a company called Grubb & Ellis. They provide this information so that prospective business owners can pick out retail locations that fit with their business plan. This company does detailed demographic research for almost every property they list (I can't vouch for the accuracy of said research). For the sake of this post, let's assume that the data they provide is correct. For reference, here is a link to the demographics data. There is a lot of interesting data included here beginning with the population in the surrounding area. If we are talking about Rook's, I think the 5 mile radius is going to provide the most accurate information. People in Montana are used to driving long distances so even a large radius is probably appropriate. The total adult population within 5 miles of Rook's is 40,408. The total daytime population is 54,061. This means that roughly 14,000 people come into this part of Bozeman per day. That seems like a big number. A 5 mile radius covers all of Bozeman so those 14,000 commuters are all from the surrounding area, most likely from Belgrade. The next interesting thing I noticed is the median age of the adult population. In this case, it is 38. That median age seems really good for a game store. Most of our customers are between the ages of 18 and 45 so a median age of 38 seems great. Along with the median age of 38, we can see that the two larges age groups are 21-24 and 25-29. This again fits in nicely with our observed customers and seems to indicate that we are in a good town for a game store. The next set of interesting data is population change. This shows that Bozeman has grown 29.21% over the last 8 years. This data seems close to the official census. This also seems to indicate that Rook's is in a good place. Our growth does depend a lot on population growth, especially now that we are getting a little more established. If Bozeman can continue to grow, at even half that pace, I will be very happy. Along with population growth is housing growth. We can see that renter occupied housing is almost as high as owner occupied housing. This reflects two things. One, the transitory nature of college students. MSU students are a sizable portion of the population. Most of those students are going to be renting which seems to be reflected in these numbers. The high number of renter occupied units probably also reflects the high real estate value in Bozeman. Bozeman is a difficult place to buy your first home. The high prices will force a lot of people to rent instead of own. I don't think this number is inherently bad or good for a business but it is interesting nonetheless. The next set of data is income data. This shows that the median income in a 5 mile radius is $43,976. This is surprising when compared to the Montana median income of $43,948 and a United states median income of $52,029.  I thought the median income would be lower than the Nations but I am very surprised that we are right inline with Montana as a whole. I believed that Bozeman was one of the more affluent cities in Montana. This number again is probably a reflection of the rural community and the large number of college students living in Bozeman. Median income is often used because it is not skewed by extremely high incomes. In this case, the median may be skewed by a large number of low income earners. This seems like a reasonable assumption as there are 2880 people with incomes below $20,000. The mean income within 5 miles of Rook's is $66,055. This seems like a much better number. That number seems more inline with the kind of affluent community that I think of as Bozeman. So what does all of this mean? Well, several factors we looked at today tell me that we picked a good place to have a game store. The age of the population seems perfect. The income of the population, while a little on the low side, seems to be appropriate. The only real problem is the lack of population. Next week I will compare this data with data from a store in Concord, California that I consider very successful. It will be interesting to see how things stack up with them. Try to think of how their demographics will look and then you can see how well your perception agrees with reality.