It's going well. We're working on finding our niche.
Yeah, it takes time. And paying
very close attention to what your customers want, which can change over time.
The other store in town is much more MtG focused, but one of our co-owners runs the local 40k league, so we're focusing more on wargames and, my specialty, rpgs.
My store is about 2/3 a Comic Store. I'm good at D&D, comics, and board games (in that order) and my long-time employee is good at Magic, comics, Warhammer (in particularly painting the minis), more board games (than me), and a few other RPGs.
I've built and curated a pretty extensive indie and small press collection, and have been really surprised that they sell as well, if not better, than D&D.
Your section on indies is MUCH better than mine. My customer base is
extremely mainstream, both with comics (Marvel & DC by a mile) and games (Magic & D&D over everything else). We
wish that we could get into more stuff, and have it sell, but we
already carry more indies than actually makes sense sales-wise, just to have them.
And it's a vicious cycle! We support what sells, which is mainstream, so mainstream stuff is what we "look" like we focus on, so we attract mainstream customers (and not as much indy-minded ones) and so on. Still, we DO have some (as much as we can afford to). I'd love to have more.
We all gotta pick our battles.
I also own a cabinet shop, and we built the gaming tables specifically for WH40k and other similar games.
That is AWESOME. I have one custom table built by one of our volunteer DMs, which is nice. But the other two (can only fit three - I have a hundred thousand back issue comics to fit in!) are just fold-up tables with plywood boards fitted on top (painted green).
Your store honestly looks nicer than mine, because a lot of my fixtures are old and mismatched (having acquired them over decades, usually on the cheap). I've been slowly upgrading, now that I'm not dirt-poor, but it takes time, money, and a plan. And there is a LOT of weight to move to do anything. In some ways, it would be much easier to start fresh - but that would be VERY expensive.
I wish you all the best in this venture! Have fun, too!