Category: Retailing

…or “It is October 8th and my rent is now over a week late. PLEASE BUY THESE.”

So I don’t really talk about the real ins and outs of store business very often, mostly because so many of our customers read the blog and I always get a little creeped out when they seem to know more about what’s going on ‘behind the scenes’ here at the store than I think they should. But the recent story about someone finding a copy of the first appearance of Batman in their attic, coupled with comics retailer Mike Sterling’s recent post about buying comics off of the general public in that sorta situation led me to want to post about it a little.

First and foremost, I hate buying people’s comic collections.

I’m pretty lucky in that, generally, I don’t actually have to do it all that often, what with the store’s owner being a CGC-level grading expert, and a long list of friends that can do similar for us. Five minutes with a stack of comics and the owner can give a solid guess as to condition, value, and how much to pay for the lot. His efficiency at purchasing comics is a wonderful compliment to my aversion to same, and usually things work out well. But the past two weeks saw the owner on vacation, and that combined with school starting and rent needing to be paid and all that by half of the city, I probably picked up something in the neighborhood of 8 or 9 collections of comics while he was away. The material we picked up ranged from a poor art student selling her 20 beat-up alternative comics like Eightball and Hate, to four full long boxes of late 80s/early 90s drek, including a full box that included (and I’m not kidding here) only copies of X-Force #1 and X-Men #1. I bet when that guy bought 50 or 60 copies of X-Force #1, he wasn’t expecting a massive negative98% return on his investment, huh?

The best collection I bought was from a fella who was moving out of town and wanting to part with his beloved collection of material from the 1980s, almost exclusively bought at The Beguiling. That was awesome, and full of comics that I had (quite honestly) never seen before, as well as real rarities. Just digging through two massive suitcases of comics like that was fun in and of itself, and one of the more enjoyable aspects of picking up a collection, wading through not only rare comics, but actual comics history.

But mostly? No.

There was the sweet old guy who came in with a painstakingly collected complete run of Alex Toth Zorro comics, including some of the later Gold Key reprints. That’s a situation where a couple of points of difference in the comic’s grade changes what you sell it for by quite a bit of money. The pressure to grade and price the comic accurately is definitely on, and then you add in the fact that he clearly loves these comics and he needs the money that day with the implication that something terrible has happened to him, and he needs this money more than the joy of owning his favourite comics. So, no pressure there right?

Then the guy who comes in needing to sell off his prize collection, the comics of his youth, including WOLVERINE #1!!! He needs to pay his rent and he’s in a bind and… the Wolverine #1 is actually, somehow, the Rucka/Robertson Wolverine #1 from 2 or 3 years back, and anything older than 10 years is generally wrecked. Dude’s getting, on average, 25 cents a book when he’s expecting to walk out of the store with a few hundred bucks in his pocket. The desperation is palpable, and really, really uncomfortable. I mean, I could be all Comic Book Guy about it and try and completely disconnect myself from my job, both emotionally and rationally, and hand him his $50 and go back to watching YouTube, but man, who wants to be The Comic Book Guy? So you go through and start guiding a bunch of the books, trying to see if any of the random shit that comprises all of his childhood hopes and dreams might have a key book or two–a first appearance, an origin, a first-fight-scene, anything to push the comics he’s got out of the dreaded $3-$5 ‘filler’ range into something that’ll get his landlord off his back and make it seem less like he’s selling out for pennies. BAM! It looks like a bunch of bronze-age Justice League and Wonder Woman issues are just early enough to guide for $20-$40 depending on condition, and they’re (miraculously) in better condition than any of the more recent books. That raises his per-comic payment up to about 75 cents on average, and has him leaving with enough to feel good about the transaction. I breathe a sigh of relief, and put the boxes of comics in the “to be priced” pile.

Which I think I earned the right not to have to deal with… :-/

I don’t like being in the position of breaking bad news to desperate people, and “your comics investment is not what you think it is” certainly qualifies. In the story about the Detective Comics #27 purchase, it’s mentioned that the seller originally tried to deal with another local store and didn’t feel like they were getting a fair shake. Even my first response was “that owner was probably a cheat!” despite the fact that I’ve been in similar situations. Sometimes what we’re willing to pay does not match the expectations of what the seller wants for their books. That’s the beauty of not being the only shop in town I guess, but we’ve had people take personal offence at the suggestion that their white-polybagged-return-of-Superman comics are, in fact, not worth more than the nickel each we are willing to pay. Or that their ‘genuine first issue of Action Comics!’ is really a give-away reprint (worth about a nickel), or that their really old Spider-Man comics are the ones that the police used to give away warning about the dangers of like, child abuse or whatever, and they’re worth about a nickel. Or, you know, the massively successful Rucka/Robertson Wolverine relaunch. **Cough**

Granted, this is an original Detective Comics #27, and if the seller didn’t feel like they were getting all that they could? I’m glad that they went out and found someone else to deal with. There are always options (hell, they could’ve auctioned it themselves if they really wanted to, and gotten the retail price for it (less commission by the auction house) instead of whatever fraction of its guide value, however large or small, that they eventually sold it for).

So, there you go. A little bit more about my job: things I don’t like to or try to avoid doing. Don’t worry about me though, I make up for that aversion by inserting gratuitous links to The Beguiling’s online store in my personal time. It all balances out.

– Christopher

So, I really like Cold Cut. In my duties as The Manager of The Beguiling, I put together between 6 and 8 orders with Cold Cut a year, and they’re very competitive on discount and stock availability for a number of publishers. When it comes time to do line-wide restocks of Slave Labor Graphics, or grab some out-of-print Tokyopop or Viz trades, or even our massive back-orders of smut from Eros and AG, Cold Cut are good folks to deal with who get us our product in a timely and well-preserved fashion.

You can imagine that I’m a little heartbroken seeing them trying to get out of the comics distribution business. One shouldn’t get emotionally attached to business entities; you’re all in this to make money and that’s as long as your goals are the same, friendship doesn’t hurt. But I can’t help it, as a retailer I really LIKE options when it comes to distributors. I like knowing that Cold Cut is there, and I’m sure that publishers like knowing that there’s another group of people out there working to get their books seen. Hell, my customers might not know how much they love Cold Cut, but they certainly love the considerably-lower prices on things like FILLERBUNNY toys and SPOOKY squeakers that are Cold Cut purchases from us. So, yeah, I’m bummed out (and they don’t even owe me any money!) about this, and I hope things come together for the best. I’m not holding my breath though.

Y’see… The writing’s been on the wall regarding…something…happening for a little while now. About a month ago, I stopped receiving Cold Cut’s weekly update of new product. I just figured my e-mail was bouncing or something, but… nope.  No new product coming in. I also noticed that earlier this year (maybe?) the company was down to one (excellent) employee named Matt. I sincerely hope that whatever happens, Matt ends up okay because his customer service is top-notch, and he worked really hard for our business. And I’ve been wondering for a little while now how the new shipping charges in the U.S. (basically: everything through the U.S. Postal Service just got a whole lot more expensive) were going to affect anyone doing mail-order/distribution… I wonder if that contributed anything? I have a feeling we’ll never know.

But you wanna know what the straw that broke the camel’s back was?

Dan Vado e-mailed me.

Well, he didn’t e-mail JUST me, he e-mailed a lot of folks, retailers like me. Dan Vado is the GodKing of Slave Labor Graphics, long reputed to be Cold Cut’s top distribution client. In an e-mail on June 6th 2007 with the subject SLG Publishing wants to GIVE YOU A T-SHIRT, Dan Vado put out a call to retailers to… essentially see if they were paying attention to SLG’s promotions by offering them a free shirt. But he also encouraged retailers to place direct reorders with SLG by offering good terms and free shipping–something most retailers can’t resist. I thought this was odd… The Beguiling are loyal customers of Cold Cut’s and I’d always thought of the two organisations, CC and SLG, as being pretty tight. For SLG to be stepping up their direct-to-retailer sales like this, particularly because it’s been The Beguiling’s experience in the past that they’ve been reticent to do so (at least for us), I figured something was gonna go down.

And now it has!

I guess the big question everyone is asking right now is “What happens if it Cold Cut gets bought?” I think the more important question is, what if it doesn’t? Folks who are happy and want to keep running businesses? They don’t GENERALLY put those businesses up for sale. Am I a dick for trying to decide whether to place an order now, or wait and see if they have a huge closing sale down the road? Or am I a dick for other reasons?

Anyway, the whole situation is just sucky and stupid and annoying. Tom asked: “What is it about the shape of that comics market where a boom period is felt more through articles claiming “This is a boom period!” than it is in the wallets of creators and retailers?” and I’d really like to know for myself. Are these sorts of things growing pains? Is Cold Cut just a hold out from the dawn of the DM to be replaced by technologically-advanced bookstore distributors like Ingram and Baker & Taylor? Or is there something much more substantial wrong with the industry right now where we’re selling more comics than we have in a long time, and some organisations seemingly can’t (or don’t want to) make a go of it? I wish I knew.

– Christopher

Over at his blog, Alan David Doane picked up on the fact that The Beguiling doesn’t participate in the “First Look” program for Marvel or DC, where for a fixed cost you receive preview-copies of their books a week in advance. Tom Spurgeon notices Alan noticing, and then Alan responds. So, uh, here’s what’s really going down:

For a time, we fine folks at The Beguiling were subscribed to both Marvel and DC’s “First Look” program, where for roughly $6 (or $6 plus shipping, where Marvel was involved) we’d get a selection of next-weeks books a week early, to peruse and theoretically to inform us and/or get us excited about the books. We dropped out of the Marvel program early, because it was costing us a little more than $15 a week for the books, which had to be UPS’d to us with a separate shipping charge. $15+ a week for like $12 retail worth of comics? I don’t know about you, but the ‘usefulness’ of the information contained therin just wasn’t justified by the cost. I’ve got no problem spending $60 a month to significantly increase our sales (spend money to make money, etc.), but the cost/benefit ratio never worked out for us.

DC Comics, on the other hand, completely discontinued theirs a few months back, when they moved to the FOC (or adjust your orders 3 weeks before the books come out) system. Apparently, they didn’t think they could do both… Marvel can, it just costs us $15 in UPS fees. In all honesty we liked the DC First Looks well-enough, although any book that might have enough ‘hot’ stuff in it as to actually adjust our orders was often left out of the package for fear of spoilers. If you start to think about this very hard at all, you’ll realise this makes the whole endeavour more-or-less pointless, and perhaps that led to DC discontinuing it. DC have always been powerfully, powerfully anal about their ‘secrets’ being ‘spoiled’ even one iota of time before they were ready for them to be out there, and so if they weren’t prepared to release important information, then they were defacto releasing unimportant information, charging us $6 for the priviledge, and probably losing money on it…

I think the key assertion with Alan’s piece, that we didn’t participate in The First looks because we were concerned with other publishers, it has the ring of truth but it doesn’t hold up. Frankly, we are more concerned with other publishers than with DC or espescially Marvel. Those books sell themselves very well to the dedicated hardcore, and despite some tweaking here or there we stock the books, maintain our selection, and make intelligent recommendations based on existing purchases–it’s easy. Something like the truly-excellent Rutu Modan’s EXIT WOUNDS does require more attention from us, because, despite it being better than anything in the Marvel or DC universes that graced our shelves last week, it’s by an unknown author, it’s her first graphic novel, on a ‘difficult’ subject, and it’s art style and storytelling ‘give good hand’, meaning that the book can be easily recommended once a customer is looking at it. We gotta put more work in on that one, but it’s totally rewarded and makes our days happy and wonderful when we sell lots of them.

But, that doesn’t mean we won’t take every advantage that’s offered to us, from every publisher. The DC First looks worked for us because for $6 a week, we averaged $12-$15 worth of books, meaning that even if not one iota of useful information was gleaned from the books, we got saleable product out of the deal at a good discount, so it’s at best a wash. If Marvel could manage to get their first-look costs down, and could manage to get us the books in salable condition (seriously, those UPS envelopes looked like they’d been stuck in the spokes of someone’s bike wheels to make that “thwap-thwap-thwap” noise), we’d probably sign back up for the program. And I’d know what the big spooky deal is about this week’s EVERYONE IS SAD ABOUT CAPTAIN AMERICA: IRON MAN WEEPS FOR 22 PAGES. My guess is Skrulls, but enh? If we sell out, there’ll be a second printing. If we don’t, then it won’t have mattered what the big deal is. Win-win!

…I should also note that recently Image Comics has started offering a First Look program–For Free!–that makes the most sense out of anyone’s. Chances are that the majority of comic stores are at least ordering one copy of everything DC and Marvel publish, but the same can’t be said of the books published by the fine folks at Image Comics. So Image sends one of more-or-less everything out, for free, to every Diamond account, on the off chance someone who isn’t ordering CASANOVA or FELL or GIRLS or whatever will take a look at an issue and like it enough to try ordering it… or throw it on the rack and sell it, and maybe make a few bucks and increase their opinion of Image a little. It’s a great idea, kudos to whoever come up with it. (Of course, we’re ordering at least one copy of every Image book, but I do appreciate the opportunity to read THE WALKING DEAD a week early when I can).

Anyway, in my ever-humble opinion, smart retailers take every advantage, and determine whether every offer is advantageous or not to their own establishment. So, in that way Alan was definitely correct, we’ll source every book we carry from two or three different distributors and see who offers up the best deal, the best shipping, the timeliest turnaround. We wanna get the books in first and carry them the longest, and get you the best price on them. Putting all of our eggs into the Diamond basket, certainly not the way to do that right now. But if Diamond does step up (and they do, every once in a while) then we’re happy to work with them.

That’s today’s boring retail theory. Sorry.

– Christopher