CBR: Tilting at Windmills 9/19/08 Discussion Thread

[CBR News]

Brian examines some of the lessons learned from the "All-Star Batman & Robin" fiasco and why proper Street dates should be enforced in the Direct Market and what it could mean to retailers pocket books.


Full article here (http://comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=18124).

[thefourthman]

to things.
@oldtime - yeah,but that was several years ago under the old regime. There has really been a regime change in the past ten years, Brian Hibbs and Andy Neal of Chapel Hill Comics show that they are interested in a business not a fanboyy hobby. There are other shops doing the same. People trying to make a profit, not just get their books for free and the succesful shops are these kind that look at their numbers and react accordingly in stock levels and appropiated floor space. So while that may have been true several years ago, I am not sure that it is as true now. And yes the penalty should be as severe as to possibly put them out of business, otherwise it is just a slap on the wrist and the retailer will be in a position to weigh the outcomes of their actions. Will I make back the money I lose by breaking it?

@Brian... in order for street days to work though there have to be effective communication. I work in one of the shops that sold ASBAR 10 on its shelves last week. For cover price to people that walked in the door. Two things failed here, we did not receive an email or letter communicating the recall to us and as you know Tuesday and Wendesday are extremely busy days. It was well into the day before we found out and then we pulled it from our shelves. Plus a recall as opposed to a destroy order would have worked better, return it for the credit, not destroy it and we will credit you. We have communicated to Diamond and DC how many we sold and would very much be willing to have that taken from our credit for the books.
Plus there are two more fundamental problems with this situation. One the collectibilty factor involved in the said printing. By letting a few out, they made them extremely rare and much more wanted by the public. It is odd that from a company that keeps to itself so much, that they would choose to publicly let it be known that they destroyed thousands of copies of this book, meaning that those few in circulation would fetch crazy prices from speculators and collectors. Those people are as much a segment of our customer base as folks who just read comics. Also, there was a street date of Sep. 10, DC changed that at the last minute after they noticed their screw up. Almost certainly some of the same problems would have occured and ramifications would have been just as ellusive. Yes an order from the publisher would have been effective in scaring a few down, but how legal would it have been after DC effectively broke their contract by changing the date?
I agree tuesday deliverys are a god send and I would hate to go back, but there is more at play here and it is less of a black and white issue than many would like to claim.

[The Xenos]

For that Marvel ad, maybe they could have had a link to the comic store location right on the Embrace Chance . Org site? Say that these stores were participating in the Skrull alliance or something.

[The Amazing Lord Retail]

I would love, love, love to be able to receive shipments on Tuesdays to be ready for new release day at opening. We are what I believe to be a high volume store (this week we will receive and process approx. 3300 issues, not counting any reorders) so Wednesday's can be precarious at times. If the shipment is in any way late it is incredibly stressful and damaging. If everything goes well, subscriptions are done and comics are ready to buy before 1pm. But if anything is wrong anywhere, that time is endangered. I recall during the holiday season, some shipments would arrive on Tuesdays including some merchandise and some comics. We processed everything and after closing took care of subscriptions, but we never sold anything early. Even if we were the only store in town, I would not sell anything early. Just as when I get inside info from Marvel (DC doesn't tell me anything), I keep it close to the vest and use the information to help me to prepare to sell their product. Not all retailers are like that though and therefore ruin a lot of things for those of us who are serious about the business of comic books.

[Paul McEnery]

I'm not sure it does anyone any favours to conflate street date with the shipping of an instant collectible misprint. The two have nothing at all in common, as far as I can see.

Except this.

ASBAR 10 was indeed shipped in such a way that it created a product of greater than cover price value. And part of that was that it wasn't shipped uniformly, but only to a few stores, so that only a few stores benefited from having such an item to sell.

Otherwise it wouldn't have been collectible, no?

As it stands, pulping the goddam Batman makes no sense -- it's adult-oriented material anyway, so what difference does a C-bomb make? None at all. So this is a completely phoney blowup. There's no reason why this shouldn't have been a saleable item.

So at the end of the day, the real issue is that DC panicked over nothing; undershipped the product in a way that lost a bunch of retailers money (and gave a bunch of other retailers a fair piece of free money).

Nothing to do with street date there; everything to do with a concatenation of cock-ups. From which some people were unfairly excluded from making a packet.

And I reckon there'll still be a collector's market for these misprints in the future -- because they're naughty, because it's Miller -- and fair enough, really.

Superman having a beer -- less exciting, I think. Still, I hope a bunch of these got saved too, because collectors love that stuff.

[Village Idiot]

If you are close enough to the UPS building, you can pick up your shipment first thing Wednesday morning and have the books sorted and on the shelf before 11am.

[Chris@4color]

OMG I would love to be able to set my shop up the night before. I agree that hopefully most the shop owners now are not your typical fan-boys and realize that shops are not your basement where you sell comics from and can act just a little bit professionally. I would totally agree to a fine if you break the rules, and I do this because.....hmm I wouldn't break the rules. I get up at 4am and drive from my shop (normally 45 mins from the distribution center) and arrive at the distribution center at 6am, load up at 6:30am and rush back to the shop by 8am. Once there, we (2 employees and I) start the long process of unpacking, counting, logging into POS, special orders, and pulls, we barely finish at noon when we open. I would love to be able to process the pulls and set up displays the night before, cause trying to set up displays while customers are in the shop is very difficult.

Maybe we could look at some of the higher invoicing single store owners getting their shipments on Tuesday after agreeing to the fine process.

But I understand the reluctance to try something like that because of things like the supposed "secret" 2nd printing of Cap America 25 that the publisher asked us not to say anything until the announcement came out, but the day I got the notice it was already up on Ebay.

Just my little thought

Chris
4 Color Fantasies
Rancho Cucamonga, CA

[thefourthman]

OMG I would love to be able to set my shop up the night before. I agree that hopefully most the shop owners now are not your typical fan-boys and realize that shops are not your basement where you sell comics from and can act just a little bit professionally. I would totally agree to a fine if you break the rules, and I do this because.....hmm I wouldn't break the rules. I get up at 4am and drive from my shop (normally 45 mins from the distribution center) and arrive at the distribution center at 6am, load up at 6:30am and rush back to the shop by 8am. Once there, we (2 employees and I) start the long process of unpacking, counting, logging into POS, special orders, and pulls, we barely finish at noon when we open. I would love to be able to process the pulls and set up displays the night before, cause trying to set up displays while customers are in the shop is very difficult.

Maybe we could look at some of the higher invoicing single store owners getting their shipments on Tuesday after agreeing to the fine process.

But I understand the reluctance to try something like that because of things like the supposed "secret" 2nd printing of Cap America 25 that the publisher asked us not to say anything until the announcement came out, but the day I got the notice it was already up on Ebay.

Just my little thought

Chris
4 Color Fantasies
Rancho Cucamonga, CA
Chris, I am pretty sure that you can get tuesday shipping at a dollar amount as well as at the chain level. There is a point where you can get too many books to process, talk to your Diamond rep.

[Chris@4color]

Yes..I was told an amount that was HUGE, but the other kicker was that I needed to have two locations.

Chris