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Post by Randle-El on Sept 12, 2014 22:47:15 GMT -5
Midtown Comics (or a Westfield, or a Mile High), which is basically an LCS
How many homes do you own? Surely not all of those businesses are local to you. Ha, no. I tend to think of an LCS as an independently-owned retailer who sells comics and related merchandise via a bricks-and-mortar facility, and is not backed by a large corporation. So that would disqualify large chains like Barnes and Noble, or online retailers like Amazon. Depending on the context of the discussion, whether or not they are local to me personally may not be relevant. I bring up retailers like Midtown, Westfield, and Mile High because even though the scale of their business is much larger than your typical LCS, and they have multiple locations as well as a strong online presence, under the previous definition they would still technically be counted as an LCS. The point I was trying to make was that, in most cases, when people talk about "supporting your LCS" they usually mean a small store, usually only one location, maybe two, that is generally at a disadvantage when it comes to things like price or deep inventory when compared to the corporate-backed entities. But does that ethos of "supporting your LCS" also apply to larger retailers? Do they really need our support like the little guys, or are they large enough that they can be considered a big box for all intents and purposes? There's a part of me that thinks the comic retailer market is heading towards greater consolidation, with smaller players slowly dying out and the larger stores taking up greater slices of the pie. In some ways that is sad. But in other ways, I think it might not be such a bad thing. These larger retailers, they must be doing something right to get so big and successful, no? And the ones that die out might be dying well-deserved deaths. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 13, 2014 8:07:45 GMT -5
Fewer options is definitely not good.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Sept 13, 2014 8:14:11 GMT -5
These larger retailers, they must be doing something right to get so big and successful, no? And the ones that die out might be dying well-deserved deaths. The free market only works when consumers make informed decisions, but bigger businesses have learned to grow and thrive by offering short term convenience and lower prices, luring in customers who don't realize what they are losing in contrast. To go back to the op, if you have no good LCS options near you, then there's no reason to support bad ones, but if you have a good LCS (or one that's addressing the problems that turned you away), and they are offering a personalized and quality shopping experience, that's something the larger retailers cannot offer, and it's something that most consumers don't realize they're losing. Sure, saving more on your pull list makes sense. Who doesn't want to save money? But we make that choice assuming the LCS will always be there if and when we decide we'd rather walk in and browse every once in a while. It won't be. |
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Post by Jasoomian on Sept 13, 2014 23:53:08 GMT -5
How many homes do you own? Surely not all of those businesses are local to you. Ha, no. I tend to think of an LCS as an independently-owned retailer who sells comics and related merchandise via a bricks-and-mortar facility, and is not backed by a large corporation. So that would disqualify large chains like Barnes and Noble, or online retailers like Amazon. Depending on the context of the discussion, whether or not they are local to me personally may not be relevant. |
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Post by Randle-El on Sept 19, 2014 21:02:32 GMT -5
So stopped by my LCS today to pick up my pull. I asked about two issues that had been missing from my pull two weeks ago. Still haven't arrived yet. Supposedly Diamond never sent them the first time, so he had to call them again to reorder it, but it didn't show up in this week's shipment. When he looked over the invoices for this coming week's shipment, they still weren't there, which I guess means I won't be getting them next Wednesday either. So he said he's going to call Diamond and ask what's going on and ask them to re-send them.
Is this normal for Diamond to regularly not send books that shops have ordered? It seems that the missing books in my pull list are split between books that the staff forgets to pull for me, and books that Diamond supposedly never sends. The guy at my shop has cited this reason a few times now, and it just seems odd that a distributor would so frequently not send books that a customer has ordered. I do have quite a few Image and Boom Studio books on my pull list, and a lot of those books are single copy orders that are made solely for me. I'm wondering if it's really Diamond not sending them, or if he's just forgetting to order them (because I'm the only one that gets it) and then blaming it on Diamond.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Sept 19, 2014 21:09:07 GMT -5
Could be either. Diamond is a monopoly selling to small businesses, so they know full well that they don't have to be reliable when dealing with shops and screw them over regularly. This also makes it easy for shop owners to blame Diamond.
Once again, though, when we talk about the unfair competition LCSes face when competing with online businesses, Diamond doesn't screw around with those bigger businesses because they are major clients. They will ALWAYS get what you need from Diamond on time, and it's not because they're doing something right when your LCS has done something wrong. It's just a case of David v. Goliath.
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Post by Randle-El on Sept 19, 2014 21:21:02 GMT -5
Could be either. Diamond is a monopoly selling to small businesses, so they know full well that they don't have to be reliable when dealing with shops and screw them over regularly. This also makes it easy for shop owners to blame Diamond. Once again, though, when we talk about the unfair competition LCSes face when competing with online businesses, Diamond doesn't screw around with those bigger businesses because they are major clients. They will ALWAYS get what you need from Diamond on time, and it's not because they're doing something right when your LCS has done something wrong. It's just a case of David v. Goliath. But with what you're saying, then it's not online vs. LCS per se that makes Diamond give preferential treatment, but the size and buying power of the business right? At the other two stores in the area where I've had my pull (from the OP), store #1 was a small store, and occasionally got shorted by Diamond. But not nearly to the frequency that's happened with my current store. Store #2 never had anything missing from my pull, but this was a large store that carried just about everything, and lots of copies. Even if store #2 were to hypothetically forget to pull something for me, it wouldn't really matter because I would have been able to find it on the rack, including the non-Marvel/DC titles. With my current store, that's not possible for a lot of my titles because I'm the only one getting them. I really want to give the benefit of the doubt, but my patience is starting to wear thin. I realize that in the case of David vs. Goliath it's not the store's fault... but still doesn't change the fact that I'm not getting my books. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 19, 2014 21:38:59 GMT -5
We usually have an average of 5-6 shortages from Diamond each week. It may be that a book we ordered 20 copies of and only got 19 or a book we ordered one of and got none. We also average about 5-10% of the books we ordered arriving damaged in "unsellable" condition-corners bent or dinged, whole corner flaps folded over, the book getting bent in half between two other books instead of laying flat, etc. and then when Diamond does send corrections, it is at their convenience because the weekly new books get priority and reorders are filled when they get around to it, same with ordering items from the backlist and not the current Previews issue. Most often thy just credit the account and don't send replacements unless you request it/reorder, but discounts on reorders are less than initial orders. Now we are a tiny account, and we went a year with no actual sales rep from Diamond because our guy left the company and they never bothered assigning the account to a new salesman, so I am sure other larger accounts don't see as much of this, but it does happen. And then you know when they "fix" things, they screw you too-we were shorted an issue of Robert E. Howard's Savage Sword from Dark Horse and when they sent it to us, they shipped it in its own shipment of one book and we had to pay shipping for that book. So it's a $7.99 cover price book, we pay $4 for and had to pay $8 shipping to get the book. So he lost $4 ordering that book from them...
I so love Diamond.
-M
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ironchimp
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Post by ironchimp on Sept 21, 2014 4:53:02 GMT -5
Why exactly have printing costs gone up? That's the nebulous area that I've never seen anyone explain in detail. Is it the simple fact that colored inks continue to increase in price? Is it more expensive to log lumber, trickling down to increase the cost of paper for printers? This is strange to me given that our technology continues to get better, which usually leads to a reduction in overhead (as more automation is employed), which in theory should get passed on to the consumer. I don't know anything about the source causes of the rising costs of printing, so I'm honestly curious. Environmental laws ....almost in a snowball effect fashion. -M Offset against that tho is lower pre production costs because of digital, new press technology, and rise of asian printing presses. My record sleeves were all printed in Taiwan at stupidly cheap prices and quality was top notch. I'll assume floppies are still printed in USA but printing trades will cost less now than it ever did when you ship work out to China etc. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2014 5:04:14 GMT -5
Environmental laws ....almost in a snowball effect fashion. -M Offset against that tho is lower pre production costs because of digital, new press technology, and rise of asian printing presses. My record sleeves were all printed in Taiwan at stupidly cheap prices and quality was top notch. I'll assume floppies are still printed in USA but printing trades will cost less now than it ever did when you ship work out to China etc. When I was writing for the rpg industry, many of the companies used Asian printers for the lower costs printing, and the running joke weeks after release dates were missed was-where's the book? On a slow boat from China, then caught up in customs for several weeks because goods from China always seem to get closer scrutiny ....maybe we'll have the books in time for the next big Con to do a release...or maybe not. Asian printing may be cheaper, but transport costs to get the books back to the US on time for proposed release dates is not cheap, and the customs variable in one that can throw a monkey wrench in the release schedule as there is often little rhyme or reason to what gets held for closer inspection and what does not. So while printing costs for printing in Asia are less, there are often opportunity costs associated with it tha tmake the savings much less than they actually seem. -M |
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Post by Randle-El on Oct 4, 2014 10:27:07 GMT -5
So I think I've found a resolution to my LCS issue. I stopped by this past week to pick up my haul of books. The usual employee who mans the store was not there, and they had a temporary guy helping out for that week. As I was flipping through my books for the week, I discovered I was missing a book, which I mentioned to the staff member. Turns out the temp used to work at the store and was previously in charge of running the comics section, including placing orders and sorting pull list orders. He didn't have very glowing things to say about the way the store was currently being run. "You're not the only one complaining about missing books. I had everything running well, but when I left it all went downhill. I don't even get my comics from here -- I have a pull list someplace else."
He also showed me the list for that week's orders, and it showed the book I was missing -- The Fade-Out #2 -- hadn't even been ordered for me. To add insult to injury, the book had been ordered, as copies were listed for other customers, just not for me -- this despite the fact that I had pre-ordered a copy of #1 and specifically requested that this book be pulled for me in the future. What was even more interesting was that the temp let me look at the rest of the list to see what the store thought was on my pull list. I was astounded at how inaccurate it was. This would explain why I was often missing books, or had books that I didn't request in my box.
So I've decided that I'm done with this store. I think I've been patient, and shown the benefit of the doubt, but this last visit was a real eye-opener for me. I decided to go back to the previous store I had my pull list at. They had a POS computer system where I could actually watch them enter my specific requests and see them logged in the system, and they never missed a book while I was there. It's going to be a bit more trouble to get to this store, and the discount is not as much, but I think this is a case of "you get what you pay for".
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Post by hondobrode on Oct 4, 2014 15:54:03 GMT -5
It's sad that most LCS's aren't we'll run IMO. Truly amazing they do as well as they do.
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ironchimp
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Post by ironchimp on Oct 4, 2014 17:57:41 GMT -5
Offset against that tho is lower pre production costs because of digital, new press technology, and rise of asian printing presses. My record sleeves were all printed in Taiwan at stupidly cheap prices and quality was top notch. I'll assume floppies are still printed in USA but printing trades will cost less now than it ever did when you ship work out to China etc. When I was writing for the rpg industry, many of the companies used Asian printers for the lower costs printing, and the running joke weeks after release dates were missed was-where's the book? On a slow boat from China, then caught up in customs for several weeks because goods from China always seem to get closer scrutiny ....maybe we'll have the books in time for the next big Con to do a release...or maybe not. Asian printing may be cheaper, but transport costs to get the books back to the US on time for proposed release dates is not cheap, and the customs variable in one that can throw a monkey wrench in the release schedule as there is often little rhyme or reason to what gets held for closer inspection and what does not. So while printing costs for printing in Asia are less, there are often opportunity costs associated with it tha tmake the savings much less than they actually seem. -M I never had those problems in UK. But i was using a broker rather than going to direct to the press so they are bulk ordering time on the presses. Even with shipping and customs duty it was way cheaper than Euro printing. I am pretty sure a lot of DC and Marvel trades and omnibi are printed in asia (or at least were for a while) so they were saving a lot compared to north american printing. Even without Asian presses I'd be very surprised if the overall trend in printing isnt downward over last two decades with DTP and new press technology. Hell you can print one copy of a 200-300 page book for $6-$10 so by the time you are printing even a few 1000 you are getting very big economies of scale. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2014 18:14:19 GMT -5
I'm planning on stopping by the LCS this week. First time since February. A lot of good stuff coming out this week, I'd like to read it the day it comes out. I didn't add anything to a pull list though, so it's possible the LCS won't be stocking any of it. I'll give it a shot though.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2014 20:20:23 GMT -5
The shop I support is ab out a hour trip for me . The LCS in my town is more a thrift store that will order comics for you but really doesn't stock much for back issues or current stuff. So I make a trip every 2 weeks or so . I only have a few comics on my pull list . and my want list is pretty small now . I mainly go to see whats new on the shelves and like to look at the local artist section and try to support them as much as possible . There is some great work being done by locals . I have been buying the odd book on line that I need . I could easily finish my pull list from a couple of online stores but I still enjoy the hunt . I been noticing that about half the shops have gotten away from back issues for some reason . And are scaling back on current issues only ordering what the have demand for . Just my observation ,
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