Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, DC Comics | Tagged: comic shop, Magic: The Gathering, Tuesdays

Comic Store In Your Future: No New Comics On Tuesdays Is Hurting Sales

In July, DC Comics started moving their new comics on sale dates from Tuesdays to Wednesdays. A foolish thing to do...

In July, DC started moving their new comics on sale dates from Tuesdays to Wednesdays. It was a foolish thing to do for me as a comic book retailer, and DC sales dropped because of it. Sales dropped because people were no longer coming in on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. What is one of the many things a comic store should do? Get people to come into their store. The more people that come in, the more chances of them spending money. When I go to Target because I need soap and then come back the next day because I need toothpaste, people at Target don't question why I have come back; they are a big business. Target wants people to come in as many times as possible. The second time I went, I saw something else and decided to buy it, along with the item I went to Target for. Or I even buy more than one item, like a bunch of Magic the Gathering packs. That's more sales for Target; multiply that by thousands of people who do that at Target, and that adds up.

I had people coming in, upset that DC was no longer being sold on Tuesdays. I told people this for a month, though many were still in the habit of coming in on Tuesdays for new comics. I had one person, who I see once in a blue moon, pick up previously released comics and then ask where the new DC titles were, and I told him I could no longer sell DC on Tuesdays. He put the titles he could have bought back on the shelf; I told him those I could sell to him with no problem because they were previous releases. He just left.

As a store owner, I try to get people to come into my store. We have sales and auctions, and having a second release day in the week helped. Then, due to no input from me and many other comic stores, DC stopped having a street date of Tuesday and moved back to Wednesday. I do not understand why DC went and did this. DC had new comics on Tuesdays available just for them. There was no new release competition from other publishers, so they naturally had an advantage. DC threw that away.

Comics used to be sold on Fridays, then moved to Wednesdays. Things change. Things need to change. My store, Rodman Comics, remained profitable during the year COVID-19 shut down businesses. How was that possible? We sold on the curbside; I worked a lot, and I did things the other stores did not. When DC first started selling comics on Tuesdays and Marvel returned on Wednesdays, I had two big sale days a week. I was told the other stores were only selling new comics on Wednesdays. After not having any new comics for so long, people wanted to be able to get comics as soon as possible. We had many new customers coming on Tuesdays that we had never seen before. One of the things I have learned is that everyone is different in their thinking. This is great; it makes the world go round and a great place to live in. It would not be very interesting if everyone thought the same way. So, people come on Tuesdays and spend $50. Some people believe that now they will pay the $50 they would have spent on Tuesday and the $50 they would have spent on Wednesday. No, some people will think, oh man, $100 on comics on Wednesday is too much, and I need to put some back.

Lunar, the company that ships DC, is usually the first comic shipment for the new releases we get. We usually received this week's new DC releases on the Wednesday before, though now we have had two shipments that have not arrived until the Tuesday of the week of releases since the start of July. I love it when shipments arrive early. For years, Diamond deliveries would only show up on Tuesday, the day before they would go on sale. If Diamond has a truck accident, a weather delay, or UPS made a mistake, it could mean the comics from Diamond were a day late or more. How do you make sales crazy? One store gets their comic shipment in central Iowa, and the rest do not.

When DC left Diamond, the Diamond Secret Shopper program ended, which made me very happy. It was a program that Diamond made the comic stores pay for to ensure shops stuck to the street date, and then they would send in a person who had no knowledge of comics asking to pay for two titles that came out the next day. How did I figure out who the secret shopper was? It was always two titles. Whenever I would ask the person something like, are you enjoying the storyline? I would get a deer-in-the-headlights look back. I would tell the other business owners about it here at the strip mall, and they would all laugh because it was nothing they had to go through. Their vendors do not do that to them. One of the few ways to get me out of the comic business is if the secret shopper program returned. What other businesses get treated that way?

I know my wanting to be able to sell comics again on Tuesdays is a long shot, though who knows, maybe someone will read this and see the logic in it. If not DC, then maybe another publisher? Basically, I like to make more money…. does DC?

Many stores want all new comics to be on just one new release day, Wednesday, but I like to do things differently and bet against other comic book stores. The Magic set Ikora was the first set released after the shutdown. One of my vendors for Magic called and asked if I wanted to cut down my orders, saying all the other stores did. I said no, I will gamble on the collector's mentality. They have not been able to buy cards for so long that they will want them even more. That was my thinking: if COVID-19 did any lingering or long-term damage to sales, every store would be in trouble. It was a winning bet, other stores ran out of Ikoria while we had stock of them, Ikoria ended up being one of the best-selling Magic sets in our nearly fourteen-year history.

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