Posted in: Comics | Tagged: comic store in yiur future, Comics, coronavirus, coronavirus comics, covid-19

Hope for Days Ahead – Comic Store In Your Future

Rod Lamberti of Rodman Comics of Ankeny, Iowa writes weekly for Bleeding Cool. This week he is bringing some hope. Find previous columns here. He writes: DC announced they have in place distributors that can get comics out. This is the best news I have read in months. Diamond Comics is currently unable to send new comics. Diamond is having money issues. One publisher feels Diamond is holding their comics hostage through all this. If only we had more than just Diamond delivering comics to comic stores. Diamond is the only game in town for new comics or it was for years. Before the coronavirus, the comic industry had not seen real growth even with all the comic related movies making comics more mainstream.

Now we have a chance to grow the industry in the future. The more vendors to buy comics from the better. I know we have lost customers due to only having Diamond for comics. A small independent comic or one copy of a comic I ordered may be on the invoice but it may not actually get sent. The customer is disappointed. When Diamond does not have any copies available my options are to buy the comic off the Internet and hope the lost money on it is made up by a happy customer who will repeat or just say even though I ordered it I cannot get it. If only there were another option, such as I can order the comic through another vendor! Oh my!

In the strip mall where I rent space, my fellow business owners cannot believe what I go through. Having only one vendor for product is a foreign concept to them. It is something they would never go through nor will they have to. Has another business type ever said oh wow the comic business is run so much better than ours? In all my years of dealing with various people involved in different businesses no one has ever said that. Other businesses act like I am crazy to go through the headaches we go through.

All those years ago Marvel tried their own vendor, Heroes World. It almost tanked the comic market beyond repair. It did cripple it by making Diamond the only comic vendor. What growth or improvements have happened under a Diamond only vendor system? Comics showing up on Tuesdays? That was Bob Wayne's idea when he was with DC. Diamond went with it and then added an extra $4 charge. DC is going to let comic stores sell on Tuesdays and not charge an extra $4 a week.

DC will not have a secret shopper program to waste peoples' time either. I won't have to pay for someone to monitor and report how we do business. Reports by a person who odds are knows nothing about comics or the business. After years of the secret shopper coming in on a Tuesday and asking for two comic books, I can pick a vendor that will not do this? Let alone make me pay for the "service"? The last secret shopper was so uninformed the person combined two titles into one weird title and was upset with my employee for saying there was no such title. There was no new "The New X Men Mutants 89" coming out the next day. Diamond lets us waste time with someone who is not going to buy anything, is being paid by Diamond to lie to us and is taking away time from someone who may actually spend money with us. We would miss that so much, not.

But Heroes World. Remember Heroes World? It went so badly. Yes, Marvel's Heroes World went badly. I was a collector when Marvel tried Heroes World. Stores would fail to get a single copy of a Marvel title even though they ordered it. The newest issue of Daredevil would come out and a comic shop might not get a single copy. Then to make it even worse there often would be no copies on hand at Heroes World to send a replacement for the shorted title. I remember going to various comic stores getting copies for the store I shopped at so they could cover their regular customers. Heroes World was a mess and kept being a mess. But, bringing up Heroes World as a reason not to have another vendor is like telling people who want to open a comic store that most businesses fail in two years. With that logic, none of us should ever hope to try to open a comic store.

Ankeny, Iowa hometown to Rodman Comics had multiple comic stores before we came along that did not make it. If we go under it doesn't mean it is impossible for a comic store to be in Ankeny. Heroes World was back in 1994 for goodness sake. Diamond has been the sole vendor for comics for years. So what? What loyalty? If I go under Diamond wouldn't blink. They might go under. Am I supposed to loan them money out of loyalty or something? Some comic stores love Diamond some do not. Some people love Rodman Comics, some people do not. That is the nature of business. Some businesses have cut back or dropped comic business in their store due to dealing with Diamond. Diamond is not evil; it is just the way things are when dealing with large groups of people. It is impossible to please everyone; some people very well could have legit complaints and others may not.

The closest Rodman Comics ever came to closing was because of an issue with Alliance years ago. Not due to late payments, it was over their Heroclix Con In Your Store program. Long story short, Alliance threatened to bring Diamond their sister company into it; have Diamond reevaluate my terms. Diamond did not have anything to do with it. I ordered the Heroclixes through Alliance. I got a lawyer and after getting threatened with bringing Diamond into it I just said so be it. It's like going to Walmart, having a problem and being told Walmart won't let me back in. Why would I want to go back, I said in one email. I felt like it was a bully move. At the time, the lease for the store was ending in a few months so I decided if need be, I would limp along without new comics and then close when the lease ended. I don't like bullies and had no desire to be in such a business relationship. Luckily, the top dog at Alliance called me; he was very nice about it and we settled everything.

When I read Diamond has been there for stores throughout many disasters, specifically bringing up hurricanes, I remembered this article from Bedrock City Comics from ICV2.com. Quotes from the owner include "If there's any advice that I give to anybody that's running any kind of business, it's, 'Never rely on just one business partner.' No business relationship is ever completely altruistic. If you're too dependent on one business partner, you might find out that that business partner isn't there to help you."

Evans points to 2017, and a natural disaster that struck Houston. "What we found out from Hurricane Harvey was that comic shops spend a lot of money, time, and dedication to Diamond, and Diamond has none of our best interests at heart," Evans says. But he finds a silver lining on that cloud. "It really freed us up to go find other vendors and spend our money elsewhere," he says. "That's been a huge help. We've been able to increase our margins and find new products that sell and not be beholden to one business partner, one vendor. That's definitely a bit of advice I'd give to everybody."

Hope and change.

As human beings, change can be tough. I may not be able to get what DC is willing to ship at all. I have no idea how long the governor's mandate here in Iowa will last. As I have said before I know Rodman Comics is not worth anyone's life. I also know I am not going to be all entitled and demand if I cannot sell new comics because of the virus, no one can. That is being selfish. The longer a store goes without selling new comics the more likely they will lose more customers. That is, again, human nature. If Iowa has a major outbreak and is the last state left in the country suffering from the virus does that mean all the other states need to wait for Iowa to be able to sell so they can sell comics? It is alright to cost other stores more business? How many more comic stores closing is "alright"? Misery loves company? I hope not.

We have been in business for nearly a decade. I know being closed during this time will cause long term business losses. I know there are many people now hurting for money. When we reopen, the business landscape very well could be near impossible to navigate. I am not going to put my store above the whole comic industry. I would rather see my store close than hurt other stores or tank the comic industry. That said, I intend to work very hard to keep my business going.

I was shocked Bleeding Cool had an article saying many people were surprised DC started with their own vendors. I figured out weeks ago DC was working on it just by the emails I received that other comic stores should have received also. I posted one of the emails on our Facebook page. People were thrilled with the possibility. As I stated before in a previous article one person even posted, "Oh, man, if we could see another distributor other than Diamond, that would be amazing." Back on March 29th, ICV2 ran an article titled DC Exploring "Multi-Distributor Model" for Comic Stores.

People want to pin the comic industry's future on Diamond who is having all kinds of issues? As a business person the first thought that comes to my mind isn't Diamond is unable to pay the publishers, has a week's worth of comics just sitting around, has furloughed and laid off how many people? Just a flesh wound, Diamond will save the comic industry. No, Diamond is part of the current problem.

Diamond is not awful.

Diamond is not awful. I do not want Diamond out of business. I have met some of their employees at the last Diamond Summit in Las Vegas and thought they are good people. I would just love to see multiple vendors. Diamond does have years of experience, though they are a business with no competition. Basically, for years a store owner's options were deal with Diamond or don't sell new comics. As a store owner I face competition. People who don't like my store go to other stores. Same thing about other stores; people who don't like other stores come here. Businesses from movie theaters to gas stations have competition. Some people like Target over Wal Mart. Some like Wal Mart over Target. Diamond had how many years to expand or improve the comic market place without any competition? Yet, here we are. If Marvel had started up their own comic vendor again instead of DC, I would be saying the same thing. Go for it. Something that did not work long ago does not mean it is impossible. It is called change. It is happening rather we like it or not. I would love to be able to order a comic I need and if one vendor does not have it, I am able to get it from another, be it from Diamond or another vendor.

DC having other vendors for comics available gives me something I have not had for a while during these times, hope. Hope for the future. A possible better comic market with more options.

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