Knowing a fad when you see one.

There is a surprised comment on an industry blog I frequent (Comic Reporter) that anime and manga might have been a "fad."

I always suspected they were.

Not that they don't have a core constituency.  The thing about hard core followers however, is that they aren't very good customers.  I hate to say it.

Stands to reason.  The more you are a follower of something, the more sources you're going to find.  The more you buy, the more likely you are to use those sources to find the cheapest prices.  (I don't think I'm giving away any secrets to say that you can always find something cheaper if you're willing to look hard enough.)

No, I do better with the person just getting in on the fad, or the casually interested.  Hell, on the way up, I can even sell to the hard core if I have what they want and they don't want to wait.

Why did I think it was a fad?

It had all the characteristics.

It was something that everyone had to have today, even though they hadn't heard of it yesterday, and so the chances were, they wouldn't want it tomorrow.

It's always dangerous to build a business on a fad.  Always dangerous to buy based on current high demand that can dry up to nothing overnight.

Anything that isn't central to our lives -- let's say, cellphones, for instance -- that grows exponentially, is  probably a fad.

The other thing about anime and manga fandoms was that they were heavily populated by 10-14 year old boys and girls.

Here's the thing:  15 year old boys and girls absolutely disdain what their 12 year old selves loved.  (Not always, sometimes the love is pure, thus creating a hard core fan -- see above problems with that...)

When sales for manga first started falling off, and the question of fadness first came up, the explanation was that the core constituency was "getting older."

But that's just it.

That just proves the point.  If it wasn't a fad, then there should have been a new generation of followers, and then another.

 Even knowing what I know, I got somewhat trapped by anime and manga -- mostly because I underestimated this generation's willingness to drop the retail version for the pirated version.  (We're in for some interesting times...)  I way overstocked, and as long as I was building stock, sales seemed fine. When I tailed off to try to actually make money, that demand for new product kept coming, but I wasn't being sufficiently rewarded on what I'd already bought.

So I nearly quit, had a big sale for a year or so, and then tiptoed back in carrying only the top ten or twenty titles in each category.

Manga and anime, were more of a fad than the followers were willing to acknowledge -- which is just another sign of a fad.

So, here I'll reverse course a little.  Wabi Sabi is catering to the hard core, and I think they can do some business there.  And there is enough intrinsically interesting product that it can capture the casual walk-in customer.  There is a core constituency to Japanese stuff and a broad enough range of material, to justify a business model to caters to it.  Something will probably come along every year or two under the umbrella of that product mix that will pay off.

But the huge slug of manga that came through the system a few years ago, is probably gone.  Anime is going to struggle because no one wants to pay the high prices, especially when they can get it free.

Borders and Barnes and Noble both dove into manga big time.  For a few years it was held as a cudgel over the heads of comic retailers that we were "stupid and shortsighted" for not expanding our base of customers, and how manga was the future and thus the big chains had done the right thing and we had done the wrong thing.

I think the big boxes had it wrong, and we comic retailers might have had better instincts about what was coming.

Not that we shouldn't have carried manga and anime, only that we were right not to bet the farm on them.  


Speaking of which:  my boardgame selection gets bigger and bigger.  Every holiday season I wonder if this is the year the big box stores will get a clue and undercut me.

Then again, I have 100's of games and it's a little hard to believe that any of these store would be willing to devote as much time and space and attention as I do, keeping up with the newest games and expansions.

Then again again, they wouldn't really have to.  They could carry 5 to 10 games -- Settlers of Catan, Dominion, Munckin, Ticket to Ride, and so on, and capture over half the sales.

It's always best for me when a trend stay simmering for a long time, instead of boiling over.   Reading the tea leaves, I'm going whole hog again this year.

Hope I'm right.