It's interesting to watch the reaction of the younger retailers to the big changes in the industry. Basically, anyone who had an established business before 1995 versus everyone who came along later, especially in the last ten or fifteen years.
Time to admit that we old timers were just spoiled. It was a simpler time.
Of course, that's not really true. We older retailers have been through some hard times that the younger ones can only imagine. Or can't imagine, or I doubt they'd be cheering what's going on now.
I tend to get a little angry when I see a younger retailers making stupid remarks, without any context or experience. I use the word "quisling" to myself, because it seems like they are cheering for things that are going to make it hard for most retailers, young or old.
So I need to back off and figure out what's going on.
I think it's a divide between retailers who are focused on collecting and speculation, versus retailers who are interested in the intrinsic art and writing of the medium. I'm simplifying it--rarely are retailers just one or the other, but there is a definite attitude difference in older retailers.
We older retailer have already been through several boom and bust cycles for collecting. We tend to focus on readers. My saying is, "Speculators always quit, but readers keep reading."
(To be clear, speculators and collectors and readers can be all or just one of those things.)
When I bought the store in April, 1984, collecting and speculation were a huge part of the business. In fact, back issues were a major part of our sales. So much so that I--as a neophyte to comics--assumed it was the reason people bought comics.
So I bought collections and priced them according to the price guides and I kept track of which comics were going up and which were going down.
It wasn't until I found Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Howard Chaykin, and other giants of that era that I realized that comics were, in fact, a legitimate art form.
But I continued to assume that this was part of the speculative game--figuring out which writers and artists were hot, (no matter what the reason), and making sure I was ahead of the curve.
When variant and foil covers came along, I willingly played that game along with everyone else. But suddenly, in the early 1990s, it started to get crazy. Since I'd just been through the sport card bubble, I recognized the signs.
One month I realized that my orders were double last years sales: what I mean is, my wholesale price was double the previous years retail priced sales. Basically, I was ordering 4 times the comics, in one year. That seemed more than a little crazy. I even called the Diamond rep and asked what happens if there is a collapse. "What are you worried about? Everyone else is doing great!"
Sure enough, the whole bubble burst a few months later and took 3/4 of the retailers with it and all but one of the wholesalers.
I woke up one day and realized that the only buyers I still had were strictly readers. That turned out to be about half of the customer base that existed BEFORE the bubble came along.
For the next twenty years, it seemed like catering to readers was the only way to go.
But while I was off writing my books, things were changing. By the time I came back and fully focused on the store, I realized that collecting and speculating were a much bigger deal and only growing bigger.
But instead of diving back into that part of the market, I shifted to all the other product lines, especially books.
So when Covid hit, speculating on everything, including comics, became a big deal. Fortunately for us, so did new book sales, which is where I'd focused on future growth.
Now the market is made up of those retailers for whom speculating is once again a legitimate part of the business, and those older retailers who are more than a little gun shy about it.
That's why I think there are different attitudes toward the mystifying changes in the industry. What appears to be chaos to us older retailers is seen as opportunity by the younger retailers,
I think the younglings are mistaken, but only experience will prove it to them.
No comments:
Post a Comment