Hey, Folks!
It will be a quick EDitorial this week as I am scrambling to get “End of the Month” stuff done. I’ve mentioned to many of you the interesting challenges to being the sole employee of Monarch Comics. I mean, “running” the store is certainly nothing new…I’ve been handling a lot of the heavy lifting for years and the stuff that was always Steve’s responsibility has not been too difficult. (Of course, I have yet to make my first monthly sales tax payment, but my accountant assures me that it is no big deal…lol) The big problem is that I got so used to sitting squeezed into my little desk futzing around with stuff like reorders, initial orders, the subscription form, inventory, etc. that I neglected to consider that I wouldn’t have the actual time to do such things while the store is open and busy. SO the last couple of weeks have involved identifying the work stuff I can get done at work and the work stuff that I have to take home to get completed. So if you stop by the store and I seem anxious or harried just know that I am being over dramatic and that everything is under control….mostly…
I did want to once again mention my latest addition to the store…a winged poster rack! I can’t convey to you how excited I was to make this purchase and how it feels me with happiness to see it standing tall and strong in the middle of the store! By pure luck alone, the day after I bought it Marvel/Diamond started running a big poster sale, so I was able to quickly fill most of the panels with an assortment of awesome posters and all of them at a big discount! With the exception of a couple of new poster selections all of them are currently on sale for $5 each! I also have a handful of D.C. Comics and Mandalorian posters ordered and due in any day now, so please make sure to flip threw them when you are visiting the store this week!
I’m also currently working on securing a supplier for more merchandise type items in the store. Diamond used to have a pretty wide assortment of such things as coffee mugs, t-shirts, wallets, keychains, and other assorted geegaws, but I’ve noticed in the last couple of years that such things stopped being offered in the monthly Previews catalog. So, I’m taking a moment to ask YOU, my beloved customer base, what kind of items you would like to see in the store. I believe that it is necessary to have these kind of items for folks who wander in looking for birthday gifts and the like for loved ones who are comic fans, but who don’t necessarily know what the person reads or already owns. I’m dipping my toe into the pool of more posters, obviously, and I am working on getting a wider range of t-shirts and the like in stock. I’m just curious as to what kind of items everyone would like to me carry that we’ve never tried before now. I’m opening the floor to suggestions…😊
I want to comment once again on the problems comic retailers are currently having with getting backlist hard covers/trade paperbacks back in stock. It really comes down to two issues, maybe two and a half issues. The first is the state of the printing industry. After the Spring shutdown, apparently restarting printing presses isn’t simply a matter of flicking on a switch. These massive machines need time to get back up to speed. Add to that the sheer amount of books and comics that need to get printed in order to catch up backorders and you can imagine the problems publishers are having getting things back in stock. The second problem lies with D.C. Comics and their “silly bugger” games involving their distribution plan. Understand that even though D.C. pulled out of Diamond as their distributor, Diamond still had the right to distribute D.C. backlist product through the end of 2020. D.C. had been working hard at getting their backlist product into the hands of UCS and Lunar, but then UCS pulled out of the deal. So, going into 2021, Lunar, the only U.S. distributor of D.C. Comics, is currently waiting for truckloads of backlist items to get transferred to their warehouse from both Diamond and UCS. This is a process and one that will take a minute to get sorted out. So when you walk in the store and see a bunch of holes on the wall that used to contain trade paperbacks you can now understand the difficulties I’m currently laboring under. Oh! And “the half” problem is that I haven’t had a spare moment to go over my backordered D.C. books from Diamond and UCS to check and see if they are now available for reorder from Lunar. I promise, Folks, I’m dancing as fast as I can and I will hopefully get closer to fully stocked before the end of the Post-Holiday Sale. In the meantime, if you are looking for a title, whether it is from D.C. Comics or not, please ask me about it at the counter. I can always check to see it’s availability and I love special orders!
One other thing and then I’m moving on to getting my January initial orders sorted. I’ve gotten four shipments of D.C. Comics from Lunar at this point and I think I have their shipping schedule sussed out. If you special order an item from the subscription form or by some other means it looks like it will take two weeks to get to the store. You see, when I order things from Diamond I have the option of getting items shipped directly from the warehouse which means a general turn around of 3-4 days from order to store. Lunar does not have a “direct ship” option so when I reorder an item from them I have to wait for it to be included in my next weekly shipment. Lunar, however, does not have the same shipping schedule as Diamond. My invoice for the following week’s worth of D.C. product is usually ready over a week in advance and I generally receive those books by Thursday or Friday. So if I reorder something on a Sunday then the invoice for the following week’s books is already figured and I have to wait until my next invoice to receive them. So, for instance, if you special order something I don’t carry on the subscription list I’m posting today then I will likely not see the order until the week of February 8th. We’ll see if I can find a way to get orders filled faster as I become more accustomed to dealing with Lunar.
Okily dokily! I hope everyone has a great weekend and I’ll see you in the store soon!
Eddie