Hey, Folks!
Well, the last couple of weeks have been pretty hectic here at Monarch Comics, but I do believe everything has finally calmed down to pre-FCBD levels of stress. Between FCBD, putting the final touches on Ed Year One store renovations, training Brian how to operate within a business system created (and only used by) myself, dealing with delivery issues with our D.C. Comics distributor, and sorting through literally thousands of new back issue purchases it has been a very long August!
The biggest issue over the last three weeks has been the sudden breakdown of service between Lunar Distribution and the local FedEx hub. I’ve gone over the story with many of you and was posting about it when it was actually happening, but I thought it would be a good idea to go over the general details one more time and hopefully set everyone at ease over our delivery issues. When Monarch Comics initially moved from UCS to Lunar for distribution of D.C. Comics I must admit that there were no problems for months. I initially chose Lunar’s principle shipping partner, FedEx, to deliver our weekly shipments. For the first 7+ months the honeymoon was on and I had little to no problems dealing with FedEx for our deliveries. I generally received my Lunar shipments days before their street date and it was relatively easy to deal with them. However, Lunar/D.C. decided to wait until the week before FCBD to ship us our titles and that is when the problems began.
To be honest, I wasn’t particularly surprised when I realized that there was going to be a problem with that week’s shipment. I was a bit panicked, sure, but not surprised. I mean, I usually get between 1-3 boxes a week from Lunar and because of the FCBD titles I ended up getting 13 boxes. If other stores had a similar amount of boxes coming to them it wasn’t a huge surprise that Lunar or FedEx might have a little problem processing and delivering them. When I hadn’t even received shipment tracking numbers, much less the shipment itself, by Friday morning I knew there was a serious problem and that I was going to have to spring into action in order to fix it. I e-mailed Lunar and after a little back and forth determined that it would be necessary for me to drive to New Haven, IN, to pick up the shipment. Understand that Lunar is only about an hour and a half away from Toledo and while it is not a trip I’d want to have to take every week I decided that it would be a good idea this time if only to ensure that my FCBD titles arrived before the event. I put Brian in charge of the store and Hill and I made our way to the Lunar warehouse and picked up the pallet. (I won’t go into how there were actually twice as many huge boxes then I was told via e-mail…)
So, problem solved, right? Wrong. The following week was another case of not having tracking numbers by Friday morning and this time I was told by Lunar that I wouldn’t see the shipment until Monday…which eventually turned into late Tuesday afternoon. This was annoying as by late Tuesday afternoon I generally have everything unpacked and I am preparing to pull the sub customers as well as record a new episode of Monarch Comics Afternoon Delight. Still, I got the books and did the job and chalked the whole thing up as a blip in the general scheme of things. After all, the first 7 months had no major problems, right? And the other retailer woes that I read about online involving shipments from FedEx were on the other side of the country and I figured it wouldn’t be a factor in our delivery problems at all.
How wrong I was. The third week was the worst one yet. Again, no tracking numbers by Saturday and Lunar couldn’t really give me much information about when we would see our shipment or what the problem was. It was a single large box as it was a small shipping week for D.C. and I tracked its progress in a way that could be charitably called “obsessive”. The lone box ended up being checked in as arriving at the Perrysburg FedEx hub at 1:17am Monday morning and the box didn’t actually make it to the store until after 4pm on Wednesday afternoon.
When a box shows up so late that I can’t put them on sale Wednesday morning then we have a serious problem. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get any real idea from anyone about what the actual hold up was, whether it was a problem with Lunar or FedEx. I remembered reading about other retailers on the West Coast having similar issues with FedEx and figured that must be at least a portion of the problem. I also learned that retailers working with Lunar had no obligation to use FedEx and that we could switch to UPS at any time, albeit with a hefty shipping charge increase to the tune of 4X FedEx’s rate. This mattered little to me at this point, however, because all of the money I could potentially save on shipping means nothing if I don’t have actual book to sell.
So everything in regards to getting my D.C. books shipped from Lunar on a timely basis has been fixed. Last week I got this week’s titles on Thursday and this week’s books are scheduled for a Friday afternoon arrival. All is right with the world…at least for the time being.
There are new changes on Monarch Comics’ horizon in regards to comic distribution. As many of you already know, starting with the week of October 6th, we will begin receiving our Marvel books from new comic book distributor Penguin Random House. The industry has been preparing for the changeover since May of this year and it looks like everything is going to go smoothly. Once I realized that PRH had product in stock that I couldn’t get from either Diamond or Lunar I began putting regular reorders in with them just to see how they were at packing and shipping items. They aren’t perfect, but I’ve seen a lot worse in my time and I am cautiously optimistic about getting the Marvel periodicals shipped in good shape. Because PRH operates so many warehouses in the US it can be a kind of crapshoot as to how long it takes to get a reorder from them or in how many pieces it will show up, but I don’t think that will be an issue with the comic books as they will all be coming from one dedicated warehouse.
There is also the matter of navigating PRH’s retailer website. It’s certainly different from Diamond and Lunar’s respective websites and I think I have it figured out, but I’ve had to make some changes to how I process order behind the scenes. I won’t bore you will al the spreadsheet details, but a major change I’ll be making is switching to FOC orders for Marvel rather than the way I did it through Diamond with Initial Orders followed by FOC tweaks. This is mostly due to PRH’s initial orders system is a little clunky and they haven’t updated their systems to allow for reducing orders for product on FOC. This shouldn’t make a difference to the way you order and purchase Marvel Comics at all and I am hoping that the transition is functionally seamless, but I’ve also been around this industry long enough to know that there may be issues down the road that I can’t even predict at this point. I think that I’ve worked it all out on paper and got it figured out, but if there are issues then I will rectify them as quickly and hassle-free as possible.
The final stages of Ed Year One renovations are in their final stages. I finally received the bookshelves and brackets that I have been waiting on since early July and Brian and I have been working hard to get them all up on the walls. For those of you who haven’t been in yet this week, this portion of my renovations consists of taking the metal baskets that have been hanging on the slatwall since the beginning of time and replacing them with much more attractive bookshelves which will allow us to display more titles on the walls as well as keep those titles in better shape. The supplies have also been moved from their old metal shelf and onto these knew and sleek bookshelves. I’m actually pleasantly surprised by how well this project turned out and despite a few hiccups, including having to repaint a whole wall because the paint didn’t stick well, it has been pretty easy to swap everything around. Over the next couple of months I will be working to bring in a lot more trade paperback/hard cover backstock in order to get these shelves filled up as quickly as possible, hopefully in time for my first holiday season!
I’ve also recently picked up a great deal of backstock for the store and Brian and I have working tirelessly in order to get it all out in front of you as quickly as possible. This includes some major new key issues in the showcase as well as a major restock of more general back issues in the boxes and the creation of many new dollar boxes! I won’t claim that we have a comprehensive catalogue of back issues, but we have a lot more than in the past and if there are books you are looking for to complete runs then it is certainly worth your time to check out the back issue boxes and dollar bins! Also, keep an eye on our Facebook page as I will be posting pictures of all of the new keys that come in the door and end up in the showcases.
I will be out of the office tomorrow (Friday, September 3rd) for a much needed day off. It surprised me when I realized that I haven’t had an actual day off in almost two months and decided to treat myself since Brian just got back from vacation and was ready to hit the ground running. I will effectively be offline until I get back into the store, but if you have any questions that need attending to immediately please don’t hesitate to give the store a call and talk to Brian. He needs more experience in helping folks with comic book issues and he can always take a message and kick any problems back to me. Additionally, I will be taking a small vacation from the store starting September 16th and I won’t be back until the 21st. Hill and I are joining two other couples and journeying once again up to Michigan’s UP in order to visit the bears at Oswald’s Bear Ranch…😊
Okily dokily…that’s it for me this week! Have a great weekend and I hope to see you in the store soon!
Eddie