Hey, Folks!
After last week’s seemingly endless EDitorial I just have a few quick notes before getting the whole schmoo posted and ready to go! The biggest note this week is that there will be no EDitorial next and that I will be out of the office from Thursday, September 16th-Sunday, September 19th for my now annual trip up North to see da bears at the Oswald Bear Ranch in Michigan’s UP. This will be a little different from my previous excursions as I have decided to leave the office behind and let Brian give it a go to run things next week. This means I will not have the computer with me and I may be out of communication at various points due to the weak cell coverage up there. I will make sure to get the shipping list and sub form up and running before leaving Thursday morning and here’s hoping there will be no problems with it. I’ve trained Brian on how to process the orders, but I am apologizing in advance in case there are any blips while I’m gone.
This week also marks the first time I will be ordering Marvel periodicals from Penguin Random House. It’s an interesting process and I am curious as to how well it will work…lol. Back in the old days, i.e. last month, when I was still getting the Marvel stuff from Diamond I would place Marvel initial orders into the system and then I would do a final order cut-off every week in order to adjust my orders up or down based on inventory records. Well, the system is not quite the same with PRH, especially in regards to “initial orders’ VS “FOC orders”. I could put in an initial order for Marvel product at the end of the month as I did with Diamond, but PRH does not offer the option of adjusting orders down, only up, with their FOC system. As a result, I have had to devise an entirely new system of ordering Marvel Comics in order to properly track and manage special orders and the like. I think I have it figured out and those of you who helpfully let me know what you want to purchase ahead of time should be covered with no problems. I’m not sure how well prepared PRH is for reorders of periodicals, both the packing and shipping, but I have been using the, to restock hard covers and trades for a couple of months now and they have pretty efficient with the way they handle it. So I have big hopes that this new arrangement will work out just fine, but I thought I should mention it now to let you know that there is a sea change going on behind the scenes and that there may be issues with it that haven’t presented themselves yet. I will, of course, keep all of you in the loop and let you know if some problem has popped up!
Brian and I have managed to get all of the new shelving units up and running on the slatwall, but we are still working on filling them up so that the store doesn’t look half empty. Who knew that a wall of face-out trade paperbacks would contract so much when reoriented sideways!?! We have been spreading the stock out a bit in order to fill things in and there are plans afoot to start moving around the books and refiling things. The big work will most likely begin when I get back as I don’t want to burden Brian with it while I am out of the store. I do believe that we will, at least at the outset, have one wall devoted to Marvel books and the other wall devoted to D.C. books although this may change at some point if I get a better idea. In any case, I ask for your patience while we move things around and my current goal is to have everything spread out well filed before our annual Black Friday sale in November!
We have also been feverishly working to finish the restock on the back issue bins as well as finishing up refilling the dollar boxes. If you haven’t checked out the back issue bins recently you might want to take another look as we have added hundreds of restocked back issues. The dollar boxes are flowing pretty well now too and there are hundreds of new selections for your perusal.
Okily dokily…that’s it for me this week. To reiterate, I will be here in the store next week on Tuesday and Wednesday as per usual, but will be gone and incommunicado for the rest of the week. Please direct all questions to Brian who will attempt to help as best as he can and will direct any questions to me once I return!
Have a great week, Folks, and I will talks at ya again in two weeks!
Eddie