Retailing Issues: The Rush To Ship

* the comics business news and analysis site ICv2.com has re-opened the issue of early shipping for comics products, with about a half-dozen retailers weighing in on that original piece. I'm not sure this particular discussion is specifically interesting in any way, but the general failure of the Direct Market to get past its policy of a mad scramble to put product on the shelf by sending it to stores day of, essentially giving them no opportunity to plan for what's come and what didn't, remains endlessly fascinating to me. It's basically a market that bases a fundamental part of its business on the widespread and nearly absolute expectation that a significant number of its retailers will routinely cheat a potentially better system and that even with pretty much a single distributor no one is willing to enforce a change in the way things are done. Imagine a movie system or a world of television where we weren't always sure what movies would open or what TV shows would be on until two days before or even day of.

I'm likely to receive criticism for saying so, but this has always been one of those things, like the publishers not taking that last step to have a disciplined and rational release of material across the weeks of a month or retailers again not willing to participate in some industry-wide advocacy that might lead to a competitive store in their area, that makes it hard to feel bad when a system loses sales to on-line or different brick-and-mortar retail avenues.

* here's yet another semi-baffling issue unless you spend enough time in comics to become accustomed to this sort of thing: rumors abound that a naughty word in the crazy-ass All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder series may have led to that book being recalled. Something seems not quite right about this story, and while I think it's funny more than tragic that DC occasionally recalls comics either post-printing or later in the distribution process, it's always a little alarming when someone on the airplane develops a nosebleed. Anyway, while I haven't a clue as to what it would be, I wouldn't be surprised if something additionally weird was going on here -- if nothing else, it seems pretty late in the process for DC to notice something goofy considering how early other such incidents were caught. To the wider point, one has to think a more rational way of releasing material to market would better insulate retailers against losing such and such comic on such and such week. Although it's not like the title in question ever came out regularly enough to inspire a recurring sense of consumer expectation.
 
posted 8:05 am PST | Permalink
 

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