The Bob Layton countdown. Less than 53 days till October 4th. I have gathered the various back issues we have at the store that he has worked on along with buying issues so there will be material to sell that day if you want something signed. Saturday sold a copy of Iron Man 150 to a customer to have signed by Bob. The customer read it and liked it so much he is now trying to hunt down issue 149. Part of the Doctor Doom vs Iron Man story. You are also welcomed to bring comics to have him sign. Please be reasonable though. He will also be doing sketches.
Please join us in welcoming Bob Layton for his first trip to Iowa. I hope after his first trip to Iowa he will be willing to come back some day. Also feel free to check out his website at http://www.boblayton.com/. He does commissions. Darn good ones too. I have one hanging up at the store.
On CBR’s website here is a small part of their interview with Dan Didio and Jim Lee:
On the thinking behind DC’s weekly titles: “The goal for weekly comics is very simple,” said DiDio. “It’s to bring people into stores every week. To give them a destination book. I know that I love to go to the comic shop every week, but you’re not sure what might be out or what’s not out but you’re looking for an excuse. So the weekly comics sort of give people an excuse to go in there. You know you have that book, and while you’re there you can see what else is out there and grab it. Like I said, there’s so many books out there. Nobody comes into a comic shop, at least not that I know of, that goes in and buys just one comic. They go in and they see one and they find something else and they buy a bunch. So now what we like to do is it gives them a reason to come in, buy your weekly book, and then hopefully they find the other stuff that we’re putting out that week as well.”
I agree with that. When the monthly regular Batman title comes out I know it is going to be a strong sales week. People love Batman. Comic stores need people coming into their stores and buying something. People need a reason. They want to be entertained. Put a comic out that people will come in and pick up as soon as possible. Quick cash flow also helps businesses.
Walking Dead 130 had an unexpected twist. Don’t want to spoil it for you. If you are not already reading this title you should be.
Wizkids, which is owned by NECA who makes Heroclixs continues to do all the wrong moves. After already delaying the Con In Your Store materials to arrive on August 8th we didn’t receive anything that day. Of course there is no way to directly contact Wizkids about this. Alliance who carries Wizkids products contacted me that day asking if we had received it. I of course said no. So come Monday Alliance was suppose to call and let me know what is going on. That was Friday. Monday I ended up calling in the morning. Asked if there was anymore info on the Con material. Was asked “You didn’t get yours?” Um, no we talked about this Friday. Was told they would call back later. As of 2:30 Monday I called again and left a voicemail and have been told nothing. I did get a call back at 2:40 letting me know come Wednesday they should have an answer. I only spent over a grand to be in the Con In Your Store program. My payment wasn’t delayed at all. Meaning my money was taken as soon as possible. Then days before we were originally suppose to be able to have the Con In Your Store they delayed it so the earliest a store could have the event was August 8th. August 8th gets here and I still have nothing. People contacted me wanting to know what I have received. But I have not received anything. Thankfully I did not have the Con Event on that weekend. And now the 16th is a “Surprise and Delight” Heroclix event since I had pushed back the Con In Your Store Day to then. But I still have no idea if I will receive anything by then. It is Wednesday morning as I type this up. If there is any updates today I will post them on our Facebook page.
There is no tracking number even.
The Amazing Spiderman Team base, Trinity base, Captain America Sentinel, and Shuma I am now being told Alliance doesn’t even have these on hand to send out to any of the stores that signed up for the Con In Your Store program. And they do not know when they will receive them. Shuma and the Trinity base have already been released at conventions and Shuma was available online also. The Captain America Sentinel is a repaint. The Amazing Spiderman Team base is reusing the Brother Hood of Evil’s team base. And Wizkids does not have them available yet. But they were part of the Con In Your Store Program. And when they do come out I have to pay for them.
Friday when I talked with Alliance the sales rep said he noticed I scaled back on the Galactic Guardians Heroclix coming out. I said yeah. I already spent a grand on product Wizkids couldn’t sell to get the Con In Your Store material and I still don’t even have that. Dealing with Wizkids takes up to much of my time. And as a business owner time is money.
I was hoping to show what was received for the Con In Your Store program to everyone who showed to play War of Light round III Saturday August 9th. It is very hard to hype random “surprise and delight” items that could be an old Chase like Sun Girl to a rare in demand Heroclix.
Come Wednesday I have to hope that my store wasn’t over looked and we are still receiving hopefully good heroclixs for the Con In Your Store. And that Wizkids doesn’t find out they don’t have enough to cover us if they overlooked us.
Business wise Wizkids causes more headaches than any other business that I deal with. Meaning out of all the vendors that get my money Wizkids beats them all for being a pain in the butt. From having a heroclix set where retailers had to order so much to receive prize support for the set and then on the day it releases no one received the prize support. Wizkids still stayed silent on it. Alliance who distributes their product even had on the invoice the prize support but listed as not shipped. Then we the retailers all found out that there never was any prize support. Wizkids kept silent about that little fact right up to the release date. And never did I get an apology or any word about this from Wizkids.
Will I get an apology or anything to make up for the Con In Your Store program headaches? Doubt it. Wizkids is set up that there is no direct contact with them. Everything goes through the only two vendors that carry their products, Diamond and Alliance. Wizkids is making money so they don’t care about the small businesses that sell their product.
I am tired of guessing how much War of Light material for their six month event I will receive. Their whole you better stock up because we don’t expect to have any for months 5 and 6 is another headache. I am not in the warehouse business Wizkids. Stock up your own material. Seriously having small businesses buy product that they can not sell for months is a drain on any business.
Who the heck goes out and buys a car they can not drive for 6 months?
As regular readers of this column know this isn’t the first column that I have pointed out Wizkids business practice. And quite frankly I am tired of typing about them. I know Wizkids is not going to apologize to me or anyone for this. I know they will do nothing to help right any of the problems they have caused.
So I finally slashed my heroclix orders by over half on the Galactic Guardians set due out this month. Along with future heroclix releases. I think it is a good business move regardless. The movie version of the Galactic Guardians just came out. And now the Marvel Comics Galactic Guardians are coming out. War of Light round three was this month. The Con In Your Store program is suppose to happen soon. To many heroclix events at once.
And if the new set of Galactic Guardians is popular I will just order more after selling out of my original order. I do not see a sell out of the product like what happened with the Deadpool set. Though from what I understand the popular zombie chase heroclixs will be back for this set. The team bases for the zombies are in the prize support.
Wizkids looking like they do not know what they are doing just makes me look like I don’t know what I am doing when it comes to dealing with their products. Wizkids uses up to much of my time. Time that can be better used promoting comic sales and other products whose companies seem to want to worth with me even more.
Magic From The Vault: Annihilation is due out this month. Next month will be another prerelease for Magic for the newest set.
The State Fair is going on. That always brings in out of town people to the store. It always amazes me how people who come from areas with no comic stores really like the store.
Heck for War of Light Heroclixs we had one person drive two hours to play since he had so much fun last time he was here.
Great Saturday with the Magic Game day, War of Light Heroclixs, and all the out of town customers. Other than wondering what was going on with the Wizkids Con In the Store program…..
Been more people asking about Star Wars X Wing Miniatures gaming. I hear you all. Just need things to slow down first. Right now it is looking like maybe in the middle of October for the return of Saturday gaming for X Wing.
The whole does gaming have a positive effect on sales question? When I went to Vegas for the Summitt and talked with follow store owners the ones that seem to be doing the best were the ones that didn’t have games going on in their stores. There were ones who told me their business improved once they stopped having games.
Getting a group of people together gaming can at times lead to peope getting hurt feelings and not coming back due to another fellow player. Or a rude person arriving that no one wants to deal with. Or people with no morals. Prizesharks that want the prize so badly they may tell others they hate the store but they have to have the prize. During the War of Light I had to tell a person to play his own game and quit bothering other peoples games. I even told him he already cost me two heroclix players. He didn’t even seem surprised.
Heck, two gamers in the past wanted to be on my emailer list. Just a few problems. I hadn’t done a customer emailer for months and was putting the news letter on the website and I had never told them one ever existed. They wanted to see if I would be foolish enough to email a copy without blind carbon copying my other customers on the list. They wanted to give a copy of my customers email address to help out another gamer at a different location.
Andy helped get the Magic gaming in better shape. He pointed out having free Magic events was a drain on the store. I had another person claim it was “unfair” to people if I didn’t let people play for free. How many businesses encourage people to hang out for free?
When heroclix gaming first started and I started getting official heroclix prizes out for free that was a big mistake. People would show up for the free events. I remember one person being so impressed that I had over twenty heroclix players and I ended up telling him yeah but I would have made more money working at Burger King. I remember trying to talk one of them into just having Heroclixs at his house since I didn’t make any sense for me to host heroclixs for them. Drafts and events where people had to buy something were the complete opposite of free nights . I would hear oh I don’t have any money. But after the free heroclixs and prizes were awarded they would go out for pizza and beer. Which we all know doesn’t cost anything. Steve pointed out what Andy was telling me about Magic. You need to make money.
Being nice and help full and letting people hang out for free just told some people if he is dumb enough to let us hang out for free let’s do it.
Free events were done away with. And money wise gaming was doing a lot better.
I understand the idea of having gaming is to get people into a store. It is one advantage that stores with a physical location have over internet businesses.
It is like the store I told about after I went to Kansas City awhile back. A group of Magic players loved playing at their local store. Then they decided to get all their boxes of at the time new Magic material online. And they didn’t tell the owner that they didn’t plan on buying any from him. That owner had to liquidate what he thought they were going to buy by selling it at a lost to another store who sells gaming material but doesn’t hold any games. Who told me this story. That store did go out of business later on. Now the people that played there stop in the store that doesn’t run gaming events and just sells the product and talk about how they miss the old store that they used to play at.
For whatever reason some gamers think of gaming at a store as an entitlement. Not all. Just some. It is like some have been taught that.
I understand it has to worth it for a person to come here. The flip side is it also has to be worth it for the business to host gaming.
Just like Star Wars X Wing Miniatures. Had a record sales day selling them after not having any Star Wars X Wing Miniature gaming for months. It is part of the reason I am hesitant to have it come back. It was doing fine till I bought prize support for it and had to listen to whining about the prize support not being good enough. Even though the Star Wars X Wing Miniature gaming was still free. It went from playing and getting nothing to still playing and getting something and still not paying anything. But the thank you for buying prize support was whining. Then a person who whined about the prize support had enough balls to tell me to order different prize support. Hell no.
If I had never ordered prize support people would still have been playing for fun. It is like prize support teaches some players they are owed it.
When I go to a bar I don’t demand a free shot glass because they are lucky enough that I showed up. I should try that sometime and have someone record it and put the results on YouTube.
The new D&D is out. Sold more D&D material than I ever did when there was D&D gaming here.
I am sure if the Con In Your Store program wasn’t such a pain I would be in a better mood about gaming at the store.
There are a lot of gamers that do treat the store as a typical business and that is good. There are also very respectful gamers. And you should easily know who you are. Odds are I have sat down and even played with you. I enjoy the gaming. But as I have stated before the owners of the building I lease from don’t care how many gamers play, how many Facebook likes the store has, or how many positive online reviews the store has. They just care that the lease check clears.
I may just to easy going of a person. An easy mark for some people, or so they think. A more business attitude and/or look at the store I may need to develop. Time for me to work on becoming the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.
And then we had a birthday heroclix game celebration at the store Tuesday . And Matthew’s look afterwards is priceless. Makes it all worth wild. His picture is up on our Facebook page.
The website is growing. I have even had to do some updates to it already since some items sold already. Yes, I am surprised. I think I only had roughly 40 items on it last week. I really dropped the ball by not having the website check out working a lot sooner. The good news is I have added more items to the marketplace and hope to add more every week.
Still on Facebook. Get updates and news and funny stuff by “liking” us on Facebook.
Everything for Bob Layton’s arrival to Rodman Comics is good to go. The hotel is paid. The tickets are paid. Thunderbirds are go!
Hope to see you at Rodman Comics. Well unless you are a jerk. Unless you have money. Naw, just joking. No jerks please, and no banging your head on the display case please.
