Ask a guy whose LCS closed because of Marvel anything

>>93749267
Why did you close your LCS?

>>93749267
Why did your League of Legends Champion Series close?

>>93749267
How big is your cock?

>>93749267
What are you gonna do now?

>>93749267
Are you planning revenge?

>>93749267
post proof or it didn't happen

>>93749267
At what depth does a pan become a pot?

Is it really that hard to sell enough pokemon/yugioh/WH40k to keep the lights on in your ancient media museum?

>>93749267
Why won't anyone love me?

>>93749267

Why did my dad have to die?

File: amen.jpg (77KB, 887x1097px) Image search: [Google]

77KB, 887x1097px

>>93749267
Is there really an industry blacklist a company can put a store on for not stocking their comics?

>>93749267
Why does that image make it seem like Marvel is Diamond and thus leads me to doubt your ever working at an LCS?

What's the meaning of life?

>>93749267
How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Why did OP say ask me anything then abandon his own thread?

>>93749440
So does this question mean that woodchucks normally don't chuck wood?

>>93749366
Op. Ever claimed to work at his LCS. He said his LCS closed.

>>93749356
Probably not. Especially since everything is done through Diamond. Diamond doesn't give a shit what books you order since you HAVE to use them.

>>93749312
Given how Magic and Yugioh are both shitting the bed really hard right now, if say it's pretty hard to move them. Pokemon hasn't been a real strong seller for years and years, and warhammer's overpriced figures sell to an extremely niche crowd who aren't always able to afford new product on a regular enough basis to keep shit going.

>>93749521
Okay but he claims marvel specifically is what closed them down, so either he has deep intimate knowledge of the stores inner finances or hes just a shitposter who wanted to start a thread.

>>93749267
Why do you have to blame Marvel? Stop being a bigot, it's not hard.

>>93749574
Then sell apparel and vinyl.

>>93749574

>magic

>shitting the bed

Ok what happened this time.

>>93749267
you're not helping your case by posting such an unfunny comic

>>93749280
Stocking useless marvel shit that didn't sell
>>93749286
7 inches soft (I'm black)
>>93749331
Because you're a faggot

>>93749356

I don't think Marvel can really afford to maintain a blacklist at this point. Really what they do is over incentivize certain titles or ship shops tons of useless copies they can't move for free so they can inflate their sales numbers. You may not want 20 issues of their progressive comic but by God, Marvel is going to send you 20 issues.

>>93749902
>7 inches soft
This isn't even good bait

>>93749471
I've never observed them in the wild. I was hoping OP's lack of a job and by extension, probable homelessness, would have provided him with the means to answer the question.

>LCS claim that evil Marvel and their stinky SJW nonsense is killing them
>Apparently they don't understand that DC, Image, Dark Horse, Dynamite, Archie, Boom!, D&Q, Fantagraphics, IDW, Devil's Due, Vertigo, Oni Press, Top Cow, Slave Labor, Valiant, and Udon.
>Still refusing to sell manga
>Still refusing to actually do things with TCG or TTG
>Still refusing to buy old reprints
>Still refusing to offer to order niche stuff of customers if they pay a fee
>Still refusing to diversify your goods

You deserved to go out of business because you refused to adapt to the times. That's like saying that a record store went out of business because nu-metal stopped being a thing.

>>93749267
Why do you feel the need to lie to strangers on the internet?

>>93749833
Wizards spent the last couple of years focusing more on story than gameplay so some of the worlds in Magic can be used as D&D campaign settings.

>>93749574
My friend has a booth at a local bazaar, he makes tons of money off Yu-Gi-Oh!/Pokémon/magic
Teens come and sell him boxes of 1500 cards for $30 and he sells cards for $1-3 each

I'm a business partner in the comic side, I'm making almost $200 a week off a $300 investment in a bunch of long boxes
Once the summer ends I probably won't be making too much tho

But anyway, you just have to have a good location with a lot of foot traffic, my LCS is next to a grocery store and a nail salon and kids come in all the time

File: 1318267479769.jpg (23KB, 500x332px) Image search: [Google]

23KB, 500x332px

>>93749902
aha you fool
blacks are showers not growers, you've revealed your hand

File: 1494887260090.png (359KB, 935x527px) Image search: [Google]

359KB, 935x527px

>only one LCS for miles
>they sell model kits and import figures and a ton of neca stuff
>give people comics to take home over the weekend to see if they'd like a new series
>host TCG, TTG, and even computer game events
>sell anime blurays and manga and even old OVA VHS tapes
>they even sell snacks at the front desk

>>93749999
Forbidden Planet sells all that shit.

>>93749833
Ignoring all flavor related fuck ups (and oh ho have they fucked up), they decided to change how sets rotated. For anyone who doesn't know, it used to be you'd have three sets in one block and a core set that came out each year and then standard, the most popular/pushed format, was two blocks plus a coreset. So they changed it so there were only two sets per block, no core set, and they'd just rotate three blocks at a time. Meaning your cards would be in standard for about a year and a half instead of two years. People were happy with the change until the first rotation came and they got pissed that their cards weren't around for two years. So Wizards freaked and changed rotation to keep cards around longer. Problem is...they didn't actually test the older cards with the newer cards. So they had to do the first standard bans in years. People mostly understood and it wasn't the biggest deal. Then they put out an artifact block and it's been banning after banning. One time they said nothing was banned and then came back two or three days later with a "lol we lied actually ban that shit." So standard has been miserable to play for years AND you can't safely invest in a standard deck because anything top tier can get banned.

To make things worse, the rares from the next set leaked and they were fucking boring and Wizards had their own "Marvel Legacy" type event planned for their 25th anniversary including a return to Dominaria...but then someone spilled the beans that they "modernized" it and people got pissed.

>>93749267
Why were you talking to Marvel and not Diamond?

>>93750036
Honestly, you can have a shit location for pokemon or magic. All you have to do is have enough space to fire the occasional event so they'll let you buy from distributors. Then you take all the product and hock it on ebay. Easy money.

>>93749999
>>Apparently they don't understand that DC, Image, Dark Horse, Dynamite, Archie, Boom!, D&Q, Fantagraphics, IDW, Devil's Due, Vertigo, Oni Press, Top Cow, Slave Labor, Valiant, and Udon.
Wut?

>>93750074
woah hold on! are you tellling me that you expect people to do the most logical thing they should do in a LCS business? please someone stop this madman!

>>93750165
Meant to put "still exist" at the end. My point being that there's literally tons of other comic book company's to throw in with if Marvel's letting you down. Fuck; just sell the books that are obvious tie-ins to the MCU or the cartoons. Like I said; if your business if dying because one brand is letting you down, you're doing something wrong.

>>93749833
They've banned more cards in the last rotation then in the history of the game. Collectors are out several grand in card value and despite the bans there are only two viable decks that basically go 50/50 against eachother in tourney play.

>>93750139
This is intresting, can you elaborate on the lore fuck up?
And too what extent is it being modernized?

>>93750212
wow. it's almost necropotence all over again

>>93749944
You still have to pay the shipping on those "free" issues.

>>93749902
Mah nigga.

>>93750139

Thank god I only play sealed events and casual constructed with friends.

Pick one thing that would vastly improve your LCS

mine: they actually start selling comics again

>>93749648
Autists can't into music. The owner wouldn't know what to stock and the regulars would get assblasted when clean, normal people came in to buy records.

>>93750074
>Only local comic book shop in around 30km also has a small window at the front where you can buy Duck comics, newspapers, snacks and yugioh/pokemon cards.
>Small room in the basement used for karaoke, gaming and movie nights hosted by owner
>When it is not used for events, it also serves as a generally comfy spot to read or study.
>You can leave your own coffee cup there and the owner charges you 25% less for your coffee.

>>93750205
That's just the problem, they aren't choosing to throw in with marvel, Marvel is overshipping the fuck out of everybody to inflate their numbers and the LCS is getting stuck with the shitheap.

>>93749999
Nobody buys half the shit you are talking about man.

>>93749999
The refusal on the part of some many shops to sell manga is unbelievable. A lot of the people who own these places seem to only stock shit that they personally think is cool so they completely miss out on a load of opportunities.

Yeah the comics market is tough, but I think the average LCS would be a lot more successful if they were run by well-adjusted people who treated them as businesses rather than hobbies.

>>93749267
I checked this artists stuff on his twitter. I liked this comic but the rest of his stuff is what you'd expect from someone that has a seething hatred for sjws

>>93750484
Have you ever been to real LCS? Both of mine kick you out if you don't buy anything and enforce the policy exclusively on the neckbears and autistic. Eltingville ain't real life man

>>93750446
Mine would be that it starts to exist.
Closest one is like a 45 minute drive.

>>93750074
The owner of my LCS has a TTG business in another location and it's so great knowing he has that income and also not having to interact with TTG people.

>>93750525
That shot sounds comfy as duck, anon. Reminds of my hodunk college town LCS.

>>93750484
You're underestimating how autistic collecting vinyl can get. One of my LCSes has a separate room for it and seems to do well enough.

>>93750446
Manga. I'm not super into it, but a lot of younger people seem to be and I'm always seeing them walk out disappointed by the piddly little rack of manga.
Otherwise it's already an awesome store. No tabletop/card game/video game bullshit so there aren't smelly spastics wandering around the store all the time. They stock nearly everything from Humanoids, Fantagraphics, and all the small indie publishers I'm aware of. They've got zines and local artist's comics in the back. It's awesome.
A store this good only survives in a big city like this. Out here a comics shop attracts more arty types than autists and honestly I prefer it this way.

>>93750484
get him to sell those shitty funko pops, and is there a new kind of fashion that the fedoras wear now? get him to stock that.

>>93750564
In my life I have had 4 LCSs. All but the most recent have been exactly as I described. Comic shops have the reputation they have for a reason.

>>93750642
Vinyl collecting is its own completely separate breed of autism. I have the misfortune of owning a brain basted in a stew of both comics autism and vinyl autism.

>>93750526
Then the people it's killing are stupid as fuck. My LCS got a shitton of the 50 States alt covers for nu 52 JLA. You know what he did?
>Told rednecks that DC made a very small number of the Mississippi flag because of the starts and bars and sold it for $2 higher as a "limited edition"
>Sold all the Southern States covers in a "Southern Pride collection" for a discount that equalled out to not paying for 1 of the issues
>Would only sell the American Flag one if you bought at least 5 states covers plus own State flag
>Offered to let you burn the cover with any state flag you didn't like if you sold him decent condition comics

These all worked and he was out of JLA #1 in two weeks thanks to gullible rednecks and collectors.

Just literally offer to let customers destroy your extra Marvel Comics for a fee. You'll get enough butthurt anti-SJWs to do it. Then charge a "limited edition" fee to the people who actually want it because your stock was bought up already.

>>93749833
Standard's been unplayable for a long time and WotC has no clue how to fix it.
Not a lot of stores do other formats, and to get into those you have to be willing to drop some serious cash.

File: 1495806378269-vg.png (73KB, 254x291px) Image search: [Google]

73KB, 254x291px

>>93749285
That's pretty funny, buddy.

>>93750729
Yeah, a reputation from the fucking 90s that autistic neckbeards wear like a badge of honor. When my LCS nearly burned down, the one across town literally twitted "Good Riddence" and laughed about it with their WH40k customers. When people stopped going because a rumor started that THEY had done it and their comic sales tanked because they basically refused to sell comics or allow women in when there was 40k going on, they did a complete 180 and started to not act like a secret boys club.

Even today, my LCS gets TONS of foot traffic from people during Free Comic Book Day and nearly sell out of their backstock, while the other guys still had all their shit on sale 3 weeks after it ended to close the gap.

>>93749267
>>93749267
IT'S HAPPENING

>>93749280
>>93749285
>>93749286
>>93749294
>>93749300
>>93749304
>>93749307
>>93749331
>>93749354
Pajeet shill going full force.

>>93749902
>Stocking useless marvel shit that didn't sell

But you knew you'd have to pay for it upfront because that's how the direct market works, and since LCS don't generally go out of business through ordering comics, you must have been doing something exceptional which caused the failure of your own business.

First case: you say you were stocking Marvel products that didn't sell.

OK, so... why? Diamond doesn't force you to buy them in order to access other publishers' products, and though it's a reasonable guess to assume 50% of your customers will want a Marvel product, if you happen to open somewhere that nobody reads Marvel you're going to discover that within a month; so you maybe have two months where about half your new comic book and comic book merch stock (which surely wasn't the only thing you stocked) would be waste; but even then you could recoup most of that cost selling through eBay or Amazon as a reseller for a modest fee (and you should have had eBay/Amazon presence given the nature of your business and the likelihood of your having one-time, high-value items in stock that the local consumers might not want/pay top dollar for).

My questions just keep mounting here. Who approved the loan you needed to start your store, and if you didn't need a loan, why do you care? Obviously you're rich and stupid in that case. But if you borrowed against your home or pushed your life savings into it (which is extremely unlikely, given the way people have been saving the past 10 years or more), why weren't you given advice by anybody on the basics of running a customer-facing business? Why didn't you seek advice on the basics of economics, instead of ordering and re-ordering month after month until your money ran out?

How retarded are you?

>>93749356
What would be the point? It would clearly be counter-productive to do that, there's no way it would stay secret and only Diamond could ever enforce it - Diamond make their money from selling, not withholding.

>>93749532
Can someone please enlighten me as to how the fuck Diamond operates and why do people put up with it? I do not understand why everyone apparently uses such an apparently shitty company.

>>93752480
It's a literal monopoly. It has exclusive distribution rights with the big three (DC, Marvel, and Image) because they were basically the biggest direct market distributors before newsstand sales went belly up. Now everyone's stuck having to use them. Kinda like how, technically speaking AT&T and Verizon are still basically the Bell System because almost all telephone networks in America were set up by Bell System.

>>93752480
Diamond is just the middle-man

Comic companies tell Diamond what they're making.
Stores order comics from Diamond.
Diamond gets the comics from the companies and ships them to stores.

Diamond isn't really "evil" or bad. It's just not really healthy, since it is a monopoly. It's cancerous to the American comics industry.

>>93752727
But how does such a monopoly continue in America? It couldn't exist here, has no one ever tried to get round them?

>>93752984
It was ruled back in the 90s that while Diamond does have a monopoly, because that monopoly doesn't extend to all of printed literature it's ok.

They allowed comic books to be considered books, and let one manufacturer control the market.

>>93749267
> marvel was the only thing keeping your LCS open

File: PSN gets hacked.png (61KB, 738x576px) Image search: [Google]

61KB, 738x576px

>>93750139
>>93749574
>>93749833

>both major tcgs are having huge disasters at the same time

is this the end

>>93753041
That and like >>93752727 implied, they're basically the ONLY distribution network in the country. Even if they DID get busted, it would be just like what happened with the Bell System. Modern AT&T is like how it is now because it was originally two of the bigger Baby Bells that merged and started buying back the rest of the system, while Verizon is one of the Northern Baby Bells that bought the biggest American cell phone system really early on.

You break up Diamond and all it'll do is either make the comic book companies have to figure out which of the Baby Diamonds to throw in with and hope it manages to build itself back by eating the other Baby Diamonds or settle for a bunch of massively crippled distributors that might end up hurting their bottom line because the break-up might keep them from selling stuff on some regions easily or at all.

>>93749521
>phoneposter

>>93749999
>struggle to sell marvels overstock
>i know, the solution is to stock your shop with even more nichestuff thats hard to sell
you dont dversify when the market sucks, you stick with your niche product for your established consumers until it gets better, problem being you dont have a niche product nor consumers anymore
here is what they should really be selling
>big macs
>starbucks coffee
>anything but comic books

>>93749267
From my understanding of the publishing business, bookstores (and that includes comic stores) get a full refund for unsold books. How hard can it be to put a bunch of those in a corner, even if they won't sell any?

>>93753934
Even amazing games like Netrunner are in terrible states. I swear I've never seen something go downhill as fast as that game.

>>93749267
How bad was Marvel's overshipping?

>>93749574
>>93750139
What happened with Yu-Gi-Oh?

Wasn't XYZ supposed to balance the whole thing? Because I heard the new type was useless

>>93750446
More floor space so that backissues are easier to browse. That's it, though. My LCS is pretty awesome and decently sized, and backissue browsing just takes a little bit more effort than walking in and having a look.

>>93750551
>run by well-adjusted people who treated them as businesses rather than hobbies
I think you need a both sides to be truly successful, but I definitely agree that the heavier focus should be on business. An LCS run as a clubhouse for the owner's employee-friends with a clientele of people in on the secret will never do as well as one that's more inclusive and business savvy.

>>93753934
Don't know what's going on with YGO, but I'm sure the dedicated players will always be around
MtG's main format is garbage, but the other ones are fine.

>>93749574
>Pokemon
>not a strong seller right now

Someone hasn't picked up on the turn of the tide

>>93755604
It's completely different for the direct market. The direct market is speculative and the shops, not the readers, are the primary consumers. Diamond is the middle man between the shops and the publishers. The shops order their stock from Diamond, who get it from the publishers. Books are ordered based on what the shops' own customers have pre-ordered (on pull), along with what they think they can sell off the shelf as extras. Unlike the news-stand model, once a LCS buys a book from Diamond, they can't send it back to the publisher for a refund, outside of very, VERY rare circumstances as allowed by the publishers.

If stock doesn't sell, they'll just take up shelf/floor space it until it does, and some of these books never will. With Marvel overshipping books for "free" to boost their own numbers, the LCS not only has to still pay to have them shipped (which isn't cheap), but they also have to pay for upkeep/storage of the books. Either that or they have to get creative about how to get rid of them without taking even more of a loss, like the LCS in >>93750802.

>>93754572
Even if you tried to get in on the ground floor, who the fuck is going to go with an unrealized, untested, insecure producer? If someone could show up and reasonably produce and distribute a fraction of what Diamond's capable of, then there'd be a potential of a turning tide.

If you've ever followed a Kickstarter on a board game, then you know how legitimately complicated some shit can get. Printing is likely a lot easier than component assembly and sorting, but it's still a lot of work to produce and ship all that shit, have it available to all outlets on the same release day and be able to respond to new orders if something sells hot. There's way too much investment necessary for what is ultimately a niche market for any investor to consider it viable. You'd have to be a complete comics nutjob to want to fix the system personally.

>>93752465
Wow, this shills are out in full force today.

>>93752480
They have a monopoly on direct market comic distribution and all LCSs operate under the direct market. And I mean monopoly in the literal sense. They were taken to court over it and the judge agreed that it's a monopoly but since it's only a monopoly on comics instead of all print publications that it's OK.

Basically, the reason they're able to operate the way they do is because the America declared it a legal monopoly since "lol comics."

>>93750139
>>93750212
>>93750823
Standard has always been for the goodest of good goys. Legacy is where it's at.

>>93749833
Magic died with the Zendikar block.

>>93750802
This is similar to what my LCS did. That month that Marvel sent out a bunch of overshipped comics? Packaged the excess in some "Marvel NOW Starter Packs." Sold them for $10 per and ended up making the money back. Even got a couple people in my store to pick up Nova thanks to it being one of the books that got grossly overshipped. Fat lot of good that did in the end, but still. Like, there's a bunch of reasons to complain about Marvel and their poor sales these days are definitely hurting LCSs, but the overshipping and variants are only a problem if your LCS is ran by a bunch of idiots. If you don't think you can sell the variant at a high enough price to more than make up for the extra issues, then don't order it. The only stores who have extra shipping costs that wouldn't be made up for by just selling even one or two of the free issues are the ones so big that they aren't at risk of closing anyways.

Even selling a couple of them would more than cover the extra shipping costs and end up making you money, and at worst, if that extra shipping cost (of a few bucks) is enough to sink the shop then they had much bigger problems.

>>93756511

The problem is that yugioh only has one format. Zoo cancer is still shitting over everything and people are mad about the upcoming new rules killing their decks. The next dew booster sets coming out also look awful. There's no other format to run to unlike magic.

File: 1431037831727.png (67KB, 230x230px) Image search: [Google]

67KB, 230x230px

>>93750139
>mfw I stopped playing Magic in 2003
I made the right choice.

>>93756037
>Wasn't XYZ supposed to balance the whole thing?

Ohohohoho. No. Lord, no.

It's basically the same problem as MtG with the banlists, only even worse because of the gimmick rotation and that UpperDeck doesn't bother to do quality control until after certain decks top the tournaments. Also as >>93757163 there's no alternative format (well, that's not true, but no one plays standard), so everyone just hops on whatever wins until it gets banned, then they move to the next tournament-winning deck, ect ad nauseum.

The metagame's been a mess for the past decade, and now that the new archetype turns the field into a chess board it's been exacerbated.

>>93757188
Magic was still really good in '03. It wasn't until '09 or 2010 or so that it started going to shit.

>>93756037
>>93757854
Keep in mind that before all of the rule changes and xyz and synchro shit happened, beatdowns were the only viable strategy. There weren't enough cards to make a decent mill deck with and Exodia/Destiny Board banked on your opponent not having Card Destruction or Harpie's Feather Duster. They had to rework the game from the ground up to inject life into its putrid corpse, and that's how you know the game wasn't really well designed to begin with.

>>93756426
How many action figures did you have? Do you still have them? :) Did Marvel Legends sell well for you? What was your markup?

>>93757188
I moved on after Nemesis came out, but I didn't know it was this....weird

>>93758027
Mill really only needed the jars tho and it pretty dead now because milling gives your opponent too many recources to work with.