Lunar doesn’t know your customer base in your location. Stop blaming them and make your own decisions when ordering goods. Learn your customers I say! Try and take no offense but you sound like a whiny typical American blaming their woes on others. Nothing is perfect and you can’t satisfy all customers but don’t totally blame distributors cause they’re not stocking up with an abundance for the “just in case” type scenario.
Perhaps be happy you survived the pandemic and still operating a store cause there’s a lot of retailers who didn’t.
If the link works there’s a quick view of some of the Liquidation Lists that rotate regularly so we have a chance to get great prices and Diamond doesn’t get stuck with anything. They alternate on a 2 week rotating schedule and if an item doesn’t sell, it gradually gets reduced down in price until it makes the lowest discount levels. It’s actually rather addictive to check in every two weeks and race other stores to get the best new items. Other times it’s a gamble on if we should wait and hope it makes it to a lower discount or sells out. The best deals get grabbed immediately so you have to check early and be ready to pull the trigger.
Another favorite is they have regular sales for individual publishers leftovers. I love stocking up on those as well. Zenescope and Dynamite offer some of the best ones. I just packed a 32 comic E-Bay order Saturday morning that every book came directly from one of those Zenescope sales.
Leftover ratio’s regularly get special sales so we can go in and grab them. That becomes a huge race against other stores as hundreds are all trying to buy at the same time and items are selling out while you’re trying to check out. Extreme fun and massive profitability. I’ve never seen a DC ratio offered since Lunar took over and miss it.
They also have special sales in general throughout the year to allow stores to stock up for things like Black Friday and Christmas. Lunar does a few of these now as well.
For all we know, the publishers have certain contract obligations with Lunar that is more restrictive now from when they were with Diamond. We’ll likely never know unless you work at either and have access. Oh well… nothing to get our panties all knotted up over I say!
I’m not new to this. I’ve been in direct retail since 1994 across 3 distinct product types. Their job as wholesalers is simply to order the product and have it in stock for stores to place smaller orders. In this case, orders for #2 and #3 can be dependent on having #1’s available for consumers so there’s a history of wholesalers ordering enough to last until those issues come out. Pointing out the obvious with examples of both that are happening right now isn’t being whiny, it’s stating facts.
You have a lot to offer but let me give an example of how you appear to be operating so hopefully you can learn from it.
You like cake. You make cakes at home from box mixes and canned icing. You have certain ways you want your cakes to look. You have flavors you enjoy and those you hate. You sell some occasionally at yard sales, school bake sales, you maybe even have a family recipe for fruit cake you crank out extras for each holiday season to cover the cost of your own.
You’re really great at making websites and figuring out where to put ads and pop up boxes so you decide to make a website for cake lovers. You figure you can tell them where to shop for cakes, which ones to buy, etc and over time more people join on to talk cakes.
Where this gets wonky at is you now consider yourself to br THE AUTHORITY on all things cake. You start to set rules for cake production and even for where the bakers shop. You’re basically now stepping outside your lane. There are bakers, and store fronts all over the country that their needs, expectations and purchasing desires are different from what you have dealt with so there’s no real way for you to know what they actually need but you act like you do or try to fault them for not believing what you perceive when there are legitimate differences between what you do in your kitchen and what a commercial baker needs or goes thru.
Open a bakery for a couple years if you must but even then that doesn’t qualify you to say what’s best for Mama’s Little Cheescake Factory in Chicago that may have different needs and customer experiences than your own. Right now it appears all you have is a kitchen.
Don’t chase the bakers off your Cake Boss website. Maybe they actually want to keep some extra cakes around for the display case and have the option of getting that special icing flavor a week after hearing about it from a customer that requested it. Maybe they want their wholesaler to keep Valentines cake deco in stock thru the week of Valentines Day and don’t mind having the chance to stock up on leftovers at a better price to be ahead of the game next Valentines Day. Maybe they just want to have a Christmas in July weekend special.
I see what both of you are saying BJ is saying that he wishes more were in stock from the distributor so he can grab some so he can engage customers looking for a copy as to not lose business. Poyo is saying that a retailer should move all their copies and take the money and run because there are so many titles that just sit.
But let me offer another perspective, I bet the distributor is saying they wish that the publisher had printed more copies to make available to them so they can cover advance reorders, and in turn the publishers are saying that they wish the stores had ordered more copies so they could have printed them and had them available (an overage percentage) to ship to the distributors.
I think both sides are right and have expressed their feelings well. Let’s move on so this doesn’t degrade into an argument.
How would he not take offense to that?
Jeez…good discussions are a great part of this forum but there is something to be said for trying to see others perspectives, letting something go, and/or not always having to have the last word.
And stop the whole blame game… Run your store, learn your customers and order what you know you can sell. Nobody can predict the demand off the street. Sure it’s nice to get products in such cases but that’s not always realistic and the consumers need to realize this. If they whine, let them whine. The world isn’t Burger King, you can’t always have it your way!
I’ve tried, he keeps coming back with same ol same ol… or it doesn’t make sense.
Just seems like a lot of whining and deflecting blame, that’s all. Just more and more excuses put onto others. Focus on the positives instead of repeating… "Lunar costing me money… " That’s all I hear or got from everything stated. There’s bigger problems in the world than to focus on if you or someone missed out on a single comic book issue.
All Marvel had to do was give people the story they wanted with a good writer and great art. It’s almost like it makes perfect sense and is an example of how to make money!
agreed