lighthouse

Loan funded this morning. Approval Sunday, funds in my account Tuesday. Start to finish was 11 days. Best wishes to all my fellow shop owners (and other small business owners) going through the process now.

Can I wait and be “Weird Wonder Tales 15 Guy” twice, two decades apart?

Turns out you were indeed correct. But about the wrong program. It’s the EIDL program (which has received over $200b in applications against just $17b in funding) that has dropped the limit all the way down to $15k (plus $10k more as a grant per the story I read). So far the average approved PPP loan is for around $260k ($151b over 580,000 approvals). Doubt there’s many comic shops running a weekly payroll of $25k.

Found this interesting. Jewelers Mutual provides instructions/advice for shipping expensive jewelry at this link (much of which would apply to high value comics): https://www.diamondcouncil.org/Documents/ReadingRoom/TheSAFEWaytoShipJewelry.pdf Spoiler alert, they recommend Register Mail above all other options. But I found this paragraph of note: 7. Avoid shipping packages to/from ZIP codes 10036, 90013, 90014, or 90015. Use caution when sending packages to/from ZIP codes 60602, 60603, 60659, 94102, 94103, and 94108. If shipping to and from these ZIP codes, arrange for packages to be picked up or delivered to the post office or the carrier's convenience center. Consider mailing the shipment to another location outside of these ZIP code areas. Avoid shipping to a residential address.

Registered Mail is slow as molasses. I've had packages take 3 days just to get out Florida leaving CGC, spending each night in a new city. But it's the most secure transport you'll get short of doing the drive yourself (which I did with a 400-book submission years and years ago). Theft from UPS and FedEx hubs happens all the time. And it's buried in the Terms and Conditions of both carriers that your package has to be able to survive a 5-foot freefall drop from one conveyor belt to another. Theft of mail (Registered or otherwise) is heavily prosecuted. And Registered Mail shipments are processed entirely by hand from start to finish. No automation. No conveyor belt drops. If I'm shipping fungible books, sure, I might drop them to Sarasota via UPS or FedEx because it's cheaper and I can deal with an insurance claim. It's not even about the money. An $18k shipment that was entirely 9.6 ASM 300s and 9.4 New Mutants 98s and whatnot? Insurance check is fine. You can replace all that with a minimum of inconvenience. If I'm shipping a likely 9.4 Amazing Spider-Man 11? Registered Mail all day every day. Because it isn't about whether I can get a claim paid, it's about not having a claim in the first place.

I think a lot of organizers were holding out hope that a cure would suddenly be found and implemented, and that if they waited long enough the event could go on. But with Governor Newsom saying he doesn’t expect live sports to be played in California stadiums and arenas until October, there was zero chance SDCC was going forward without an unexpected cure. I work the NY Auto Show every year as a post-retirement part time gig. That event with its 1.4 million attendees was pushed back to August (the only empty window big enough in the Javits calendar). But that’s a coin flip at best. I personally think it gets canceled.

Just got an email indicating MyComicShop is reopening April 20th. And accepting orders again starting the 17th. Good to hear!

Received my loan approval today (yes on a Sunday) and signed my loan documents a few minutes ago. Had my application submitted in the first 4 hours, received approval 9 days later.

Please don't misunderstand. That comment is saying that that was the first update where you were including dates in the listings. Before that you just listed names (but not the effective dates). After that date you started saying "Bugaboo (added 12/25/1973)" instead of just "Bugaboo".

With Covid-19 keeping the shop closed for a couple more months, I’m tossing these (and the other publishers) up in my modern sales thread. Rather not do single issues and hundreds of posts, so they’ll be in 8-15 book lots by publisher. See if we can get them into hands that will appreciate them.

Given that Covid-19 is likely to keep my store closed for another couple months, I’m gonna throw pretty much all of those newsstands from that last collection (the New Jersey dealer one) up in my modern sales thread. Probably putting them in 10-20 book lots rather than singles (don’t really want 1,000 separate posts lol). Grouped by publisher. See if I can get these into hands of folks who appreciate them.

Agreed. I get that you didn't receive exactly the birthday present you would have picked out. But if you can't find use for $200k at 1% interest with a 6 month deferral and 2 year term, where you will get some part of it forgiven (whether that's all of it or 10% of it) there's something wrong. They're gonna pay around $2100 in interest if none of it was forgiven. Even if you waited and rehired all your people in the 8th week of the loan period, they would forgive $25k (one week's payroll) plus 1/3 of that amount ($8,333) spent on mortgage/lease/utilities. So you got $33k in government grant, and a $167,000 loan at 1% interest payable over 2 years starting 4 months after you rehired your people. Any way you look at it that's a massive helping hand.

Interesting. Maybe they moved the goalposts after seeing they weren't getting the additional $250b.

This business got $200k? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/paycheck-protection-program-heather-sanborn-owner-rising-tide-brewing-loan-sba/

The national clearance rate for property crimes has never broken 20%, and that rate is propped up by auto thefts which are easier to solve. When it comes to recovering your stolen property, if it’s not a car, you’re foolish to expect law enforcement to have success. Withholding information from this thread because it might compromise the law enforcement investigation is like waiting two weeks to turn on your sprinkler so you can give your drunk uncle’s rain dance a chance to work.

It’s lost income if you can also make the valid case that you lost the opportunity to replace those comics at wholesale during the month. But if you’re just reallocating your portfolio from comics to cash there’s no income occurring at all. Capital gains, sure, but not income.

Worth noting that those projections are based on social distancing continuing through at least the end of May, and that in the FAQ they define social distancing as including non-essential businesses being closed. So that’s the projection even if my shop (and the others in states that closed “early”) is closed for 75 days. The original models used on that site had non-essential businesses closed through August 4th. And that’s still the date in the FAQ. But the summary pages now say through end of May. So maybe I’m only closed 75 days? But I’m still guessing it will be 90-100.

The only folks who get paid are the printers. The publishers and Diamond forgo their costs. So the “free” comics cost stores $0.25-0.30 each (plus freight charges). Everyone in the whole chain loses money on them except the printers which seems fair to me.

FCBD has been a boon for us overall. It's been in the top 5 sales days each of the years we have had it. But we leverage our advertising budget around the event. And we see sales increases in the weeks leading up to the event as a result of that budget. We drop $700-800 on Facebook advertising promoting FCBD over 6 weeks leading up to the event, and that promotion gets shared and reshared to people we wouldn't otherwise reach because we aren't promoting a sale, we are promoting a future giveaway. So we get some "three degrees of separation" eyeballs that we simply wouldn't reach any other way. Folks tag their friends in late March asking if they want to go in May, that gets us extra traction with the friends of the folks doing the tagging and the people tagged. We get dozens of extra customers in each of those leadup weeks saying they saw a post on Facebook about FCBD, and the Top Of Mind Awareness that comes from that is invaluable. The actual attendees on FCBD don't do all that much. We see around $4.50 a foot in sales that day, which is great but doesn't fully cover our costs for doing the event, especially when we give away $500-1000 in prizes in our costume contest. But the extra sales leading up from FCBD re-shares is huge. And there's no way we would get that by promoting a random "hey come check out our comic shop" post the way we can by promoting a "we are giving away 10,000 comic books" post.

Agreed. I can't in good conscience promote another FCBD until there is either a vaccine or unlimited antibodies testing available. I'd be fine reopening in June with a "limit 8 people in the store at one time" rule for 30 days or something similar. I get 90% of my foot traffic (and 25% of my revenue) from people leaving the adjacent movie theater, and I could do fine without that theater traffic for a month, just serving my regulars and folks who searched for me. Even on Wednesday mornings when I may check out 15 customers in an hour, they weren't all in the store at the same time. I won't see the huge masses of people until the theater is running again, which eliminates any concern for me about what the rules would say (since I don't need to receive huge crowds until they are). I'd fear the inevitable "wanting to kick out a lookiloo customer who's been milling about to make room for the good customer to come in" situation, but that would be an easier problem to have than what we all have now.

I have to chuckle a little at a few of my Facebook friends acting like all these businesses needed "bailouts after just one week of being closed". My shop has been forcibly closed for 20 days and counting. I have seen no stimulus check. I have seen no SBA EIDL loan. I have seen no SBA Paycheck Protection. I fully expect that some of those funds will eventually arrive. I've still made my three weekly payrolls, still paid my utilities, still paid my insurance, still paid my rent. Diamond has stopped shipping to me but I still have other vendors shipping out stuff I ordered months ago and I'm still paying them. I'm still paying my HVAC contractor to do their scheduled maintenance. I'm still paying for my offsite storage location. My shop is small. Less than 1500sf. But business was great the four weeks before we closed. We were doing a little over $6/sf/week over the final 4 weeks of winter, a full year pace of $315/sf during the slowest quarter of the year. It's really really hard not to sit here wondering what might have been. But for now, the goal is "survive the likely 90-100 days we will be forcibly closed and be ready to serve our customers on the other side". Government stimulus may well cover some of that 90-100 day period, but it didn't cover any of the first 20. And had this closure just been 30 days? I might have taken it as a blessing that I could finally get some backlogged work done. But it was never going to just be 30 days.

What people picture in their heads when they hear "small business" and what the definitions actually are... two different things. A roofing contractor with $16.2 million in annual revenue? Small business. A sawmill with 450 employees? Small business. A toy and hobby goods wholesaler with 155 employees? Not a small business. A new car dealer with 180 employees? Small business. A meat market with $9.0m in annual revenue? Not a small business. A hobby, toy and game store with $28.0m in annual revenue? Small business. The definitions depend on the industry. Some tied to revenue. Some tied to employee count. (Some industries are still considered "small business" with 1200 employees though they obviously wouldn't qualify for this specific program). Here's the lastest (2019) definitions by industry: https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/2019-08/SBA Table of Size Standards_Effective Aug 19%2C 2019_Rev.pdf But if you had to guess who is going to get a SBA Paycheck Protection loan between a local restaurant chain with 4 locations and 300 employees, or comic shop with 4 employees? Best believe the restaurant chain is the favorite. Far more likely to already have a relationship with their bank, have bookkeeping and accounting folks at the ready to provide proper documents in minutes, and have advocates on their behalf at every step of the process if there is a hiccup. I filed as early as I could. I certainly hope I get approved. But I think it's likely few "under 10 employee" businesses will see any of this money, as it's gobbled up quickly by the folks who qualify for 7-digit sums.

I have not yet heard a response on my own application, but my bank has already stopped accepting new applications for the time being, due to "unprecedented demand". Their website indicates they are still processing the applications already submitted, but that no new applications (even from existing banking customers) will be accepted. So the first wave of openings didn't last even one business day (Friday morning to Monday morning).

Has someone thoroughly researched the graemlin timeline? When did Greggy transition from words to graemlins?* When did he eschew nearly all graemlins in favor of his first love, the ubiquitous sumo? When did he move on from sumo adoration and how has his path progressed in the years since? * Yes, boardies. There was indeed a time before the Graemlin-Greggy we all know and love.

I’d like fewer titles from Marvel and DC. But not fewer monthlies. I just want fewer mini-series and “stealth miniseries” (the titles they solicit as monthly knowing full well they will only do one story arc). DC is running around 29 main universe monthlies right now plus the Joe Hill stuff and the Sandman Universe stuff. I can manage my orders just fine on all of that and maintain a profitable sell-through on all of them. What I can’t maintain a profitable sell-through on is the additional 20-30 miniseries coming out at any given time. The magazine size Black Labels are easier. And I’ll happily take a chance on Tom King dragging some C-List character off the pile for 12 months. But trying to guess at buyer interest in Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Metal Men, etc etc etc is a nightmare. Marvel has around 38 true monthlies right now. And another 35 miniseries. Again, the monthlies I can manage my orders just fine, and consistently run 92+% effective sell through. (I say effective sell through because a title where I ordered 100 copies and sold the 1:100, two 1:50, and four 1:25 incentives plus 41 of the 100 regular covers gives me a perfectly fine result compared to selling 100 out of 100 regular copies with no incentives, even if I throw away the 59 excess copies). But the Marvel minis? Nightmare. Absolute nightmare.