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CGC Update

Started by plitch,

206 posts in this topic

MatterEaterLad

MatterEaterLad

Posted
Posted
"But that's not how a business works - it's always a trade off between what companies can charge for their service to remain competitive (and be profitable) and how fast they can actually perform that service for the money they're charging. How long a book spends in the hands of a CGC employee is completely irrelevant."

 

How could the time it takes to grade be irrelevant? This entire post is about time. And it sounds like they have a mountain of profit waiting to be collected (graded) so they can bill for it. How long it takes is the most relevant thing in this forum!

 

They have an enormous back-log of work that's paid up front. Imagine a retailer who accepted payment but delivered goods 6 months later.

 

When it comes to cash-flow they're an accountant's wet-dream.

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CKB

CKB

Posted
Posted
I don't think they will invest in another facility only because who knows how long Modern Comics will continue to be produced.

 

And there is a limited supply of old comics to grade. At some point they may actually slow down.

 

This is what I keep wondering. How sustainable is their business model when eventually, all the old comics that people want graded will already be slabbed? Seems that at some point they will hit a peak and business will slowly contract.

 

I don't think it matters. My impression is that the lion's share of CGCs busniess is in grading moderns. And the lion's share of that is books that hit the shelf last week.

 

Worse, a percerntage of old books are graded over and over again. So just because it's slabbed doesn't mean it won't be slabbed again. I would not be surprised if there were a few books that have been to the CGC offices over 20 separate times.

 

 

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Bill1

Bill1

Posted
Posted
"But that's not how a business works - it's always a trade off between what companies can charge for their service to remain competitive (and be profitable) and how fast they can actually perform that service for the money they're charging. How long a book spends in the hands of a CGC employee is completely irrelevant."

 

How could the time it takes to grade be irrelevant? This entire post is about time. And it sounds like they have a mountain of profit waiting to be collected (graded) so they can bill for it. How long it takes is the most relevant thing in this forum!

 

They have an enormous back-log of work that's paid up front. Imagine a retailer who accepted payment but delivered goods 6 months later.

 

When it comes to cash-flow they're an accountant's wet-dream.

 

Since I have only used the coupons, I had no idea they charged up front! That makes it even worse. They should not be able to charge until the work it complete, and then if it is not completed on time, they should not be able to charge as much.

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Robert Doggett

Robert Doggett

Posted
Posted
"But that's not how a business works - it's always a trade off between what companies can charge for their service to remain competitive (and be profitable) and how fast they can actually perform that service for the money they're charging. How long a book spends in the hands of a CGC employee is completely irrelevant."

 

How could the time it takes to grade be irrelevant? This entire post is about time. And it sounds like they have a mountain of profit waiting to be collected (graded) so they can bill for it. How long it takes is the most relevant thing in this forum!

 

They have an enormous back-log of work that's paid up front. Imagine a retailer who accepted payment but delivered goods 6 months later.

 

When it comes to cash-flow they're an accountant's wet-dream.

 

Since I have only used the coupons, I had no idea they charged up front! That makes it even worse. They should not be able to charge until the work it complete, and then if it is not completed on time, they should not be able to charge as much.

 

If they did that, Bill, they would lose their shirts. Oops, I was thinking Domino's 30 minutes or less or it's free!!

 

Actually, if they did that, they would find a way to fix the problem!! lol

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RockMyAmadeus

RockMyAmadeus

Posted
Posted
CGC is enjoying being the fat cats of the grading world right now. But believe me, unless they eventually do something about getting their turnaround times down significantly, it will come back to haunt them. It's happened many times before with other companies and it will happen again. Mark my words.
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Wampler

Wampler

Posted
Posted
CGC is enjoying being the fat cats of the grading world right now. But believe me, unless they eventually do something about getting their turnaround times down significantly, it will come back to haunt them. It's happened many times before with other companies and it will happen again. Mark my words.
Serious_Nod_Smiley_by_Mirz123.gif

 

I fully agree! They made themselves the authority, and now they can't produce. Just pray the quality of the grading does not go down, buy overlooking flaws to push them out the door.

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mschmidt

mschmidt

Posted
Posted
"But that's not how a business works - it's always a trade off between what companies can charge for their service to remain competitive (and be profitable) and how fast they can actually perform that service for the money they're charging. How long a book spends in the hands of a CGC employee is completely irrelevant."

 

How could the time it takes to grade be irrelevant? This entire post is about time. And it sounds like they have a mountain of profit waiting to be collected (graded) so they can bill for it. How long it takes is the most relevant thing in this forum!

 

You're missing my point.

 

Even though a comic book might only spend 30 mins in the hands of an actual CGC employee, it would be financial suicide for a specialized service company like CGC to offer a "30 min service" without charging an overflowing boatload of money for it. And even then it probably wouldn't be smart seeing that unforeseen circumstances could easily turn that into 60 minutes.

 

Ignoring the lucrative "I need this fast at any cost" market, however, would be equally stupid - which is why CGC offers a 1-day Walkthru service that is prohibitively expensive.

 

For every other levels of service, it's, as I mentioned previously, a trade-off between what CGC thinks they can charge and how fast they can perform the service and still remain profitable. I'm sure there's some sort of a metric in place, based on number of employees, expected submission volume, price charged pr. submission, overhead & salaries for their employees, etc, that allowed them to come up with the initial turnaround times, but I can guarantee you that the actual time spent grading the book is only a tiny part of that calculation.

 

You claiming that it should only take 3 weeks is nonsense - it's a number you just plucked out of thin air, based on an irrelevant comparison with the auto industry. It would be like me saying "I can send this email to anywhere in the world instantly, so why doesn't the USPS offer instant package delivery?".

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The Amazing Chump

The Amazing Chump

Posted
Posted

Turnaround time are shameful, and I agree that the OP shouldn't have made a statement that turns out to be either inaccurate or woefully naive seven months later. They trained new graders in July 2012? So why haven't the turnaround times gotten better?

 

They need to try and forecast their volume at the end of whatever the training period and staff up to that level. But my guess is they aren't run like a real business-they just guess what they'll need going forward, or they're stuck in the present and don't really think what they will need. Just as an example, they should be thinking about staffing through and after the con season. But they're already so far behind that they're probably busy putting out fires.

 

I have an order I'm planning to send to Joey, then to CGC. 60 books-30 moderns, 30 value tier. I can't afford fast track, so I'll wait six months and see where turnaround times go. In six months I'll have enough saved to fast track. I'm guessing fast track will be slower and the other tiers will still be at "might as well buy Mylars." Then I'll probably spring for fast track. Incredibly liberating having no choice.

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DougC

DougC

Posted
Posted

Doug: If someone is keeping tabs in the quality control department, then they need to be fired. Using BH as an example, 3.7% error rate shouldn't be acceptable. This is just for the print on the label. What if he's right and they typo the grade of the book? That could potentially be hundreds of dollars worth of investment gone because of carelessness. This percentage could be higher than the average, but it is an exact figure from BH. At least one customer for one month had these results.

 

I do agree that their quality control is lacking across the board, they would be lucky to operate at a high 2 sigma level. Unfortunately, this is something the customers will still accept so there will be no change. I would be interested to see what their PPM is and how they classify defects to drop it down on internal reports.

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namisgr

namisgr

Posted
Posted

Tell you what. Why doesn't everybody bothered by the poor turnaround times stop sending in submissions until the turnaround times are more to their liking?

 

I'm bothered by them, and haven't done a non-onsite submission in over two years.

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blazingbob

blazingbob

Posted
Posted

Why improve turn around times?

 

You lose the person who doesn't submit high volume and you get the "instant gratification" submitter spending more money for fast tracks cause they "Gotta have it now".

 

We will be talking about this 2 years from now.

 

 

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Bill1

Bill1

Posted
Posted

"You claiming that it should only take 3 weeks is nonsense - it's a number you just plucked out of thin air, based on an irrelevant comparison with the auto industry. It would be like me saying "I can send this email to anywhere in the world instantly, so why doesn't the USPS offer instant package delivery?"

 

If you actually think it should take more than 3 weeks (120 working hours) to grade a comic book, you are a little mixed up. And you are putting way to much thought into their processes. They have gotten caught with their proverbial pants down, not in any way prepared for the business they have gotten in the last year or so. Combine that with all the specialty grading they have agreed to do (Boom to name one), and they can't handle the business. To think they are deliberately slowing down grading to keep prices up is ridiculous, when they are losing business daily from all the people who are NOT submitting because it takes too long.

One of our comparisons is nonsense, that's for sure! Either the one where actual people spend time doing something, or the one where something travels over the internet or is teleported.

 

They will have to get better or someone else will step in and get better for them. It can't possibly be too expensive to buy the few pieces of equipment required to do slabbing. It would cost more to do the PR to get it started.

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