I've no affiliation with Diamond but I sure reserve the right to be pissed off at stupidity any time I see it, Mr. Bitches.

Next time you take the time to quote somebody do yourself a favour and make sure you understand the words first. I never said college was bad, you've said you don't have a store front yourself several times, I pointed out you bought the fixtures too early, etc etc...

You clearly did not do your homework or you would have been asking this stuff ahead of time, plus, your store would have an address and stuff. I gotta say if you think starting up a successful business is going to take less than 60 hours a week you should be asking for a refund from that esteemed college of yours.

On a previous thread you stated your collection was worth $30,000- good luck in getting that. Allah willing, it should be no problem with this increased demand you speak of. Ethically, used trade paperbacks shouldn't sell at cover price either, but I'm sure you understand that. There exist some threads on taxation of unsold inventory at year's end in this forum you may be interested in as well.

Despite the fact that I think you're woefully unprepared I sincerely wish you luck.

Whoever said my TPB's were used? If you would have read the whole thread you would have seen that I had acquired a store front. When did I say that my collection was worth that much.? A few weeks ago. You know time passes and people purchase. In fact a week ago I bought an additional 9 long boxes full of comics, about 600 paperbacks, and about 300 hardbacks. The one who is not doing their homework here is evident. The one who is making statements without taking in all of the facts. I will admit I am new to this. In fact completely new. I will make mistakes, but I can say I have prepared extensively for this. I just did not expect that when I went in to set up my account with Diamond I would have all of these problems. It is kind of hard to expect something like that when you have never experienced it before. As for my schooling, why even bring it up if you didn't have a problem with it.

Oh, thanks for the luck even if somehow I don't believe you mean it.

The truth is, your first few weeks will be slow anyway. A lot of customers will just be checking out the layout and location. The promise of new stock being on he way will be a good reason for them to come back. Most of your new comic sales will be from people who subscribe to a pull service. Unless you've got some unbelievably sweet location, your sell through will be crap if you try to rely on walk-in sales. You might actually be GLAD Diamond didn't give you your first few weeks of comics on time.

Many comic orders these days are based on pre-orders from subscribers. The financial risk is lower because the sell through percentage is typically higher. Unless you really intend on marketing back issues aggressively, most of that stock will be cherry picked quite quickly by collectors and the rest of your back issue sales will settle down to a very small percentage.

This may be your dream job now, but it won't be in a few years.

My own rant....
Diamond should be happy to get whatever accounts they can get. Their problem is that they are so deserate for genuine retail accounts that they must keep their minimum orders very low. At the height of my collecting, I used to buy as much as some of their smaller retail accounts. I bought so much that my local retailer set up my account as a fictitious "3rd store" and just used an address for an unrelated business of theirs on the paperwork. I was getting the retailer preview packs full of freebies... the whole works.... just as if I was buying direct from Diamond.

Logically, a bunch of small accounts could cost Diamond a more money to support. It is more efficient for them to support a fewer number of accounts that place higher orders. If that's their concern, it's just stupid. If a retailer gives me a nice discount on buying new comics for the sole purpose of letting my huge orders boost their orders (and qualify them for a better discount), Diamond is still losing income.

Nothing helps a retailer more than quick turnover and a better discount. While I can help a retailer by providing that, I expect a nice discount. In other words, if I'm helping boost their orders significantly, I'm not oblivious to the fact they are making a higher percentage profit on every other sale... I deserve a respectable savings for my significant contribution. Back in the 90's, comic books store were constantly trying to offer me a better discount just so I'd buy from their store.... sometimes my discount was barely above their cost. It was worth it to them. I could also resupply them with hot issues, since my insight into preordering exceeded their own abilities.

Diamond implemented a bunch of stupid rules to chastise and prevent subdistribution, but they can't price fix a product (that's illegal) an they can't tell me (the hobbyist) what I'm going to do with my comics after I get them for a nice discount. The stores that sold me my comics often had no idea what I did with them.. unless they needed them and were buyimg them back.

My point? Diamond is full of crap. They'd be far better off just sticking to their discount structure and selling to ANYONE with a business license. Nothing has ever stopped me from getting a business license and setting up a mock store front. I can think of a dozen ways to do that and it would cost them more money and effort proving I was doing a mock-up than it would be to just sell me the comics in the first place.

Currently, I'm not buying any new comics and when I pick up Previews, the selection is so homogenized it sickens me. Also, the closest comic shop to my home recently closed. If I was to make a plunge back into comics, I'm not driving 15 miles to another location. I'll use one of my my friend's existing business license,we'll pool our money and orders and we'll buy from whatever distributor is actually interested in selling comics. I haven't quite figured out what the hell Diamond calls their operation. They don't really do a great job at anything, yet they somehow manage to keep a monopoly on the distribution.

Nothing would help this hobby more than giving some alternate distrubutors a chance to compete. If even one other distributor entered the game, a certain percentage of tolerable overorders would take place. Those distributors would fight a little harder to sell those overstocked items and they'd try a little harder to keep any customers they had happy. The overorders alone would start boosting print runs and this hobby will never be profitable to anyone until the print runs start increasing and the availability to consumers increases.

Defiant1

Believe whatever you wish, Smackmorebitches.

I'll clear up a couple of things then I'm out.

Stay in school, drink milk, do whatever you want; I'm not making fun of school. It just seemed funny to me that someone taking business classes would be so unprepared, that's all. Anyone starting up a store without knowing their address two weeks before Grand Opening is amateurish in my books. End of story.

From your first post in your "New shop owner looking for advice":



Every week I get calls from somebody trying to sell their dozens of boxes of Valiant, Image, Marvel UK, X-Men #1a-e etc etc thinking they are worth more than land-fill or kindling. The fact that you've bought more since posting that 30G number is immaterial. I assumed a healthy portion of the original books were from your own collection, hence the used comment. But really, outside of my experience suggesting what might be the case, I have no way of knowing- so I'll drop it.

From the first post in this thread:



I did miss this from nearly a week later:



It's interesting that I am not alone in having missed this as I notice others were still commenting on your lack of store front as well. Prior to that one throw away ass-covering line it had been indicated that you were using your home address. Probably the most important thing in setting up a business is location and you'd given no indication that you'd given it much thought. Maybe you had but it didn't seem that way as I read it.

I want to hear smackmorebitches attitude about his Dream Job this time next year.

Don't worry jack you will and who ever said it was my dream job. There are many things that I would rather be doing. This is just one of the opportunities that presented itself that I had interest in.

About my collection, I have priced it very reasonably. I am not some stupid. I don't have delusions of granduer. In fact the price I listed was ultra conservative.

Anyways, this thread is dead and I have much work to do. But I will post occasionally just to show you people that I am still open. In fact wait a week or two and call your local comic book locator service that is advertised in Wizard and Diamond and find the store Pictures and Words ETC in Oklahoma.

What city in Oklahoma?

So why isn't the store name "smackmorebitchescomicsandcollectables" ?

Good luck, smackmorebitches. I think you'll find running your own business very satifying. This industry needs more places to buy comics.

Please, please, please start a new comicon ID. So you lose recognition of 88 posts, no big deal. What you gain in respect from the name change would be priceless. It's not very hard to get your level up again. Just keep giving us updates about your store. Heck post once a day or once a week and we can watch your store grow with you.

Really keep us informed.

We wouldnt recognize him if he wasn't smackmorebitches.