World's End

About the end of 2023, and where we're going from here.

Welcome to the second year of The Indirect Market.

Last year, I managed to write 62 full posts here, and 5 over at The Beat. This year, I’m hoping to be a little more consistent in getting things done around here, but I usually run out of juice by around April. Maybe this year, less people will die and send me off into a bit of a spiral?

That’s a positive way to kick things off in 2024.

Let’s talk some numbers.

So a lot of folks are talking about this year and how things have gone a bit sideways in the direct market. The sky is falling, and folks are going to shut down their stores or scale things back significantly. I don’t want to diminish the pain others are feeling at this moment with what I’m about to post, because those realities are very real. However, I have always believed that the path forward has been in evolving - and I won’t lie, our store has been successful this year because we’ve focused on continuing to pivot the business away from the status quo.

First up, we are down in gross - which means we did not beat last year’s total earning by roughly 2%. We did, however, beat our year to year by 14% when I took out the bulk discounts we gave to some speculators last year (and this year), since that money is more or less negligible. All told, we are up in net by 2% year to year - which isn’t much, but is a lot better than most are doing right now.

What do I credit with this success? The biggest thing I can point to is continuing to push away from being dependant on the “direct market”. A lot of folks will tell me this isn’t the way forward, but most of those people are wringing their hands, trying to figure out how to grow or sustain their business in the coming year. A great many of them also have COVID to thank for their good fortune as markets like ours EXPLODED during that time, as the direct market was struggling with momentum.

Also note how the book channel has absolutely outstripped the comic shop/direct market during the “COVID benefits” period to the market. This is an important thing.

Times are changing. It has been that way since I left my old employer when they wouldn’t listen to my ideas about the future of this business. They went out of business last year, and we are… not thriving, persay, but surviving during this downturn for pretty much every market in existence. With some upcoming plans, we intend to do even better in 2024, even though the forecast is bleak. We’ll be talking about more of the how’s and why’s in the days to come.

But for now, hi. Welcome back to this nonsense.

Talk with you all soon.

-B.