What are your thoughts on the current situation generally?
Christina: Thoughts? [laughs] We are fielding publisher requests to take them on, and we only can take so much on.
I'm talking more broadly in terms of the direct market and the overall impact.
Christina: I think the direct market has shown an incredible resilience over the last five years. In the last year, in the last two quarters even, all we've seen is growth and excitement. We're only seeing better numbers and have been since early Q3 of last year.
It's going to have an impact, but comics are going to be fine. I think they're actually maybe going to be stronger once we consolidate and get people in the right places and working within our new dynamic. I think it's going to be better for everyone.
You started to say you have limited capacity to take on new publishers. PRH only wants the largest publishers, from what I can see. What's going to happen to those small publishers? Let's start with, what's the bottleneck in terms of taking on new publishers? Is it the initial contract or relationship, or is it the data, or is it the logistics? What's the bottleneck?
Christina: This is the thing. Any distributor that takes on 10 publishers that do a million units is going to be way more efficient than a distributor that takes on 50 publishers with a million units, because then you have to deal with 50 people and data. It's a data issue, it is a resource issue, and it is capacity at some point.
What I can say our experience has been as a retailer is that some of the smaller publishers, not all, have a lack of consistency in product, a lack of consistency in shipping. It's difficult for a distributor to deal with multiples of those, with constant moving of dates, constant pushing of things.
When it comes down to it, it is much easier to distribute a cover that sold 5,000 than it is a cover that sold 500. The capacity isn't necessarily capacity‑driven, as actual square footage in the warehouse. It is, how many SKUs do we have to pick in a week? That is something that I think created the downfall of Diamond (whatever you want to call it): the inability to be as profitable as you can be, because it's a losing game. [laughs]
They had the hardest part of the business left after they lost their biggest publishers.
Christina: They did, exactly.
The thing is, I'm sure for years, Marvel, DC, and Image were subsidizing a lot of those publishers' ability to be with Diamond. It's important to, what's the word I want to use? [laughs] It's important to make sure that what the retailers are being provided is what's best for them.
I'm not saying that we're gatekeepers, but there's going to be a point where some publishers are going to have to make the decision to either go direct with customers or find a way to directly distribute.
That's not necessarily a bad thing. They can still be found. Now, for us, Massive Publishing came on (see "Massive Indies"). Michael called me before they made the announcement. He said, "I have this idea that I'd like to run by you. I know that you can't take all these small publishers on. What do you think, if we did just a massive indie imprint? We would aggregate all that data, we would take care of all of that."
I said, "I like it. Yeah. I don't have the bandwidth now to take submissions and do all of these things. I need to make sure that we're taking on all the right publishers and doing all of the things we need to do that people need and know. We own DCBS. We know who the top 25 publishers are. We just don't have the bandwidth to do that."
He said, "Let me do that." I said, "I'm happy that you're willing to do that."
The other thing I said was there needs to be a level of quality that you're expecting, a level of consistency and accountability in what they're doing. Because they're going to have to follow the same policies that we've created in things that went by the wayside with Diamond, where they would let things be a year late and not cancel them.
It's not fair to the retailer to have that hanging over their head knowing that one day it could come out and they don't even, they can't even sell it anymore. We have very clear policies in place with our publishers about those types of things.
What are your plans for non‑comic product, if any?
Christina: Right now, there are none. We would like to concentrate on being the best that we can for comics. We do McFarlane Toys, some of the statues. We absolutely will continue comic supplies and we will make that a little more robust.
Where do you get those? Are those from somebody else?
Christina: Yeah. We are a wholesaler through BCW Supplies.
They're an hour and a half from our warehouse, which is incredible. They've been an incredible partner to us on the DCBS side for years. They have grown exponentially as well. It's very easy. They've had growth bumps in the road as well and we've been talking to them recently about getting those kinks worked out and things like that.
Right now, it's more important for us to preserve the integrity of the comics market. Hopefully, there's somebody else who's going to come in and say, "We need to take the merchandise side and really do that the best."
We've learned this with InStockTrades. InStockTrades is bigger than DCBS now. It is because it has one product line that we are able to focus on and make absolutely the best. We feel that's what we need to do with Lunar.
Will Lunar bid for any Diamond assets?
Christina: No.
Where do you see Lunar a year from now?
Christina: In the process of building our new building (which we were already in the process of scouting locations), hopefully continuing to grow in a very measured, controlled, and mindful way.
Where do you see the direct market a year from now?
Christina: I see it actually stronger than it's probably been since 2019, 2021 even.
Do you think purging the weak publishers is a net plus?
Christina: I don't know if purging is the right word to use, but I think that the loss of some publishers may not be a bad thing, in that, I think that the exposure for other publishers will be a little bit more heightened and I think it'll be a stronger result.
When we were in distribution, Bone was a single‑issue comic, independently published. I don't remember how regular or reliable their ship dates were, but it turned into this huge global franchise. I worry about whether the next one of those is going to find their way to the market.
Christina: I think they will. I think that now more than ever, we have that opportunity. It's just that there's been so much noise that it's difficult for any of that to happen now. I think that once there is maybe a bit of a clearing that it's even more of an opportunity for things like that to come forward.
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