Debra Streicker-Fine, CEO of Fandom, Inc. announced Thursday, April 19 that the company has given CMI Holding Group the exclusive license to sell Fandom Shop's inventory. Fandom, once the largest pop culture retailer in the US, stopped shipping orders on Friday, April 6th and since then has been attempting to sell its e-commerce and content assets (see 'Efforts Continue to Sell Fandom Assets'). CMI Holding Group is the parent of Thecomicstore.com--the Internet spin-off of Comics and Comix--and Beyond the Pale Distribution, a book distributor and e-commerce fulfillment company. Comics and Comix CEO Ross Rojek is also the CEO of CMI Holdings. Comics and Comix is a five-store Northern California chain and is one of the oldest comic specialty store operations in the country.
Streicker-Fine told ICv2 that the Fandom Shop inventory, which is stored at Fandom's Manassas, Virginia fulfillment center, would continue to be sold from that location. Orders that had been taken by Fandom but not shipped will be fulfilled by CMI. In addition to the agreement to sell the inventory on Fandom's behalf, the deal provides for the eventual purchase of the Fandom Shop website and the Fandomshop.com URL by CMI. The deal does not include Fandom Shop's 250,000-name catalogue mailing list.
Fandom's inventory had been secured by a lien related to the sale of Another Universe assets to Fandom by Diamond Comic Distributors owner Steve Geppi in early 2000. It may be that the structure of the deal (a license to sell the inventory rather than the actual sale of the stock) and the fact that the inventory is staying in Virginia is related to continuing efforts to satisfy that lien.
This is the second deal to dispose of Fandom assets announced since the company shut down most operations and laid off its staff. The first was the sale of Creation Conventions back to its original owners. Assets remaining to be disposed of include the Fandom.com site and network of content sites, the company's massive list of customers and newsletter subscribers, and the Cinescape magazine and website. According To Streicker-Fine, they are close to selling the Fandom.com portion of the business and she expects an announcement next week. Although she wouldn't comment on who the eventual purchaser might be, she did confirm that UGO remains 'interested' in purchasing those assets.
Because of the substantial length of time the Fandom Shop site has been unavailable for ordering, the separation of the mailing list from the other Fandom Shop assets, and the inevitable difficulties in restarting the site, re-establishing fulfillment, and obtaining new supply to fill orders, it's unclear how much of Fandom's $5 to $10 million in annual sales of pop culture products will eventually accrue to the new CMI operation, and how much will be dissipated among other pop culture retailers or lost from the industry. Regardless, when combined with the volume sold by CMI's other enterprises and Comics and Comix, the Fandom Shop will definitely be part of one of the largest pop culture retail groups in the country.
Related Fandom stories, most recent first:
'Efforts Continue to Sell Fandom Assets'
'Fandom Selling the Bones'