Our game store in Gilbert went full-blast hybrid. It later hybridized even further, into miniature wargames in early 2015, and back into video games in early 2016 (after largely abandoning them earlier, a business mistake if there ever was one). We had, at various points in time, manager-level positions devoted almost entirely to comics and media and maximizing our reach with our collecting community in the category.
In November 2018, Desert Sky Games and Comics returns forevermore to being "Desert Sky Games," now in Chandler. Yup, we've gone ahead and closed out our comics business, with an intention to add resources to games and refocus on our core competencies.
This was a good time to do it: we had happy boxholders so there was still value to convey, we had a friendly/ally store nearby in Samurai Comics that was able to take over where we left off, and our Diamond account had no pending invoices on terms left due so we were at liberty to walk away. We were never going to get another chance to do this as clean as we just did.
Longtime readers will remember that DSG almost left the comic category in late 2016. After setting forth the case for why we got into comics in the first place, we had some analytics turn sharply south and I believed it was as good a time as any to wrap the category up. I even addressed the situation a second time to make it clear we did not see this as "nurp nurp comics suck" but instead just recognizing the direction we thought the comics industry was about to go, and realizing we weren't positioned well for it.
That direction, as I've discussed in e.g. my Commitment Quotient article earlier this year, suggests that stores that are committed to comics first, are going to be the big winners in the sunset cycle of the category. I'm not talking doom and gloom here; as I stated in one of the 2016 articles, comics aren't going to "die" even if the monthly 24-page comic magazine ends up falling into disuse. What's happening is that as mass media and consumptive media mature, comics mature with them, and we're going to see a gradual and vast consolidation as the format itself stratifies as a key configuration of the collectible long after it ceases being strictly necessary. The business world is going to converge to where the two major players will be comics readers much as they are now, and comics retailers with high expertise, broad coverage, and platinum-grade brand appeal. Nobody is going to be able to do this as a side gig anymore.
When the Mergesplosion of early 2017 occurred, and we gained a large location with a comic customer base already present, we held off on exiting the category mostly to see what would happen. As 2017 neared its end, we moved the Gilbert store to Chandler and we let the Tempe lease expire and we could have exited comics then, but once more we decided to hold off and see what would happen. Now, after another year of business with no other changes and nothing to distort our analytics, no wild cards still yet to be drawn and counted, we decided, in the words of my accountant, that "staying the course for one more year was no longer the thing to do."
I have enjoyed being in the comics biz quite a bit. There's something about the comics category that lets a store be out in front of pop culture like no other category does. Even when games are at their most cutting-edge, they can't approach the high topicality and immediacy of comics. Great new stories, blockbuster summer movies, characters we've loved all our lives -- these are part and parcel to the world of comics, and with us being fun merchants, the category felt like a natural fit. However there's always more to business than just the front-facing part visible to the client. Much of the logistical, nuts-and-bolts upheaval took place backstage.
This isn't the last of the consolidations DSG will be making in the months ahead, but it's one of the biggest. Brock Berge of Empire Games (and the Berge auto dealership empire), a savvy retailer if I ever knew one, once explained to me that there are only two ways to succeed in retail: sell some of everything or all of something. And the mass-market like Wal-Mart and Amazon already have the some-of-everything option on lock-down. The path to success still open to small business is to sell all of something. We preach diversification in hobby game retail, but it can be dangerous to diversify too far beyond a closely overlapping set of supercategories.
I can say with confidence that we should have been out of comics in 2016 as planned, but I'm OK with having played that out a little further because now we know for absolutely sure. I can say with confidence that getting out of video games in mid-2014 for lack of various resources to devote to them was a serious mistake. Other more granular consolidations become a bit easier when we have a clearer look at the shape of our all-of-something umbrella. For example, we recently discontinued support for all the anime trading card games again. Yu-Gi-Oh was already "packs only" but we had event support and went a little further for the likes of Dragon Ball Super, Force of Will, and Cardfight Vanguard. No longer; it's all gone and never coming back now. We wanted to see if our presence in the Chandler market as a dominant card venue would solve those games and it did not. The player bases for those games want something different and it's not a direction we are interested to go.
In terms of other games and hobbies, everything is pretty much locked in for the holiday season, but there are going to be some serious shifts after the first of the year based on what we see with another December worth of comparative analytics. Next week is Thanksgiving and Black Friday, and while we aren't going to be blowing the doors off of everything, we have a few special treats in store that we know some of our clients will love. See you then!
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