This "Big Picture" column was originally published in the June 2005 issue of Comics & Games Retailer magazine.
Watching the Tide
Interpreting an Immutable Law
A dozen years ago, I had some coffee mugs designed for sale
and giveaway in my store. The mugs featured the Flying Colors’ logo on one side
and big dark star on the other side that disappeared when heated liquid was
added to the mugs, revealing the somewhat flippant message
“Where Comics Don’t
Have to Be ‘Hot’ to Be Cool.”
Our market was all about the ‘hot’ comics then, rather than
being about creative content.
Sure, there were times when content and a
product’s blistering popularity coincided, but mostly those days were about
packaging collectibles, with foil covers here and limited edition holograms
there. Few (if any) new titles introduced then continue to be published today,
other than extensions of titles far longer in the tooth than 1993. Looking back
on that time, very few of us retail survivors would look back fondly
remembering the content of what we sold, but we could probably quote some
startling stats about how many units we moved.
Perhaps my favorite business-related book---and I’m making a
strong recommendation for all to read it again, now!--- is
“The 22 Immutable
Laws of Marketing” by Al Ries and Jack Trout (HarperBusiness, 1993). A quick
read, to be sure, but the book has tremendous food for thought in the way we
run our businesses, as local entrepreneurs and as members of the larger comics’
industry.
Retailers might wonder why they should give a hoot about branding,
line extensions and media share-of-mind, but the reasons are all right there in
the Ries and Trout paperback. For small business owners, it’s in between the
lines of case histories about IBM and New Coke, but each and every law has
applications for selling comics and making our individual businesses more
distinct, whether that’s on a local level or worldwide.
What moves me to write this month is Immutable Law #21, “The
Law of Acceleration.” The principle of this law is that success is not built on
fads, but rather on trends. There’s much for the comics’ business to learn in
the less than four pages of the book taken up explaining this particular law.
Fads, by nature, burn hot and fast. They don’t last long, but they tend to
scorch everything in their path.
In the last couple of decades, there have been
fad-like cycles in the market, as retailers have surfed from one hot thing to
another trying to stay ahead of the bill collectors. There was the
black-and-white comics’ fad in the mid-‘80s, spawned by the mega-success of Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Other fads include the proliferation of instant collectible
comics with holograms, variant covers and limited editions. Remember the
publisher that made the promise not to print over 100,000 copies of any of
their titles? I remember their serially numbered editions of such poor quality
between the covers there was never any chance for sales over 100K, so that
publisher, whose name I ironically fail to remember, kept to its promise. It
also faded quickly out of business.
Many retailers surfed to products on the
comics’ periphery attempting to gain quick profits, only to be holding the bag
on stale inventory some time later, such as sportscards, ashcan editions, Pokemon
stuff, Beanie Babies, Yo-yos, and POGs.
Ries and Trout posit the best thing to do when we see a
fad is to dampen it, stretch it out and make it more like a trend. “One way to
maintain a long-term demand for your product is to never totally satisfy the
demand.” That makes me wonder about the continued onslaught of multiple
printings, including all of DC’s “Infinite Crisis” printings and Marvel’s oddly
named “limited variant covers”. While I’m all for trying to satisfy my
customers’ want-lists, sometimes the best sales tool for popular products is an
occasional and honest sell-out.
Fad-surfing may be the way to a few quick dollars, but it’s
also the road to an unfocused business identity and an erosion of core consumer
confidence. While trends are mostly indecipherable in the moment, they are
profound over time. Identifying and riding emerging trends are the keys to
longer-lasting profitability.
We’re in the midst of three potentially powerful trends:
1)
The ongoing love affair between Hollywood and
comics
2)
The persistent growth and influence of Japanese
culture in popular media
3)
The continued migration from a periodical-based
collectibles’ business to a book-based readers’ market.
These trends present opportunities for those willing to
learn, to invest in them and then to ride the trends to profit.
According to Ries and Trout, fads are akin to quickly
breaking big waves while trends are consistent like the tide. In other
immutable words, give me
cool over hot any old time.
(Joe Field still loves his job running Flying Colors
Comics & Other Cool Stuff, 2980 Treat Blvd, Concord CA 94518. Comments and
suggestions are welcome at Joe@FlyingColorsComics.com
)
