Case Study: Online Comic Book Retailing

Case Study: Online Comic Book Retailing
Much like a lot of retail businesses the sale of comic books and related items has both grown and moved from the brick and mortar shops to online. In some cases this is to expand their customer base. In others it is a way to reach customers without the overhead of a physical shop, which carries various levels over overhead. My case study will look at three businesses, Mile High Comics, (milehighcomics.com) Midtown Comics, (midtowncomics.com) and My Comic Shop .com (mycomicshop.com). These three shops have different backgrounds and different levels of web presence. I’ll consider each to these things in the case study of online comic book retailing.
I chose online comic book retailing as its something that I have familiarity with. Once upon a time I was a manager at a brick and mortar shop in St. Louis, Missouri. The Comic shop that I worked at was a family owned business and had been around for 20 years. The time away near the end of the 90’s and we were beginning to see a decline in sales Like many comic book retailers. You see in the early 90’s the comic book industry saw a boost in sales. Young readers were picking up comics for the first time. Many were getting into comics for the first time many were returning. A big reason for this is was that the large publishers, DC Comics and Marvel, were making efforts to bring new readers in different ways. One of these ways was to begin making collectable comics, using gimmicks like limited print runs, multiple covers, and publisher crossovers. That’s not to say that comics of the 90’s were all flash and no substance, another driving force was great writing, art and fantastic characters. It was because of all of these things that comic books gave birth to a new type of collector, the speculator.
The speculator would go into comic shops and pay lots of money for comics that they felt were going to quickly grow in value so that they could be sold for a nice return. It was a lot like the Day Trading days of the early 2000’s with the stock market. Unfortunately for many speculators this didn’t work with comics that well, this can be blamed on several things, over saturation of the market with comics that were intentionally marketed at speculators and not understanding the market were the biggest. At first the speculators were bringing great deals of money into the shops, but as time grew on and they saw they were losing money most of the time they stopped coming into he shops. That is not to say that they all stopped many of them began reading and collecting the comics for the art and stories and this continued, though many stopped. This made many retailers begin to look at ways that they can expand their customer base. At this point in the history of the internet amazon.com and eBay were growing by leaps and bounds. Some of the retailers started looking at these as viable options for growth. While a small number of others started looking at creating their own web presence.
Mile High Comics
Mile High Comics started out in the basement of its owner Chuck Rozanski in 1969 when he was 13 years old in Denver, Colorado. He started the business selling back issues and doing mail order comics. Over time the business grew to the point of him having ads in the back of Marvel Comics offering mail order on a much larger scale. The mail order business grew and opened retail stores, by 1977 Mile High Comics had 3 locations around Denver. By the Late 90’s Mile High was now occupying 13 retail locations including 2 Large stores, one in Orange county California and one in Denver. This was also the time that they moved their mail order business to the internet as well as using the ads in the back of comics. This move was meant to create a foothold and expand its customer base. Then over the next few years due to the decline of comic book market the majority of the Mile High Comic Locations were closed. The internet business was strong and growing and to this day remains being their strongest money maker. MileHighComics.com is in a word, dated. The website still has the look and feel of a website that was created in the late 90’s. There is a lot of information on the main page, multiple locations for navigation and searching. It almost seems like it has been through several rebuilds without having a design direction in mind. The website is not concise as when you first load it up you are visually assaulted with a great deal of information that is intended to give you several options for searching for the comics and collectables that you are looking for. The site downloads with ease as it is very low bandwidth, the only graphics that they use are the site logo and images of comic books that are being highlighted or offered for sale The no frills approach seems to be intentional as to allow customers to move through the website and not have to dig to find the things they need. This could be to avoid frustration as in when you go into a clearly marked and organized store. The only sign of community is the offer to joint a newsletter, which can often tel you of sales, newly acquired stock and even the owners collecting of native american pottery.
Midtown Comics
Midtown Comics is based in New York City, and started out as a traditional retail brick and mortar store in the late 90’s. The website in the beginning was designed to be purely informational, but over time if was redesigned to offer sales as well as other community offerings, designed to bring customers into the stores. Unlike the Mile High Comics website the Midtown comics website is very busy with information, they do not have the redundant navigation systems like Mile High does. through because of the information overload it could cause frustration for visitors that are looking for easy navigation. The graphics used on the site are designed to inform customer of the current going on stories in comics to stay current. this will lead to the site needing to be updated on a regular basis to stay current. The site is well organized with different sections for different information. For the community aspect of the website they use services like Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter. My recommendation for midtown are minimal, cutting down all of the extra information to allow customers to easily find what they are looking for.
MyComicShop.com
MyComicShop.com started out the same way that Mile High comics did. They had a Mail order business that later turned into a local brick and mortar shop named Lone Star Comics in Arlington, Texas. At the hight of their success Lone Star Comics had a total of 9 locations through out central texas, but as time changed in the comic market they adapted their business. They sold off the remaining stores and moved to a completely internet based business. At MyComicShop.com you can do everything that you would be able to at a local brick and mortar store. Buy/sell comics as well as look at new releases and preorder comics. They also offer an auction service that allows users to bid on older comics right on the website. Of the three companies MyComicShop.com has the easiest website to to navigate. It offers users one set of navigation and not a lot of busy graphics or overload of information. They also do not offer anything beyond comic books, like collectables or toys.
Recommendations
Of the three websites MileHighComics.com is the weakest and has the weakest business. They currently are headed in the same direction as Lone Star Comics, minimizing their brick and mortar efforts and focusing on internet sales. Which in my opinion is the correct model in todays market, having a minimal brick and mortar offering will allow them to service their local customers. Second would be retooling their website. Make it a bit simpler and easier to navigate for their customers would be a good way to easily encourage return customers.

References
Duncan, Randy; Smith, Matthew J. The Power of Comics: History, Form and Culture. 2009. Continuum. pp. 102-103