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Professor Shark posted:Speaking of, how are comicbook companies doing these days? I assume that some of them are fine because of Disney and whatever, but I feel like actual comicbook sales must be doing lovely these days Mostly subsisting on life support as IP farms, putting out a mix of pandering to their remaining fans and ill-considered fads and attempts at relevancy in the 'how do you do, fellow kids' vein to attempt to appeal to an audience that can barely even access the things while alienating the abovementioned rusted-on fans. A few of them, IDW mainly, specialise in licensed comics that are basically supplementary material for nerds. (Archie used to, but it seems they canned all their licensed stuff to focus on... Archie being dark drama or something, I dunno)
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Oct 10, 2017 11:53
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Sunshine89 posted:KMart is a very strange case. It is operated alongside Sears- in 2005, it sought a buyout from Sears because it was in such bad financial shape, but it turns out Sears was actually worse, so Kmart bought Sears. Its owner, Eddie Lampert, is a manifesto writing recluse who uses his own fortune to prop the company up. Lampert is a hedge fund guy who has no experience in retail-in fact, he hates the retail industry. K-Mart was doing well, on paper when it bought Sears. Lampert did a fantastic job cutting expenses, like a billion dollars' worth in one year. He managed to cut K-Mart to profitability, which is more difficult than it seems. I think Sears was in better shape than K-Mart, but the market thought Lampert could quickly make the shift from cost cutting to revenue growing and K-Mart's stock price reflected that optimism. So a weak company was taken over by a weaker one and that worked out well for everyone. This reminds me a lot of the Time Warner/AOL merger. Time Warner wasn't a weak company, but they let AOL's dotcom bubble stock price dictate the merger and when the bubble burst they realized they'd just married a corpse.
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Oct 10, 2017 14:34
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There's a long form article floating around that goes into detail about Lampert's insane plans at Sears like having each department at each store compete against each other. He's like some kind of bizarre Objectivist/anarcho-libertarian.
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Oct 10, 2017 14:49
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FlamingLiberal posted:There's a long form article floating around that goes into detail about Lampert's insane plans at Sears like having each department at each store compete against each other. He's like some kind of bizarre Objectivist/anarcho-libertarian. It's not just at stores, he comes by corporate like twice a year (he's a hermit cuz he got kidnapped once and is a super big baby about it) and makes corporate departments basically give competing presentations to carve out budgets from each other. It's the most patently stupid thing I've ever seen in business and I have seen an awful lot of failing businesses.
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Oct 10, 2017 14:54
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New Butt Order posted:Remember how in the 90's people would buy the dumb collectible toy or issue #0 comic of the month on the basis that "it might be worth something some day?" The Cryptocurrency market is that, but they cut out the middle man and just sell you the concept of being worth more someday without an actual product attached. Yeah, I fell to part of that. It was definitely an odd time. Comics were starting to be valuable because older people were getting the money that they could afford to buy the old Spidermans they remembered from their youths. I tried but never really got into comics, so that didn't exactly catch up to me. I remember new Star Wars toys being fairly collectable for similar reasons, as the original toys were becoming valuable, so of course the newer (much more detailed and nice looking) ones had to be valuable in the future! It's my understanding though that the current trend of old things becoming valuable through nostalgia are Hot Wheels.
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Oct 10, 2017 14:59
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Iron Crowned posted:Yeah, I fell to part of that. It was definitely an odd time. Those old things were valuable because people back in the golden age of comics & toys didn't think to collect them, which made them rare and difficult to find. Since everyone was collecting everything from the 90s onward, they stopped being rare, and became significantly less valuable. Speaking of which, remember beanie babies? 
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Oct 10, 2017 16:33
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Except, apparently Hot Wheels. So anything you think is going to be valuable is going to worth jack. But that rando thing you didn't think twice about is what appreciates in value. Which means collectors are always chasing a moving target. Silly bands are going to be the next big thing because who the gently caress saved those?
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Oct 10, 2017 16:40
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Professor Shark posted:Speaking of, how are comicbook companies doing these days? I assume that some of them are fine because of Disney and whatever, but I feel like actual comicbook sales must be doing lovely these days They are because the two big publishers ignore what fans want and continue in a downward spiral of idiocy. Just look at Marvels recent brilliant idea of partnering up with a tech company that makes drones & stuff for war purposes. Needless to say they got eviscerated on Twitter. I doubt I can find the post that I saw on twitter, but it claimed m the company that has the largest market share in comics is Viz, a company that releases Japanese Manga.
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Oct 10, 2017 16:41
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Krispy Wafer posted:Except, apparently Hot Wheels. What if you bought up all the worthless X-MEN #1s and then burned them? Worked in some cartoon I saw as a kid.
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Oct 10, 2017 20:13
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No, more mutants.
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Oct 10, 2017 21:21
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Inescapable Duck posted:Mostly subsisting on life support as IP farms, putting out a mix of pandering to their remaining fans and ill-considered fads and attempts at relevancy in the 'how do you do, fellow kids' vein to attempt to appeal to an audience that can barely even access the things while alienating the abovementioned rusted-on fans. A few of them, IDW mainly, specialise in licensed comics that are basically supplementary material for nerds. (Archie used to, but it seems they canned all their licensed stuff to focus on... Archie being dark drama or something, I dunno) I can't fathom why print comics are still a thing. Not collections or graphic novels mind, but monthly titles. ryonguy has a new favorite as of 21:55 on Oct 10, 2017 |
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Oct 10, 2017 21:51
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Randaconda posted:The most 90s soda, edging out Surge and Crystal Pepsi We had that around my parts. Basically tasted like what we called a suicide, a mix of all the stuff at a soda fountain. Teenage me though the 800 number was a hoot.
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Oct 10, 2017 21:59
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Krispy Wafer posted:Except, apparently Hot Wheels.
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Oct 10, 2017 22:06
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Haifisch posted:I can't wait for the fidget spinner & emoji pillow boom 20 years from now. Novelty toys never quite seem to ride the nostalgia wave successfully. When I was a kid they tried to bring back pet rocks, "clackers" and a few years ago they tried to bring back one of the hot stupid toys of my childhood, slap bracelets. Kids never really care, they want their own dumb stuff.
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Oct 10, 2017 22:13
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On Friday, Sears Canada will ask a judge for permission to close every store in the country. http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/business/sears-liquidation-court-1.4347765
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Oct 10, 2017 22:21
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Novelty toys never quite seem to ride the nostalgia wave successfully. When I was a kid they tried to bring back pet rocks, "clackers" and a few years ago they tried to bring back one of the hot stupid toys of my childhood, slap bracelets. Kids never really care, they want their own dumb stuff. Scooters are back in a big way right now here in England. Personally I'm looking forward to yo yos being a thing again.
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Oct 10, 2017 22:34
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FlamingLiberal posted:There's a long form article floating around that goes into detail about Lampert's insane plans at Sears like having each department at each store compete against each other. He's like some kind of bizarre Objectivist/anarcho-libertarian. Command Ant posted:Those old things were valuable because people back in the golden age of comics & toys didn't think to collect them, which made them rare and difficult to find. Since everyone was collecting everything from the 90s onward, they stopped being rare, and became significantly less valuable. Krispy Wafer posted:Except, apparently Hot Wheels.
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Oct 10, 2017 22:54
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So many modern kid devices and toys are gonna be useless in the future since they'll be heavily dependent on PC and internet connectivity.
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Oct 10, 2017 23:12
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Professor Shark posted:Speaking of, how are comicbook companies doing these days? I assume that some of them are fine because of Disney and whatever, but I feel like actual comicbook sales must be doing lovely these days Due to a confluence of factors, both Marvel and DC are barely moving any comic books these days and the future's not looking too bright. I recently read a pretty good 30,000 word essay (in the form of a loving Twine game  ) that goes into great detail on why. In addition to other things people have mentioned, one of the big reasons the US comic industry sucks is that one company (Diamond) has had a monopoly on the retail distribution of print comics in the US since the 90s. Unlike most book distributors, they don't accept returns of unsold copies so this makes comic stores super-conservative in what they order (since if they order too much of a book they're stuck with letting it languish on their shelves until it does sell, or trashing it and eating the cost). They also require all comics to be pre-ordered 3 months in advance, even new titles that nobody has seen yet (and which may not even be finished yet) and Marvel and DC primarily make their business decisions on which books to support based on these pre-orders. In one example in the essay, a book went from an ongoing series, to a miniseries, and finally cancelled all before the first issue even came out because its pre-sales didn't meet expectations. This, of course, is a really lovely situation for everyone and does absolutely nothing to help grow anyone's business.
Mr.Radar has a new favorite as of 01:45 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 11, 2017 01:38
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Here's a serious question. Has anyone managed to cash out millions in Bitcoin in hard currency and not bricks of heroin or white slavery?
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Oct 11, 2017 01:48
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Clitch posted:Here's a serious question. Has anyone managed to cash out millions in Bitcoin in hard currency and not bricks of heroin or white slavery? Uhh, what else is the point of having millions of dollars?
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Oct 11, 2017 01:55
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FlamingLiberal posted:There's a long form article floating around that goes into detail about Lampert's insane plans at Sears like having each department at each store compete against each other. He's like some kind of bizarre Objectivist/anarcho-libertarian. food court bailiff posted:It's not just at stores, he comes by corporate like twice a year (he's a hermit cuz he got kidnapped once and is a super big baby about it) and makes corporate departments basically give competing presentations to carve out budgets from each other. He did do that, and eviscerated his own appliance business, one of the few profitable categories, because he did it badly. Lampert is definitely an odd case. He was being hailed as the next Warren Buffett before he was kidnapped, and considered "odd, but in a good way". After that, he lost all his sense, and instead of listening to E/N and going on a strict regimen of meds, therapy and work out, he went and bought a department store or two to prove he could revolutionize retail by "rightsizing" stores, calling customers "members" because his Shop Your Way rewards card was going to revolutionize retail somehow- because nobody else was doing targeted rewards and mining data, and also making it take 10 minutes to ring up a pair of socks while the cashier drew a blood sample to send off to Eddie to analyze. Trimming the fat in a big corporation is nothing new. GE, a huge conglomerate, sold off a bunch of divisions, everything from home appliances to railcar leasing. The company's position is that in every sector they're involved in, they want to be first, second, or not involved at all. Sears is so badly organized that appliance sales and Kenmore, its house brand were -and are- separate divisions! They have to compete not only against Home Depot and Lowe's, department stores, specialty appliance stores, and now Best Buy, but also against each other for a piece of Sears' shrinking budget. What happened in practice is that the appliance division found out they made the lowest margins off of Kenmore appliances, so the Kenmores got shoved in the back behind the scratch-and-dent and refurbed returned appliances. Unlike smaller goods, people want to see and touch the appliances they buy, so Kenmore appliances were largely passed over. Sears, being in the mess it's in, doesn't have the market muscle to go toe-to-toe with big box home improvement warehouses on price, and Sears isn't anywhere near as contractor friendly. They can't compete on national brands, so private label was their only hope. There is also the issue of warranties- Sears won't be around much longer, but nobody knows if they have 5 quarters or 5 years left- neither instills much confidence for warranty repairs. Lampert even wants to sell the Kenmore brand, but there's no equity left in it and no makers demonstrating interest at all. Major appliances are an incredibly concentrated market. LG and Samsung are part of their respective empires; Blomberg, Miele, Subzero-Wolf, and a bunch of European brands are independent, but other than that, there are pretty much 5 major manufacturers: Whirlpool: IKEA (North America), Amana, Whirlpool, Maytag, Kitchen Aid, Jenn-Air Electrolux AB: Frigidaire, Electrolux, AEG Quingdao Haier: Haier, GE, Monogram, Fisher & Paykel (wickedly expensive and fragile condo-size appliances designed in New Zealand) Robert Bosch GmbH: Bosch, Thermador, Gaggenau Sharp: Pretty much every microwave. Sunshine89 has a new favorite as of 16:43 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 11, 2017 02:37
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Clitch posted:Here's a serious question. Has anyone managed to cash out millions in Bitcoin in hard currency and not bricks of heroin or white slavery? I'd seriously like an answer to this as well. Googling the subject is just giving me a bunch of bullshit. It's oddly difficult to find any real, intelligent, believable (this is the real problem area) info about cryptocurrency. Not that I want to flush a bunch of money down a hole, I wanna laugh at it.
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Oct 11, 2017 02:58
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The Black Stones posted:I doubt I can find the post that I saw on twitter, but it claimed m the company that has the largest market share in comics is Viz, a company that releases Japanese Manga. Honestly, if you look at the full list of what Viz publishes, I can believe it. https://www.viz.com/read/read/section/31411/more Notable titles include Dragon Ball, Bleach, Naruto, One Piece, Full Metal Alchemist, Fate/Stay Night, Sailor Moon, Pokemon, most of Shonen Jump's titles, The Legend of Zelda's manga adaptations... They've got a lot of really big titles under their umbrella. Viz having a larger market share than Marvel or DC wouldn't surprise me in the least.
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Oct 11, 2017 03:13
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There's a video of Stan Lee critiquing a Rob Liefeld drawing and in between being awesome and making GBS threads on Liefeld he says something like "you guys are killing us and we're going to have to start making movies." So it was at least clear to Stan Lee that the comics business was doomed by the early 90s.
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Oct 11, 2017 03:37
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Stan Lee was trying to get Marvel into film in like the '70s but the stuff they did produce was awful.
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Oct 11, 2017 03:43
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You'd think the future was digital, but last I heard Marvel didn't even include their app in sales figures because it was so small compared to their print runs. On a similar note, I'm amazed textbook publishers haven't gone out of business. It used to be every kid got a textbook, but my kids share a classroom copy and use digital or check out books for home use. I'm sure they just charge more per book, but it's still an order of magnitude drop in circulation.
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Oct 11, 2017 03:47
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fizzymercy posted:I'd seriously like an answer to this as well. Googling the subject is just giving me a bunch of bullshit. It's oddly difficult to find any real, intelligent, believable (this is the real problem area) info about cryptocurrency. Not that I want to flush a bunch of money down a hole, I wanna laugh at it. You could try asking the buttcoin thread in YOSPOS, but be prepared for large amounts of laughter before you get an answer. Not at you, specifically, just in general.
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Oct 11, 2017 03:51
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Clitch posted:Here's a serious question. Has anyone managed to cash out millions in Bitcoin in hard currency and not bricks of heroin or white slavery? There's a banker in BFC who is helping a client cash out a substantial sum of Bitcoins (his client sold a car for Bitcoins in 2012 when they were still ~$30 then forgot about them until recently, miraculously not losing the wallet or having it stolen by a virus). He didn't name the service they were using but he did mention they had a $10k daily transaction limit per account-holder so it will take them quite a while to convert it all to useful money.
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Oct 11, 2017 04:03
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Waterslide Industry Lobbyist posted:There's a video of Stan Lee critiquing a Rob Liefeld drawing and in between being awesome and making GBS threads on Liefeld he says something like "you guys are killing us and we're going to have to start making movies." So it was at least clear to Stan Lee that the comics business was doomed by the early 90s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmLFGWAyajU
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Oct 11, 2017 04:15
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Krispy Wafer posted:You'd think the future was digital, but last I heard Marvel didn't even include their app in sales figures because it was so small compared to their print runs. Thats cause the textbook market is a racket with the school administration involved, just change the numbers in the problem questions maybe shuffle content around a little and thats enough to force students to use a new edition. And as you mentioned theres all that digital and online stuff, which when I was college a few years ago you had to buy a new book to be able to do whatever online quizes that were now part of the course. Im surpised there hasnt been a tech company arise to try and 'disrupt' the textbook market, even if it is a doomed venture due to institutional collaboration.
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Oct 11, 2017 04:58
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Communist Zombie posted:Thats cause the textbook market is a racket with the school administration involved, just change the numbers in the problem questions maybe shuffle content around a little and thats enough to force students to use a new edition. And as you mentioned theres all that digital and online stuff, which when I was college a few years ago you had to buy a new book to be able to do whatever online quizes that were now part of the course. Amazon kind of does that with textbook rentals. It's not a true disruption, but it's definitely pushing out college bookstores and hurting the new book market. I can't tell you how many times I had to buy a new edition for twice as much because there were no used copies. Kids these days don't know how good they've got it.
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Oct 11, 2017 05:19
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Communist Zombie posted:Thats cause the textbook market is a racket with the school administration involved, just change the numbers in the problem questions maybe shuffle content around a little and thats enough to force students to use a new edition. And as you mentioned theres all that digital and online stuff, which when I was college a few years ago you had to buy a new book to be able to do whatever online quizes that were now part of the course. Maybe there's too much disruption in the form of piracy already to make it appealing to a tech company.
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Oct 11, 2017 05:39
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there wolf posted:Maybe there's too much disruption in the form of piracy already to make it appealing to a tech company. Yeah, in the last few years of university for me most wouldn't buy the books, everyone would just get a line on a pdf. Stupid me though, I bought a lot of them because I hate reading on screens. I was what they called a 'mature student'. Didn't have a problem reading the copied pages of the accounting book and worksheets though! The ones I bought were fairly reasonably priced though, between fifteen and thirty euro, but the material was often political or philosophical works, and the homework was usually "write a paper contrasting how these different principles would apply to your chosen scenario" as opposed to calculations or anything, except for the accounting stuff and economic stuff, but the teacher for that knew he was dealing with non-mathematically inclined students so we had babby's first economics textbook for two years, which was pretty pricey, but again, we had it for two years so the price was doable. The administration may be in on the scam, but the teachers were sympathetic. They often assigned stuff that was in the public domain or gave us links to free online material in the syllabus. I think here in a few years more and more teachers are going to be leaning that way, at least the ones who are more in touch and sympathetic to the students, and then you'll see the disruption in the textbook market.
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Oct 11, 2017 07:57
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Ralph Crammed In posted:Yeah, in the last few years of university for me most wouldn't buy the books, everyone would just get a line on a pdf. Stupid me though, I bought a lot of them because I hate reading on screens. I was what they called a 'mature student'. Didn't have a problem reading the copied pages of the accounting book and worksheets though! A student at my school had a scam going where he'd go to the library on day 1, scan the textbooks for his classes, and then quietly pass word that he had a pdf available for $1, cash. Another student started doing the same but not charging just to gently caress with the other one.
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Oct 11, 2017 08:03
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Ha, we had a girl who did the exact same thing. Like, why else would they have scanners everywhere in the school? As one of the book buyers I always got "hey Ralph, can you take pics of pgs 97-110 on your phone and send em to me?' texts.
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Oct 11, 2017 08:22
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fizzymercy posted:I'd seriously like an answer to this as well. Googling the subject is just giving me a bunch of bullshit. It's oddly difficult to find any real, intelligent, believable (this is the real problem area) info about cryptocurrency. Not that I want to flush a bunch of money down a hole, I wanna laugh at it. We have a thread for that and I literally wrote a book about all this but the short answer is "it's a massive pain in the arse to sell the bitcoins you found on that 5yo drive for actual money without setting off every compliance alarm going and your bank may fire you as a customer". You can make money trading cryptos!! But you better be seriously good at the sort of trading that's basically gambling, or you'll be the one giving money to the guys who are that good.
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Oct 11, 2017 11:21
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Mr.Radar posted:Due to a confluence of factors, both Marvel and DC are barely moving any comic books these days and the future's not looking too bright. I recently read a pretty good 30,000 word essay (in the form of a loving Twine game I was a HUGE collector in the 90s and remember all of that. Right around this time you saw collectible card sets released and then games like Magic exploded and basically saved local indie stores. Suddenly stores were getting new customers off the street and not having to depend on the weekly regulars to keep the lights on. Some people will also tell you that trade paperbacks really hurt stores because there was no reason to carry a large back issue stock anymore but I've found it varies store to store. I tried the Marvel app recently but you can't search and the GUI just seems bloated. My local library has many TBPs for loan and I'm a suck for the Omnibus collections when they go on sale on Amazon.
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Oct 11, 2017 17:48
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Bonzo posted:On Friday, Sears Canada will ask a judge for permission to close every store in the country. They got permission from the judge to do so. The remaining profitable bits, which amount to their installation service and SLH Transportation will be spun out and live on. Sears Canada's liquidation prices are hilarious too. On Levi's jeans, they're charging full sticker price, $89 for most pairs. Meanwhile, HBC, which is 1) not liquidating and 2) just dumped a ton of money into their stores and went upmarket is selling them at their usual deal: $47 for 501s and 505s, 30% off sticker for everything else, last season's stuff is 30% off lowest ticket price. They also just tried to revamp their stores- new logo and typeface, better merchandising, even a pop-up shop on Queen West with just the new maple leaf logo, and a tragically ironic neon sign saying "It's never too late to get your sh!t together" inside, but the damage was already done. The consensus was that Sears Canada was too slow to adapt to changing market conditions, and then tried to survive by selling off its stores- but in doing so prolonged its existence at the expense of ever becoming viable again. Unlike Sears' American operation, Sears Canada has gone through 6 CEOs since 2009, one of which only lasted 8 months.
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Oct 14, 2017 19:10
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Sunshine89 posted:Sears Canada's liquidation prices are hilarious too. On Levi's jeans, they're charging full sticker price, $89 for most pairs. The article you quoted says "Retailer hopes to starts liquidation sales no earlier than Oct. 19" so there are no liquidation prices yet. Still doesn't justify $89 though.
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Oct 15, 2017 00:53
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