| |  | | Uff.And hello. But why are comics so HEAVY? This month is crazy. Omnigeddon has finally arrived, and the Manga explosion is about go off very soon (more on that later). We’re expecting ca 2,5 tons of books in October. And we’ve still not crossed the midpoint. It’s not enough that we constantly carry and unpack and shelf new arrivals, but we also move our in-stock inside the store all the time. No, we are not mental (?), but we’re ONCE AGAIN refurbishing the store. It will look beautiful. A different, shelfier beautiful, compared with the airy and display-oriented beautiful. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ve probably never visited our brick&mortar. I think you should drop by, when you’re in Berlin the next time. And please leave a review on good ol’ google, so more people can find us . Again I am asking you to do something for us, shame on me. Meanwhile, you have already delivered phenomenally last month. Ca 300 newsletterees took our first-ever survey and we got more than a glimpse into the MYSTERIOUS SOUL OF THE CUSTOMER. So insightful! And who would’ve thought that asking the customers about their needs might work better than the good old gut feeling? Not me! Anyway, let me share some insights into our learnings and what they mean for the near future of Walt's Comic Shop. (just jump ahead to sales announcement at the end of the if you’re not into the whole comic shop kayfabe). | | 2022 Survey |  | We could act surprised, but… | 76% named the oversized Hardcover / OMNIBUS their favorite format. We are an Omni shop, sure, but more than three quarters? Wow. The Epics fraction follows second with 11%, and everything else is … single-digits. Then we asked where you buy most of your comics and barely half of you named Walt’s as one of their premier sources. GUTTED! Only half the audience of our own freaking newsletter?! (positive resolution to follow). Also, to make things even saltier, roughly one quarter names Amazon as one of their main sources. You got us there, well done! (Oh yes, we will work on that of course, that's GUARANTEED! ;)) But then, in a surprising turn of events, when asked why Walt’s is not one of your premier supplier of comic goods, almost 40% of you answered that they just haven’t ordered enough with Walt's yet, but they plan to. 🥳 RELIEF! HOPE! |  | This one was one of the more baffling ones. Only 2% named the thin paperback their favorite format, but 13% want more of it. Sure, we’ll obey! Roughly half wants more hardcovers (because: addicts), 8% more Manga (yes yes yes), 11% more graphic novels… Now, when I compare our offerings with most comic shops, we do have a large amount of indie and literary titles. But I think you probably mean something else by “Graphic Novels” (such a blurry word). We will stock more Image and indie paperbacks in the future, but frankly, historically only the thick, oversized, hardcovered Indie books really sold well. Signed comics: yes, we plan to host more awesome artists in our store and we’ll offer their signed books, and we already have the occasional signed editions. Single Issues: already in the works. Older comics: someday for sure, but the time and budget allocations have to cut somewhere. |  | Because we can’t sell everything. We have even reduced the amount of non-books in our offerings lately. The toys/collectibles market is very crowded, you need a lot of storage space etc. We’ll still get the occasional treat, though. We asked about your non-books preferences to understand how our customers spend their time/money. It is more interesting for us in the long run, especially for the time, when we will expand our brick&mortar presence. Original art would be amazing but frankly the prices have gotten so crazy I am afraid that ship has sailed. No posters (difficult to ship) or cards (unless the demand is overwhelming) planned, slabs… we’ll talk about another time. Board Games we’re looking into, but just comic book related ones. We now have someone on the team who’s quite knowledgeable and if it’s a well curated selection I think it’d be a great fit for us. We are on great terms with the greatest book distributor in the world (PRH), so novels is something you will see pop up every now and then. Testing the waters. Which leaves us with merch. We do not want to sell printed jugs. Or keychains. Nothing wrong with that, just not our thing. T-Shirts though… totally our thing. But if we offer them, they have to be of the bestest quality. No cheap junk that falls apart after a few times of washing or generic apparel you can get from H&M. Only premium stuff. More on that next year, hopefully. (looking at the clock: DAMN IT’S LATE) OK, the rest in short form: 55% of you, despite the many delays, still prefer pre-ordering vs 45%, who prefer to buy on release, and only 10% have changed their preference in that regard. This is more parity than we would have wished for but of course we’ll try to do justice to both groups (not easy). When asked how you guys found out about our shop, more than half said that Omar sent you, ca 10% each were “recommendation" and “instagram/facebook presence”, 15% came from google and… only 5% from our sales channels on ebay/amazon. Thinking that roughly two years ago ebay was everything we had… it’s been a good run. Which hopefully doesn’t stop quite, yet. And there is still hope, after all… |  | … because Supes managed to snatch second place in the end, even though it looked quite different for a long time. Krypton forever! And now on to ... | | The Tease | One big takeaway from the survey was to understand that we need to provide the best possible service to our core customer base. And they love Omnis. Sure, the numbers have softened a bit on pre-orders and Marvel’s delays and DC’s price hikes were frustrating, but it’s on us to adapt to the situation and cushion you from most of the, ahem, imperfections that go along with collecting and pre-ordering Omnis. Many of you asked about it in the past, and we’ll finally announce next month a “Pullbox for Omnis” program. You pay a yearly fee and get a regular, free monthly shipping + some special discounts + other advantages + of course less head-aches when ordering. Like Amazon prime, only MUCH BETTER (had to go there). We will make less money with our regular customers as a result. But we will gain more planning security. It's a win win — I think. But let’s see, what YOU think about it. We’re finalising the last details, so it won’t be ready to launch by next weekend (when the new pre-orders go live). But it will be ready for the next round in late November. | |  | from Candy & Cigarettes, about a 11 year old master assassin :) | Manga. Properly, though. | Another realization is that we offer a very special service to Omni collectors in Europe, which seems to be really popular. We have received quite a few "thank you" messages, which has made us very proud. Of course it's a business, but we really try hard and it seems to catch on with many of you. And we believe that there is no one like that in Europe for the manga sector. That’s why we will have a strong focus on Manga for the next half year. It's a strategic decision, of course, but it also reflects our increased interest in manga. We've been offering it in small quantities for over a year now, reading them Tankōbons more and more ourselves, and discovering the many crazy concepts and incredible artwork. And while the Disney and DC media franchises look a bit tired, anime continues to go through the roof… So we’re getting more serious about manga. To begin with, we’ll add 500+ new products, mainly from Kodansha and Seven Seas, to our manga section later this week. A large Viz backstock update will happen till the end of the year. There will be some cool marketing actions, discounts and more. Some of you will also be pleasantly surprised when we will announce our manga testimonial. Similar to our cooperation with Near Mint Condition, we are currently in talks with a fantastic manga influencer. And many of you who don't read manga will know him anyway... ;) We are aware that the audiences for omnis and manga don't necessarily have a huge intersection, but the trend is clearly pointing upwards. But no one has to be interested in everything: We need you to know that we are pursuing new tasks, but will certainly not neglect our brand core. | |  | This is NOT what a Nick&Dent book at Walt’s looks like!!! | Nick & Dent Sale (update) | We need to cclear some space, so the next Nick & Dent sale update will go live and you as a valued Newsletter-subscriber know the secret start time, which is: Tomorrow! Thursday, 20.10., 11.00 Berlin time. If you don’t know them by know, Nick&Dents are books with more or less small imperfections. The photo above IS NOT A REFERENCE FOR OUR NICK&DENTS! It’s a reading copy for Walt, who only manages to get the unsellable, truly destroyed copies. Poor guy! As you can read in our reviews on Trustpilot, people seem genuinely happy with the less-than-perfect books. Actually, we never had one complaint about our Nick&Dent grading. Since we hardly break even on those sales, be aware that special rules apply: No discount codes allowed. No freebies (it just slows our fulfilment). Over 9 KG we will ask for supplementary shipping payment on top of our flat rate (between 5-10€ depending on destination). And please do not send us email ahead of the start asking if particular books are included. We do not have time to answer them. Just drop by on Thursday and check out the sale! 🙏 |  | Is it… Hauptmann Deutschland?! | The Rest | On November 13 we’ll be at the BERLINER COMICMESSE, a fun local con. If you’re in or from Berlin, stop by our booth, get a special Messe-Voucher from us and check out the special deals! The auctions last month went… OK-ish. Unfortunately the auction app didn’t perform as we wanted and we also announced the wrong end times for some of the books, which caused some frustration. Really sorry. We’re working on it and will re-launch with a new app and new (old) cool books, hopefully next month. And finally, something personal: Some of you know that I'm also a screenwriter. A few days ago, my first-ever audio drama was released on Audible: HYPERIA, a superhero series set in Berlin. Slice-of-life meets science fiction and in the middle a heroine who learns that she is the daughter of a lost and forgotten superhero... It's a great audio production with some very good (voice) actors. But of course it only makes sense if you understand German. |  | It’s the one time we don't mind if you buy something from Amazon (Audible's parent company) ;) | | That’s it! | If you need any kind of support, please get in touch: info@waltscomicshop.com And I will leave you with a beautiful, traditional haiku about autumn. The baby cow Goes on a trip. In the autumn rain. | | | | | |
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