2020 Review - The Covid Year
After having a record breaking year of sales in 2019, the world and Mission: Comics had a dismal 2020 due to the Coronavirus pandemic. In addition, we had the worst fire season in years keeping customers at home and unable to visit the store.
Overall sales declined by about 42%.Ā
And while thatās comparing strong sales to a year where the store was completely close for 6 weeks and operating under covid restrictions for much of the rest of the year, sales were also down about 28% compared to the nearly disastrous year of 2017.Ā
Without the initial generosity from the community, an understanding landlord and a Federal Disaster Loan the store would not have been able to survive
Sales were down in all categories. But graphic novel sales had the steepest decline, probably as more casual customers visited the store less often, or not at all. In previous years, Mission: Comics was much more of a graphic novel focused store. But in 2020, those sales declined to the point where they were just about equal with periodical comic book sales.Ā
2019
2020
Breaking down the year by month, very strong sales in January and February indicated 2020 was poised to be another year of strong sales. Then in March the covid epidemic took off and the San Francisco Bay Area got a Shelter-In-Place order and lead the country in a lockdown to try to contain the virus. While the store was closed, we continued to receive shipments from Diamond with no idea when we might be able to sell those books. Thankfully eventually Diamond also had to suspend distribution saving us from just racking up more debt.
Rather than waiting for Diamond, DC rushed to start printing and getting comics to stores through alternate methods, using two of the largest mail order retailers as distributors. Initially we did not sign-up to use either of these competitors.
In May we were finally able to open for curbside pickup and mail order service and the other publishers resumed printing with Diamond resuming distribution. Even when the store was able to fully reopen, many customers were confused about what was open or closed, and what restrictions were in place. This continued for many, many months. As the pandemic grinded on, sales stabilized at a very marginal level. While the store did some internet and mail order sales, these were largely insignificant.Ā
While sales fell for every publisher, they did not fall equally. Image had another a terrible year of sales our store, dropping below DC in overall sales. This was because of the lack of casual customers buying graphic novels. Marvelās policy of slowly ramping back up to a more normal publication level was very much appreciated, but as a results their sales did suffer at rate comparable to Image. DC on the other hand aggressively returned to publishing and distributing. While chaotic and infuriating, DCās decision did seem to preserve a greater percentage of their sales.Ā Ā
With expanded affidavit returnability, BOOM was able limit their sales decline to just a 17% and Vault was actually able to grow their sales in our store by 9%!Ā Both amazing feats in these conditions, a considering other publishers saw 30-50% sales declines.
2019
2020
Image graphic novel sales steeply declined for a second year while still leading all other publishers, but by a much, much smaller margin than in past years.
Marvel and DC graphic novel sales declined by almost the same rate and remain almost equal
Marvel continued to lead in single issue comic sales, helped by higher cover prices, but they experienced the sharpest decline in 2020
DC the smallest relative drop in comic sales of the three largest publishers
Image single issue sales continued to drop in 2020, with no new standout hits.Ā
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