While Diamond is unarguably the best known comics
distributor in the country, that does not mean they
are alone. In fact, in almost a decade, a
smaller California-based firm named Cold Cut
Distribution has carved out its own little corner of
the distribution world. Did you think it was
possible for a distributor to survive without the
"Big Two?" Cold Cut has done just
that, carrying primarily graphic novels and indy
publishers...and no Marvel and DC. In fact, for
many smaller publishers, Cold Cut is one of the few
places they can turn, and over the last few years the
company has nurtured small press creators through such events as its sponsoring of the "Indy Island" at
the San Diego Comic-Con.
The Slush Factory spoke to Tim Stroup, one of the
founders of Cold Cut and its current Vice President of
Operations, about the company.
What is Cold Cut’s history?
My current partner, Mark Thompson, and I started
out doing conventions [as retailers] back in the early
90s, and we were selling the usual comics: Marvel, DC,
etc. But we had an interest in, and Mark had a real
good knowledge of, the independent/alternative stuff.
We started to focus on that, and we actually
eliminated Marvel and DC. And we sold a lot. There
seemed to be a lot of demand for it. At that
time, we were going through both Diamond and Capital
City, which were the two big distributors. And we were
trying to get some of these smaller titles. One of the
books was Wandering Star, which was one of the
big hits back then. A lot of people were looking for
it, at least from conventions around here. And we
would try to order it from the distributors, and we
couldn’t get it. They would say that either the
publisher was out of it or they just couldn’t get
it. And they would cancel our backorder. Basically
because it was probably too small, even if we ordered
ten or twenty.
So we’d call the publisher and they’d say, ‘Yeah,
I’ve got tons of them. How many do you need?’ We
got to the point where we started getting frustrated,
because it was happening a lot with the smaller guys.
And at that point, Bone, and a lot of the
self-publishers and small companies, were
catching on. There was real good stuff: Poison
Elves and books like that. So we
said, well you know, if we’re having this trouble,
and we’re just doing conventions, what about regular
retailers? So we went to the San Diego convention in
’93 and talked to a bunch of different retailers at
the retailer EXPO. And several said,
‘Yeah, we’d be interested in doing that.’
So in
late ’94, we decided to go ahead and take a chance
and do it. And we went ahead and bought a bunch of the
small guys. We never even bought Marvel, or DC, or
Image, just the small guys. And we started out real
small, in fact we were in Mark’s apartment for about
five months until we couldn’t take anymore. We were
growing pretty well so we got a warehouse base. The
first couple years were like that. Actually, it was
started by Mark, myself, and my now ex-wife. She was
working part time and keeping things going. And it got
big enough where I came on full time.
After my wife left we then brought in Mathew High,
and he basically became our right-hand. He had worked
at Antarctic since the early 90s. This was about ’97.
We focus mainly on back issues, because that’s
what was big then. And trades started to pick up. We
picked up larger and larger customers, like Viz. And
we really only did reorders. We tried advance for
about six weeks and decided that we couldn’t compete
on time, because Diamond picks up their books and we
figured out that even smaller retailers wanted their
books pretty much right away. Just because another
store would have them and somebody else would go
there. So it got to the point where it just wasn’t
worth it. It was a short-lived experiment. Since then,
we’ve brought on more and more graphic novels. And
we’ve expanded as more retailers have found out
about us.
Also, before Mathew came, there was a smaller
distributor that did just graphic novels, and they
were called Downtown Distribution, so we bought them
out. They said, “Hey, we’re going out of business.
Do you want to buy our contacts and our stock?” They
had a lot of contacts in the distribution end of the
book market. So that enabled us to easily pick up
comic strip books like Calvin & Hobbs and Doonesbury
and stuff like that. So that’s when we decided to
focus in on that, but we still carry the comics
because those are real hard to get. Basically we see
ourselves as a service for retailers. Our minimum
order is $25. They can buy one copy of any book, or in
effect five or six comic books, and they’ve already
hit our minimum.
How big is your warehouse?
It’s about 2100 square feet.
And Cold Cut has how many employees?
Seven. Five full-time and two part-time.
With the company carrying approximately how many
publishers?
About 500.
Do you take on a lot of the first-time, more risky
publishers?
To some extent. We’ll look at anybody. Our goal
is to go up to the people who are continually going to
come out. In other words, if someone wants to do a
series, and is willing to put in the time and effort
and build their audience over time, that’s who we
like to focus on. We do bring on some of the smaller
ones, but we don’t buy them any copies. We look at
their product and see whether it’s a quality book.
If it’s a quality book we’ll consider it, if it’s
not then we just won’t do it. Generally, there are
some that we accept that Diamond doesn’t except,
partially because they put more emphasis on salability
than we do. We have some who are one-shots, but it’s
kind of interesting, a lot of the really small guys
will put out another one in the next year. But because
we also don’t focus on superheroes, these guys are
more “I want to put this out because I want
to put it out.” We do carry some one-shots, but
one-shots don’t sell that well for us, so we don’t
buy too many.
Let’s say someone comes up with an original
graphic novel or the like, and they want you to carry
it. What is the submission process and the criteria
that you go by?
The submission process is real straightforward. Because
we’re reorder, we either want to see a copy of the
thing if it’s been printed, or a nearly finished
photocopy of it. Then we take a look at it and decide
whether we think it’s quality enough that our
retailers are going to sell it. We have a trust with
our retailers that so if we offer it, it’s at least
salable, it’s just not crap. So if it’s a book
that we decide to pick up, we’ll respond back. And
we’ll buy anywhere from 20-100 copies, depending on
how well we think it is, how well it sits with other
things, how well we think we can describe it even.
Then we take it and we put it into our category or our
weekly e-mail/fax update, which is a big thing because
our catalog only comes out about two or three times a
year. But we’ll put it in there and essentially let
the retailers know we have it. If we sell out, we’ll
come back and get some more. And as long as it
continues to sell, we’ll continue to buy it from the
publisher. What helps is if they come out with another
issue while we’re still selling the first issue,
people will hear about the second issue from Diamond
or whoever is selling it, and they’ll go, ‘Oh,
well I want issue one, too,’ and then they’ll come
to us, and we’ll sell more of issue one at the same
time.
Does Cold Cut solicit books?
No, because solicitations are for books that haven’t
already been printed. The way Diamond works, they’ll
put out their catalog and the retailer will look at it
and decide what they want in two months or whatever.
We don’t offer a book unless we have a book in our
warehouse. When a retailer places an order with us we’ll
ship within two or three days.
What kind of timeframe is there from the point when
a book is first released to when it is stocked and
carried by Cold Cut?
That all depends on the book, but we don’t have a
set time. We’re starting to carry more and more
people who are either (a) not bothering to go through
Diamond or (b) Diamond’s not carrying because they
don’t think it’s good enough, or it didn’t get
into their system or something like that. But the
publisher has gone ahead and printed it. In other
words, they have printed thousands, and plan to go and
sell it however they can. So in effect we have it
first so if you want to say we’re soliciting we are,
but we have it in stock. For our standard books, like
Fantagraphics titles, we get shipped from Quebecor the
same batch of books that Diamond gets. Diamond just
happens to go pick theirs up, and with us they put
them on a truck. We’re in California, so it takes a
week or so for them to get to us.
Some books that are printed on the west coast we
actually get before Diamond does, and we’ll
offer them before Diamond. Also, Diamond tends not to
pick up the smaller print guys right away. If they
have a big DC/Marvel shipment they may say, ‘Ok, let’s
let those indies sit a week or so.’ So maybe we get
them the same week Diamond does. It’s kind of fuzzy,
but the rough rule is a week or two.
Who are some of the larger companies that you
carry?
Fantagraphics, Viz Communications. I can tell you
our biggest company sales-wise is Viz, which does
manga. We are really big with manga and goth books. So
our second biggest publisher is TokyoPop, which does Sailor
Moon and stuff like that. And third is Slave
Labor, which does Johnny The Homicidal Maniac
and a bunch of others. That’s a book that constantly
sells. Even Diamond finally put the Johnny
books into their Star system. We carry Dark Horse
trades, but no issues. Also Oni. And then one of our
next big ones is Little Brown, which does Tin-Tin.
So we sell a lot of Tin-Tin and Asterisks.
We also do Antarctic and Drawn and Quarterly. In
addition, our biggest non-comic book or non-graphic
novel company is Graffiti Designs, who do t-shirts. We
work well with them because they’re in California.
We pretty much offer anything they have. And then
publishers like Bongo, Humanoids, Cartoon Books, and
things like that.
Where would you put Cold Cut in market terms?
We figure that Diamond controls about 95% of the
entire market, and the smaller guys like us, FM, Last
Gasp, and a couple of others fill the remainder. So
Cold Cut is probably 1-2%. Us and FM are about the
same size, and Last Gasp maybe slightly bigger, I’m
not sure. They do a lot of mail order and retail sales
so it’s hard to say.
How many stores do you ship to?
We send our catalog out to about 700 stores. But
because the way of our service, we’ll have a store
that will order from us, and then wait six months and
order a big chunk again. We’ll have other stores
that order from us every week. And it just depends on
what their need is and what they sold. But what we
usually say is every month we probably ship to 200
different stores. And it’s not the same 200 stores
every month.
For the products that you both sell, why would
somebody buy through Cold Cut as opposed to Diamond?
Two reasons. One is the ability to get the books.
They just don’t keep the smaller publishers’
issues around. Definitely like a lot of the Antarctic
stuff. Diamond has a minimum quantity, not per order,
but if they don’t get five orders for a book in a
week from their whole system, they cancel the order.
So if you’re looking for a back issue a lot of times
Diamond can’t get it for you. It’s not worth their
time, they’re too big and it would cost them too
much money. So the availability of some of the books
is one reason.
We also pride ourselves on service. They’ll call
us up, and if there’s a problem we’ll take care of
it right there on the phone.
Do smaller publishers receive any support or advice
from your end?
We’re always willing to talk to them, and let
them know what our experience is whether it’s for
printing or about promotion, whether its through us or
whether it’s other ways they might want to promote
it. I do get probably two or three phone calls a week
from somebody new, who’s trying to start out. We
tell them how to get a printer, that type of thing.
Diamond does that, I’m sure, some of the time. We
also offer a couple of promotional programs where we’ll
send out free flyers or ashcans and stuff like that.
And if they provide it, we’ll also include free
copies of their books in each order that ships out. So
we’ll do some promotion that way and help them to
figure out problems, who to talk to, etc. Some of them
just don’t have an idea. Until you start and
actually work at it you don’t have a clue as to how
the system works, so we’re happy to help them out
that way.
What conventions does Cold Cut traditionally
attend?
As Cold Cut we attend really two conventions: the
San Diego Comic-Con and A.P.E.. With San Diego we do
the ‘Indy Island.’ We basically sponsor an island
and have a whole bunch of small publishers. We
organize it for them: they pay us and we take care of
the table fee and have a theme that fits together. It’s
slightly cheaper for them to do it that way. They can
ship us the books and since we’re in California we
can bring them down to San Diego instead of them
having to ship to there and worrying about having to
ship to their hotel. So we handle a lot of the
logistics and we’ll run a register so they don’t
have to worry about money. And that’s what we do
with the Comic-Con International.
We usually then go to a local one here, A.P.E.,
which is the Alternative Press Expo. And with that we
mainly go just to have a presence. We take a bunch of
our books that were damaged that we never reported and
sell them, usually by the pound. So those are the only
two main ones that we go to, although we occasionally
go to other ones just to wander around, but for a Cold
Cut presence we really don’t go to too many others.
What does the future hold for Cold Cut? Are there
any expansion plans?
Nothing really short-term. We’ve grown sales-wise
probably 20-30% a year, so we’re still trying to
keep a handle on that and not go too fast. There are
no specific plans to do anything. We’re not going to
try advance, that didn’t work. And there’s no way
to do it anyway with the way the whole Diamond
exclusive thing is set up.
On a nice closing note, what’s the deal behind
the company name?
Actually it’s a pretty bad story. As I said, Mark
and I started doing conventions and to set up our
first account with a distributor we were looking for a
name. So we were sitting around trying to come up with
a bunch of possibilities. And our initials were B.M.T.,
which is a sandwich at Subway. And someone goes, ‘Well,
why don’t you just call it Cold Cut?’ So that’s
how it stuck. Like I said, not a very good story. We
keep meaning to make one up to make it more exciting.
But it’s definitely unique and simple and easy to
remember.
Cold
Cut Distribution
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