F.U.B.A.R. II: The Quickening

As the much-hyped 9/9/09 street date for The Beatles box sets drew closer, our previously reported stock situation had not improved appreciably; our allotment for the mono box increased from 5 to 10 (after we had originally ordered 70), while our order for the stereo box (which we had also ordered 70 of) was going to be cut significantly. With this in mind, we started looking around for alternate external sources of stock the week before street date in a bid to back ourselves up as much as possible ... just in case.

Surprisingly, our rarely-used secondary supplier came through for us in a pinch; as with our primary supplier, their mono box set order had been brutally shortened by EMI, therefore getting additional copies was not going to happen. However, they were so well-stocked with stereo box sets that they were able to pull aside 15 pieces for immediate shipment right then and there. Greg took this news with a furrowed brow, stared off into space for a moment (as he always does when he's about to go out on a limb), then had me drastically increase our order to 50. Secondary supplier didn't even bat an eye as our order amount soared in an instant from $2700 to $9000; they must have somehow received a far better product fill than our primary source. Lucky bastards. I sometimes wonder if they regretted that sale afterward.

Greg and I had a long talk after placing the order, both of us wondering aloud if we had just jumped in over our heads; the stereo box would be retailing for $220 (give or take), after all, and adding 50 pieces of an item that expensive on top of the 35 we figured to be receiving from our main supplier seemed an almost suicidal move. What bothered Greg more was that we were also staring at a loss of at least half a grand in accrued returns, as we rarely buy enough from our secondary supplier to warrant returning anything, let alone 90-140 CDs worth of unsold product purchased from them. Still, we figured if nothing else that we could break these boxes down and sell off the individual albums if we wound up not selling them; it's the freaking Beatles, after all.

As it turned out, that backup order was one of most prescient calls of Greg's career; two days after securing those extra 50 copies of the stereo box from our backup source, we were informed by our primary supplier that our stereo box allotment had been dropped all the way to ten copies. Suddenly, those 50 box sets we'd ordered from California weren't a possible stone tied around our necks, but a lifesaver. I don't even want to think of what work would have been like over the next few weeks if we hadn't gone that route.

A lifelong poker player, Greg didn't show his hand when we were given this little update, and he raised some hell with our main supplier. His anger was only a partial bluff; both of us were pretty exasperated by now with the way this situation was changing on an almost daily basis and he let them know about it. To their credit, our ire was assuaged by the arrival of 11 additional copies of the stereo set over the next week from their "private stash." We also managed to get in on the ground floor when a second wave of mono box sets arrived at their warehouse just before release date. With an additional 41 copies of that limited set safely behind our counter (and dozens of individual titles on hand for those who didn't want to opt for the big sets), we were still short of our intended stock target as street date arrived, but at least we felt ready to do battle and kick some ass ... which is pretty much what we did.

Here's the really good news: after all of the unending headaches and scrambling about, these boxes proved very quickly to have been worth the chase. All of our efforts (coupled with the timely arrival of some big new releases over a three-week period) resulted in a sales bonanza the likes of which we hadn't seen here outside of Christmas season. Combined sales of the mono and stereo boxes (both in the store and online through our Amazon window) went beyond even our most optimistic expectations. Without getting into reams of boring numbers, let's just say that not only did the Beatles propel us to our best September sales figure to date, but they probably saved our entire year as well. Wooot!

A few weeks later, after all backup supplies on both sets had completely dried up (this has now been the case since early October), our primary sales rep informed us that we were the only account of theirs who had guessed right on these things; everyone else had run out days or weeks before and were screaming for additional product. While our salesman meant well with that statement, the fact that we had been right all along and yet still wound up on the short end of their supply stick (apparently thanks to a desire on their part to make as many accounts happy as possible by using the quantities that we had ordered to do so) made his flattery feel more like a poke in the eye. "Best laid plans" and all that rot ...

As of this writing, we are down to 1 copy of the mono set, having sold our last stereo box earlier this afternoon. As expected, EMI have gone back to the well for a second run of these "limited edition" sets, and we will hopefully have some new mono stock early next week (though our desired quantity is being cut down again as supplies are short of projected targets, ha ha ha). Unfortunately, we get to twist in the wind for a bit as far as the stereo set is concerned; no additional stock is expected until sometime around Thanksgiving. Ugh. For the sake of Christmas, I sure hope EMI can meet their maddeningly-shifting target date, because once you slip past that weekend with no product on the shelves, you are skating on awfully thin ice.

F.U.B.A.R.

"If this isn't the biggest bag-over-the-head, punch-in-the-face I ever got ... GOD DAMN IT!" - Clark Griswald

Really bad day at work today.

The most infuriating part of this whole mess was that we knew this was going to happen and we did everything we could to think ahead and attempt to circumvent this problem before it ever came up, yet we wound up getting screwed anyway. Unbelievably frustrating.

So, what happened, you ask? EMI happened. Yes, the worst record company on the planet is in the process of royally screwing up their biggest release of the year: the twin Beatles box sets, which are set to release on September 9. The ripple effects of this latest cock-up should pretty well sabotage the grand kick off to our fourth quarter, and torch what should have been our best weekend (and non-Christmas month) ever. To say we're "infuriated" is putting it nicely.

Here's the set-up: I'm not quite sure how much of this is ultimately tied into the general downsizing of the music industry apparatus over the last five years or so and how much was simple modern-day corporate thinking, but right now only two major labels, Sony and UMG, still own the means to press and distribute their own product. The remaining majors, WEA and EMI, long ago sold off their pressing plants and attendant pipeline outlets and now farm out these operations to outside companies (including Sony and UMG).

With sales levels being as depressed overall as they have been over the last few years, this new compacted production scheme runs relatively smoothly, only running into a bump here and there if an album suddenly explodes around Christmastime (Straight No Chaser) or if some unforeseen event has a drastic effect on sales (the entire Michael Jackson catalog going completely nuclear in the weeks following his death). Another cause of problems with this new system is the launch of items with bulky, complicated packaging like, say box sets.

As many of you I'm sure are aware, it's not the 1990s anymore, and CD boxed sets aren't the sales-driving juggernauts they once were. That said, once in a while you do get a long-awaited collection from a Neil Young or a Genesis (or, uh, the Beatles ... you know, the single biggest act of the entire rock era), that will create some noticeable sales ripples. With artists more involved than ever in the creation of these sets, and with label catalog departments all trying to create something with a unique design and multiple design-specific components to wow the people who still buy these things, the production of these sets requires significantly more effort (and, more importantly, time) to create than simply duping a couple hundred thousand Miley Cyrus discs and booklets.

The recent distribution history with nearly all box sets has not always been a pretty sight, and we've become used to these things almost immediately running into short supply. To ensure that we would be the only store that had any Beatles box sets in stock after everyone else had blitzed through their supply, we deliberately over-ordered, especially on the limited edition mono box (which would attract the most ardent Beatles fans who also happen to make up a sizable portion of our customer base). Thus, when the word came down a few days ago that there were production/supply issues cropping up with these sets, we didn't worry terribly much: we'd ordered enough that even if our initial order was cut (as we were pretty sure it would be), we'd still have plenty of stock to work with.

Well, we got word of our allotted amount from our supplier this afternoon and were very surprised indeed to learn that while we had ordered 70 mono box sets (by far the most of any account in our supplier's system), we would be receiving a grand total of 5. That's right: 5. I figure that amount should last us a whole two minutes from the time the box comes through our front door. Gosh, what a sales bonanza that will be.

Oh, it also turns out that our stereo box set orders will likely be slashed in half as well. Great. I guess a 50% fill beats the pants off of the 7% fill we're getting on the mono set, huh? Anyway, if this figure holds up, that would leave us with 35 pieces of the stereo set, which would then necessitate us having to buy up separate copies of all of the original albums as our strategy of sourcing the individual album sales from our planned glut of stereo box sets just flew out the window.

Looking into this disaster, it appears that some genius at EMI's sales department did his research and figured on a limited outlay of 13,000 copies for the mono set. This number was arrived at before any orders had even been placed, which is standard operating procedure for most labels as they can fine-tune their shipments upwards or downwards from target as orders come in during the solicitation period. Well, it turns out that this genius guessed a tad low: orders for the set topped off around 46,000, nearly 3.5 times the size of the intended production run. Oops.

Now, when this happens (which is hardly ever since most people in sales departments have at least a basic grasp of what the fuck they are selling), you generally have two options as a company: 1.) you delay the release of item a couple of weeks to allow for production to try and catch up to demand, or 2.) you stick with the release date and allocate shipments so that everyone gets something to sell, just not the quantities that they'd ordered. Locked into this September 9 street date since April 7 for crissakes, EMI felt they had no choice but to go with the latter option. A decision was then made to fulfill all the remaining orders before cutting the piece off once and for all. Thus, the mono set appears to still be limited ... to 46,000 units. At 270 bucks MSRP, one might figure that supply should last for a pretty good while. The stereo set, which is priced cheaper and actually has more CDs in it, will be available in perpetuity.

Of course, catching up to these remaining orders is going to take some time. Since they cannot press their own product, EMI has to stand in line along with everyone else, which means that retailers won't be seeing refreshed supplies of these sets for anywhere from 2-6 weeks after street date. In our discussions before we arrived at our order figure, I opined that these sets would get a pretty good second wind around Christmas time, but I didn't exactly figure on them being COMPLETELY GONE until then.

So, this is the way we sell things in the 21st century: set a release date months ahead of time, whip the media and the marketplace into a froth with wall-to-wall hype, and worry about whether you can actually meet said date sometime later on. Don't worry: by launch date, people will want to be the first to own your product so badly that it barely matters if you didn't make enough to go around or that there might be some mislabeled discs or perhaps a couple of packing errors during the assembly of the piece (whoops! I have an extra copy of Abbey Road instead of Yellow Submarine and my Please Please Me CD actually plays Rubber Soul instead!). This whole fiasco feels more like the launch of the Playstation 3 than something dreamt up by the music industry. Perhaps I miss the point when I wonder how this can be anything but a PR disaster, especially considering that the record industry has a vested interest in people buying their products, and this is generally helped greatly when that product is actually in stores when they say it's going to be.

Until today, we were really looking forward to these sets as there aren't many bands that create excitement amongst music people of all ages like The Beatles. Now, we're kind of dreading having to explain everything I wrote above time and time and time again. There are going to be a lot of very unhappy Beatle nerds running around on September 9 and the days afterward, and there aren't many things in customer service that are worse than dealing with unhappy nerds. Bravo, EMI.

Truly "Bigger Than Jesus"

No discussion of popular music in the 1960s (or the 20th Century, for that matter) could be complete without mention of The Beatles, and this week marks the 45th anniversary of what could arguably be considered the very height of Beatlemania.

On Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart for the week ending April 4, 1964, the Fab Four achieved a level of dominance never seen before or since as they staked claim to the Top 5 positions on said chart, while placing an incredible seven other songs ("I Saw Her Standing There," "You Can't Do That," "All My Loving," "Roll Over Beethoven," "From Me To You," "Do You Want To Know A Secret," and "Thank You Girl") at various slots down the list.

Below is a look at that week's Top 10 as it was published:

As you might have noticed, the Beatles singles listed above originated from multiple distributors, not just Capitol Records (the label they had signed to just before the hysteria had started, and their U.S. home ever since). Facing a stone wall of skepticism or outright hostility from the U.S. record industry, band manager Brian Epstein had scattered several Beatles singles among a handful of smaller independent labels over the second half of 1963 in persistent efforts to get a foothold in the U.S. market with no success at all. Then, as now, if you had an insufficient promotional budget to spend fostering radio airplay, your releases simply would not get on the air, and the labels that chose to work with Epstein had little or no national promotion budget to speak of.

Epstein's efforts at the time may have been viewed as a failure, yet they paid off wildly when the band became a known entity in America seemingly overnight. Thus, when "I Want To Hold Your Hand" went supernova in January of 1964 (with five million sold, it ultimately became the best-selling song of the decade), there was plenty of older Beatles product available to record stores who found themselves swamped by overwhelming demand for anything Beatles-related. Such was this demand that even cash-in novelty records recorded in the days and weeks following the band's Ed Sullivan Show appearance began to show up in the record charts as well in the form of "We Love You Beatles" by The Carefrees, "A Letter To The Beatles" by The Four Preps, "My Boyfriend Got A Beatle Haircut" by Donna Lynn and "The Boy With The Beatle Hair" by The Swans.

While managing to nail down the Top 5 slots on the Hot 100 is an impressive enough feat, one has to look beyond this amazing one-week snapshot to see just how stupendous the Beatles were in the first half of 1964. While they released their most epochal works down the line a ways, they would never again completely dominate culture like they did that spring. For starters, that mind-boggling roll call of twelve singles listed simultaneously on the Hot 100 would actually increase to an unbelievable fourteen entries on the April 11 chart as "There's A Place" and "Love Me Do" entered the fray alongside their dozen predecessors.

The April 4 chart may have been the only time the Beatles would control the entire Top 5, but their domination of the Billboard singles chart extends for months either way: on April 4, the band had now owned the entire top 4 for two straight weeks and the entire top 3 for four straight weeks (since March 14). If that wasn't enough of a stranglehold for you, consider next that the Fabs had also reserved the top 2 positions on the Hot 100 from February 22 to April 25 (1o weeks) and held down the number 1 spot with one song or another from February 1 though May 2 (14 weeks).

Oh, it gets better: The Beatles kept at least one song in Billboard's Top 10 from to January 25 to June 20 of that year (22 weeks solid), and managed to keep at least one hit in the national Top 40 for 39 consecutive weeks -- from January 25 (the week "I Want To Hold Your Hand" rocketed from #45 clear up to #3) all the way through to October 17 (the week "Matchbox" tumbled from #17 to #52, opening a nearly two-month period when no Beatles songs impacted the U.S. Top 40 ).

Lastly, and perhaps most incredibly of all, by the end of 1964, the Fab Four would amass 15 million-selling records in the U.S. (over 9 singles and 6 albums), and the total sales of these releases combined amounted to over 25 million records sold ... by one band in one year.