Muzak, the company that has punished elevator users for over 75 years with their hideous “music” renditions, has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

According to Bloomberg.com, Muzak filed for bankruptcy this week with credit problems of $465.3 million, but listed assets of only $324.2 million.  The problem is that the company pushed a lot of their debt to mature in the early part of 2009 seeing as they were relying on a merger or sale of the company to help them control the debt.  Now that neither has happened, the company was left with only the option of filing for chapter 11 reorganization.

According to TheStreet.com, this is a list of how some of their debt breaks down.

• U.S. Bank NA – $371 million
• Universal Music Enterprises – $349,321
• EMI Capital Records – $320,323
• AT&T – $257,384
• Dish Network – $251,276
• The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers – $213,020
• Companies without amounts listed include Sony Music, BMG Film & Television Music, United Parcel Service and Virgin Records

How in the world do they owe U.S. Bank $371 million?  What were they taking out loans for that would amount to anything close to that?  The music companies aren’t surprising since they have to pay out royalties for all of the music they play, but in general this is a company that sends out music and nothing else.  I know in the old days they were sent out by tape, but I would imagine in this day and age they transmit their products by satellite to the elevators.  What is even more frightening is that their list of secured creditors has yet to be released, so this is possibly only the tip of the iceberg.

While there are so many saddening stories right now of companies cutting jobs or going out of business, this is one that just leaves my head spinning.  How could a company with such a simple concept be so badly mismanaged?  And how could a bank, one I happen to have accounts with, allow a company to have $371 million dollars in unsecured loans?  What was that money going to?

I feel sorry for the companies owed money… okay, not really, my feelings towards the music industry machine aren’t really a secret, but I do feel sorry for the artists.  Hopefully they will be able to get the debt problem settled, and get the money out to those they owe.  If not, think of how much more pleasant a ride in the elevator will be next time when there isn’t some overly jazzed up version of The Beatles “Hey Jude” playing in the background.

It’s true folks, Hollywood is in deep crisis… of morals that is.

Hollywood had a record year in 2008 financially, but attendance dropped off.  Well, according to Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood, the American movie industry had their best January ever to kick off 2009… stupid pirates killing off all of their business!

Hollywood has been cutting jobs in this down economy, and they also have been dragging their feet on a new contract with the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) due to money concerns, and they have been saying that they need more money, with even rumors of a government bailout may be needed.  Yet, here we are looking at the January numbers show that they grossed $1.028 billion at the box office compared to $867.2 million last January for an increase of 18.57%.  Now, before you say this is caused by increased ticket prices, you should know that attendance was up 16.78% over the same time period last year.

True, we are only one month into 2009, but this certainly bodes well for the movie industry, and while it is highly unlikely we will see another break out, $500 million plus, grosser like The Dark Knight this year, this bodes very well for the year.  Considering the total gross for 2008 was $9.76 billion, it certainly looks like they are tracking to beat last year already.

Poor Hollywood… you know pirates are hurting their bottom lines… they keep telling us so by annoying advertisements.  Well, if history teaches us anything, it is that during tougher economic times, people tend to go to the movies more for escapism, and this lead to huge attendance numbers during the Great Depression.  Certainly this is not another depression, but you have to figure that contributes to the situation.

I have to admit I am a bit befuddled by this since Netflix reported their earnings jumped 45% in the fourth quarter of 2008, so expected box office takes to be down.  Shows what I know!

The movie industry had a record year for revenue in 2008, but actual attendance was down.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Hollywood’s revenue was up 2% for the year to a record $9.76 billion. This tally was generated on 1.36 billion tickets sold across the USA and Canada compared to the 1.40 billion tickets sold the previous year.  The average price of a ticket hit $7.20, or 4.7% higher than the previous year.

Okay, enough of the boring stats, where am I going with this?  Well, Hollywood have you believe that a reduction in movie attendance is down due to online piracy.  They run ads on television in theaters telling you how piracy is hurting the industry, and those dirty, dirty pirates will cause people in the industry to lose their jobs, and then where will you be without new movies to go see?

Well, I would like to put forth that Hollywood needs to be looking a bit more internally as to why attendance is down.  I know, I’m talking crazy talk at this point, but hear me out on this.  The average ticket price is now $7.20, so lets say a family of 4 wants to go see the latest animated movie and you are going to see it during the evening so you are paying full price.  The two adults will be paying $7.20 each, so there is $14.40, the children will be $5.75 each (using my local theater as a gauge) meaning an additional $11.50, so tickets alone have now cost you $25.90.  Want snacks?  That’s another $10 minimum, and I’m being generous there, so now you’re at $35.90.

Now, what about the costs in time?

• Loading up the family in the car
• Finding a parking space
• Watching 19 minutes of ads and trailers
• Getting out of the theater
• Getting unloaded at home

I always tack on a 1/2 hour before and after a movie of time I figure I’m going to lose doing other things I need to do.  While this doesn’t cost you actual money, it is a factor in ancillary costs to your movie going experience.

This is where I finally go, “Forget it, I’ll just buy it on DVD when it comes out.”

You could buy a basic copy of Wall-E for $14.99, or you could even splurge for the deluxe edition that has 2 extra discs of content, an added short and a digital copy for $23.99, and you still come out ahead.  Heck, splurge for $24.99 and you get it on Blu-ray high def, and you are still winning.  You get to watch the movie when you want, how you want, and you have a physical copy that you can watch multiple times, or even sell it off somehow and reduce your cost even more.  There was a time where you could say, “Well, there is nothing that beats seeing a film on the big screen”, but as technology has improved, and people have bought bigger and bigger televisions, added surround sound and so on, yes, it can beat seeing it on “the big screen”.

Should we even begin to factor in the ease of renting from places such as Netflix, and how that reduces your costs to an insanely low level compared to a theater?

As the economy worsens, people are going to start to look at this math harder and realize that seeing a film in the theater just costs too much, and attendance will continue to dwindle.  I’m honestly amazed it was only off by 2% in 2008, I had estimated it was going to be much higher than that due to all of the factors I have mentioned here, and it actually deserves to be higher.  The thing is, though, Hollywood is still making an insane amount of money as that $9.76 billion was just ticket sales, and doesn’t factor in DVD/Blu-ray sales.  I can almost guarantee you the lost revenue from those missing 2% were made up in home video sales.

Hollywood needs to be looking at their own greed for their supposed problems.  The continuing rise of ticket prices is forcing people out of the theaters, not piracy.  Well, perhaps it is a form of piracy, it’s just one being perpetrated by the movie studios themselves.  I am certainly not advocating movie piracy, the hundreds of DVDs I own certainly attest to me doing my part to support the movie industry, it is quite the contrary to be sure. I love movies as an art form, and I want people to see films, but Hollywood has to realize this constant fight to increase ticket prices is making that harder.

I know there is zero chance of this happening, but I think they should actually lower their ticket prices some, and the increase in the number of people going would not only make up the revenue difference, but they would see attendance go back up also, if not exceed what it had been. There was a reason the movie industry flourished during the Depression in that people wanted to escape from reality, so they flocked to the theaters. I am not saying we are in a Depression, but I am saying that people want to escape again, and a little bit of give by the movie industry would go a long way to getting people back into the theaters.

It also wouldn’t hurt for them to stop whining about the evils of piracy. Yes, it’s wrong, and yes, it is illegal, and no, I don’t do it, but each time I see one of those ads, it just makes me annoyed with them that much more. Stop treating us all like criminals, and we might like you more.

Rick Wagoner of GM, Alan Mulally of Ford, and Robert Nardelli of Chrysler all deserve to be strung up by their toes.

I am sure by now you have heard that these three CEO’s went to Capital Hill to beg for the bailout money for their car companies on Wednesday.  The “delicious” irony is that these three gentleman arrived in Washington D.C. on private jets instead of flying commercial.  To add even more insult to injury, Mr. Mulally of Ford took one of the eight private jets owned by the company according to the Washington Monthly.

According to Money Central, it is estimated that each roundtrip on the GM plane for Mr. Wagoner costs the company $20,000.  As Mr. Wagoner lives in Seattle, WA, GM ferries him back home every weekend from Detroit on the private plane, meaning they are dumping an estimated $20K a week in to letting him go home.  Lets say that he takes 52 trips a year on the private plane, it is costing the company $1,040,000 a year to move him around the country.  First class averages out to about $1,600 between any two destinations domestically, so even if they flew him first class every where, you are looking at a cost of $83,200 a year, a savings of $956,800.  How about coach?  Approximately $30,000 a year, a savings of over $1 million a year.  (I personally find first class for domestic flights for anyone to be excessive and ridiculous)

This is only a very small slice of the problem with these companies, but if this is any indication of the mismanagement of funds at these companies, then I almost wish they would fail.  Mind you, I have no desire to see factory workers lose their jobs, but this climate of CEOs being treated like messiahs who walk on water has to end.  No CEO is worth a $28 million dollar pay package.  Golden parachute clauses, insane perks, excessive pay packages, no CEO is worth the amounts of money these men receive.

I do have to applaud the Representatives who called them out on this debacle.  From Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), as quoted by the Washington Post:

“I’m going to ask the three executives here to raise their hand if they flew here commercial,” he said. All still at the witness table. “Second,” he continued, “I’m going ask you to raise your hand if you’re planning to sell your jet . . . and fly back commercial.” More stillness. “Let the record show no hands went up,” Sherman grandstanded.

I think “grandstanded” was unnecessary in the article, and I am sure it was a bit of a play, but it was a question that did need to be asked of these men.  The commentary was continued by Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.):

“I’m not an opponent of private flights by any means, but the fact that you flew in on your own private jet at tens of thousands itself dollars of cost just for you to make your way to Washington is a bit arrogant before you ask the taxpayers for money.”

I have mixed feelings about the bailout, and I almost always come back to, “Would the government help my family out if our business was in a similar situation to these companies?”, and the simple answer is ‘no’. I understand the theory that these companies are too big to allow them to fail, with tentacles reaching in to too many other industries, but I have to wonder why my tax dollars have to be involved in cleaning up the poor management of companies.

As I said, this is just one small slice of the problem with the American car industry, but it is an insulting situation to say the least.  If anything good comes out of this whole thing, I hope that every one takes a look at every last one of these CEOs with their horrendous paychecks and perks.  And, as a side note, if you know of one good reason why these men and women are paid these insane amounts of money, please explain it to me.  I have never gotten it, and I’m not sure I ever will.

I think it’s time for a small change in how blogs give credit to one another for where stories come from.

Back in May 2007, I wrote an article about “The most insane trackback ever?“, and how a picture of some storage under stairs had made it’s way from blog to blog without any acknowledgement given to the original site that had posted it.  Here we are a year and a half later, and I have found another situation that seems to follow in the same… vein.  (you’ll get the joke in a moment)

The victim this time is a antique vampire hunter’s kit that sold recently at an auction for $14,850.  I first read the story at The Inquisitr yesterday, it got my interest, and I decided to go to the source they listed to read more about it.  SlipperyBrick was next, and they didn’t have much more info, so I decided to go to their source in hopes of more information.  PopTherapy was next and… yeah, still had to go to their source for more info.  Neatorama failed me also.  FINALLY!  Antiques and the Arts Online seems to be the source!  Not only are the source, but they ran the story five days before The Inquisitr.

So, it took four jumps for me to get back to the source of the image and the story, and that is where I don’t think this is fair.  Now, mind you, I am not specifically saying the four sites involved are bad sites, or that they have done something wrong; this is a common practice on the Web, and that is what I am speaking to.  While I feel credit should be given to the site that brought the story to your attention, I feel it is only right you should also try to give credit to the original also.  So to give credit, you would do something like:

[via SlipperyBrick and Antiques and the Arts Online]

Why is this important?  Well, I think credit should be given to those who deserve it, and I also think that it is only fair from a search engine optimization standpoint.  By giving credit only to someone that is three steps removed, you are giving them the search engine credit, but none to the people who did the real work.

Again, I am not slamming the blogs involved in this bread crumb trail, this happens all over the web, and it has become what we tolerate in this business, but I think it’s time for this to end, and credit should be given properly.  Do I think people will change their policies?  Doubtful, but I think it is worth at least some thought, especially on a niche story like this.    Considering some of the complaints I’ve seen over linking policies, it surprises me that no one else has brught this up yet.

Who’s with me?  Just do a couple clicks on stories like this, find the original source, give them credit when and where possible.

Deutsche Post has announced they will cease domestic shipping inside of the USA.

Good riddance.

Before I go any further, let me state that I am very sorry for the 9500 people losing their jobs.  That is never a good thing, and I hope they can find new work.  As for the company itself, I have never thrilled to their shipping, and I dreaded every time I learned a package was coming to me via their service.

They came to the USA in 2003 and began operations by buying Airborne Express, another service I never liked.  DHL tried to woo me away from UPS a few times, but I just didn’t like their set up, and my experiences with their deliveries didn’t make me want to run to having my customers having to deal with them.

Competition is always good for business, but DHL never was a big enough threat to UPS and Fed Ex to really matter.  They will continue to do international shipping, but they are closing everything down domestically in the USA and I for one couldn’t be happier about it.

Good luck to all those people who will be out looking for work, and I do truly mean that.

You know, it fascinates me how airlines and companies like UPS were so quick to adapt to the higher fuel prices this summer, but where are the cut backs now that fuel prices are dropping?

Over the past few months I received numerous updates from UPS for my shipping software of new fuel surcharges.  We were getting one or two of these weeks, tacking on more expenses to our shipping costs, raising them to unheard of levels.

In a more common every day effect on people, airlines have been doing the same.  Fuel surcharges have been added to tickets, not to mention that some airlines are now charging you for checked luggage, which was also supposedly due to the rising cost of gas.

So, prices have plummeted, oil futures are even lower… where are the cut backs?  All of these companies were extremely quick to raise their prices, but I sure don’t see them doing the reverse.  With the economy dropping, don’t you think you might want to encourage people to travel more and do more online shopping?  Or, could it possibly be that these companies used this as an excuse to raise prices and it had no real connection to what was going on with gas?

Nah, it could NEVER be that… could it?

Yesterday Alex Carnevale over at io9 brought up a story about how some science fiction writers are calling for a boycott of the Borders chain of bookstores overthe fact the store had skipped ordering their book.

As I have dug down deeper into the back story of what was going on, it makes even less sense than it did at first blush.  Going backwards, sci-fi authors such as Tobias Buckell and Pat Cadigan are saying that authors should boycott Borders for their recent trend to skip titles in hardcovers or expensive trades.

The Borders chain has been in financial trouble for a while now and is trying to get itself back on track by tightening their belt.  Add in the recent economic news and you will probably find chain stores in numerous industries trying to find ways to cut back on expenses, and that will mean tighter constraints on orders for new products.

The idea of authors withholding new titles because previous were skipped is just asinine, and also probably impossible.  Is anyone in their right mind going to turn down an order of a few hundred copies of a new book because their previous one was passed over?  Get over yourself and get your ego in check.  Add in do you really think the publisher, who is the ultimate say in things like this is going to say to a bookseller, “Oh no, sorry, we aren’t selling this book to you because you hurt the author’s feelings on their last book, and what they say goes!”

Yeah, that isn’t happening.

Andrew Wheeler, a Marketing Manager for John Wiley & Sons, has an incredibly in-depth blog post about how book ordering works and how “skips” suck, but they are part of the nature of bok selling.  All of this is extremely easy for me to relate to from my comic book selling days, and if comic creators had wanted to boycott me for not ordering their previous works, I would have had nothing to sell.  You only have so much budget to work with, so much shelf space and only so many resources to devote to promoting a given project.  Worst of all, unlike book stores, direct sales comic stores have no return capabalities, so it was always a huge risk for us to order, so every book had to earn its way on to our shelves.

In short, I think I am just awe-struck by the ego and entitlement these authors are showing.  While I realize every author wants to sell copies of their books, they should also remember all those authors who can’t even get their books published.  So you didn’t make it in to Borders, fine, you just work that much harder to help promote the copies ordered by other sellers.  However, to punish a book seller that is already in financial problems is just stupid.  Say they ordered 900 copies of your previous book, skipped the next, you boycott them on the next one, they go out of business in the meantime, just how many copies of the project after that one do you think they will order?  Yeah, that’s right, 0.

Your biggest concern right now should be keeping your industry afloat so you have future work, not your bruised egos.  Pull yourself up by your boot straps, put a smile on, and keep your industry going.  Don’t act like tantrum throwing children.

UPDATE: Okay, okay, I get it, I misread the situation!  The authors did NOT, I repeat, DID NOT call for a boycott.

The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) in Washington, D.C. is set to rule on Thursday over a request from the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) to raise the royalty rate paid on digital downloads.

It seems the NMPA has decided it is time for royalties to go up, and seeing as CD sales are on the decline, the record companies have pawned off the request to the digital download market.  The current royalty rate is $.09 a song and they are requesting an increase to $.15, a hike of more than 60%.

Seeing as Apple’s iTunes store currently controls 80% of the digital music market, it is fairly obvious this move is squarely directed at them.

Under the current system, on a $.99 song sale, it is believed Apple already gives away $.70 in royalties and rights.  Of the remaining $.29, very little is actually profit as the majority goes to maintaining the store, paperwork and so on.  This new rate would lower Apple’s share to $.23, and they are saying at that price they would actually be losing money.

As Apple is like any other business, and wishes to make money, iTunes vice president Eddy Cue has made a rather ominous threat via an article on CNN Money.

If the [iTunes music store] was forced to absorb any increase in the royalty rate, the result would be to significantly increase the likelihood of the store operating at a financial loss – which is no alternative at all,” Cue wrote. “Apple has repeatedly made it clear that it is in this business to make money, and most likely would not continue to operate [the iTunes music store] if it were no longer possible to do so profitably.

I personally find it highly unlikely that Apple would actually go that far, but it does seem when one company controls 80% of a market, and is projected to go as high as 85%, that this does seem a rather unfair targeting of them. It does also put them in a position where their threat should be taken very seriously.  Apple does have a counter-proposal on the table of a percentage of wholesale that would work out to an actual reduction of royalties, but somehow I don’t see that flying either.

David Israelite, president of the National Music Publishers Association, is saying that everyone should embrace the royalty increase because ultimately everyone involved will prosper. Um… yeah… sure, I see that. -scratches head- There was a more telling quote in the CNN Money story from Mr. Israelite that I think sums up the core of this whole issue.

“Apple may want to sell songs cheaply to sell iPods. We don’t make a penny on the sale of an iPod.”

Ah, yeah, there we go again.  Remember back in 2005 when Edgar Bronfman, CEO of the Warner Music Group, thought record companies should earn a percentage from the sale of each iPod sold as Apple wouldn’t be able to sell their products without music to put on it.  Luckily that idea was quickly squashed, but here it is rearing it’s ugly head again, just in a different form.

So Apple is once again being targeted for basically being profitable.  Well, let me ask the music industry a very simple set of questions: Did you collect payments for sales of record players?  8 Track players?  Tape decks?  CD Players?  On and on and on, why is it now okay to target one hardware manufacturer because they have the most popular version of it?

Once again, here we are with the music industry again trying to get more blood out of a turnip, never mind their greed may end up harming things.  Say this passes and Apple finally gives in to raising their prices, this will inevitably leads to lower sales, and in turn, lower royalties.  Say Apple would shut down iTunes, then there would be no royalties at all.  Gee, are either of these desirable for any party involved.  How would everyone “prosper” again?

Stupid, stupid music companies.

Even though I have been in business for over 22 years now, I will never claim to understand all the trappings of high finance. What I will say is that all of these people involved with some of the stupid mistakes made on behalf of companies like Lehman Brothers and AIG could do with going back to their most basic business classes.

I have sat back watching this whole debacle unfold, and I am just dumbfounded by some of the things I have learned were going on that led to this whole slide into oblivion for these companies.  Apparently there was some form of loan I had never heard of before named “No Income, No Job, (and) no Assets”, or N.I.N.J.A. loans, where, as the name implies, apparently you can get a loan without a blasted thing going for you in the positive corner.

…

What idiot came up with this idea?  How can anyone with a modicum of intelligence even begin to think that making loans to someone with no assets is a bright idea?

As I see it, you had companies who were already incredibly rich and just got greedier for even more money, and how do you make that money in an over saturated market?  Well, you just give money to anyone who walks in!

So, I honestly was just going to let this whole thing pass without much thought, but when I heard the news tonight that the government is loaning $85 billion dollars to bail out AIG, well, it kind of becomes the business of every US citizen doesn’t it?  Now it appears if you’re big enough, and run your company into an iceberg, the government will come and pick you up, dust you off, and say “now you behave”.  However, if you’re a small business, you’re screwed and too bad.

Remember that old saying about “the rich just get richer…”?  Yeah, seems to be true doesn’t it?

Again, I am no economic expert, but this current crisis feels to me like it was all brought on by greed of slap happy executives who thought that the mere fact they were loaning money would keep the good times rollin’, and basic business sense be damned.  Yes, these companies crashing is bad for economies, and I would say it would be worth to let them rot, but then no one ever seems to learn from any company falling apart, so why bother?

I guess I am writing this more out of a bewilderment than having my own conclusion because nothing about this whole mess makes the least bit of sense to me how any group of people could be collectively this stupid.

Edgar Bronfman, Jr is back.

For those unfamiliar with Edgar Bronfman, he is the CEO of Warner Music Group.  Good old Edgar and I have a long history of his amazing comments in that I have written about him numerous times,and I’ll link those as we go.

This time around, the story comes from the Chicago Tribune where Mr. Bronfman was talking about the success of games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero.  These games are built around playing fake instruments to music, and those songs tend to be well known.  While bands have seen an increase in sales for music included in these games, Mr. Bronfman told the Chicago Tribune the following:

“The amount being paid to the industry, even though their games are entirely dependent on the content that we own and control, is far too small,” he said during an earnings call this month.

This is shockingly remiscent of what he said in September 2005 when he thought it would be a good idea for Apple to give music companies a cut of iPod sales because he felt the $.99 price for iTunes songs was artificially low, and everyone knew Steve Jobs couldn’t sell iPods without the licensed music.

Bronfman’s solution? Well, if Apple is “artificially” keeping the price of downloads low to promote sales of iPods (you can debate amongst yourselves whether 99 cents is artificially high or artificially low), then as he sees it, the labels should get to share in those [iPod] revenue streams.

However, back in November of 2007, while at the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress conference, he said:

“We used to fool ourselves. We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong.

How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find and as a result of course, consumers won.”

Mind you, that was only 10-months ago he said this, so what changed?  What do I mean?  Again from the Chicago Tribune:

Bronfman suggested that he wanted Warner to be less a supplier than a partner.

“If that does not become the case, as far as Warner Music is concerned, we will not license to those games,” he said.

So, here we are again, in the exact same type situation we were in back in 2005 when he thought it was a good idea to mess with Apple.  So it appears his solution is to threaten the video game makers with totally withholding music from them.  Does he not realize this would mean no realized income from this revenue stream?  This is exactly like the article I wrote the other day about how the industry is killing off music discovery methods over greed, and now here is yet another example of them doing the exact same thing.

When is this industry ever going to learn that their greed is doing nothing but angering the consumers, and they keep killing the golden goose that keeps laying eggs for them.  Sure, they’re making money from Pandora, but not ENOUGH.  Yes, they are making money from Rock Band, but not ENOUGH.

Mr. Bronfman said that the music industry wasn’t evolving as fast as the technology and that needs to change.  So here you have two of the biggest promotional tools going right now, and you are realizing revenue from it, but you may kill it off because it just isn’t enough.  I am sick and tired of the music industry being nothing but story after story of greed.  How they are so put upon, and everyone takes advantage of them, boo-hoo, poor them.

Well, apparently history does repeat itself, because Bronfman is sounding like a broken record.  Let him cut off the games from getting music, and your company can continue to lose money.  Oh, did I forget to mention Warner Music Group suffered a net loss of $9 million last quarter?  Yeah, good idea, threaten to cut off even more money to drive those losses even higher, good thinking!

Before I say good-bye to Mr. Bronfman before his next asinine comment calls me to his shores again like the Sirens of myth, let us not forget this is also the man who gave his kids a ‘talking to’ after he learned they were illegally downloading music.  He never did reveal what their punishment was, but I suspect it had something to do with charging them more money.

Hard to believe it, but Splash Page Comics/AnimeUSA turns 22-years-old today.

Since I have gained so many followers over this past year, many of you may not even know about “my other life”.  Besides writing for Mashable, I have a “day job” working on the family business, AnimeUSA.  The store officially opened on August 4th, 1986 as a comic book store, but quickly started morphing over the years.

My mother had a costume shop in an old house on one of the major streets in Kirksville, and only 4 blocks from Truman University.  She didn’t have any use for the old garage, so at the age of 14, I asked if I could convert it into a comic book store.  After some convincing, the parents gave in and Splash Page Comics was born.  (For those who don’t know, a “splash page” is any page of a comic book that consists of only 1 panel taking up the entire page)

In 1993, mom was tiring of the costume business having been involved in it since she was 18, and I was quickly outgrowing the garage.  She opted to close the costume shop and give the bigger portion of the building over to the comic store.  We quickly outgrew that space and expanded into even more of the building.

1999 saw us doing so much business in anime products from Japan, we opened a sub-division named AnimeUSA.  We were traveling to more and more conventions around the country, and showing up at an anime show calling ourselves “Splash Page Comics” just didn’t make much sense.

By 2000, I was getting more involved with ecommerce, and our convention business was picking up so much that I was contemplating closing the retail store as it was holding its own, but was becoming a very small portion of our gross take, but the majority of our headaches.  I talked it over with a good friend of mine while we were flying to Japan together on a buying trip in August 2000, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

We were again on our way to Japan in August 2001, and he was with me again.  Again the subject came up (hey, it’s a 10 and 1/2 hour flight from Los Angeles), and after much hemming and hawing, I called my parents from Tokyo and told them to get ready to do it by the end of the year.

I returned from Tokyo just a little over a week before the events of 9/11, and that extended the time frame as we had other issues to deal with in regards to my dad’s job, and it just not being a priority on our minds.  I finally closed the retail store in December of 2001 after 15 years and 21 weeks of it being open.

We finally sold the building that in late 2002 when the gas station next door offered to buy it to expand their parking lot.  They offered us enough we could build a 3,000 square foot warehouse (the old building was 1,800 square feet and very broken up as it had been a house) on property we already owned, and we moved out in March 2003.

The warehouse is doing a beautiful job of keeping us contained, and it is so nice not going, “Which room is product x in?”  The old building was demolished in 2003, but I still smile every time I drive by it as I spent so much of my life there, but now I actually like the building we’re in as the old one was impossible to heat.

There are a million little facts about the history of the business I’ve left out as you would with any 22 year history, but this is a good general over view of the history.  Still, it’s impossible I’ve been doing this for well over two decades now.  Yikes!