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Post by The Ultimate Nullifier on Feb 2, 2014 23:13:55 GMT -6
Omaha.com is reporting that Meyers & Sons Mail Order Comics, Inc. of Omaha Nebraska has filed for bankruptcy on January 28th 2014. According to the paperwork filed with the courts the company has close to $1 Million in debts and less than $50,000 in assets, none of which is likely to be made available to creditors. On-line the company is known as mailordercomics.com
Mitch Meyers, 25% owner of the business said things were initially looking good, but a website plagued with technical problems just as new shipments came in was one of the causes for the tough financial situation. Another was a Argentina retailer that had been buying thousands of copies a month suddenly reduced and then abandoned new orders all together. On top of that the higher gas prices, bad economy and the company was forced to relocate do to the Nebraska Crossing Outlets redevelopment.
The companies two biggest creditors are Wells Fargo Bank which is owed $360,000 and an unnamed Maryland comic book distributor owed $325,000. Though one could speculate that it’s Diamond Comics Distributor of Timonium, Maryland.
At this point a meeting of creditors is scheduled for 3/6/2014.
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Post by The Ultimate Nullifier on Feb 3, 2014 10:54:57 GMT -6
Mail Order Comics has filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy, seeking to liquidate the nearly decade-old business.
In documents filed last week in federal bankruptcy court in Omaha, Nebraska, the retailer lists $45,000 in assets and $919,000 in debt, of which $325,000 is owed to Diamond Comic Distributors.
Signs of trouble with Mail Order Comics became apparent last month when customers began complaining on the store’s now-deleted Facebook page about unfulfilled orders and website troubles. Discount Comic Book Service quickly stepped in to fulfill all orders.
According to an undated “success stories” profile on the U.S. Small Business Administration website, Mitch Meyer bought the Comic Book Supermarket brick-and-mortar store and its attached warehouse business Mail Order Comics in early 2011, with some help from his parents. Soon the Gretna, Nebraska, business was bringing in a reported $1.9 million in revenues and touting itself as the fifth-largest distributor of Marvel comics; one retailer in Argentina spent between $8,000 and $10,000 a month with MOC.
But Meyer, who owned a 25 percent stake in the company, explains to the Omaha World-Herald that online sales dropped by half late last year, leaving expensive new books unsold. And then that Argentine retailer suddenly reduced orders before stopping them all together. Add to that increased shipping costs and the company’s forced move from its location to make way for redevelopment.
“A lot of our regular customers were ordering half as much,” Meyer tells the newspaper. “It was a steady downward trend. Perhaps it had to do with the economy and discretionary spending.”
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tun
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Post by tun on Feb 4, 2014 9:02:02 GMT -6
Omaha, Nebraska-based company Mail Order Comics has filed for bankruptcy in federal court, citing assets of $43,790 and liabilities of $969,101. The assets listed in the petition consist of $1290 in cash, 250,000 comics valued at a dime apiece, 1500 graphic novels valued at $5 each, and a few odds and ends.
With nearly a million dollars in liabilities, and sales, according to the petition, of around $1.7 million annually in 2012 and 2011, the company was heavily leveraged. The liabilities include $496,501 in secured loans, $99,600 in priority claims, and $373,000 in unsecured nonpriority claims.
The secured debt of around a half million dollars was from two lenders: Wells Fargo’s SBA Lending division, and AdvanceMe, a company that makes typically high interest "merchant cash advances" and then takes a portion of the company’s credit card sales until the debt is repaid. The effective annual interest rates on “merchant cash advances” can be as high as 50% a year or more, and they’re typically used when there are few other options for cash.
The priority claims of around $100,000 were made up primarily of unpaid payroll taxes, with some sales tax and a small amount of salary included.
Diamond Comic Distributors was the second largest creditor and the largest unsecured creditor, with $325,000 owed, according to the petition.
Signs of website trouble were scattered throughout the petition, with a disputed $48,000 fee for website design in the liabilities section, and the value of potential litigation for “breach of contract and software malfunction” against another web developer listed in the assets section.
The small amount of income information showed the seeds of the company’s problems. Sales declined 7% between 2011 and 2012, while the market was growing, and losses grew, with $22,341 in losses in 2011 and $88,294 in losses in 2012. The combination of the operating losses and declining sales especially in a business in which revenues are collected before the inventory is paid for) undoubtedly caused a severe cash crunch, especially if those trends continued into 2013.
As of January 23, internet comic retailing giant Discount Comic Book Service offered to fulfill preorders from Mail Order Comics’ customers, and did so without requiring any new payment from customers that had prepaid Mail Order Comics.
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