We caught up with the brilliant and insightful R.J. Carter a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

R.J., thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you share a customer success story with us?

Helping creators reach success is our primary goal. In the world of independent publishing, particularly with crowdfunded items, we were seeing creators produce fantastic content overseas, but the shipping costs would exceed the cost of the actual product. This was an impediment to potential customers in the U.S. We saw this happening with Lee Byron Carver’s “The Company Men” graphic novel, and proposed to him the idea of sending the entire stock of his book to us so that we could then perform the fulfillment on it within the U.S. for a cheaper cost.

Once that cost became reflected on his order page, sales began to surge, and the funding goal wasn’t just reached, it was exceeded and “The Company Men” became a widely discussed graphic novel among U.S. readers and fans.

R.J., before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Critical Blast began as a simple entertainment media review site, with written opinions and interviews. As the brand evolved, we added livestream discussions with guests through our YouTube channel, and then branched out into publishing new and experienced writers through Critical Blast Publishing.

It was through one of our livestream interviews that the idea for Critical Blast Logistics developed, and the initial success of that venture has grown into a burgeoning business model that has expanded from the fulfillment of graphic novels to include roleplaying games, toys, and plush figures.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

This is a bit of a cyclical answer, but the best source of new clients for us has been old clients. Our client base of creators frequently interact online and at national conventions with each other, sharing tips and experiences. With so many moving into independent business models, they find that a lot of the back office activities are a stumbling block to what they really love doing: creating. When the conversation eventually comes around to fulfilling their orders, it’s almost always about what a grind it is; they’d all rather be writing and drawing the next book than sit around taping up hundreds of boxes. That’s when our current clients regularly recommend our services, and the word has been bubbling up from small creators to larger ones, taking us from a project every two months to having multiple projects within a week. This word of mouth — the original and still the best form of advertising — has expanded our operations from a simple “in the house” business to one with two warehouses of inventory and automated data processes.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

This is where people will say, “The thing that builds our reputation is the consistent good job we do.” But what’s been more important here isn’t that, but rather how we take responsibility for things that get screwed up. Miscommunications and bad data will always exist in business, and when it goes uncaught the end results can be disastrous, and we’ve certainly had our share of those! But immediate communication, transparency of all the issues, and owning the problem are behaviors that build confidence in your customers; it’s not important to place blame when things go awry, it’s important to provide a solution that gets everything back on track, so that *their* customers don’t even notice the glitches.

And then, of course, learn from the experience and make whatever corrections are needed to processes so that you don’t repeat it. Things going wrong isn’t a failure — letting them remain wrong is.

Contact Info:

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