Yesterday, I was chatting with some non-comics folks and I was going to share a link to the site because I thought they still might get a kick out of the idea. But when I checked the Character Studio site, I see that the Scooby-Doo elements have been removed entirely. All that's left is a generic thank you message and a form to sign up for their newsletter. I can't offhand find precise dates on the project, but it seems to have originally launched around late August/early September of last year based on some of the promo material still available on other sites, and the Character Studio Facebook page kept getting updated through the end of January. The most recent capture the Internet Archive has before showing the thank you message is from February 18.
So it would seem the project ran for about six months. That seems to me like a short time to run this proof-of-concept and then cut it off entirely. Unless they were printing books at a loss, why not let it continue to run? It was (theoretically, at least) a pretty low-touch process for them after they launched -- it likely took longer than six months to get the functionality working in the first place.
So what gives? Why did they shut down so quickly?
As usual, I have no special insights here, but I'll relay the thoughts I have. The online interface had a fair amount of time spent on it; it had a few problems in some browsers, but the basic design and UI worked well. The character customizer in particular was well put-together. And while the book production looked nice, the contents were a bit lackluster; the page layouts were basically two panels per page with loads of white space around them. They were horrible, but it seemed to be put together by someone not super-familiar with putting together a comic book page. I said that it seemed like a good proof-of-concept piece, and that they'd have some really fantastic if they put some more effort into the storytelling in the book.
So it's possible that's what they've taken it offline for -- to re-tool how some of the backend systems integrate with a new/revised/better story.
But the other thing I noted when I purchased mine was that it originally had a $90 US price tag. It seems that they ran multiple sales during their six month test, though, bringing the price down at least as low as $50. I seem to recall hearing it was at $40 US for a while too. And there were discount codes floating around, so I wound up paying $41.24 after shipping, taxes, and everything. I suspect this was a very deliberate and focused set of price tests to see what people would be willing to pay. You can get a similarly sized photo book from CVS for about $40 and I have to believe there's more than a little profit in that, so my really rough guess is Character Studio's per book cost is probably in the $30 ballpark after you start factoring in licensing fees and such. I think they would've loved to have the book sell at a 200% markup (about $90 if my cost guestimate is remotely accurate) but they could still make some decent profits as the price dropped.
They were just looking for the right price where a good number of people would still shell out money for the book, but also get them the most profit possible. With six months worth of tests, they have a pretty good idea of what that final "ideal" price point is. (I have no access to any of their data, but I'd guess their sweet spot is around $45. I suspect there's a significant sales drop-off once the price goes north of $50.) That they've take this particular book down instead of letting sales continue while they kick things around is precisely because they're sorting through their price data.
I'll throw out one more detail thant suggests to me that they're going to come back later with different books. If you look carefully at that cover I have posted above, it has a small blurb on it that says, "Launch edition." That of course acts as a way to make the book seem more special/unique to buyers, but I think it also ties in to a larger plan to offer multiple books with better/different interiors. By adding the "Launch edition" text on the cover, they can come back later and claims that they've imrproved the books' interior layouts/design and maybe get some of the previous customers to come to effectively purchase the same book a second time.
I think Character Studio would not have put in all the effort they did to launch this (which included, by the way, hiring Matthew Lillard to promote it in a variety of ways) only to shut things down for good six months later. And if they weren't selling as many books as they projected, or weren't making profit on each one, they would have continued to run things for a full year. Even if they had to take out some massive loans to pay for operating costs, those would've kept them going for longer than six months just as a basic business proposition. (The company is set up as a LLC out of Deleware, so they've got some basic business knowledge at the very least.)
Like I said back in Novemeber, this felt like a proof-of-concept product to me in several ways. My guess is that they'll come back with a similar-looking character customizer, but a set of several different books that users can insert themselves into. Will they all be Hanna-Barbera properties (sign me up right now if they do one with Space Ghost or Jonny Quest!) or will they be able to use other licenses or will they have entirely unique books available? I have no idea, but I think that when they do come back, we'll definitely see more options than a single Scooby-Doo story.
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