Diamond plans the return 1 1

[lighthouse]

From Geppi Family Enterprises this morning:

“Although we are not yet on the other side, we are tracking COVID-19 developments daily and starting to see signs of the spread slowing in certain areas. Like you, we are thinking about and planning for when and how we will restart the shipping of new weekly product. We have been closely watching the news, listening to our retailer and publisher partners and considering the many points of view as we decide, as an industry, how to proceed.

With health and safety of employees, retailers and customers a top priority, we need to be very deliberate about how we restart and scale operations. We must find that delicate balance between managing health and safety concerns, meeting the pent-up demand for product and working with retailers whose situations differ, and whose need for product may have changed. 

While there are many steps and conversations that need to happen between today and resuming distribution of new weekly product, we are currently targeting mid- to late-May with the hope that, as an industry, we can all work toward that timeframe. Of course, as we have all seen, target dates sometimes need to be adjusted in this ever-changing new-normal. But we cannot wait for firm dates. We have started the planning process and are having these important conversations with publishers and retailers so that once we have more clarity, we are in a position to restart and scale operations over time. 

Our intent is to restart the weekly FOC process once we have worked with publishers on a new schedule for product releases. Product that was originally scheduled for release on April 1st and 8th will be distributed over a longer period, allowing publishers to work with printers to deliver new product without further interruption. Retailers will be able to adjust order quantities for those products, making sure that they are receiving quantities that make sense for the current situation in their stores. 

(Snip some repeated resource links).

Thank you for your understanding and support as we all plan for our future. We are committed to communicating with you during this process and look forward to our continued partnership. For questions regarding this information, please contact Diamond’s Retailer Services Department. Thank you.” 
 

I think mid-May is overly optimistic. But late-May, early-June seems possible. 

The likeliest pain from any restart is that some stores may be able to reopen 4 weeks before other stores are able to reopen. Do you have some stores open but with no new weekly product? Or do you have other stores reopen immediately buried with four weeks of product that was waiting for them (much of which is now stale)?

No easy answers. Diamond furloughed most of its employees earlier this week, paying their healthcare and hoping to bring them back when the time comes. We will see.

Edited April 17, 2020 by lighthouse

[shadroch]

Most indications are that the smaller states will reopen weeks, if not months before many of the big ones.  I'd imagine the North East and the West Coast combined account for a very substantial portion of Diamonds business.  If a shop in Alabama is open, but one in NYC is closed, what do you do?  Diamond is walking blindfolded through a minefield. They can't make a misstep.

[Gaard]

Having not bought a modern comic in years (plus being very ignorant), how did everyone get their new comics? Or weren't there any?

[the blob]

4 hours ago, shadroch said:

Most indications are that the smaller states will reopen weeks, if not months before many of the big ones.  I'd imagine the North East and the West Coast combined account for a very substantial portion of Diamonds business.  If a shop in Alabama is open, but one in NYC is closed, what do you do?  Diamond is walking blindfolded through a minefield. They can't make a misstep.

Seems like shops with pull customers can solicit those orders and figure out a way to get stuff to their folks. What % of sales are those I wonder? Get some revenue in.

[Juno Beach]

5 hours ago, Gaard said:

Having not bought a modern comic in years (plus being very ignorant), how did everyone get their new comics? Or weren't there any?

No modern comics since March

[JollyComics]

Diamond controlled the comic distribution since 1982.  I missed my old days to check comic/magazine books at White Hen Pantry, 7/11, Woolworth, Ben Franklin, Walgreens and all other stores until I graduated from HS in 1982.  All comic books were not there in those places I used to pick them up anymore. Oh boy, I missed newsstands!

[Myowncollector]

Back when comics were popular. Buy them at grocery drug store, gas station. I used to get them delivered to my mail box. Average grade Vf. You still can get them delivered last I checked. 2016 2017 had a few subs. 8.5 9.0 range. 40% off price though. 

 

I gave new comics a try to support local shop when rebirth was 2.99 and store gave a discount if you bought so many titles of them. Then dc raised price back to 3.99 that was it. Regret getting them at 2.99. 2.99 x 70 or 117 or whatever could of bought me a real book. Art was good in them though.

[NP_Gresham]

As above, I miss the newsstand

No "variant covers" no retailer incentive covers.

Just hunting the local newstands for Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-man # 1 and Nova #1.

Pretty sure the cover price has out-stripped inflation by a sizeable amount.

Having 50 different covers on the latest re-set of ASM #1 did nothing but leave a sour taste in my mouth. 

If Diamond completely collapsed would that be a bad thing?

[dupont2005]

4 hours ago, JollyComics said:

Diamond controlled the comic distribution since 1982.  I missed my old days to check comic/magazine books at White Hen Pantry, 7/11, Woolworth, Ben Franklin, Walgreens and all other stores until I graduated from HS in 1982.  All comic books were not there in those places I used to pick them up anymore. Oh boy, I missed newsstands!

Comics were on the newsstands plenty well into the 90’s when I was buying them there. Some lasted much longer, Archie in particular

[JollyComics]

7 hours ago, dupont2005 said:

Comics were on the newsstands plenty well into the 90’s when I was buying them there. Some lasted much longer, Archie in particular

Yeah, I had seen them but the newsstands dwindled in my home area that forced me to go to the comic book store (5 miles away) by bike. I had to burrow the cars.

[aardvark88]

13 hours ago, NP_Gresham said:

No "variant covers" no retailer incentive covers.

If Diamond completely collapsed would that be a bad thing?

Dealers like competition but they don't want to pay extra WEEKLY shipping from a mix of comic, gaming card, and toy distributors especially if dealer is outside of USA. Cost of weekly goods would go up and no comicons to dump bad ordering (due to variant cover chasers) and reduced cashflow/demand (folks layed off from Spring thru to  the summer).

[lighthouse]

15 minutes ago, aardvark88 said:

Dealers like competition but they don't want to pay extra WEEKLY shipping from a mix of comic, gaming card, and toy distributors especially if dealer is outside of USA. Cost of weekly goods would go up and no comicons to dump bad ordering (due to variant cover chasers) and reduced cashflow/demand (folks layed off from Spring thru to  the summer).

Agreed. I use 13 different vendors currently to stock my store. And there are several of them that overlap with Diamond where I will choose to order quantities from Diamond even at a weaker discount because of the cheaper freight charges. 

With Funko Pops, I get roughly half my inventory buying them used from collectors, a quarter direct from Funko, and a quarter from Diamond. Diamond’s unit cost is significantly higher than direct from Funko. But whenever I order anything smaller than a master case (36 units) direct, there’s a decent chance they ship to me in a whole bunch of individual packages that cost me over $2.30/Pop in freight. Those same Pops from Diamond my incremental freight charge is consistently 26-30 cents a unit. Sure, if a property is really popular maybe I’m ordering a master case each of ten different Pops from a movie. Then it’s direct from Funko all the way. But there are a lot more IPs where I want 50 in stock than 360 in stock. 

[JollyComics]

14 hours ago, dupont2005 said:

Comics were on the newsstands plenty well into the 90’s when I was buying them there. Some lasted much longer, Archie in particular

One more thing. I remembered vividly.  My family had annual trailer trips to Rocky Mountains, Yellowstone, Badlands, Mount Rushmore and many wonderful places in Plains/Mountain areas.  I was saddened that I didn't have new comic books that I used to pick them up myself but to my astonishment, my mother still managed to find many comic books from the newsstands anywhere in West even smaller groceries or laundromats. She found some 3 comic book packs! I didn't miss a beat for two long months during summertime.  That was from 1970 to 1975.  My dad got tired of long drives so he bought the lake house in Wisconsin. The small grocery had the newsstands so I walked back and forth to buy them until about 1984.  Everywhere I could find but most newsstands vanished forever but I still had a great memorable.

Edited April 18, 2020 by JollyComics

[shadroch]

When a newsstand has a choice between a sixty cent comic or a two dollar magazine, is it little wonder comics disappeared. Lifestyle and Fitness magazines exploded in the 1980s.  Too bad Marvel didn't evolve from individual titles to anthologies.Instead of four different Spiderman titles selling for Sixty cents,imagine a 100 page Spiderman title selling for $2.50.  Newsstands would have been happy to stock them,and distributors would make the same profit with 25% of the work.

[dupont2005]

1 hour ago, shadroch said:

When a newsstand has a choice between a sixty cent comic or a two dollar magazine, is it little wonder comics disappeared. Lifestyle and Fitness magazines exploded in the 1980s.  Too bad Marvel didn't evolve from individual titles to anthologies.Instead of four different Spiderman titles selling for Sixty cents,imagine a 100 page Spiderman title selling for $2.50.  Newsstands would have been happy to stock them,and distributors would make the same profit with 25% of the work.

I think that’s what they should do now. Sort of an anthology, multiple ongoing stories, a handful of done-in-one stories. Pinups, a newspaper strip type story. Some What-If type stuff. 100+ pages. Maybe 200 pages. A list talent and cutting room floor stuff and everything in between. Even reprinted classic stories. The most popular characters and teams could hold their own. Make them manga sized and square bound and release spinner racks and counter displays and market them in grocery stores and big box stores as well as record stores, tattoo shops, Hot Topic type places, bookstores, hell, make vending machines that can distribute them at airports and bus stations and malls

Edited April 18, 2020 by dupont2005