Elsewhere: Diamond’s Reduced Shipping is Too Little, Too Late
...and possibly even worrying.
The plan was for this to be an “off week” for my articles at The Beat, but Diamond went and made an announcement that I just couldn’t ignore.
At last week’s Comics Pro meeting with retailers, Diamond revealed plans to decrease their shipping costs by 40% over the next few months - which is good news! Then, they proceeded to talk about how they would be restructuring parts of their business to allow this change to happen - which is… well, it’s just bad. It is an admission that the company has been using increased shipping costs to subsidize their business, while their direct competitors offer cheap, or free shipping for a similar level of service. I had some things to say about that. I hope you enjoy.
Behind the Scenes:
I try not to engage with the comments on these articles, preferring to keep my engagement to this Substack, which is a place I can control. That said, a Twitter account responded to my supposition that “Diamond and Geppi nearly single handedly brought the direct market to its knees in the early days of the pandemic when it shut down for two months” with the fact that a lot of stores would have also gone bankrupt if distribution had continued during lockdown.
This is an indisputable fact. However, there were also many stores who were going to go out of business because they weren’t getting product. Outside of that, folks like Ed Brubaker were talking somewhat candidly in interviews about how Diamond’s stoppage and subsequent non-payment to vendors resulted in Image stopping payments due to their creators, putting a few folks in precarious positions. If this were to continue for an extended period of time, we could have been looking at a very different industry than the one we have today.
This wasn’t met well. I was asked not to equivocate stores that wanted more product to those that would have to permanently close if product continued to come in. I don’t really see the difference between the two. While there were some stores who were doing okay and just wanted product during the shutdown periods, there were still many who withered on the vine without the ability to generate cash flow. Some did close because of this. I feel as someone who has been given a platform to talk about this industry, it behooves me keep that in mind.1
This also wasn’t meant well. Which is generally why I ignore things like this. They sit in my brain, and fester, and then you get this fun little look at the gremlins that chew at my edges. Engagement sets them off, and I’ll lose minutes to hours in a day, occasionally yelling, “and another thing” at Danica until she tells me to go away.
Anyway. At the end of the day, Diamond’s position and decision in those early days were not informed by what would be best for shops who did, or did not want product. They were merely trying to survive something they were not equipped to handle, and publishers like Marvel, DC, IDW, Dark Horse, Oni Press, Vault and others recognized that Diamond wasn’t a place they could comfortably trust with the entirety of their distribution needs. Given the fact that since this time, they’ve been overcharging for shipping and are just addressing a problem of their own construction two and a half years in speaks volumes. It speaks even louder when you realize that their proposed 40% drop in shipping costs will still make them a distributor with the worst shipping rates for most retailers.
Oh well. There’s not much to be done about it at this point, then to be prepared for… well, for anything. Build a business that’s nimble and can adjust on the fly. It’s what got us through the early COVID days when our store was shut down, or could only hold a capacity of 5 people at any given point in time.
Stay resilient, and be aware!
Talk with you soon.
-B.
For the record, Diamond’s stoppage did help out our store at the time. We were very lucky that Diamond’s closure lined up near perfectly with Alberta’s closures. Taking in single issue product that folks wouldn’t be able to properly browse through would have sucked. We had a whole plan though, where we’d essentially be playing a claw game with customers, where we’d have all the new issues displayed in our front window, and we’d grab whatever they pointed to. We never had to get that going, and I am thankful. It doesn’t change the fact that Diamond didn’t make the decision to shut down out of any form of kindness - and given Geppi’s push to comeback, complete with a marketing push for “pandemic era collectibles”, my guess is he would have kept moving along as though nothing was happening if the company could have handled it.