As we reported last month, Diamond Comics, one of the three largest comics publishers in North America, has been facing serious shipping issues, with comics arriving a week late, shocking comics retailers.
Yesterday, Diamond Chief Sales and Service Officer Chris Powell, Update accounts with status reports. The situation is improving, he said, with “almost all U.S. retailers scheduled to receive their products by Wednesday” this week.
Shipments have been delayed due to the holidays and a major winter storm this week, but “the pace of shipments leaving our warehouse is better than it was in December.”
Powell went on to explain why there were so many delays after the Plattsburgh, New York, distribution center suddenly closed:
Following the recent changes, many of you have questions as to why shipments are not being shipped from distribution centers as quickly as we or you need.
Issues that we do not receive directly from individual printers (issues from publishers who sell to us through other wholesalers) arrive at us over the weekend or on Monday at the latest for release the following week. We handle a wider selection of products than other dealers, both printed and non-printed, which can result in delivery delays or routing errors that must be resolved before order sorting and packaging can begin.
The retailer furthest from the center is picked first, then the next furthest, then the next, and so on. Then the process starts again…
Clearly, the process is not working as it needs to, but revising it will take time. Ideally, we would continue operations as we did in Plattsburgh while planning and testing changes. Since this is no longer an option, we must make changes and test them with live data and shipments while minimizing the impact on retailers.
We are considering a number of options that will almost certainly involve additional changes to how we have operated in the past. I want to assure you that this remains a key focus for our operations, procurement and retailer services teams and we will keep you informed as further developments develop.
To this observer, it’s still a little mind-boggling that comic shops aren’t crying about the impending doom of the comics industry because of this major disruption. However, the availability of Marvel, DC and Image comics from other publishers must have eased some of the pain. A quick search on FB shows several retailers still complaining, but shipments are gradually improving.
Florence Legend Comics, SC Fan Page They were so moved that they produced a graphic for the news.
Well, diamonds are still diamonds. They’ve at least packed this week’s books, but haven’t shipped them yet. If they ship today and there aren’t any weather delays, we’d expect to receive the books sometime on Friday. We will keep you updated as we have more details. We apologize again for the inconvenience.
PS When talking to Diamond yesterday, I asked them if they knew when they would be able to resume their original plans. Someone told me “Hopefully this will help once the holidays are over.
The end of the holidays should really help, and Diamond is working hard to get things moving again.
When I was talking to people about this issue last month, a few things came up: I’d heard that Lunar Distribution had been experiencing occasional shipping delays over the past few months, but those issues attracted less attention.
Will new solutions emerge? final. As long as there is money to be made, there will be people trying to claim it. But this will cause huge damage to the industry.
In short, we all hope Diamond can fix this problem and continue to improve and remain profitable.
Photo credit: Tima Miroshnichenko
