Posted in: Comics, Conventions, Current News, Events, Pop Culture, san diego comic con | Tagged: diamond, retailerlunch, sdcc

Diamond Comics Retailer Presentation At San Diego Comic-Con

The Diamond Comics Retailer Presentation at San Diego Comic-Con 2024 promised new suppliers, new marketing and comic shop excellence.

Diamond Comic Distributors gave the opening presentation at the San Diego Comic-Con 2024 Retailer Lunch this weekend. They discussed their plans as publishers, especially in light of the departures of Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Image, and IDW in recent years. One of those plans included a new approach to promoting and listing publishers' work in the Diamond Previews catalogue. As well as bringing in a few new suppliers…

As well as some slides looking at the distributors future and the semi-controversial launch of Fandomworld, covered on Bleeding Cool before.

Diamond in 2024

• Maintaining our focus on the Direct Market and its continued growth
• Continuing to enhance our services with the Direct Market in mind, building on the many years of our partnership with retailers
• Retailer Services and Tech Support Reps are still just an email, phone call, or support ticket away, ready to continue providing industry-leading service
• Nance Romer is here this weekend, and likes cookies. Just sayin'

Services: Finding New Ways to Add Value

• Fee-Free AutoPay developed with retailers in mind
• Allows qualifying retailers to save over $1000 in UPS COD fees annually
• Hundreds have taken advantage, but many of you have not. Please check it out and start saving!
• Customers with net terms still benefit from the convenience of a weekly ACI-1 deduction for their invoice on its due date

FandomWorld

• Another marketing initiative like PreviewsWorld, but across more of the Geppi companies
• We want to continue finding and supplying products that aren't yet part of every shop's product mix and producing content to highlight them
• Retailers who don't have the space to stock as many of these products as they'd like can participate in our Partners Program and receive 10% of sales via an affiliate link.
• We are testing a fulfilment system that allows retailers with robust websites of their own to pass orders directly to us for shipping to the consumer, reducing their need to keep as many products in inventory
• We will also be looking at tools that work with Shopify and other systems retailers use to do the same for those with less technical know-how
• ComicSuite users will also see this functionality added in the future

Looking Forward

• We will continue developing services and increasing our product selection with you in mind
• We want to continue working with you to meet the unique needs of the Direct Market.
• Please continue submitting suggestions via the link on every page of the Retailer Services site, that's how we best can identify needs that are shared among all retailers and tailor our systems to meet those needs

Expanding our Product Selection

• We have listened to the feedback from retailers and are offering more of what has been successful in your stores
• Gift / impulse products that present well at the counter
• Plush
• Die-cast
• Trading cards
• Blind boxes
• Model and building sets

And they also had the return of the Diamond Retailer Best Practice Awards which saw the following retailers acknowledged.

• Best Display Focused on Community Representation: Neighborhood Comics, Savannah, Georgia
• Best Complementary Products Display: Goblin Market: Chicago, Illinois
• Best Collecting Supplies Section: Famous Faces And Funnies, West Melbourne, Florida

We have seen the Diamond Retailer Lunch return at San Diego Comic-Con again this year, which allows comic book publishers to present upcoming projects to comic book store owners and employees who have made the trip to the show, and sometimes pick up some swag on the way, Watch those eBay listings in the next coming hours, there may be quite a few items worth picking up, and for retailers it can sometimes pay for the cost of coming to the show.  There is plenty more coverage to come on Bleeding Cool it seems. Thanks to Mark Fenton and Heather Stirewalt on the scene at San Diego Comic-Con for helping us out in one hell of a pinch. You can read all about announcements and presentations from a number of publishers by following the Bleeding Cool Diamond Retailer Lunch tag.

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