Posted in: Comics | Tagged: comic store in your future, diamond

Did Diamond Hurt The Comic Store In Your Future?

Did Diamond Hurt The Comic Store In Your Future? One store tells tales and regrets of days of distribution past.

When Diamond was the only vendor for American comic books, I thought that was limiting comic book growth. If I did not have a comic on hand and Diamond did not, I basically could not get it and still sell it at a profit. My store was basically just an outreach of Diamond Comics. I also wondered about businesses that could not do business for whatever reason, with Diamond that wanted to sell comics. I used to joke that my options for selling comics were to deal with Diamond or not sell comics. I read Gary Ray's Facebook post about Diamond announcing they filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. He owns Black Diamond Games in California and has been in business for many years. Here is what he posted on Facebook:

"This is sad for everyone involved. But this is also an example of what happens when a company has a monopoly on products, resulting in terrible service, ridiculous policies, and a level of unparalleled arrogance. Diamond is the only company where I had to actively close the account and tell them never to contact me again, otherwise they would find some comic book to send me in an $8 UPS shipment."

"Diamond was awful. Their policies and methods were the reason many game stores shunned comics. My success in the game trade is more about navigating difficult, backwards, inefficient companies than it is about having some retail brilliance. My job is more about removing sand for the machinery than building sandcastles." If there had been more than one comic distribution vendor other than Diamond for over twenty years, how many more outlets would there have been for comics to be sold through?

The closest my store ever came to closing was due to a fallout with Alliance Games years ago, Diamond's sister company at Geppi Family Enterprises. It is a very long story that may serve as a future article, but I would need to dig up the emails. In short, Alliance told me they could have my terms with Diamond reviewed, even though it had nothing to do with Diamond, and everything for both companies had been paid for. My lease was up in a few months, and I thought I was not going to be bullied. So I emailed something along the lines of "This is like if Walmart ripped me off and threatened to ban me from their stores. Why would I want to keep doing business with them?" I thought I would limp along to the end of my lease, not be able to sell any new comics, and be done. In my mind, it was insane; a comic store was going to not be able to sell comics because of one gaming vendor, which was a sister company to Diamond. It went higher up, and we made peace. But I wondered how many other people this had happened to. Who would have joined or stayed in the comic book business if it was not just Diamond-or-nothing for comic book stores?

I never understood why I could order games through so many distributors, but for comics, it was only Diamond. I do not want anyone to lose their jobs. I hope Diamond bounces out of Chapter 11 and is still in business. I do not want there to be only one vendor for comics ever again. Competition inspires growth and progress; having none can have the opposite effect, which can hurt the comic market.

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