Yeah but it costs you $31.99 to regain changing names rights on the forums. So you win and then lose… 
Diamond is really having a year with the various shipping delays some retailers have experienced multiple times. Not always their fault once it leaves their hands. But then you see damage notices like this from Westfield:
100% of the issues we received of Hellions #11 have damage. There ARE NO REPLACEMENTS available! If you would prefer a refund, contact customer service and we will cancel your order.
It’s honestly not that uncommon for an entire order of an issue to be damaged in shipments. Just luck of the draw on if you end up with damages to stuff with very small orders, or to something popular. Like in 2019 when we had our entire order of an issue of Venom damaged and everyone lost their minds thinking we were justs holding back orders because the comic was more valuable.
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Yea I remember when an LCS here received every copy of Immortal Hulk #11 damaged. They put some on the shelf for $2 or something in case people wanted to read it with a sign that replacements should be in the next week or so.
I got an email back from Penguin. They seem very professional, very quick email response. They are not requiring minimum orders until I guess they take on Marvel completely from Diamond. I’ll let you know how my experience goes with them moving forward.
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Just got signed up for the PRH account, and I can tell they are a much larger entity with processes in place. However, I had to send them the same information twice to a general ‘new accounts’ email address before they actually took the attachments and looked at them. It was not too much trouble, more annoying than anything.
The second thing I immediately saw once I logged into my account was the shear volume of other stuff they have. WoW! I read that they were creating a separate section for comic book retailers…and I hope they deliver, because going through all their other stuff to find comics to sell will be a weekly headache. Its going to be a process change, and a lot of people don’t like that, some aren’t able to do it. I would be curious to see how many shops have swapped over, because it looks like we will have to start putting in orders for delivery after October 1st pretty soon.
Anyways, I told you I would share my experience, and I’ll keep you updated once I place my first order with them.
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Penguin House is huge…
“Established as a joint venture between Pearson and Bertelsmann in 2013, Penguin Random House has an enterprise value of $3.55 billion…”
In comparison, I think Diamond net worth was only roughly around 500 million in revenue.
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This is all very confusing.
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Multiple distributors = no bottlenecks. COVID shutdown changed the landscape.
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Diamond is f***ed at this point.
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I do appreciate that Diamond let’s a small guy like myself use a credit / debit card…where Lunar requires COD. Also, Lunar does not supply a simple Shopify formatted .csv file for inventory management/updating.
So far I still haven’t made a purchase at PRH, so I’m not sure about them yet. I’m curious though, why try to distribute Marvel as a wholesaler when PRH will give you an account rather quickly, and you get the comics straight from the source?
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For some shops it’s just easier having them come from one place and dealing with the one invoice regularly. Plus it may help with smaller shops meeting order minimums.
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I just found this article…hadn’t seen it yet. Pretty crazy to offer everyone net 60 payment terms right off the bat. That could provide a huge relief to some shops that are struggling…2 months to get their act together…by that time they would probably know if they are going to make it or not.
Hope this is true! I just need whoever it is to generate Shopify product files like Diamond does…that saves me some serious time! Takes me 5 times as long to post Lunar comics vs Diamond.
From my research, PRH is an industry leader in their respective industry. I think LCS’ will be quite pleased with PRHs business model, and the execution and innovation of said business model. Free shipping too, am I right?
Net 60 are good terms for responsible and prudent business owners. Terrible opium for business owners without discipline. Just don’t let the credit they are extending you make you order any differently.
Cautionary tale:
TL;DR: toy retailer racked up over $400k in net 30 charges they fell behind on.
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I charge $29.90. The only drawback with me is that I actually have no authority around here so it might not get done.
For those of us without much business know-how what is this net 60?