Diamond Introduces
Flat Rate Standard Shipping in April
Dear Diamond Customer:
At Diamond, we’re dedicated to strengthening our partnership and contributing to your success and the success of our industry. Central to this mission is our commitment to providing the widest range of products, along with systems specifically designed for the Direct Market that streamline your operations and significantly reduce the time you spend tracking costs and managing logistics.
In line with this commitment, we are excited to introduce Flat Rate Standard Shipping on most products for Continental US customers currently served by UPS. Set to launch in April, this change aims to simplify your shipping process and reduce your costs, making your expenses more predictable and manageable.
Reflecting on our promise from last February, we’ve already implemented two significant freight reductions for our U.S. retailers serviced by UPS. The introduction of Flat Rate Shipping marks the latest evolution of this journey, aiming to boost your profitability and streamline your operations further.
“Our expansion in fulfillment operations for comic and game publishers, along with various cost-saving measures we’ve undertaken, has enabled us to offer Flat Rate Standard Shipping without compromising the quality service you’ve come to expect,” says Steve Geppi, Chairman, President & CEO of Geppi Family Enterprises and Diamond Comic Distributors. “This move is not just about reducing costs; it’s about making your business more efficient and predictable.”
Here’s what Flat Rate Standard Shipping means for you:
Predictable Shipping Costs: Enjoy the predictability of shipping with a flat rate for most products, facilitating easier management of your expenses.
Transparent Pricing: Only 3% of retail on all product categories (or 3% of MSRP on net-priced products), ensuring clear and straightforward pricing.
Upfront Fee Disclosure: Any special fees will be communicated at the time of solicitation, maintaining clarity and consistency in pricing.
Applicability: This rate applies to both weekly deliveries and replenishment orders, providing you with greater flexibility.
Direct Ship Reorders: Continue to take advantage of Direct Ship Reorders. A nominal $7.50 handling fee will be applied to orders under $500 retail / MSRP.
One Invoice for Ease: For Standard Shipping customers, freight and other fees will be consolidated on the same invoice as the related products, streamlining your accounting process. Please note, customers outside of Standard Shipping will continue to see freight charges billed a week in arrears, as part of our phased approach to enhance billing simplicity across all services.
No Change for drop point or LTL customers: Customers currently served by drop points, LTL trucks, or other shipping services will experience no change, ensuring consistency for customers who prefer those service options.
If I’m reading this correctly, if we resume ordering Boom and Dynamite preFOC, then on the weeks 10 comics ship at a combined cover price of $39.90, the freight charge billed will be $1.20. That’s a great rate if true and there’s no minimum. That covers the other problem as well when they damage 2 copies in shipping and the next weeks shipment only has 2 comics at $7.98 cover price shipping for 24 cent. That’s much better than the $12 to $15 they normally charge for a couple comics freight.
No doubt has to do with their declining sales with their move to Tuesdays. For my area people were still coming in on Wednesdays. It just annoyed our retailers and they started to order less dc books.
I don’t like it. I refuse to send comics to E-bay until release day so this basically gives E-bay sellers another day to sell ahead of us. I don’t get Wednesday traffic or Tuesday either for that matter. Regulars just set up boxes or wait to come in on the weekends.
I like the way the packing lists are for Lunar presently as well we inventory by.
Image gets it’s release day in alphabetical order.
Then DC gets it’s list in alphabetical order.
Anything separated after that are restocks that can go out immediately. Nice and simple. When making listings I make one then copy it to make the next one in order changing the title, price, scans, etc but leaving all the basic stuff. Then when I go to put them on the shelf, they’re already sorted by publisher so I know what part of the store each stack goes to.
The Batman who Laughs maybe. Maybe that female joker whose name escapes me. Or maybe one of the Jack White covers. Something like that. It’s been a while
Justice League vs Godzilla vs Kong just recently was doing pretty well above cover. I don’t get walk-in either day generally to amount to a hill of beans for new comics but E-Bay usually does very well for me starting Tuesdays when they get loaded. I’m not a fan of things that change my routine/work patterns. The splitting away of DC for me was a huge benefit. It used to be everything arrived from Diamond Tuesday afternoons and everything from all publishers had to be sorted, inventoried, bagged, boarded, Hold-Boxes filled, 1 copy of everything set aside, shelf copies moved to a holding box and then a race to see how long it would take to scan one of everything front and back, assemble listings and get them ready to go online Wednesday morning. Some nights that ran past midnight racing to get everything done. Some weeks one of more boxes from diamond would be delayed by UPS making Wednesday a really big headache.
DC broke away and all that changed. DC and a number of smaller publisher and now Image as well arrive as much as 7 days ahead of street date. I basically have from sometimes Tuesday until the following Monday to get everything done at leisure. The inventorying is always immediate though since Lunar routinely has a mistake that if you catch it fast enough, they can get it added to next weeks shipment so you have it on release day or close to it. Last week in particular half my GI Joe’s and Cobra Commanders weren’t in the box. The reshipment/replacements arrived this week at 11AM only 1 hour after opening on release day in time to make someone happy.
I imagine the only sensible choice is to figure out the best way to start playing the presale game. I could put presale descriptions into the titles, but when the sync software adds them to go to E-Bay, no changes I make to the original titles after that get reflected so I’d have to search out manually to edit out the presale stuff on Wednesdays. I’ve always liked giving the locals that extra day or more to have first choice though. Image and DC for next week are just sitting here right now waiting to get scans and listings.
Irritated at PRH’s book warehouses shipping today. It’s totally different shipping than the comics warehouse.
I go to the Post Office at 8:30 and it’s spitting drops and I notice the beat up Dodge Dakota’s back loaded with mail and packages. By the time I come out it’s opening up into a steady sprinkle and they’re trying to get most of the packages moved to the back seat but of course they don’t all fit.
By my second trip to the Post Office it’s increased to a light rain coating everything but the truck is already out on the route.
I’m thinking, this feels like a bad omen. Sure enough, all day long it’s been increasing.
Here comes the UPS guy with one of those grey fold overs and I can see it’s polka dottted with rain drops soaked in. I race to open it and get it out and inside is 2 DC trades with nothing around them, retail about $45. Of course one was also corner dented from the shipping and handling like one of the Little Golden Books for Taylor Swift yesterday. Same treatment except those got an actual bubble mailer which at least has an inner lining of plastic to help a bit.
Now the question becomes do I have the one with the dent replaced or assume trade readers will put up with crap even if the cover appears to be rescued in time to avoid any noticeable moisture transfer.
Nope, it was Robin King I think was the last big spec hit that fizzled off pretty quickly… since then, DC spec has been pretty dead for the most part (besides the ones that heat up after release like the Godzilla Kong JL series).
