Michael Tierney of Collector's Edition and The Comic Books Store in
I’d pretty much ignored the posts here about Tuesday shipping, until customers told about me how Matthew Dykes of Kapow comics was talking about me, claiming unfair business practices by Diamond.
First of all, if someone is going to make such accusations, he shouldn’t distort the facts: Diamond has a threshold policy to qualify for earlier shipment that involves both multiple locations and a sales threshold based on combined sales for those locations.
That my competitor managed to get a newbie employee into revealing sales for one of my locations reflects more on the person asking than it does on Diamond. I’m a pretty transparent retailer with my competition able to read my columns about what I’m doing and what I’m selling every month in the CBG and every year in Overstreet, but his actions crossed a line in my opinion.
And what he is really saying? When a store complains that it’s difficult on shipment day, I’d suggest he do what I had to do when I was first starting out: hire more help. Or pay them the overtime like I’ve done to have them come in earlier.
But no, here you have someone complaining that he wants his new startup store to have the same advantages as my stores, one beginning its 27th year and the other in its 17th year, but without all the work that I had to do to reach this level.
My suggestion would be that he should quit complaining and roll up his sleeves and do what I did. Work as hard as you can. Grow your inventory and take your losses on the experimental products that didn’t sell. Keep stocking the ones that did. Deal with the difficulties to diversify your business enough to reach incentive levels.
Otherwise, his complaints are no different that a retailer who complains that he didn’t reach the sales level to qualify for an incentive variant cover, but thinks he should have one to sell anyway.
Do the hard work if you want the benefits. The other side of this whole discussion in general is that the recent trouble with retailers selling copies of All Star Batman & Robin, that they were clearly instructed not to sell, shows that not all retailers will be responsible when the opportunity for a quick dollar is on the table.
So... are we now talking about Tuesday release for everyone? If so, then you have smaller startup stores with the advantage, because they have less work to do to prepare for new comics sales day.
The long and short of this matter is that I think Diamond and its vendors made the right decision to help multi-store locations deal with the greater logistics that they must handle when they established the parameters for Tuesday release.
The opinions expressed in this Talk Back article are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
