Diamond Comic Distributors is offering retailers a chance to enlarge their offerings of magazines that is virtually without risk.  Retailers who sign up for the six-month program get a free, expandable, modular rack that rolls on coasters and is delivered to their stores without any freight costs by UPS.  They also receive an assortment of nationally published magazines (like Maxim, Star Wars Insider, Expert Gamer) that are targeted at the male 15-35 demographic that typically shops in pop culture stores.  The magazines will arrive with weekly Wednesday shipments to save freight costs.  When a new issue arrives, the retailer can strip covers from the old issues and return for credit.  Retailers pay only for the magazines they sell, and receive a 33% discount (or 35% if they order two racks), which is well above the standard discount for returnable periodicals.

This program is directly related to the slowdown in newsstand magazine sales and the increasing competition among magazine titles for space on the dwindling number of newsstand racks.  This same sort of offer has met with great success in college bookstores, where magazine publishers are willing to reduce their margins in order to snare young readers.  Magazine sales reportedly tripled in college stores that took advantage of the program.  Pop culture stores also cater to that hard to reach young male demographic, which is the reason that the magazine publishers are willing to make it attractive for retailers to give these magazines a try.   For retailers who have the extra time to deal with returns (and Diamond promises an easy-to-use, single return form that can be used for all the titles in the program), and a good handle on security in their stores, this program is a nearly risk-free way to increase product offerings by just giving up a couple of square feet of floor space.