Diamond has closed its Olive Branch, Mississippi, distribution center due to “inclement weather,” the distributor announced on January 10. The area got nine inches of snow in the past 24 hours, according to weather reports, and with temperatures expected to drop below freezing at night, it may take some time to clear. Diamond said the status of the center will be updated when details are available.

The bad weather came on top of the logistics issues Diamond was already having after closing its Plattsburgh, NY, warehouse and shifting all operations to Olive Branch, which resulted in late shipments to many stores (see “Logistics Snafus Made Holidays Challenging for Comic Stores”).

On January 7, Chief Sales & Service Officer Chris Powell said in an update that almost all US retailers would receive their product by Wednesday, January 8. “There are some pockets of disruption due to a winter storm, but the shipments leaving our warehouse were on a better pace than they had been in December,” he said, in a message published before the current snowfall. “This still does not meet our internal goals or retailers' expectations, but we continue to work with the Operations teams to identify changes that may allow us to ship products more consistently.”

Powell explained that periodicals that Diamond handles on a wholesale basis arrive at their warehouse later than those that are shipped directly from the printer, sometimes as late as Monday on release week, and that shipments are picked and packed in order of the retailer’s distance from the distribution center, with those for the most distant stores going out first. Diamond is continuing to make changes based on live data, and Powell said retailers can expect more changes in the future.