Big Hobby/Game Distributor Goes Bankrupt!
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.พ. 2025
- In This Episode we talk about the Diamond Distribution Bankruptcy
In Canada?
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There is an old saying “how did you go bankrupt?” ‘Slowly at first then all at once!’
Color me not surprised. Our store had so many headaches with Diamond we pretty much stopped using Diamond to supply our comics. We had so many instances of late deliveries and damaged merchandise we stopped using them a couple of years ago. You just can’t service a community when the supplier is so inconsistent that you are surprised when the deliveries arrive on time.
The difficult part is to decide to break up your purchasing across different distributors and by doing so lose a really good discount. Our store decided not to switch to PRH, but we've been talking about our options in the last week or so.
Now THIS is the niche content I subscribe for.
Bless
It was a self-inflicted wound. At the start of the pandemic Steve Geppi decided to close down distribution for a while. DC and Marvel scrambled to find other outlets since they were not going to stop publishing. By the time Geppi corrected his mistake it was too late
yeah as soon as they lost their comic distribution monopoly in NA, Diamond was a dead company walking.
Competition fuels innovation. Without competition for 20 years, DCD grew complacent and stagnant. I'm impressed with Lunar, for being a younger company their customer service is exemplary, and their website's retailer experience is always improving.
We used capital city distribution out of Madison Wisconsin back in the 90s. I think it was marvels, direct distribution and pulling out that put the nail in their coffin. I think they were the biggest rival of diamond distribution at that time.
I feel like I can't get into any mainstream comics because of the exhaustive history they have. I can't just go into a store and buy a comic off the shelf since it's a continuation of many OLD comics or it's a reboot of the character (but could not even be the first reboot/retelling). However I have am much more likely to buy a manga series or short comic series since that is manageable. There are no branching paths of the story, it's a singular this is THE 1st issue and is the starting point. I have found joy in buying self published works on kickstarter much more since I can find something specific to my preferences. I also don't like the price, not enough pages for me to care compared to a manga that while not even the same size has 200+ pages and cheaper.
I can echo all the Diamond issues raised. On the flip side I have had a great experience from alliance game distro.
I think it was the Mastering Dungeons podcast that was saying that diamond/alliance has exclusive deals with Marvel and DC before the pandemic such that only they could distribute their stuff.
The pandemic hit and they said they wouldn’t distribute their cards, so marvel and dc went elsewhere, which started the decline
They're a small fish, but Onyx Path Publishing formed in 2012 with the specific business practice of not working with Diamond/Alliance or other distributors. They bullied RPG companies so much that it just didn't make sense to work with them.
One story I recall from the 00s is that you couldn't find some White Wolf RPG books in stores. If the store called the distributor, they claimed it was sold out. When White Wolf called Diamond, they claimed they had books but no one was ordering them. Turns out they were not selling books and holding what they had so they wouldn't have to buy a new stock of books
Bizarre.
Shit shitty companies do when they achieve oligopoly status.
@michaelnomnomandryuk is not uncommon.
This sounds weird. A company lives from selling stuff. Somehow I feel this us only half the story as important parts seem to be missing.
@TorianTammas incenctives become messed up fast when you have an oligopoly; say you have 3 large distributors and you have the exclusive license for property A. There's a hot new property B up for grabs so if one of your competitors gets it you could be in trouble, so you swoop in and grab it, but you can't support B, or would be bad for your bottomline if B succeeds because you would be stuck with A inventory. So you sit on it and pay the MG.
@@TorianTammas Its about capitol requirements. I may want to fill a few holes in my vallejo paint rack. Distributor is not ordering a shipping container of paint to fill my order, they will wait until another wave of paint launches and add back orders on or when they have enough back orders the will place a order. Then the MF may not have inventory to fulfill and have to wait another three months. until there is a production window. Alliance has forty five thousand sku's they cant have the capitol or space really to sit on piles of each one.
Around 2010-2012 I ordered gundam figures from diamond. I bought all my gundam figures from hobby link because diamond canceled every gundam figure order. I see they never improved.
Wow, I didn't realise that price gouging from distributors was a thing. I would've thought that they were obliged to sell to retail at or below a specific price similar to RRP.
The bid the new Canadian Overlords put in had some special name, can't recall it because it's been almost 24 hours since I heard it, but a bid that's sure before it goes to more regular bidding? Something something.
We deal with Alliance all the time and our Rep is great, the owners worked with him for at least the last 12 years, but everything has gotten far to expensive and it has definitely become a hassle trying to keep stock on point as sales fluctuate down them surge up suddenly and we have to wait months before we can up our orders. I'm not surprised that the parent company has finally gone bankrupt, because I didn't really enjoy dealing with them back in the 90's
17:11 why does someone stop loving something they love like comic and etc...? well sometimes the people that make said product's are focused on a different audience or they outright hate you. So why support something you dont like anymore? At the end of the day its death by a thousand cuts and the vast majority of those are self inflicted.
Diamond has been so horribly run for so long the only reason this didn't happen years ago is they stumbled into an accidental monopoly
I collected Image in the 90s - Nighthawk mostly and some Spawn
Comics are weird. A friend who owns a local shop said that the MCU had the opposite effect that owners all expected. He said there was a boom in the first year after Iron Man, and then as the MCU became more popular, the comics hobby shrank.
I’m not a comic guy outside of a few niche comics I have collected like Babylon 5, and those were more about my love of the TV series than caring about comics.
Sounds like bad management.
This is the prevailing theory.
I remember having to wait outside the store to get the black library Lion book 😂 meanwhile cypher was online chaos😅
Thats wild , I didn’t know the hobby/comic market operated on “fronts”… I thought consignment was mostly a black market industry thing.
Extended credit is huge
Wow... I think my FLGS got much of their stuff from Diamond.
All their debts are likely to be never paid off, which can cause major ripple effects in the industry...
Great video! But why did you say "Patreon" so wierd at the end there?
I rely on alliance game distributors for my army painter (I stock the complete range) catalyst games labs, hex tech, chessex dice and more. I hope they are bought up, the reps are very helpful great company.
Sounds like Alliance is the most valuable part of the business so will very likely get bought
Diamond is not really a tragedy. They killed themselves when they shut down the entire supply chain during Covid. They unilaterally decided not to ship out for months and DC jumped ship.
In Europe at least comic stores survive on manga and funkos, it's a pretty sad state of affairs for US and european comics
The geek stores in Europe are either full on boardgames, rpg, wargames, cardgames hobby, or full on japanese pop culture. Occasionally in France you got your BD/comics centered store but not without mangas.
So... you guys sell AP stull as well as others. How does that affect you folks? Does you Canadian distribution get items from Diamond?
Army Painter is accessible from like 3 or 4 dist. Here in Canada. Very easy to get
I have some friends at Alliance...if they get sold off it would actually put them in a better situation....of course considering how poorly MTG and D&D is currently selling (which is considered prime brands) they are in poor financial shape, which means that the company many not get a buyer.
Okay but how does this affect the upstream companies? I mean, Army Painter or Warmachine has a half million dollars of credit they’ve extended to the distributor. The distributor goes toes up. What happens? Does the manufacturer ever see that money? I would bet that the paints and minis are already gone. Sold down stream and the income used to prop up underperforming divisions rather than to pay off the credit extended to the paint company.
Bankruptcy
This is why they are filing for chapter 11. They will be sold off in chunks and that money has to go to the banks and their suppliers.
as usual, in a bankruptcy, there is no cake to divide, but only scrums, and you may get some or not.
They should look into being able to distribute Trench Crusade ;)
Would have saved everything!
Damn ! if they could distribute old world they would too !!!!
Hate to hear bad news like that, but I heard rumors they were struggling now for a few years. That is kinda what I've heard about the comic industry as a whole over the last several years.
The comic industry has been catering to the influx of new speculation whales created by the pandemic. Nobody has really been 'reading' comics since 2020, and comics haven't been made to be read. However the gold rush is ending and speculators are starting to leave the market slowly, and I've noticed more young people (15-25) looking at the newsstand and actually reading, caring about the stories again. Things are turning around slowly.
Another one bites the dust…
Comics are just not well written anymore. In fact they are worse written than the worst stuff of the 80s and 90s. Couple that with all the gimmicks and high prices. There's no wonder people don't read them as much.
Generally, comics are not currently made to be read. They're made to feed the speculation market which boomed because of the pandemic. But that bubble is starting to burst, and this year I've seen more young readers engage with the newsstand and the conversations with subscribers is more 'hey I like this story ' and less 'hey is this going to be worth money in the future.' it's slowly turning around.
american comics are largely produced an outdated format
Quality lies in the eye of the beholder. Good or bad comics are very relative terms in the end they exist as long as they sell
I dunno. To take a high-profile example I was reading the X-Men in the early 90s, and have come back to them a few times since then. Obviously art is subjective, but personally Grant Morrisson's New X Men in the early 2000s and the first year or two of the Krakoan Age that Jonathan Hickman presided over were amazing. House of X/Powers of X was one of the most audacious and interesting X-men comics I've ever read. The Scott Lobdell/Fabian Nicezea era of the X-Books doesn't compare.
I do wonder more and more of the FLGS is just a dying thing. I know you gents pride yourself on being knowledgeable on hobby, but if someone is willing to spend some time looking up information they could do that themselves and products are available on many places, often cheaper than a brick and mortar store. When more people focus on cost and availability, vs visiting Cheers, it will be interesting to see where things go.
while there are more resources then ever its one of those things were (at least with the hands on stuff like painting and tools) you can't just watch the videos. There is a real benefit (if your FLGS is run well with people that know stuff) to being able to come in person and get help or introduced to the games/groups.
There is probably a saturation point for number of stores though.
I have seen many stores die as they just did not make the ends meet. They died before the great internet distributors and they die now. The costs for running the store on rented space are neck breaking high, and even small changes can be the end of a well run store. The future lies in several income streams of which the shop can only be one. A nice example is a local store that started with youtube to shoe the build products later build them live and so promoted the store. Over time the store became less and less important for his income.
I don't understand, I don't think you mentioned how this would relate to trench crusade?
Wanna talk about age of sigmar again next? I know you like to talk about business, but fantasy and hobby is fun to listen to
Fine, let them say old world a couple of times for the fantasy quota. I like the business talks, far more interesting and not talked about anywhere else
:42 I am certain that no harm was intended on your part, but the flippancy in your tone when announcing the layoffs feels callous toward the 168 employees who will soon be unemployed in a very bad US economy. Just sharing this opinion because I think you guys are great and I know you don't mean that!
Thanks for pointing it out, definately not our intention for sure. It's still too early to know if any jobs will be lost, depending on who comes in and buys them. We are always on the side of working people here on this channel.
But yes dark times for those folks at diamond, and for many other people.
Take care and thanks for keeping us honest 😊