Diamond plans a May 20th date to resume distribution operations. Further, they’ve taken orders from DC Entertainment in advance.
The contracted distributor of both comic books and video games shut its doors in March in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. As of Saturday evening, Diamond officially gave a projected mid-to-late May roll-out date and took DC orders in anticipation.
Diamond Plans To Stake Their Claim over Direct Market Option
The company released this email to related press sources: “We continue to work toward a mid-to-late May resumption of weekly comic distribution, but numerous factors will affect the actual date we are able to deliver our first weekly shipment. [Placeholder] dates are an approximation of when we hope to resume weekly operations, but are not yet firm. DC needed final order numbers for books being printed next week. That is independent of our shipping date.”
This email was sent out following a Tweet from Comics Conspiracy store owner Ryan Higgins in Sunnyvale, Ca.. He had claimed that he had discovered a new Diamond Comics Distributors ordering page online that indicated a May 20th delivery date.
The DC ordering page on Saturday was preceded by an “urgent notice” to retailers from Geppi Family Enterprises, Diamond’s parent company:
“DC Comics will be releasing these products through other sources prior to our distribution, but we will have inventory to fill your orders in our first shipment.” The latter part of that statement refers to Direct Market distributors, whom DC reported would handle shipment for books to contracted stores on April 28th. The letter goes on to remind retailers they have until noon on Monday to fill out their orders. Further, DC periodicals with a May 26th release date will be added to the FOC list on Monday with a small amount of DC Collectible items.
DC is the only publisher referred to in the notice.
To loosely borrow from Ian Fleming, Diamond apparently is forever.
