The yearly Diamond Retailer Summit hit Bally's Hotel in Las Vegas on Sunday, for three days (September 7-9) of seminars, socializing and announcements by publishers. Held each year, it's a chance for Diamond's retail accounts to convene and meet with publishers.
Among the talk: changes for several of Diamond's services are in the offing. Customer service assistant manager for technical support Cheryl Sleboda discussed many of Diamond's electronic services. The Comic Shop Locator (CSL) website will be revised in the near future. It will use Google Maps searching, pulling data from their map database, and overlaying information on the Diamond Locator website. The site attracts 45,000 unique visitors each month. The CSL will also highlight special products, in an effort to improve sales for stores. Currently, stores only receive information on how many hits have been received from the toll-free number service. The revision will now include web hits as well. At some point, Diamond plans to include comic book shops from around the world.
Last year's buzz product, the RMS Comics Suite Point-of-Sale system, continues to be slowly installed at stores. Diamond wants to provide a high level of service to each store, so the list of stores continues to grow. There will soon be a fourth Diamond employee to assist stores with installation. While Comics Suite is primarily designed to help retailers sell product, Microsoft, manufacturer of the software offers over 1200 plug-in modules..
In a related speech at Monday's breakfast, Cindy Fournier, Diamond vice president of operations, gave a presentation on the new distribution warehouse moving from Memphis, Tennessee, to nearby Olive Branch, Mississippi. Six years ago, Diamond moved from Sparta, Illinois, to its present location in Memphis, renting a 225,000 sq. ft. facility. Today, they occupy three buildings with 350,000 sq. ft.
The new facility, built to Diamond's specifications, will occupy 600,000 sq. ft. It will use modern technology, using Radio Frequency Identification and voice recognition software to assist with efficient distribution of product. Computer cartonization will calculate the volume of product product in each shipment and then select the optimal carton size, thereby reducing waste. The date of the move to the new warehouse has not been announced yet.
Lance Fensterman, show manager of the New York Comic-Con and the New York Anime Festival, was the first speaker at the breakfast on Monday. He joked that the last time he was up this early in Las Vegas, it was after a hazy night of sleeping on a craps table in a Cher stage dress. Last year's attendance of the NYCC had an estimated attendance of 64,000 to 65,000 attendees, and next year's show, scheduled for February 6-8, is projected to attract as many as 90,000 attendees. As with the previous three comic-cons, the Friday morning of the show would be reserved for retailers and professionals.
Other publisher presentations on Monday included Dave Elliot of Radical Publishing, along with indie house Devil's Due and manga publisher Viz Media, who announced they will be launching a holiday website, featuring many special products. Fans will be able to create a wish list on the site, and either email to family and friends, or print it out. The manga giant also announced an expansion of their signature line, launching a website in October at vizsignature.com. Created as a hand selling tool, it will allow users to select either a genre or creator, and then discover other titles which may appeal to that consumer. A special feature, compared to the power level grid found on the back of Transformer toys, grades each title on certain aspects, such as drama, horror, action, mystery.
