Heh. This might have been more effective with a less mundane example. I read it most-of-a-decade later and say "jeez, whiner!" :)

Today, Distributors (well, heehee, Diamond) use centralized ordering for all things. And, yes, its much more efficient.

Let's talk about Distributors. (You had to see that one coming, right?)

Lemme preface these comments with a few disclaimers:

1) All opinions included herein are mine. Nothing I ever say should be interpreted as reflect any views held by Krause, or any of it's employees. I'm a freelancer – I'm allowed to have an attitude.

2) I've also worked at a distributor (for about a year) – I realize the problems of that system, and the constraints they're working under. Most distributors are fairly efficient at getting books from A to B, at least of any titles that the preponderance of retailers order in quantity.

3) Although I only use one primary distributor for a majority of the mainstream periodicals we sell, I'm in enough contact with other retailers who use virtually every other distributor, to be able to make some blanket statements, based on common experiences.

I've got two major areas of contention with the distributors: Restocking policies, and customer service.

Restocking problems we're all acquainted with. I don't know of a single retailer that doesn't have some sort of horror story about foul-ups in orders. The thing I resent the most is when I know for a fact that the publisher has stock available in their warehouse (in quantity!), I've met both the publisher's and distributor's minimum order, and the items will never, ever show up! I mean, what the hell kind of system is it when you have a customer waving around money around on one side (that's us), and a warehouse full of comics (that's the publishers) on the other, and you don't see a transaction? I guarantee you that if any of us ran our stores like that (where the guy behind the counter wouldn't take the customers money), we'd be out of business post-haste.

There's one or two fairly good programs in place that make some headway. For example, Diamond's Star System is a good model. Automatic confirmation of availability, an extremely high fill rate, and free freight over certain (modest) ordering levels. The only problem we have here is the very limited breadth of backlist items listed (it's really only stuff that sells well in the first place and, accordingly, probably the type of stuff they were getting high reorders on in the first place, making this just a more efficient system to do what they were before), and the complete lack of any periodicals. We are, like it or not, a periodical driven business, and the lack of a national system, with every item that the distributors carry, is holding the market back from achieving it's potential. And, in fact, until we see this, "distributors" are hardly even that – they're mere freight forwarders!

I'm lucky in that the volume of my orders makes it practical for me to restock direct from many publishers. I know that for a lot of stores this is entirely impractical. Let's take a book that I think can easily be built into a strong seller with a little work, but is virtually ignored by the distributors: Hate. Let's say that you took my advice from previous Tilting's and ordered a handful of copies, to give it a try. You liked it, it sold through, so you place a reorder. In most circumstances, the distributors aren't going to be able to fill a reorder for 1 or 2 copies, so you're SOL if you want to keep giving this book a chance. I think that it's criminal that the system is currently structured to effectively only support the stuff that is going to sell gangbusters in the first place. Sure, I can walk over to Last Gasp (a local "alternative/underground" distributor -- a good resource for any store that wants to diversify their stock: (415) 824-6636), or call up the publisher, but that's not an option for everyone.

I tend to suspect that the distributors, as currently structured, are only as good as the local warehouse manager. That is: just like our customers are only able to buy materials that we like and have faith in (past the first few onsale weeks), we're only able to have strong restock on the local manager's likes and faiths. If the local manager thinks Hate is a good book, then he'll make sure that there are copies available. And if not, then "oh, well" to that title. The problem stems from the fact that most of the warehouse managers seem to be happy to fall in with "company lines" – they stock in depth what they're told to by "conventional wisdom". That is: the same items that are pushed on the covers (and ads) of the catalogs, or, to put it another way, the items that they're paid the most for by the publishers.

Let's, as retailers, face up to a hard truth: the distributors are getting rich off us. They have a guaranteed sale from every item they solicit, while we're completely guessing (even though it's educated, we're still guessing. I was flabbergasted at Steve Geppi's claim that Adventures of Superman #500 was a complete sell out! Oh, sure neither DC nor Diamond have any copies leftover, but I sure can see a lot of retailers swimming in copies); and they make buckets of money from their catalogs. I've seen some of the checks from publishers for catalog ads, and they are insane! I'm no expert on publishing costs, but my rough calculations show that the distributors are making a fortune from listings of guaranteed sales for them! It makes me pretty ill to think about.

Anyway, let's talk about the second area: customer service. It's hard to discuss in concrete terms, because it's an almost intangible thing. You know when you're not getting it, but defining it is difficult. And it's what separates a good business from a poor one. I think it boils down to the golden rule: do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. Be excellent to one another.

I run my store with that in mind. You go out of your way to do good for a customer, because you're not making just the sale today, you're making a sale for the rest of your life. Yet I hardly see that from the distributors.

I am regularly given misinformation ('course, I know enough people to be able to find out the truth eventually); I have shipments dicked (gee don't you love it when, as a random example, an item like 2000ad, the British weekly, shows up once every 2 months? And then it's 8 at once, with one of the issues missing?); and to get anything out of the norm done, I have to jump through hoops (here's an example: We order a case of current comic bags each and every week. We bag our customers purchases. One week the bags don't show, so I called my distributor, and asked what up?

"Oh, we have no order on record."

But the order was placed, by the member of my staff who is the most entirely conscientious guy in the whole wide world, just like he does every week, and I have a witness that he placed the order, not that it should be a big deal, mind you, so could you please go slap a UPS tag on a case of bags and get it out right now? And if it's a big deal, screw it, I'll even pay for the shipping.

"Well, we have no record, so we'll have to treat it as a reorder, and we won't get to it until Monday."

Look, we order a case every week, and I'm not going to sell them -- it's not a reorder, it's my original order, that you screwed. It's not like I'm ordering 100 Turok #1s – it's bags fer-christs-sake – I need to bag my customers purchases!

"Sorry"

So, I gotta call the main HQ, and bitch to them, then have them call the local warehouse to do it.

It's bullshit!

And this is the least of my tales...

What happened to customer service?

If I can provide it, why can't they?

I'm deadly, powerfully tired of this, and my only possible response is to take my business from them, direct to the publishers. I don't want to do this. It's a headache for me, and a lot of damn hard work. But what other choice do I have?

I try damn hard to run the best business I can, but the distributors don't do the same for me.

And it must change.