Diamond's Annual Retailer Summit Expands In 2012

[Rich Johnston]

As in 2010 and 2011, Diamond Comic Distributors is holding its annual Retailer Summit at the Chicago McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago in the days before, and in the same building as, C2E2.

But rather than the one day of programming, talks and presentations on the Thursday and a retailer breakfast on the Friday, this year the Retailer Summit has expanded to three days, Wednesday 11th to Friday 13th of April. C2E2 runs from the Friday to Sunday.

In an email to publishers looking for attendance and sponsorship, passed to Bleeding Cool, Diamond cites from a survey of the 400 attendees last year as it its effectiveness.

82% of the Retailer Summit attendees viewed a publisher more positively based on their time spent in that publisher?s focus group.

74% of attendees found new products and/or services which they immediately reordered or preordered for their shop.

87% of the attendees are the main buying influence for the titles and product in their shops.

35% of attendees have annual operating expenditures of over $250K dollars.

Do let Bleeding Cool know if, as a retailer or publisher, you are attending. A view from the floor could be a fascinating one.

[Howard]

I'm not a publisher or a retailer, are their breakfast's any good? If so I might try to sneak in.

[Jay Mysterio]

The retailer breakfast in NY last year was like listening to paint dry. DC ( obviously ) seemed like the only ones interested in having the thing, excited by the numbers brought in by the 52 launch. Dark Horse just droned on, "Hey we've got a Star Wars comic coming out!" ( looks of surprise ), with some announcements of new creator stuff but nothing shown. The Marvel presentation was the most laughable, with talk of a online/onsite service. They presented it in a flyer that was stuck in a variant comic. They asked for people to take just one so everyone could get the flyer. So of course a few retailers being the gracious sorts they are glommed onto stacks of copies, like they were comic book guy from the Simpsons. Leaving reams of the flyers in their wake and no books. The breakfast itself wasn't bad, and was held in a cool glass meeting area. The content as presented though seemed designed to suck your will to live away, and pass it to some corpse waiting to be animated.

Oh, and the supposed freebies they offered at the end to entice you to go... so so. 3 days? I imagine it's some arcane plot to use the energy from retailers to free Cthulhu.