Yesterday, Cold Cut Distribution announced that they were instituting an across the board discount for retailers, as opposed to a tiered system base on how the size of the order. MacGuffin explains why it’s important:
Business wise, this seems to be incredibly smart move from the outside looking in. First, it likely has almost no effect on the biggest accounts because the majority of those were on rolling terms wherein they received 50% as a base discount and worked from there. The A, B and C level discounts corresponded almost across the board to the same titles that are now 50%, 45%, 40% discounts respectively. Therefore, unless I’m misunderstanding their new terms, the only thing that Cold Cut is really doing is leveling the playing field in an attempt to get more orders from smaller stores that were reluctant to start with a base discount of 40-45% and work down from there.
Hopefully retailers have been listening to Warren Ellis ( what would you do if there were no Marvel or DC comics published? Would you survive?) and will take note of this and order a greater diversity of material from people like Cold Cut. I won’t hold my breath waiting for common sense to strike though.