Sometimes it can be super difficult to remember to fill out your pull list items each month or make that special trip to your local comic shop to turn in the order, and pick up your books. Diamond Comic Distributors is trying to make the process of ordering comics easier with PREVIEWSworld Pullbox, and new online pull and hold service that interfaces with your LCS.
Developed from the ground up to help customers place orders with their local comic shop, PULLBOX handles monthly comic subscriptions, preorders for upcoming titles and products, and special orders all from Diamond’s consumer pop-culture website, PREVIEWSworld.com, while also providing comic shop retailers with the back-end tools necessary to manage their pull-and-hold customer base.
PULLBOX has a variety of included features to help customers order and purchase from comic book shops:
- Manage Preorders. Add titles to your monthly pull-and-hold list, order additional titles and products from that month’s PREVIEWS preorder catalog.
- Synch with Your Participating Local Comic Shop. Powered by comicshoplocator.com, customers can choose a local participating comic shop and synch with them to send their monthly preorders, special orders, and more.
- Place Special Orders or Keep a Wishlist. Forgot to order a title or saw something new coming into comic shops that you want to purchase? Customers can use PULLBOX to place a special order with their comic book shop to purchase. They can also keep a Wishlist of other items and then send it to their retailer to see if they have any items in their store.
- Enhanced Search and Ordering. Customers will be able to access a more advanced search at PREVIEWSworld.com that allows them to search the complete database of items offered by Diamond and place orders with their local comic shop.
- Track Your Weekly Purchases. Customers will get additional tools to track which titles and products they ordered are releasing that week to stores, see future week’s orders, and more.
- Retail Functions. Retailers will get a full suite of functions available from the Diamond Retailer Services website: Back-end approval of new PULLBOX Customers, Alerts to new orders, Set ordering dates, and Upload your own ordering requirements and guidelines. Retailers can synch orders with their initial orders online, or export orders into ComicSuite or other POS software.
- Comic-Suite Integration. Seamlessly integrate PULLBOX Pull List, Subscription and Special Orders directly into ComicSuite for approval and ordering, manage new pull-and hold customers, synch customer data and individual orders.
This feels like a step in the right direction to encourage comic readers to get their physical comics in a timely fashion – especially if you want to read books from smaller publishers. The other advantage is this system may help new readers or comic readers who have relocated to find a comic book shop in their area.
One thing I hope this system does is integrating with the weekly release list that includes a checkbox system so you can easily check off the items you want.
Pullbox is expected to launch this spring.
