Diamond Comic Distributors Files Bankruptcy, Sells Alliance Game Distributors

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The parent company of one of the key tabletop industry gatekeepers has filed for bankruptcy. Alliance Game Distributors is set to be acquired by Universal Distribution.

According to the filings the company owes money to various tabletop industry creditors (thanks to @Abstruse for the list):
  • Wizards of the Coast: $914,602
  • Hasbro (separately): $1,064,378
  • Catalyst Game Labs (BattleTech, Shadowrun, Voltron): $401,483
  • Army Painter Ap5 (miniature paint manufacturer): $316,296
  • Publisher Services, Inc (board game and TTRPG distributor): $223,141
Also, NECA is owed $2,682,994. This is mostly from collectibles, but NECA also owns WizKids and Alliance handled distribution for HeroClix and their various D&D/Pathfinder miniature lines.

You can see a more complete list of all of the companies owed money over at comicsbeat.com.

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Any initial view on what the impact of this will be, @Morrus? Do they distribute RPGs for many publishers? Do they tend to be the primary distribution channel in certain sectors? You are much more informed on this sort of thing than us consumers.
 


I don’t know. We’ve never had any dealings with them.
You have a better relationship with Universal Distribution, who carry the L5e Starter Set (and I keep hoping for more)*. As Universal appears to be buying Alliance and Diamond UK, this may only affect ENPublishing in positive ways.

For us Comic Book Stores, this is generally bad news, but not unexpected bad news to anyone who is paying attention, and long-term, it's potentially good - if it means that Diamond manages to restructure enough to survive as a little guy (or if Universal takes over). Both of those are reasonably good outcomes, and better than what we have going on ATM, which is just a mess.

*At least the Canadian version does, I have no idea about the US version, which I assume is who's buying Alliance.
 

You have a better relationship with Universal Distribution, who carry the L5e Starter Set (and I keep hoping for more). As Universal appears to be buying Alliance and Diamond UK, this may only affect ENPublishing in positive ways.
No, they wouldn’t speak to us. But Modiphius kindly helped out and stocks some of our products so that they can be sold in North America. So you’ll see ENP stuff listed under Modiphius in NA.
 

No, they wouldn’t speak to us. But Modiphius kindly helped out and stocks some of our products so that they can be sold in North America. So you’ll see ENP stuff listed under Modiphius in NA.
It occurred to me after my above post that I'm speaking of the Canadian version of Universal, who probably get their A5e off of Modiphius, and that Alliance will be bought by the US version of Universal (And I have no idea what the relationship between the two is, if any, but I get comics and games off of the Canadian Universal).
 

I worked at an LGS until about 2008. Alliance was our main distributor for basically everything we sold. We usually got warhams and dice from GW and Koplow respectively, but we would occasionally even get those items through Alliance if it meant maintaining the best discount tier and shipping terms with alliance. We sold a lot of D&D and Magic, but all of that was purchased through Alliance, and not direct from WotC.

That store closed down years ago, and I don't know how closely modern shops rely on them.

They distribute basically everything in the RPG, hobby, and tcg space, as far as I know. Maybe now with the rise of POD, there's small press stuff that flies under their radar.

Edit: there was another "side" of the same store that mostly sold pool tables and home bar/mancave accoutrements, through various other suppliers, but there wasn't really any cross pollination between our mancave customers who were basically one-time large ticket purchasers who we never saw again, and our gamer customers who would come back frequently to buy new stuff.
 
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