EXTRA: WizKids Names Diamond/Alliance Core Hobby Distributors for U.S., Canada

This article was posted to Diamond Online's Retailer Services Area at 4:25 p.m. on January 11:

Diamond Comic Distributors and Alliance Game Distributors have announced that they have entered into an agreement with WizKids, Inc. to service the entire hobby portion of its distribution in the United States and Canada, including game stores, comic shops and sports card stores.

“Diamond and Alliance are extremely excited to serve WizKids and the hobby game community in this capacity,” said Diamond President and CEO Steve Geppi. “We have devoted significant resources to support this effort and are confident in our ability to assist WizKids in reaching its goals as well as meet and exceed the needs of hobby retailers.”

“Given Alliance and Diamond’s reach, experience and economies of scale, we are always looking for ways in which we can improve manufacturers’ efficiency and access to information on product performance,” added Alliance President Daniel Hirsch. “We are pleased to be given this opportunity to provide the best in service to both WizKids and the core market as a whole, and look forward to distributing an exciting lineup of WizKids products in ’07 and in the future.”

In a separate release, WizKids CEO Lax Chandra said, “Our strategic focus is to create a closer relationship with our retailers, protect the equity of our brands and reinvest in our products. Through careful thought and analysis we have come to the conclusion that these goals are best achieved by using Diamond and Alliance as our distribution partners for the core hobby portion of our business.” The agreement will better position WizKids to gain valuable customer feedback which will be used to improve product development, increase manufacturing efficiencies and create focused promotional and marketing efforts to increase sales in core hobby stores. “We firmly believe that working with Diamond and Alliance will work best to achieve our strategic goals and provide the best service for our retailers, our consumers and our business. We are excited by the opportunities that we hope to create in this new relationship.”

See below for a listing of in-stock products from WizKids, and refer to upcoming issues of Previews for all-new products from one of the industry’s leading games vendors!

• In-Stock WizKids Products: Click here!

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