diff --git a/combo/main.py b/combo/main.py
index 441f36f0f36621d60773bacdad1ff9865d061d75..b471f67861a82f744f24ef1be0b172c581e08644 100755
--- a/combo/main.py
+++ b/combo/main.py
@@ -282,7 +282,10 @@ def run(_):
                              'to use default models.')
                 return
 
-            pathlib.Path(FLAGS.serialization_dir).mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
+            try:
+                pathlib.Path(FLAGS.serialization_dir).mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
+            except FileExistsError:
+                pass
             serialization_dir = tempfile.mkdtemp(prefix='combo', dir=FLAGS.serialization_dir)
 
         else:
@@ -304,7 +307,10 @@ def run(_):
 
             vocabulary = model.vocab
 
-            pathlib.Path(FLAGS.serialization_dir).mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
+            try:
+                pathlib.Path(FLAGS.serialization_dir).mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
+            except FileExistsError:
+                pass
             serialization_dir = tempfile.mkdtemp(prefix='combo', suffix='-finetuning', dir=FLAGS.serialization_dir)
 
             dataset_reader, training_data_loader, validation_data_loader, vocabulary = get_defaults(
@@ -371,7 +377,10 @@ def run(_):
             except ConfigurationError as e:
                 handle_error(e, prefix)
 
-            pathlib.Path(FLAGS.output_file).mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
+            try:
+                pathlib.Path(FLAGS.output_file).mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
+            except FileExistsError:
+                pass
 
             logger.info("Predicting examples from file", prefix=prefix)