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Duke of Spoils
greyhaze
Warlord
5804 Posts
    
 | | 09/20/2006 7:37 AM |
| Posted By orcdoubleax on 09/20/2006 4:46 AM
A store that actual make most of it money by online sales is subsides the store front is option. But technically the actual WOTC agreement, at least in Canada, says that the majority of you product has to be sold at your store. I know sure if that is inforced, or even if it is inforciable.
The fact is no one at a gaming store is getting rich. To survive they have to put in long hours and only make at best an average living wage with no benfits.
Before people shit on them to much think to yourself about your own job and how you vaule your time. How much do you make an hour and what benfits you have. Changes are if you can afford 2-3 cases a set you are making more money then the guy that owns your LGS. one way or another that money eventually comes from the custumers of your business. How would your life change if your custumes suddenly got a 20% decrease in thier cost.
The first point quoted above works. It's a way for B&M stores to stay competitive. WotC policy is the only thing holding these stores back, but then again WHY does it have to be through the internet if the customers can get the merchandise at discounted prices from the stores?
I don't even understand the argument about looking at my own career. If I charged too much to my customers in order for them to complete their projects (read as sets such as Bloodwar) they would go somewhere else. I have to stay competitive, and I won't work for less than I need to survive, or I have to find a new line of work. That's how commerce works.
McDonalds has a great business model, they sell very cheap/fast product. Granted no one expects DDM to fly off the shelf like a vat of fries from Mickey D's, but if you take it all in scope it works better than getting stock, having no one buy it because the consumer's percieve the value to not be worth buying at its MSRP rate.
I thought about the Corner Store/Grocery Chain comparison, the only thing is that they are different animals. A corner store offers convenience for a price, while the chain offers bulk for a slight inconvenience. Since the B&M wants to offer both, I have a suggestion below at #1.
Comic/hobby shops do not make a killing in sales, they never have, it is a labour of love. They work long hours indeed, but is it hard labour? Generally, no. Frustrating? More than likely.  There are several things to consider.
1. They have x amount of show room space? Fine, they get a few boxes to show in the store, then anybody that wants to order cases from their distributor gets "the discounted" price and boom they get their sale. Let's face it, 99% of case buyers are gonna pre-order and pick up their merchandise immediately (we're addicts). In essense they become a trade center and collect a fee for that service - this is the approach my FLGS is currently taking.
2. They want their "50% increase". That's a tough one because it's perception. If they want to stay competitive I would propose they need to modify that train of thought. A consumer can only take so much abuse (not from the FLGS, but regarding their finances). It is also the reason I suggested a rebate system for B&M stores from WotC. Mind you, if the distributor's price is too high to begin with - there's nothing that can help the B&M.
3. Singles. In order to complete sets, we generally need to purchase singles. Most shops don't seem to want to waste the floorspace to display these AND stay competitive, maybe the best place for these is online. That way the hobbyshops can show off their models, figures and comic book lines instead.
DDM in not your typical hobbyshop merchandise (comparing to models, comics and figurines). It happens in waves every 4 months or so, people have to collect as much as possible as quickly as possible to satiate their lust for these things - they HAVE to find the best price in order to do so. If they can't get it at the B&M, they'll go online.
phew, long winded there, my appologies. | |
Greyhaze's DDM Spoilers
Champion of a Medium Dog & then a Darkenbeast , Raistlin Majere, Nightmare WDQ25/60, Warduke WD60/60,
Anti-Champion of Guns, "Knight of Bugbears", and Joke Champion of Venger.
Called Shots: Frost Giant in Demon Web, Darkenbeast in Feywild. | |
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orcdoubleax
Sergeant
692 Posts
| | 09/20/2006 10:09 AM |
| Why I said look at your own job. I was responing to some negitivety in eairler post. (not yours actually)
My point was. Don't think they are just ripping you off because they are greedy bastards. The job is a crap one and they make little money. You don't have to buy from them just don't begrudge them for thier pricing.
Many of us, if not most, would not consider working the hours they work for the money they make. Our time has a vaule that is higher then that.  I don't fault anyone for trying to make a honest bill.Â
I would not consider giving a client a single office chair for 10% over cost. It would not be worth the effort of me telling my assistant to write up the order, let alone her writing it up. Buy 250 and I being around that price.
Yet we expect them to sale us a single case at that type of margin. I don't blame them for bulking at that some business is just not worth doing.  Â
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Yes I am Gelatinous.
www.gelatinousdudes.com
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| Duke of Spoils
greyhaze
Warlord
5804 Posts
| | 09/20/2006 11:30 AM |
| Posted By orcdoubleax on 09/20/2006 10:09 AM
My point was. Don't think they are just ripping you off because they are greedy bastards. The job is a crap one and they make little money. You don't have to buy from them just don't begrudge them for thier pricing.
Well said.
I don't feel personally ripped off by the FLGS or blame them for charging the amount that they do, but I do feel that the internet price is where I am comfortable with spending on this hobby - so, what does that mean? I guess it means I feel that the manufacturers are charging too much for the product.
I don't imagine (and I do mean imagine) that a B&M, if selling at internet prices + shipping, would only sell 1 case. They really should starting getting better volume as people move away from shopping online. | |
Greyhaze's DDM Spoilers
Champion of a Medium Dog & then a Darkenbeast , Raistlin Majere, Nightmare WDQ25/60, Warduke WD60/60,
Anti-Champion of Guns, "Knight of Bugbears", and Joke Champion of Venger.
Called Shots: Frost Giant in Demon Web, Darkenbeast in Feywild. | |
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Gunthar
Commander
2938 Posts
| | 09/20/2006 12:23 PM |
| Posted By Jade Phoenix on 09/19/2006 9:29 PM Posted By greyhaze on 09/19/2006 8:11 AM
(I posted this at hordelings and wanted to spread the msg here)
I have a really simple question in regards to the FLGS.
If FLGS sold at the price the internet shops did (plus a little extra for the difference in shipping), would they be in as bad of shape as they are now?
Sure they would make less per booster, maybe $2 instead of $10, but wouldn't they be moving product like lightning?
Maybe the problem isn't Hasbro's MSRP or online shops at all, maybe it's the PERCIEVED percentage that B&M shops are expecting to get from each booster/case.
2cents.
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! You hit the nail on the head.
B&M’s have to become competitive. They have to get off their collective butts, roll up their sleeves and get dirty. Find out what your products are selling for online and adjust accordingly. The Internet was nothing back when we opened our store but there was an established chain of stores in town. We adapted. 20% discount across the board. They MUST adapt or fail. A 30% profit is far better than someone else making the sale.
  Adapt.
Try again. B&M stores are limited in their market by geography, internet shippers are not. You're short-sighted look at this is interesting, but simply flawed. The best of both worlds is a B&M Store that also does internet sales, but that's also a bit of a red herring. Why? Business basics:
B&M Store needs: Good location ($$$), friendly, knowing staff, display product (loss)Â ($), gaming space ($$$ in non-product-holding prime space)
Now, make them a moderately large internet seller too. They need either A: more storage space in that prime location, or B: a secondary location ($$$). In the former, you're overhead is much higher than internet-only sellers (a major loss of competitive ability) and the latter you are running essentially two businesses, not one.
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Champion of Prit(Wemic vindication is here)
Minneapolis/St. Paul area
Completed trades: Aspect of Cheese (Love that moniker), Tickparasite, Elderthing, Lalato, Sodj, Grimoire, SmilinIrish, Zeb, RWarehall,Link, wikkawikkawa, Auramancer, Rommers, HK, Ivid5,Qillan_dvra, Puggins, Arcabius, Ironfist Boulderbender, Robby, Corim Danex, monster_slayer, DNDJUNKIE, Kelemvor, Krush, ckissee, Massawyrm, hockey fan, Wish, Uninspiring Lieutenant, vtloon x2, Vrecknidj, Darthpoke, WakeXX, AnarionZell, lycusmike, papabear5 and umpteen local trades with board members
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| Duke of Spoils
greyhaze
Warlord
5804 Posts
| | 09/20/2006 2:14 PM |
| | Essentially, yes, the store would have 2 businesses, just like chapters/indigo. The problem is getting that balance where one compliments the other. That's a specific business model. | |
Greyhaze's DDM Spoilers
Champion of a Medium Dog & then a Darkenbeast , Raistlin Majere, Nightmare WDQ25/60, Warduke WD60/60,
Anti-Champion of Guns, "Knight of Bugbears", and Joke Champion of Venger.
Called Shots: Frost Giant in Demon Web, Darkenbeast in Feywild. | |
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Slartibart
Skirmisher
36 Posts
| | 09/21/2006 1:04 PM |
| I don't really agree with the uproar that is occurring in this thread. As long as DDM is a good product there will be an online market for singles, and the people that do the best job of pricing and selling singles will make money; if their cost goes up, they raise their prices and pass the expence on us. As long as WotC/Hasbro does not discriminate in their practice it is still a level playing field. Amazon and the other huge retailers aren't going into the singles business. Sure we might have to pay an extra $1 a mini, but such is inflation and supply and demand.
The one area this does impact is online case sales, and even here I have little sympathy for the online distributors that are selling stuff at near cost. Sure it will cost us all a little more money to order stuff through Amazon or another big retail site, but maybe then people will actually start buying cases through their FLGS, which could use their support.
My last poiint is just an expression of disbelief at all the people complaining about the upcoming price increase. Plastic is a petrochemical product, and the recent increase in the price of oil must have driven up production costs, not to mention the transport costs. DDM must be a profitable line in order for it to stay in production, and when costs go up prices must reflect that. Yes it sucks that it is goiing to cost us all more to finish our sets, but it is much better than no minis at all.
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Champion of the Gnome Hook Hammer
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| The Great
Choco Monster
Ghendar
Warlord
11197 Posts
The Dark and Forbidding Lands of The Necromancer.
| | 09/21/2006 1:21 PM |
| Posted By Slartibart on 09/21/2006 1:04 PM
My
last poiint is just an expression of disbelief at all the people
complaining about the upcoming price increase. Plastic is a
petrochemical product, and the recent increase in the price of oil must
have driven up production costs, not to mention the transport costs.
DDM must be a profitable line in order for it to stay in production,
and when costs go up prices must reflect that. Yes it sucks that it is
goiing to cost us all more to finish our sets, but it is much better
than no minis at all.
All I can really say to this is you
can't expect people to just roll over and accept a price increase
without some complaints. No one likes a price increase. Was it
inevitable? Yes, but no one likes it and you better believe it people
are going to complain.
It won't do any good but folks need to vent sometimes.
By the way, the price increase is coming earlier than WotC originally
said it would. At first they were telling us that it wouldn't come
until the set after Blood War. That also is contributing to the anger.
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Ghendar - Bringin' the snark!
Champion of the Spider Eater with rider.
I actually love to be swallowed. - Posted By gss_000 on 09/04/2007 2:32 PM
How many times in life do you get to eat your own Cthulhu? - Posted By Pedro on 03/31/2008 2:29 | |
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MaesterAemon
Skirmisher
6 Posts
| | 09/21/2006 8:28 PM |
| Plastic is a petrochemical product, and the recent increase in the price of oil must have driven up production costs, not to mention the transport costs.
So now that the price of oil is dropping we should expect a price decrease, eh?
Wizards should know better than to dissemble with PR. That might work for a less intelligent demographic, but not here.
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sage_raistlin
Sergeant
377 Posts
| | 09/21/2006 8:57 PM |
| | You know the more I though about this, I wonder if there overall sales of boosters has drop due to less people buying booster and more just buying singles on-line. I'm sure there is some formula they go by with the booster set up with the commons/uncommons/rare in mind and how many the adverage person is going to buy. Maybe people like Auggies is throwing a monkey/money wrench in the works. | |
Hello Boys, I'm Back
Vindicated Champion of the Bat
(not pretty, but it still counts) | |
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zoroaster100
Sergeant
873 Posts
| | 09/22/2006 4:09 AM |
| Although I sympathize with Auggies, because I am a loyal customer and he has acted professionally and admirably in the transactions I've had with his store, the focus of my anger towards WOTC is frankly more about how it would impact me. I feel like they are going overboard in trying to squeeze me into paying the ridiculous "suggested retail price" which frankly has grown to be ridiculous for pieces of plastic. At Auggies prices, I'm still in the market for miniatures. At WOTC suggested retail price, I'm not. Also, I don't buy for a second the suggestion that WOTC's price increase is due to the higher price of oil. Sure, higher oil prices might have cause a cost increase (and corresponding price increase) of a few pennies, but if you look around at other plastic toys made with even higher quantities of plastic and also shipped from China, those have had negligible price increases. I believe the price increase is due primarily to one thing, that WOTC thinks people are willing to pay higher prices. If they are right, then they shall enjoy the benefits of their higher price (though not from me). If they are wrong, the whole hobby will suffer. | |
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Wrackspawn
ChristopherGroves
Warlord
6093 Posts
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Chris Orlando
Warrior
187 Posts
| | 09/22/2006 6:48 AM |
| Auggie I'm really sorry to hear that. I was friends with a B&M store owner and they hated that i bought my miniatures though online means (Even though i did somtimes buy cases for $125 from the store owner to help them out when i could get them for under $100). The store owner would always complain but then again he wouldn't pay his employee's, he'd just give them 10% of whatever they sold in store credit to buy what they like (which I amd sure is Illeagal).Â
Anways if you get a chance to read this I hope you find this helpfull. As of right now I would define the D&D market as an open market in which anyone could freely enter and exit the market. What wizards is doing is trying to help the B&M stores by creating a Monopoly for those stores. I'm sure you are aware of what a monopoly does but incase you dont I'll explain (I belive this could really help your argument for why they shouldn't cut you out from your distributer (I almost double majored in Economics)). A monopoly will give the B&M stores all the power to do whatever they want with the prices of the miniatures and if you look at the Average Variable Costs, Average Total Costs and Marginal Cost curves and see what happens (which there is a dead loss). This dead loss is a shaded black regon where a bunch of people enter the market at the set prices. These people are going to no longer enter the market because the prices are set to high, and there isn't a free market to work around those prices.Â
Example if I where to go to a local gameing store they retail an average booster for $12.99 and an online distributer will probelly have them for somewhere around $8.00 if you get a case. There are a large percentage of people who would be willing to pay the $8.00 price but not that $12.99 price. So then those people exit the market because they dont feel they get enough utility (econ term for satisfaction) to justify the $13.00 per booster price.Â
I do notice how you did touch on this a bit by discussing that your gona have to reduce your store size because you wont have enough revnue for the larger size store, but this may help a bit and if anyone else out there allready talked about this, sorry for stealing your idea because i was to lazy to read through the 7 pages of posts.
The other hurtful thing i heard was that Wizards was increasing their sugested price to $15.00 per booster (which i think is rediculous). Well anyways andrew if theres anything else i can do feel free to shoot me a e-mail at leftbehind4123@yahoo.com.Â
http://www.cooleconomics.com/prin-gen/prin-monopoly.pdf#search='Economics%20Monopoly%20graph'
Talks about a monopoly. | |
Zardnaar, One dork to rule them all. | |
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Chris Orlando
Warrior
187 Posts
| | 09/22/2006 7:11 AM |
| Oh yea Andrew one more HUGE POINT RELATED TO ECONOMICS. People buy DDM for Utility (pleasure or enjoyment). Everyone has to get Utility somewhere. Don't you think when when DDM cuts you off and increases their prices in 1 big swoop it will hurt them. What I'm getting at is the substitution effect. At $15 a booster which is sagnificantly more then what we where paying before elsewhere. Where do you ask? Wii (new nintendo system) is coming out November 19 of 2006. For only $250 and $50 per game you could get the Wii + a game for the price a a mear 20 boosters (jsut a little more than a case and a half). Not only that PS 3 is comming out in january.
In conclusion the substitution effect will cause people to leave DDM and go to Wii or PS3 becasue the cost to collect is just to high. | |
Zardnaar, One dork to rule them all. | |
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transplant
Skirmisher
1 Posts
| | 09/22/2006 8:23 AM |
| I guess I'll add what I know to this.
First, WotC only allowing B&M stores to buy product from distributors (and direct) at a discount is not a new policy. This has been their policy for years.
While it's sad that Auggie's got hit by this, his distributor is probably the most to blame here. The distributors are well aware of Wizards policy, and a multi-thousand dollar pre-order should have definitely set off some red flags somewhere. It looks to me like the distributor overlooked the B&M issue in order to make massive sales to Auggies. However, WotC probably noticed the trend of this distributor making massive preorders (and other orders in general, I'm sure) and investigated it, only to find out that it was being sent to an "internet store."
Yes, it certainly sucks that Auggie's does not qualify as a B&M store. It sounds like they have a ton of play space and a loyal customer base. But WotC policy (This is second-hand knowledge, but I believe it is correct) is that internet sales cannot account for more WotC product sales than the B&M portion of the store. Because of that policy, even if Auggie's had an "official" B&M store front, I still doubt it would adhere to the 50% policy.
Again, I'm sorry this happened to Auggie's. It sounds like he had a good service. However, the rules have been in place for a while, and somebody in the chain knew they were being broken but failed to do anything about it.
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GiliusThunderHead
Sneak
98 Posts
| | 09/22/2006 11:05 AM |
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Hi All,
Question, where is Auggies flea market store located?
Thanks,
GiliusThunderHead | |
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zoroaster100
Sergeant
873 Posts
| | 09/23/2006 7:01 AM |
| | If in fact this WOTC policy is an old policy, that does not make me any less angry at it in the least. O.k., so they had an absurd policy that is hurtful to their customers and forces prices higher in the secondary market by restricting competition. But either on purpose on indadvertently they had failed to enforce it strictly, allowing various internet sellers to sell at fair prices. As long as I could still buy minis at fair prices through places like Auggies, that bad policy didn't affect me. Now it does, and now I have become aware of it, and now I call on WOTC to change it. If enough customers do so, perhaps they will. | |
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| The Great
Choco Monster
Ghendar
Warlord
11197 Posts
The Dark and Forbidding Lands of The Necromancer.
| | 09/23/2006 1:37 PM |
| Okay folks. It seems we have squeezed just about all the juice out of
this particular turnip. It generated quite a bit of good discussion but
it's done now.
I am locking it. Thank you all for the discussion.
If anyone believes it was locked prematurally please email me.
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Ghendar - Bringin' the snark!
Champion of the Spider Eater with rider.
I actually love to be swallowed. - Posted By gss_000 on 09/04/2007 2:32 PM
How many times in life do you get to eat your own Cthulhu? - Posted By Pedro on 03/31/2008 2:29 | |
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dj-chuckles
Underboss
2454 Posts
The State that invented Spam!
| | 09/23/2006 9:00 PM |
| I was the person who thought this thread should've been locked in the first place due to tons of negativity towards WotC when most well informed people knew the policy was in place and just overlooked.
If people have negative comments please direct them towards me and not Ghendar | |
Posted By WakeXX on 09/25/2006 4:49 AM OMG DJ!This has to be the spammiest spam thread ever! 
Member of Team Game-Rocket.netScry into Blood War | My Trade Thread | My Reference Thread| Vindicated Champion of the Dragon Rider & Dracolich | New Champion of Cadderly | | |
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