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Duncan_Idaho wrote:Sorry, but anyone in the business believing that BF asking shops to only use the account that befits their kind of shop is illegal should rather quickly close down shop since he will quite soon have other institutions breathing down his neck because of his strange understanding of business.

Excuse me? Maelstrom has a brick and mortar store and also webstore... and since you are flipping the illegal remark you should rather look at BF attempts to fix prices all over the board... some countries allow this but not in EU and UK. Yet BF shows muscle to the small stores and they close their eyes to this... Glad someone just got the nerve to make this public.

As for the Discounts in chrismas from ROB ( maelstrom owner) on TGN

"What you’re missing is that Point 1 proves that we did not state “Flames of War products were not included from the voucher run”, i.e., the voucher code was applicable to FoW products and thus we were not deceiving anyone.

We always list which items are not included in our voucher runs. If it’s not listed, the voucher code applies to those items.

"

Point 1 was on PDF

"Point 1:
BF- I am dissapointed to see that once again you have included Battlefront on your January discount voucher scheme. Writing that
it doesn’t include it on the voucher, yet allowing it through your webstore is lip service at best.

MAEL- This is entirely untrue, as a view of our voucher e-mail can attest to"

Hope its more clear to you Duncan_Idaho As you say " Frag! Some people her just want to read into it what pleases them.... "

As a finish sentence Companies like BF that seem to be bullying the stores into accepting the non x discounts policies should be dropped in all EU by all EU distributors... well but we know people close their eyes in order to gain some desirable product. MAEL didnt closed their eyes to their RIGHTS and BF closed their accounts... This is what I see from the prespective Maelstrom provided to us.

Folks, please read the thread in full, I don`t want to repeat the stuff if written in earlier posts in every post again....

@vouchers
there were many more vouchers since summer that when used on the voucher slot gave you a discount on FoW-stuff. As it looks and as they admit there was a time they did FoW-exclude from vouchers.

@Navarro
A company can ask you to not sell below a certain price depending on your business and there are volumes of legal decissions by court in the universities of nearly every european country to proove this. Heck we even had a guy here being banned buy court from buying stuff as he undercut everyone though he had signed a contract with the company in question to not go below a certain price. The court ruled that if it is to protect all other shops and makes sure that not one big seller floors every competition in the market it is a good thing. It would have been illegal if the company selling the stuff would have been sold cheaper by the company itself and they would have asked the shops not going below this price.

BF is only asking shops to choose the package that fits their main line of business best and every shop has agreed to do this (I do have the according documents here on my desk). It only says that as a B&M shop you get a better discount than a online shop, cause the recognize that B&M shops have higher costs due to the shop.

In the end it all depends on whether MG used the B&M discount and sold it via their online shop. If they did this it is a clear breaking of contract and them stating that they ignored it because they thaught it illegal makes the matter only worse for them. Every lawyer would groan hearing his client saying such a thing. Thats one of the first things you learn not to do wen instructed by a good lawyer.

MG might be a good thing for countries with no shops, but in other countries with a healthy shop-landscape even shop-chains were no longer able to compete with the prizes offered by MG. BF did e.g lower prices in Germany and rising them in the UK so there are only a few cent between the SRP in both countries. And MG should not have been able to go below a certain price without loosing money if they would have used the online-discount for shops. Either they want to kill competition by loosing money from some time or they are using the B-M discount, which would them ensure quite some profit. I would rather say the second one is closer to the truth. I would say thet even now with the 25% voucher they are making quite a profit.

Navarro, I am working in this business for quite some time and I know a lot of what is going on behind the curtains and I have seen quite a company pulling similar stunts. MG is not the first and will not be the last to do such a thing. There is a slim chance that they are innocent, but nearly everything points in a different direction and after many years in the business you develop a sixth sense for such things that seldom is wrong.

Duncan_Idaho wrote:Navarro, I am working in this business for quite some time and I know a lot of what is going on behind the curtains and I have seen quite a company pulling similar stunts. MG is not the first and will not be the last to do such a thing. There is a slim chance that they are innocent, but nearly everything points in a different direction and after many years in the business you develop a sixth sense for such things that seldom is wrong.

Duncan pardon my humour but your sixth sense was not very sharp about Rackham ehehehe

Silly jokes aside I respect your opinion and understand what you are saying I do share your idea that theres more stuff behind the curtains... We just heard one side of this history so far so we need to hear the other partie involved to make a more accurate guess of whats happening here. ( lets see if they are so upfront as Mael was on this)

From the prespective layed out by Mael alone I get the vibes things got way to personall at some point... From my limited scope of EU trade laws I dont know if any contract of any sort that hints to some kind of price fixing is considered valid on EU soil... you cant consider a contract valid if the clauses there go against the general laws of your territory... or Im I wrong?
But we have lawyers on board and I bet they will help us understanding these matters a bit better.

"BF is only asking shops to choose the package that fits their main line of business best and every shop has agreed to do this (I do have the according documents here on my desk). It only says that as a B&M shop you get a better discount than a online shop, cause the recognize that B&M shops have higher costs due to the shop. "

No mention to X limit on discounts? Can a shop sell stuff the price they want to ( as long its not bellow the price they bought the goods)?

Mind we do not know if Mael has the same docs/ agrements taht you have on your table... Being the biggest EU retail may somehow constitute a reason to have diferent agreements...

I'm not so sure I understand. If market forces are allowing Maelstrom to sell at a low price and still make profit (I'd say economy of scale, since their profit must be minimal), then isn't that the most efficient market? Price floors lead to excess in supply, and a good deal of dead weight loss. There's little risk of a Maelstrom monopoly since they're one of many discount retailers as well as the manufacturer. Even in an oligopoly their only power lies in restricting supply and raising prices, which is against the entire point of this debate.

Are you saying it's killing FLGSs? Because FLGSs find other forms of revenue (Magic the Gathering, usually) or they fail. Just like any business.

The issue is not about the discounts MG gave (There are enough shops out there that have similar discounts and they are living in peace with BF).

It is about the discounts MG got as a shop. They were using a discount intended for B&M for online trading. In the end this allows them to grow faster than every other online retailer that follows the contract. Competition between shops is good, but this got beyond a point where all have equal chances to compete.

And since MG is stating that they are more or less the biggest shop for FoW worldwide I have to wonder how much of their FoW-trading was done over the B&M shop and how much online.

From what they told us over the course of the last few years their online shop outpaces the B&M shop in sales by far. So they should have either used seperate accounts with seperate rates for both branches of their business or applied the one for online retailers to all of their business. They choose to do neither but use the one for B&M for all their business as they state in the PDF.

@Foxtale
If it were only market forces there would be not much of a problem, but as it looks MG used to start the race with a starting block some yards in front of the others by using a dealers discount that was intended for shops with store costs for online business.
Don't you wonder that no other shop is complainig right now about BF breathing down their neck?

Mr. Burning wrote:

Neither do I its great to save £££, i dont care either. I was just putting the thought out there that discounters are not our shining saviours.

Nor are they the evil that GW or battlefront or you makes them out to be, a detriment to the hobby.

Duncan_Idaho wrote:The issue is not about the discounts MG gave (There are enough shops out there that have similar discounts and they are living in peace with BF).

I know you said it was not about the discounts yet Im curious to know if theres a mention to that on your papers?

Well, they still can hurt the hobby. We have mega-shops like Media Markt or Saturn that really hurt the electronics market. It is recovering right now, but still far from healthy and once they floored most of the competition they raised prices, even advertising the SRP as a reduced price. Oh, and bacause of their financial situation it is easy for them to sue others and push them out of the market just by sueing them even without a good reason, just because tehy have the money to sue them over and over again until the smaller shop can`t afford it.

MG is right now in a position where they can turn into such a company and them using an unfair adavantage while everyone else is playing by the rules does not bode well.

The situation with Battlefront and Maelstrom is is really quite sad. Battlefront's letters were unprofessional to say the least. Maelstrom does not seem to be honouring its agreement with Battlefront, whether it be by selling on too great a discount or by buying at the brick and mortar rate and selling tons of stuff online. Obviously both companies are hurt by this situation.

Wehrkind wrote:
On the other hand, discounters are surely helping the consumer and helping themselves, by offering lower prices to us and getting more business for themselves as a reward. That's the whole point of trade. I help them, they help me, and we don't need to care too much about each other otherwise. We don't need them to have high and noble motives; just wanting our business is motive enough

I think that discounters really do hurt consumers. Here is a small example that ties into the GW makers of the famous Space Marines thread and the Galaxy Gobbo thread. Galaxy Gobbo discounted the StormRaven. So lots of people buy StormRavens. Suddenly, shops are full of Space Marine players with StormRavens. The lack of variety that this produces is not fun. But it gets worse. GW says, hey look Space Marines sell well, lets make more Marines. This results in even less variety.

Discounters hurt consumers on other levels as well. The quest for cheaper and cheaper merchandise has forced manufacturers to move their production facilities overseas. This results in fewer locals jobs. Thus the consumer may find himself without a job.

I think that you and I just have different points of view on economics. You take a capitalist approach and I take a more socialist one.

On the other hand MG wants to show itself in the best light possible, so we do not know what happened before those published excerpts.

spaceelf wrote:I think that discounters really do hurt consumers. Here is a small example that ties into the GW makers of the famous Space Marines thread and the Galaxy Gobbo thread. Galaxy Gobbo discounted the StormRaven. So lots of people buy StormRavens. Suddenly, shops are full of Space Marine players with StormRavens. The lack of variety that this produces is not fun. But it gets worse. GW says, hey look Space Marines sell well, lets make more Marines. This results in even less variety.

That is not a result of online discounters, it's completely unrelated.

Duncan_Idaho wrote:).

It is about the discounts MG got as a shop. They were using a discount intended for B&M for online trading. In the end this allows them to grow faster than every other online retailer that follows the contract. Competition between shops is good, but this got beyond a point where all have equal chances to compete.

And since MG is stating that they are more or less the biggest shop for FoW worldwide I have to wonder how much of their FoW-trading was done over the B&M shop and how much online.

From what they told us over the course of the last few years their online shop outpaces the B&M shop in sales by far. So they should have either used seperate accounts with seperate rates for both branches of their business or applied the one for online retailers to all of their business. They choose to do neither but use the one for B&M for all their business as they state in the PDF.
?

I fail to see the distinction. MG has a B&M operation, a very large one that does an excellent job of promoting the hobby as a whole. Ironically, the strength of their online business is what gives them the luxury of such a good B&M offering to compliment it. As Rob said, their model is open for all to see and emulate, but they choose not to. B&Ms have a very small catchment area in terms of prospective customers as it is a niche hobby and only by going online can they hope to enlarge that area and capture more sales. Before we had the internet, it was mail order. It is simply easier and quicker but the fundamentals are the same, the customer need never step into the store and the net margin improves as you lower the ratio between fixed and variable costs by selling to more in the same space. What BF is doing is in effect punishing MG for being a successful and innovative business that has helped them grow in the last several years.

stupid stupid stupid

Duncan_Idaho wrote:Well, they still can hurt the hobby. We have mega-shops like Media Markt or Saturn that really hurt the electronics market. It is recovering right now, but still far from healthy and once they floored most of the competition they raised prices, even advertising the SRP as a reduced price. Oh, and bacause of their financial situation it is easy for them to sue others and push them out of the market just by sueing them even without a good reason, just because tehy have the money to sue them over and over again until the smaller shop can`t afford it.

MG is right now in a position where they can turn into such a company and them using an unfair adavantage while everyone else is playing by the rules does not bode well.

Thats making a lot of assumptions... besides Mael is in this position for some years now, what keept them from behaving like those shaddy examples you provided?
Something tells me your prespective/opinion is not as neutral as it should be

I said they can turn into such a company, not that they already have done it.

@TPS
Well others did choose to do it not since this would have been a vialotion of the contract they have signed. So you are telling me that MG should go unpunished for breaking a contract and that this is a clever way of doing business?

Duncan_Idaho wrote:I said they can turn into such a company, not that they already have done it.

@TPS
Well others did choose to do it not since this would have been a vialotion of the contract they have signed. So you are telling me that MG should go unpunished for breaking a contract and that this is a clever way of doing business?

You seem to have all the facts on your desk, unfortunatly I dont have the contract and agreements of BF With Mael on my table and I cannot say even if they respect the EU general trade laws...

Yes you said Maels was NOW in a position to behave like those shaddy entreprises... all I told you was - why do you assume that they will do those negative things since they have been in that position for some years now and done nothing?...

I'm inclined and opened to diferent prespectives of what happened since we only got Mael communication so far... but you seem to have all the facts and your mind already made up against them and talk about punishment... odd mate really odd.

Duncan_Idaho wrote:The issue is not about the discounts MG gave (There are enough shops out there that have similar discounts and they are living in peace with BF).

It is about the discounts MG got as a shop. They were using a discount intended for B&M for online trading. In the end this allows them to grow faster than every other online retailer that follows the contract. Competition between shops is good, but this got beyond a point where all have equal chances to compete.

Yes the issue is MRP and the contractual arrangements regarding it. However, BF's positon is inconsistent. I KNOW of several other shops that HAVE and DO sell BF for less than a 10% discount...in som cases as great as 40% off (because I have bought product from them during these sales). They do not do it consistenly, but as 'special' sales each year...which is similar/same as Mael. And these shops have both B&M and an online presence (one is maybe the largest in the US).

So why is BF coming down on Mael. for doing the exact same thing?

spaceelf wrote:

Wehrkind wrote:
On the other hand, discounters are surely helping the consumer and helping themselves, by offering lower prices to us and getting more business for themselves as a reward. That's the whole point of trade. I help them, they help me, and we don't need to care too much about each other otherwise. We don't need them to have high and noble motives; just wanting our business is motive enough

I think that discounters really do hurt consumers. Here is a small example that ties into the GW makers of the famous Space Marines thread and the Galaxy Gobbo thread. Galaxy Gobbo discounted the StormRaven. So lots of people buy StormRavens. Suddenly, shops are full of Space Marine players with StormRavens. The lack of variety that this produces is not fun. But it gets worse. GW says, hey look Space Marines sell well, lets make more Marines. This results in even less variety.

Discounters hurt consumers on other levels as well. The quest for cheaper and cheaper merchandise has forced manufacturers to move their production facilities overseas. This results in fewer locals jobs. Thus the consumer may find himself without a job.

I think that you and I just have different points of view on economics. You take a capitalist approach and I take a more socialist one.

So, let me get this straight.

1: A lot of Storm Ravens are sold to people who want them for a lower price than they could otherwise get.
2: Therefor there are more space marine players (unstated assumption: lots of people who bought stormravens were not already SM players.) (unstated assumption: the storm raven is somehow cool enough that is prompts people who either do not play or play another army to play space marines.)
3: Unstated assumption: There are not just more players, but also a much larger % of SM.
4: GW sees such a spike in SM demand as a result makes more SM (unstated assumption: people don't actually want more SM, despite their buying patterns)

Let me restate this:

1:You are worried that people will buy more of what they want and think is cool.
2: Even though this will enlarge the total pool of players, this is bad because they are playing armies that you don't think are cool.

And I do somewhat agree with you, you are approaching things from a socialist approach, which is to say that any outcome that you disagree with should be stopped.

I think people should be allowed to purchase and sell as they see fit. You think people should not be allowed to sell storm ravens at a discount lest they upset the delicate balance of Space Marine to other armies that you think is best.

I find your (eventual) honesty refreshing!

spaceelf wrote:
I think that discounters really do hurt consumers.
Discounters hurt consumers on other levels as well. The quest for cheaper and cheaper merchandise has forced manufacturers to move their production facilities overseas. This results in fewer locals jobs. Thus the consumer may find himself without a job.
I think that you and I just have different points of view on economics. You take a capitalist approach and I take a more socialist one.

Humm...you do realize that discounters have enabled the lower classes to afford better things and dramatically increase their standand of living? Discounters hurt the elite not the populus as they encourage competition and prevent inequatible advantages. You are arguing that the railroad barons and dictators should be kept empowered. Discounting is not dumping.

There is a difference between a discounter and walmart. A discounter does not force production facilities overseas. A discounter sells an item purchased directly from the manufacturer (sometimes a wholesaler, although this is rare) at less than the list price.

Walmart on the other hand, TELLS the manufacturer what it will pay per unit, and what it will sell the item for. If the manufacturer wants to sell its product through walmart, it has to agree to walmarts terms, which usually means relocating to an area w/ cheaper labor, etc. so that it can retain a profit margin.

chaos0xomega wrote:There is a difference between a discounter and walmart. A discounter does not force production facilities overseas. A discounter sells an item purchased directly from the manufacturer (sometimes a wholesaler, although this is rare) at less than the list price.

Walmart on the other hand, TELLS the manufacturer what it will pay per unit, and what it will sell the item for. If the manufacturer wants to sell its product through walmart, it has to agree to walmarts terms, which usually means relocating to an area w/ cheaper labor, etc. so that it can retain a profit margin.

So... what's the problem? People get more stuff at lower prices, and if they don't like Wal Mart they can always shop somewhere else, like Target, or the mall or where ever.

Also you must realize that no one gets to set prices in a vacuum. (GW and BF would do well to remember this as well.) Everyone tells the stores they buy from what they will pay per unit, in so far is if the price is higher they won't pay it. Likewise every shop tells you what they will sell the product for, albeit more explicitly since they are trying to get you to buy from them and customers generally are not interested in shopping around and endlessly negotiating.

And for those of you born after 1990, off shoring has been popular for a long time. Comparative advantage is one of those eternal things. It was Hong Kong when I was young, then China and Mexico, now Malaysia and Indonesia etc. Ever since transportation started getting cheap there has always been someone in the world with nothing better to do than make t-shirts for 50 cents a day or whatnot. Wal Mart is no more to blame than the US School system, which, despite itself, has managed ensure that most Americans have better things to do than make T-shirts.

Yes the issue is MRP and the contractual arrangements regarding it. However, BF's positon is inconsistent. I KNOW of several other shops that HAVE and DO sell BF for less than a 10% discount...in som cases as great as 40% off (because I have bought product from them during these sales). They do not do it consistenly, but as 'special' sales each year...which is similar/same as Mael. And these shops have both B&M and an online presence (one is maybe the largest in the US).

So why is BF coming down on Mael. for doing the exact same thing?

One last time: This is not about the discount MG gives YOU. It is about the price MG pays when ordering stuff from BF.

For simplicity sake (real numbers are slightly different) let`s assume B&M shops get products at 40% from the SRP and online shops get products at 30% from the SRP. Let`s say the 10% are what the shop cost the B&M shop. If everybody plays by the rules all should be happy since the shop the offers the best service wins over the costumer. As it looks MG bought stuff for their B&M shop but sold them via the online store. In the end they have a 10% head-start in comparison to ALL other shops. Them being already the biggest fish in the pond this is an uphill battle for everyone else.

Everybody else was happy with the 30% but MG decided that they need not care for the rules of the pond and BF had to show them their place. It was probably this kind of decision they had to make: Do we keep MG in the pond and get quite some revenue but loose substantial revenue from everybody else or do we keep everybody else in the pond and kick MG out.

@Navarro
Well, Saturn and Media Markt were nice big shops in the past until they decided not to play by the rules everybody else was respecting. And MG seems to be heading down the road with their attitude.

Meh, anyway, who else took advantage of the clearance sale? I dropped about 150 bucks (after a 55 dollar savings) on a brand spanking new FJ army!

I find it interesting that when GW did this years and years ago, limiting online retailers to 20% discounts, that everyone vilified GW, while saying that retailers, both B&M and online should be able to offer whatever discount.

Now we have BF limiting discounts to 10%, and some people vilify the B&M/online store for offering a steeper discount. Odd.

I do know that in both cases, you are beholden to the contract you signed in order to receive said product from the company, and that breaking that is in violation of the contract. No argument there.

And as for Maelstrom being able to get a B&M rate, that's because they are a B&M. Many B&M's do online business as well. So what do you want to do, tier the wholesale price based on how large of an online presence you have?

Instead, you have the great and beneficent GW and now BF looking out for the B&M retailer by limiting those evil online discounters, when they're still getting the same amount of money either way *rolls eyes*

*edited for spelling

For HEAVENS SAKE! This is not BF limiting discounts!

Nearly everyone owning a shop had no problems until now when deciding wich rate to take and as it seem BF neither. Most shops either run two systems for online and B&M or decide for the rate that fits them best depending on which branch brings in the majority of cash.

Why does noone else have a problem with this and is even offering sometimes better discounts (just check Wayland or Empire) than MG and MG out of a sudden not? BF is not going after any other online store or combined store, only after MG.

Did it ever occur to you that BF has better things to do than ruining its reputation? BF is very business-orientated (which is a good thing in a market where most companies drown because the bosses ar way too much hobbyists), why the Frag woud they do something that goes against evrything that is good for business?

Normally there is only one reason: By not acting they would loose way more money/retailers than by acting.

With GW it was a completely different story, them owning competing stores that got way better rates and from time to time were "accidentaly" delievered way earlier with goods than FLGS.


Sidenote: More and more shops in this corner of the world were reducing their FoW-inventory and when asked they nearly always answered: Most people come in, have a look and play on the tables but never buy or even brag at how much it was cheaper buying it from MG. And this is not from a liitle badly run shop but from a big chain with 20-30 shop (each shop offering 300-600 squarefeet of gaming area) that get quite a good revenue from every other line they carry. And if even such chains have problems competing with MG than maybe this tells you how big of a problem this let`s say 10% (they get from using B&M-rates for online sales) advantage hurts the market. BF gets the revenue from MG but looses all the other revenue or kicks MG and has a short slump in sales but in the end has more places that promote FoW.

Duncan_Idaho wrote:

Yes the issue is MRP and the contractual arrangements regarding it. However, BF's positon is inconsistent. I KNOW of several other shops that HAVE and DO sell BF for less than a 10% discount...in som cases as great as 40% off (because I have bought product from them during these sales). They do not do it consistenly, but as 'special' sales each year...which is similar/same as Mael. And these shops have both B&M and an online presence (one is maybe the largest in the US).

So why is BF coming down on Mael. for doing the exact same thing?

One last time: This is not about the discount MG gives YOU. It is about the price MG pays when ordering stuff from BF.

For simplicity sake (real numbers are slightly different) let`s assume B&M shops get products at 40% from the SRP and online shops get products at 30% from the SRP. Let`s say the 10% are what the shop cost the B&M shop. If everybody plays by the rules all should be happy since the shop the offers the best service wins over the costumer. As it looks MG bought stuff for their B&M shop but sold them via the online store. In the end they have a 10% head-start in comparison to ALL other shops. Them being already the biggest fish in the pond this is an uphill battle for everyone else.

Everybody else was happy with the 30% but MG decided that they need not care for the rules of the pond and BF had to show them their place. It was probably this kind of decision they had to make: Do we keep MG in the pond and get quite some revenue but loose substantial revenue from everybody else or do we keep everybody else in the pond and kick MG out.

Duncan. It's all about what we get charged as we are the customer. The MRP sets the ceiling for the price and therefore the baseline for all of the wholesaler tiers. BF can legally differenciate the wholesaler prices (off of MRP) based on levels of service i.e. we can legally charge you a different rate without discrimination because you are incurring 'x' cost that we are not. You act as if BF is in a cost-plus relationship with its retailers. It's not. The issue is what consumers get charged because it would appear that Mael has fufilled its channel requirements and...BF specifically mentions the MRP discounting as the reason for the problem and threatens action regarding it.

I am not sure what you are used to but suppliers here cannot sell the same product at two different prices to the same customer simply based on how the customer plans to use it. That is price discrimination.
The


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chaos0xomega wrote:There is a difference between a discounter and walmart. A discounter does not force production facilities overseas. A discounter sells an item purchased directly from the manufacturer (sometimes a wholesaler, although this is rare) at less than the list price.

Walmart on the other hand, TELLS the manufacturer what it will pay per unit, and what it will sell the item for. If the manufacturer wants to sell its product through walmart, it has to agree to walmarts terms, which usually means relocating to an area w/ cheaper labor, etc. so that it can retain a profit margin.

Have you ever done business with Walmart as another business? Yes they TELL you what they will pay for your product and they TELL you how they got that price - it is the LOWEST price in the marketplace EXCEPT the government...that's their strategy and competitive advantage. They also TELL you that all returns are on you and you have to accept them back at no charge because that's how they treat the customer. They TELL you how much you need to produce and have available for them and its hell if you violate any of those contractual obligations. But they NEVER FORCE you to do business with them. Everyone wants the volume they can offer and then complians because it comes with serious obligations. I have had several clients who have almost gone out busines because they over-estimated their ability to meet that level of demand and customer service level. NO - it does NOT mean outsourcing - it means you need to have a top-notch operation to fufill those orders...some businesses chose to meet that by moving to a lower cost environment, others step up and improve their operations.

There's quite a big problem for manufacturers if their resellers won't order from them because "Seller X sells your products so much cheaper than we can. We just cannot get the stuff out of the door." It hurts the customers & it hurts the manufacturer. That's why there's a "price control" from the manufacturer / distributor side.

Wal-Mart is a whole different beast than Maelstrom. Now I'm not making a living in the USA, but I'd bet that if there's a huge Wal-Mart-ish chain of stores supporting your products you could most liklely afford having your stuff sold exclusively in that chain and not care about the other smaller retailers since the huge chain can get your stuff out of the door easier than anyone else.

Duncan_Idaho wrote:

Yes the issue is MRP and the contractual arrangements regarding it. However, BF's positon is inconsistent. I KNOW of several other shops that HAVE and DO sell BF for less than a 10% discount...in som cases as great as 40% off (because I have bought product from them during these sales). They do not do it consistenly, but as 'special' sales each year...which is similar/same as Mael. And these shops have both B&M and an online presence (one is maybe the largest in the US).

So why is BF coming down on Mael. for doing the exact same thing?

One last time: This is not about the discount MG gives YOU. It is about the price MG pays when ordering stuff from BF.

And that is straight unadulterated bollocks!

BF have been doing business with MG for FIVE YEARS. Do you really believe your man at BF woke up in January and suddenly realized "OMG MG sell things on the internet"

Yeah right!

The whole thing stinks. This is how I read between the lines of BF's letter to MG:

We told you not to discount our stuff and you ignored us so now you can piss off if you think we're going to sell to you at 40% off because you wont do as your told.

BF knew damn well what was going on and turned a blind eye to it because they were raking it in but now they're having a hissy fit because they cant control it.

I was pissed off about this before but now I know BF are actually breaking the law by doing this I'm resolved never to buy from BF again.

Duncan_Idaho wrote:
One last time: This is not about the discount MG gives YOU. It is about the price MG pays when ordering stuff from BF.

For simplicity sake (real numbers are slightly different) let`s assume B&M shops get products at 40% from the SRP and online shops get products at 30% from the SRP. Let`s say the 10% are what the shop cost the B&M shop. If everybody plays by the rules all should be happy since the shop the offers the best service wins over the costumer. As it looks MG bought stuff for their B&M shop but sold them via the online store. In the end they have a 10% head-start in comparison to ALL other shops. Them being already the biggest fish in the pond this is an uphill battle for everyone else.

Battlefront will not sell to a store that is web/online only.

The last time I contacted a distributor for Battlefront, I was informed you MUST have a B&M store to get items from them.

Therefore, your entire arguement is invalid.

Maelstrom is a brick and mortar store as well.

In the end it doesn't matter because.....

Manufacturer sells product for X to dealer/shop/distributor.

Dealer/Shop/Distributor sells product for X + 5.

If a dealer/shop/distributor decides to sell product for X + 2 instead to sell more items.....

No one should care. Least of all the Manufacturer as they already made what they consider 100% of the money they need.

If you sell at X + 5 and can't compete, then you better sell at X + 2 to compete.

It will all level out sooner or later when everyone agrees that X +2 is the best and most competitive price.