Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Nope. 10 copies got sold cheap, and that was it. The idea that Amazon will always be the cheapest seller and match indefinitely is kinda silly, because I am looking at other goods, and that scenario just does not hold.

I think you are focusing too much on Amazon. It's really basic, it's scarcity at work. Stores know there is only demand for X amount of product locally but distributors want to move a larger amount of product. Distributors push stores to order Y amount of product instead by lowering to cost of higher volume orders. Stores are happy to sell X amount of product in store and sell off the remainder online. Since the distributor heavily discounted the cost to move more product the store passes that discount on to consumer online because the store already made a profit from the in store sales. The store is happy to sell off the remaining product online at cost just to free up space. Having every game store dumping extra product online discounted to the wholesale cost floods the market with discounted product and thus weakens demand for buying the product in store at a higher cost. This weakening of demand caused by large amounts of discounted products online causes stores to sell less in store. There demand drops but distributors still have want to push high volumes on the stores but stores can't afford to over order and dump excess product via discounted online sales because everyone else is doing it creating an excess of product and reducing demand for the devalued product. Amazon isn't a cause it's just a symptom created by the stores themselves using Amazon or eBay or their own webstore for clearance sales of products that shouldn't have been ordered in the first place. The ability to clear excess stock online removes moral hazard and incentivized over ordering and the widespread use of the Internet To clear stock will eventually decrease demand to point that people aren't buying enough discounted products l aging stores stuck with it. In short it's not a sustainable business model but it's the business model being incentivized by the current status quo.

In your example, every store sold the 40 local units at MSRP that they would have, except they got them at a better margin. They then got a sliver of extra profit on 10 Internet units that they never would have sold in the first place. That is not a problem at all. Every store maximized their profits.

Given how long this particular product line has been sold, and how many expansion waves it has generated, it seems to be quite successful and extremely sustainable.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
In your example, every store sold the 40 local units at MSRP that they would have, except they got them at a better margin. They then got a sliver of extra profit on 10 Internet units that they never would have sold in the first place. That is not a problem at all. Every store maximized their profits.

This time. What they're saying is that the next product only sells 30 units at MSRP, as the other 10 customers noticed the previous item selling at a deep discount later on, and so chose to wait for that this time around. And so the store winds up selling fewer at MSRP and making less money overall.

As far as I can see, though, that would be a little hard to pin down, if it's actually happening. There's not really any way to be sure if the decreased MSRP sales are actually/i] the result of more people deliberately waiting for the it to be discounted, or are just down to fewer people [i]wanting that next product while it's available at MSRP.

Meh. I buy from my FLGS anyway, and don't even use MM anymore. The only people I feel bad for are those who don't have a FLGS they play at.

 warboss wrote:

rwwin wrote:


And here's a fun though. When FFG found their relationship with Dust Studios no longer to their benefit. What did they do with their stock on hand? I seem to remember them dumping it at 50% to 70% off of MSRP. How many LGS did that protect?

They also did that with AT-43 as well when being the exclusive distributor for that game for several years (just like Dust) didn't work for them any more. They also discount their own in print not discontinued nor cancelled stuff at up to 75% off every year for black friday online no matter what FLGS across north america have in stock. Please note that I'm not complaining about the sales as they allow me to try things that I'd never otherwise try (like variant 40k rpg books instead of just the deathwatch that I was running at the time).

Exactly. Why buy Horus Heresy for nearly 100 bucks from my local games store when FFG sold it for about $35us with shipping two years back during Black Friday. I did not decide to take the plunge, but the irony is sound.

Meh. I buy from my FLGS anyway, and don't even use MM anymore. The only people I feel bad for are those who don't have a FLGS they play at.

*shrug* I own dozens of boardgames and multiple large forces for each of at least a dozen different miniatures games, and a LGS has never helped get me interested in a single one. I found 40K 20 years ago to begin my whole hobby at a Riders Hobby shop, but only on my own because the minis on the racks looked cool to a kid who was already a Star Wars geek, not through any kind of salesman.

Dakka and Boardgamegeek all the way, with my own research and never even one chance to play at a table at a LGS.

I like anything that encourages people to buy from a brick and mortar store, but that's probably because I have great options for doing so. Having the Combat Companies retail outlet essentially on my doorstep is a huge motivator to drop in and buy things, and other FLGS's in the area are pretty rad as well.

However, I can understand why people who live long distances from stores would seek online alternatives, however. Hopefully their 'special considerations' will take this into account and larger online stores that supply large portions of an area will get exemptions.

I don't play @ the LGS much any more (1-2 times in the last year). Usually at home or at a friends home. So, no discount = no buy. No big loss either way. Miniature games don't keep most LGS open, MAGIC does.

Most my Infinity and stuff is from TheCombatCompany which is in New South Wales, and I live in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. Guess Im a parasite!

Adelaide doesnt have tonnes of gaming stores, and the ones it does are far out of my way in more affluent suburbs. The VAST VAST VAST VAST VAST (have I made my point yet?) majority of people play at a handful of gaming clubs, the odd tournament convention, or at home. Not stores. But don't let that get in the way of psuedo-elitism from shopgamers and draconian company policies, afterall this internet shopping thing will go away sooner or later. It's just a fad after all!

 insaniak wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
In your example, every store sold the 40 local units at MSRP that they would have, except they got them at a better margin. They then got a sliver of extra profit on 10 Internet units that they never would have sold in the first place. That is not a problem at all. Every store maximized their profits.

This time. What they're saying is that the next product only sells 30 units at MSRP, as the other 10 customers noticed the previous item selling at a deep discount later on, and so chose to wait for that this time around. And so the store winds up selling fewer at MSRP and making less money overall.

As far as I can see, though, that would be a little hard to pin down, if it's actually happening. There's not really any way to be sure if the decreased MSRP sales are actually/i] the result of more people deliberately waiting for the it to be discounted, or are just down to fewer people [i]wanting that next product while it's available at MSRP.

Again, how long as X-wing been around, and how successful has it been? If there was an Internet impact, sales should have crated already, *before* the new Star Wars movie came out and *crushed* the box office. My expectation is that 2016 will be a banner year for X-wing, which is why FFG just changed up the X-wing starter to feature the new ships from the movie, and that this LGS noise is just just that, noise.

However, if non-store people can't buy X-wing at the prices that they expect, I imagine they'll just walk away from the game, and switch over to the next thing. What will happen is that the casuals will simply buy from Target or Walmart or Barnes & Noble. Or even Toys R Us. No matter how big the pie gets, the stores will get a smaller slice of the pie. Which is just fine. Non-Magic-based gaming stores are one of the worst businesses to be in. Period.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
There's been no official word on any cancellation

(and no hints from the our spinny friend H.M.B.C who writes for them) so I don't think it's happening

(although they don't seem to be releasing a lot for some of them any more and quite a few of the books and supplements were involved in their BF blowout sale so there's always some room for worry)

Edit: although BrookM's pessimism and my optimism may end up in the same place, with the games officially live, but with no new material coming out, so only you can decide if they're games you want to get into on those terms

Thanks for the clarification. I had just always got the impression that it was a fairly small staff within the company responsible for the W40K RPGs and with 2 new books for Dark Heresy ][ that were announced in October, figured that was their workload for the last quarter.

 blackdiamond wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Nope. 10 copies got sold cheap, and that was it. The idea that Amazon will always be the cheapest seller and match indefinitely is kinda silly, because I am looking at other goods, and that scenario just does not hold.

Well, I've done this every day for the last 11 years, selling 20,000 board games a year. I wanted to attempt to explain the nuances of this, but I guess there are limits.

There are; we're not credulous enough to believe that the effects of a common Big Box retailer practice(loss leaders to drive sales in other items/generate habitual repeat customers) is actually all secretly because Joey Blogs with his wee game store in Bumfeth Nowhere, Idaho dropped a few boxes of excess stock on the Amazon Marketplace or Ebay near-cost to clear his shelves.

Also, haud on a wee minute there; your assertion is that FLGSs do this, clearing stock online dirt cheap, because the companies making the games offer them incentives to buy more stock than they actually need. Ehhh, but that means the problem that Asmodee/FFG are "solving" by banning online FLGS sales is one they created and which could be solved much more easily and with little to no impact on consumers by simply no longer offering such incentives.

Naw mate, either you're arguing this hard because you don't want to believe how hard you're about to get shafted, or because you think you're going to be one of the special snowflakes who gets an exception and so this policy will give you an advantage over your competition.

Sigh.... what´s really lacking in this thread is a basic understanding of sound business-practices. On the other end we have too much generalization....

 Yodhrin wrote:
Ehhh, but that means the problem that Asmodee/FFG are "solving" by banning online FLGS sales is one they created and which could be solved much more easily and with little to no impact on consumers by simply no longer offering such incentives.

Ayep. Forecasting retail sales is tricky, but, if Asmodee thinks the market can sustain x units of a game, they can't expect to sell 2x to distributors without a drop in market price.

Who remembers Fallen Empires???

Wouldn't the problem of super discounters be solved if they just rolled back some of the ridiculous discount tiers from the distributor? Like if they picked the tier most LGSs took advantage of and got rid of anything better.

This assumes that there is a 'ridiculous discount tier' and retailers are taking advantage of it and that is the cause of the whole problem.

It's equally possible that Asmodee just want to do what GW did and gather most online sales to their own website where they will make the most profit.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It's equally possible that Asmodee just want to do what GW did and gather most online sales to their own website where they will make the most profit.

You think?

Did anybody compare the GW and Asmodee terms & conditions?

I can'ty buy local to me as there is no LGS so I buy online. If I can't buy below MSRP then my X-Wing impulse buys will be reduced to £0. I will then only buy things that I need for competitive play which means once I've found a squadron I'm successful with I'll stick with that as my fun squadron impulse buys will be no more.

This is all a moot point of course as I'm in the UK and doesn't effect us......yet.....

 Duncan_Idaho wrote:
Sigh.... what´s really lacking in this thread is a basic understanding of sound business-practices. On the other end we have too much generalization....

Then explain it, rather than being passive aggressive about it.

Hmmm. It's taking him a while, probably drawing a supply/demand diagram to better explain it. 8)

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Duncan_Idaho wrote:
Sigh.... what´s really lacking in this thread is a basic understanding of sound business-practices. On the other end we have too much generalization....

Then explain it, rather than being passive aggressive about it.

You're talking about Duncan, right? It's his MO to put on superior airs that he knows the gaming business (and all business) inside and out unlike the great unwashed here. After all, what would any of the rest of us know about any of those things? After all, he's a translator. What have you ever done in the gaming industry?


Oh and for those extolling the virtues of B&M stores over online since B&M provides a place to play, teach new gamers, etc. Here's my closest store that sells FFG.



Oh yeah, that's 3/4 of the store in that shot. There's another walk-row behind the shelves on the left, and then the wall. And yeah, I do buy stuff there occasionally. Basically impulse stuff I don't particularly need. Anyone wanting to claim that they do more for "the hobby" than online stores is sadly mistaken. The only thing they have in their favour is that I can take it home right now (in exchange for a premium price.) I don't have anything against them. They're a shop - they sell stuff. They also sell grey some import video games, since they're often cheaper than sourcing local stock.




There are two stores that have gaming - one a further away, a pain in the arse to get to and is run by a passive-agressive douchebag, and one in the CBD run by the poor stereotype of surly and disinterested, unfriendly, unhelpful game store staff.

Henshini wrote:
Wouldn't the problem of super discounters be solved if they just rolled back some of the ridiculous discount tiers from the distributor? Like if they picked the tier most LGSs took advantage of and got rid of anything better.

With the conventional distributor-retail business model, distributors *expect* certain levels of discount. Cthulhu Wars has this problem. GEG says it can't provide discounts distributors expect because the games are so costly to make (no idea why, then, you can get CW at CSI for a nifty $130+). OTOH, A company the size of Asmodee might be able to do this, given their size in the industry. To some extent, Asmodee's prohibiting online sales and giving special terms to Big Box companies accomplishes this.

Anyone here really think Asmodee cares *that* much about the FLGS? As blackdiamond says, "Most game store owners don't know how to buy, budget or forecast." Yeah, that's exactly the backbone you want your multi-million dollar business to rely upon. Once Asmodee moves towards using Big Box, they'll have better control over their inventory and supply, solving many problems they have with the current retail-distributor system.

More commentary on Asmodee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq22VG-R2SM

It at least read my Mankiw and Stieglitz... You don´t need to be a wizard, but some basic understanding of business helps you a long way if you want to stay in business.

Compared to other countries discounts are way too high in the US, which will hurt all parties involved in the long run. Add to this LGS who do not have more business experience than their customers and some bigger shops that want to dominate the market by crushing their opponents by riding it out on discounts until they floor them. Competition is not the problem. The best market for a company like Asmodee is a healthy mixture of all kinds of distribution channels. This gives them max exposure. GW does not really grasp this and hence commits the blunders we all know. Especially the ones where they piss off their multiplier-customers.

Markets do not work out when left alone. Best example are the banks... it takes only some who get too greedy and all have to pay dearly for it later. Asmodee does what a good government would do. It regulates business where necessary. And if you keep in mind how fast Asmodee has grown in the last ten years they are definitly not the ones lacking a good understanding of business.

There are quite some consumer-markets that had to go through what awaits the gamers-market and some did not so well and have been nearly obliterated. The discount-wars nearly killed hi-fi and too many TVs these days are worse than the models that came before them. The discount-war in the TV-sector has turned out that bad for most participants that close to no-one is making any profit anymore and they have to support TV-production with sales from other departments.

Gaming business is not that bad off, but if left unchecked it could quickly deteriorate.

That´s the short version. The long one would need its own thread, cause then we really have to do micro- and macro-economics, including the necessary math. And normally people get payed quite some when explaining it in such detail an are called consultants.

I look forward to America's FLGSs enjoying the boom in their business they'll undoubtedly see as America's online buyers switch to buying FFG from Target and Walmart, while overseas online buyers will simply stop buying.

Most overseas buyers stopped quite some time ago. When USPS jacked up prices for overseas-parcels that really hurt business with the rest of the world.

It is not just about protecting FLGS, it is about keeping the market a healthy mix.

So the solution to having too high discounts in the USofA is to just have no discounts? And that's not even accounting for the fact that the big buyers are apparently exempt from this.

Not sure Duncan's explanation holds water.

How are the discounts in the US too high? Seems like those huge discounts bring FFG's outrageous prices closer to a price the market will bear.

Plenty of people buy games at full price in department stores and book shop chains, but these people are probably not afficionados or they would be buying at a specialist shop or on line.

But I thought this was about protecting the poor FLGS, not dept stores and book shop chains

Nope -- It's about Asmodee's PR department putting a spin on its policy change. Big Box says Asmodee cannot have its products sold through other online stores, so Asmodee releases said policy.

Nowhere did they say that there will be no discounts...

Folks, if you are not capable of reading simple texts we really should stop the discussion here...