For \"Clix\" players
- Thread starter philologus
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Dragon Forge Design
New member
As a former Wizkids employee.. yet another brilliant move by Wizkids to speed up that \"Going out of business sale\" I forsee in the future.
I would think you will find it is something along these lines Ritual:
Public voice of the company - A major part of this experience is the service you get in a dedicated hobby store.
Behind the scenes voice of the company - We\'re not having those online bastards making reductions on our products that are available to all no matter where they are and potentially creating friction with the hobby stores that sell less product, and therefore can\'t offer the same reductions, so can\'t compete.
Public voice of the company - A major part of this experience is the service you get in a dedicated hobby store.
Behind the scenes voice of the company - We\'re not having those online bastards making reductions on our products that are available to all no matter where they are and potentially creating friction with the hobby stores that sell less product, and therefore can\'t offer the same reductions, so can\'t compete.
Dragon Forge Design
New member
Lono had it pegged, its the decision to only support the brick and mortar store vrs the online retailers. The BMS screams that they can\'t compete with the e-retailer selling out of his basment or garage discounting 20% and the end consumer screams that theres no place in his local town that supports his favorite game. So who do you support?
I myself would prefer to have a full service well stocked game store in town that I can support and go to when ever I needed something instead of having to go on to the internet and search for, order pay high shipping and handeling (that eats up the discount) just to get what I need. The problem is many people dont live in citys with big LGS and are forced to either drive long distances or use that mail order service.
This on paper works well for the large companys, the GW\'s, Wizkids, WOTC and so on but the small little manufacturers who sometime are producing the best and most innovative products are left hanging as the big distributors wont touch them or make terms very difficult to do business.
I do feel that this is the era of e retailing and it will only continue to get better. The ability to purchase what you need from your home or work computor and have it at your door in a few days even from sellers accross the world is here to stay and will only get bigger. Im not as much concerned with getting the discount as I am getting the product I want..and getting it now be it from my local game store or a e retailer.
I myself would prefer to have a full service well stocked game store in town that I can support and go to when ever I needed something instead of having to go on to the internet and search for, order pay high shipping and handeling (that eats up the discount) just to get what I need. The problem is many people dont live in citys with big LGS and are forced to either drive long distances or use that mail order service.
This on paper works well for the large companys, the GW\'s, Wizkids, WOTC and so on but the small little manufacturers who sometime are producing the best and most innovative products are left hanging as the big distributors wont touch them or make terms very difficult to do business.
I do feel that this is the era of e retailing and it will only continue to get better. The ability to purchase what you need from your home or work computor and have it at your door in a few days even from sellers accross the world is here to stay and will only get bigger. Im not as much concerned with getting the discount as I am getting the product I want..and getting it now be it from my local game store or a e retailer.
Wren
Member
Until quite recently I worked at a brick&mortar retailer, and I don\'t quite see how dictating distributors to such stores is \'helping\' them. I suppose it won\'t make much difference to the stores already using Alliance, which is the number one distributor, but presumably there are reasons why some stores use the other options. The store I worked at, and still sometimes shop at, doesn\'t buy from Alliance. I think they have a pretty good deal with their current distributor, so it sounds like their choice will be to pay a lot more for WizKids products from Alliance (since they won\'t have a volume discount unless they move more of their business to Alliance), move all their sales to Alliance and pay slightly more for everything, or drop WizKids. I expect the real answer will be number four, the corporate guys who run the company will figure out something with may or may not be slightly shady to get WK stuff from somewhere else, but otherwise I\'d say they should just as well go with dropping WizKids.
The store really does not sell a ton of WK stuff. The Pirates line did pretty well the first year or two, but sales of that have dropped off to just steady. It would take a month or two to sell through a case or maybe two of whatever the new HeroClix product was. There\'s one hardcore MechWarrior guy that shops the store. The store bought huge amounts of HorrorClix and not that much of Dreamblade, and sales of those went the other way around. The pulp space game similar to Pirates tanked, badly. The race car game similar to Pirates sold, but not to gamers, and the regular people that liked it wanted to be able to buy the cars/drivers they wanted and rejected the collectible model, so WK cancelled it.
Honestly I\'d just about say the collectible model is more the problem than any specific WK product, and that\'s partly where online comes in. If you have to buy lots of stuff to get what you want, any price reduction eases the blow. Plus if you\'re buying products sight unseen, you\'re already losing one of the motivations of the in-store shopper - seeing stuff and wanting to own it immediately. I can own some HeroClix immediately, but I can\'t own the exact one I want immediately, so why don\'t I just buy that from an online retailer. One of the guys I worked with spent loads of money at the store, but one thing he didn\'t buy there was his D&D miniatures. He bought them from an online guy where he paid a fixed price and knew he was getting one rare, two uncommons and three commons for the money. He loves prepainted minis, but avoids anything WK like the plague because it\'s too collectible, there are all these minor variations you have to hunt down if you really want to have them all.
The funny thing is, the one thing I would say WK DID do right lately is something they did previously to promote purchase from brick&mortar stores. They ran a Heroclix promotion where you could get special edition figures only by mailing in receipts from purchases at real stores. We had several customers enthusiastically buying up older stuff that normally languished on the shelf during that promotion.
philologus
Subgenius
It looks like Dreamblade is being marketed on the MTG model of moneyed tournaments right off the bat. The momentum of MTG has alot to do with the player support/tournament marketing. The Heroclix line could have benefited similarly it seems. And you\'re right about Heroclix. It\'s fun but hard to get the figs you want. My kids love it but they want to build teams from their favorite heros/villains and are disappointed with what the boosters actually have in them.
Wren
Member
Yeah, I was always very careful to explain to people who seemed like they weren\'t regular HeroClix buyers that there was no guarantee that the character pictured on the box would actually BE in the box. Which did tend to put a lot of people off.
I think well-funded tournaments absolutely do help interest in a collectible game. Even in a smallish place like I live where there isn\'t going to be a lot of local tourney action. That\'s really the biggest bar to a lot of games, collectible or not - if a person can\'t find a local group interested in playing it, he\'s a lot less likely to purchase it. There\'s a very active Privateer Press Ganger in town, and their stuff has always sold great, whereas the store eventually sent back all the Rackham stock after not selling anything for over a year, and this was at the height of Rackham fever in the global mini community.
I think well-funded tournaments absolutely do help interest in a collectible game. Even in a smallish place like I live where there isn\'t going to be a lot of local tourney action. That\'s really the biggest bar to a lot of games, collectible or not - if a person can\'t find a local group interested in playing it, he\'s a lot less likely to purchase it. There\'s a very active Privateer Press Ganger in town, and their stuff has always sold great, whereas the store eventually sent back all the Rackham stock after not selling anything for over a year, and this was at the height of Rackham fever in the global mini community.
