Koliko sam shvatio iz teksta, JSu se zamjera da glumi kako je prijateljski postavljen prema distributerima i FLGSima, dok s druge strane radi to što radi. Prijedlog iz teksta je da kaže distributerima 'ko vas šljivi, prodavat ću svoje igre izravno ili samo preko jednog distributera koji lifra sve izravno na Amazon.
Nitko ne osporava da ganja zaradu.. pa njegova je firma, može što god hoće na koji god način, ako mu to prolazi na tržištu.
Valjda su iz ovog svega zaključili da je u jednu ruku dvoličan?
No kao što rekoh, ako je to njegov stil, može ga gurati sve dok mu tržište to dozvoli. Ili ako se nađe malo jači igrač od njega, pa ga poklopi
A svoje viđenje slične situacije toga je na fejsu dao i Alex Yeager (Mayfair games).
Dosta jednostavno i logično zvuči.
Ako vam se da čitati, evo teksta..
Alex Yeager [TL;DR]
Gather 'round, kiddles; Uncle Alex is going to tell a story about a game and number projections...
Back in 2012, Mayfair was about to go to press on the English version of Star Trek Catan. It was already a good seller in Europe, we had our art approvals and contracts ready to go, and we approached our distribution network about the numbers we should print. We knew the pros (Teuber, Catan, Star Trek, proven seller in Europe) and the cons (two Trek games, Expeditions and Fleet Captains on the market with one performing softly; straight Catan reskin, albeit with fancy pieces and one new element, though that element, workers, IMO was pretty darn spiffy). So, we asked for best-case numbers from all of our distributors (at this point, we were working with a wide variety of distributors).
We got numbers back...that were low. Short-of-royalty short. Not-viable-product short. Taken aback, we cast out a bit farther, and found that Target was willing to write a check, up front, for a multiple of what the entire hobby market was projecting, if we would give them exclusivity.
We took that deal, and the retail fallout was immediate. We were castigated for selling a game and skipping all of the stores that built Mayfair, not realizing that the product wouldn't exist for them in the future if Target hadn't stepped up in the present. We were licensees, and one of our jobs is to provide value to our licensing designer, both in the publication of product and the access the public has to that product. We also learned that a lot of our distribution network had done very cursory research as to what the retailer network would potentially sell. (In general, there's about 50-100 retailers/store groups that you can rely on ordering smartly and accurately, in numbers significant to projections, and we talked to a lot of them after the fact when it became clear how few of them were consulted before the fact).
Let's take a moment and be fair to distributors. The explosion in products they carry, coupled with the shorted life viability of product, means that they are gambling as much as a consumer as to what will be good, except they're gambling on pallets, not copies, and they're doing so based on what information is available from the publisher, past performance of similar products from the publisher and comparable products, and, frankly, conserving cash for more lucrative games (two pallets of a first-time designer's game, or two pallets of the next Magic release?...). Over the decades, distributors have moved from driving game demand with outbound contacts, to more order-taking with open houses and mass communications such as newsletters and social media channels to make the case for specific (and often sponsored) products. The power has moved steadily to the end consumer (especially with KS circumventing the chain entirely), but that loss of power comes with a corresponding loss of clarity as to the success of games (and their ability to influence that success).
We learned some lessons. Sales talked to directly to retailers more often. We went hobby-exclusive with Alliance Distribution to be able to project the entire market with a single partner, as opposed to multiple distributors trying to predict not only the demand for a game, but the percentage of the demand that would come through them specifically.
Stonemaier is transitioning from small to medium publisher, and there are lessons they will learn that look all too familiar to someone who lived through a couple of growth and contraction cycles at Mayfair. I lean to the side of the publisher by nature, I confess, because there's an awful lot that you learn in hindsight, and your hope is that you didn't bet the existence of the company on a wrong decision. A retail chain willing to immediately tell the world that your game is worth 80% of the value you've set isn't encouraging. A simple metric: 20% off is roughly 40% of the margin retailers have to work with, so you need to sell 2 to make the same as 1 at full retail - and your calculation must determine if will you make more, for a longer period, if your product is dispersed in a way that gives the majority of your product a chance at full retail price across a wide network of retailers, than discouraging a large, diverse network of retailers by selling a significant chunk of your stock to a mid-discounter right off the bat. (Jamey has learned a lesson about Amazon, per his comments about restricting initial releases - you can read Amazon into all of the above, replacing "mid-discounter" with "deep discounter" and occasionally "counterfeiter"). It's frustrating, and you're going to make missteps in how you communicate, how you do business, and how you forecast - magnified by a cash flow that he's taken the leap of faith to dissociate from crowdfunding.
The good news is that they are putting out good games: Scythe has all the signs of being evergreen, and the parade of 8+ BGG ratings on their releases suggest that missteps are recoverable in the short term. I have no horse in this race, but I'm less inclined to assign motive when the offered information aligns with my own past imperfect experiences.