Thursday, March 30, 2006

Ian Richards on reduction in # of retailer kits

The maximum number of retailer kits a store can order has dropped to two. Ian Richards of Wizards Organised Play had this to say on the matter:

I'll answer this one point for all so you all have a clear picture. This is very much an OP call since we make the kits and support stores. Seems strange since we sell them through the Direct Sales department I know but it is all us.

his isn't the first time I've read these kind of [questions] and understanding how to get these kits is an important part.

OK First up - Why do we have kits? (short version)
They are there to support your stores run league play or RPG play. We understand how important the core/hobby store and how important it is to you and us. No sales in the stores = no localized play as there will be nowhere for you to play or meet up. Therefore it's a very important part of the community as a whole.

Why can I only get them from Direct Sales?
Because we want to reward those stores that help grow our business and in this case OP as well. Also it means less stores just get them and sell them and restrict genuine stores from getting them to use for what you yourselves want... community support.

Why can't I get them as a fan?
For the reasons above. If anyone could get them...
1. We'd have to produce a heck of a lot more than we do and they cost us more than $10 we charge to make.
2. We'd lose that mechanism to encourage stores to do what we all want and reward them for providing that community.

Why only 2 kits?
Because I keep increasing the kit numbers but I have to work 9 - 12 months in advance due to 'spin' time (technical term) for minis. Therefore I'm constantly doing the 'best guess' scenario. With more and more stores wanting the kits and more and more stores going from 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 kits for whatever reason I have to collect data to support projected support and spend at the end of this year at this time. So decisions today affect early 2007.

Restricting temporarily to 2 kits gave me hard data to how many stores we could hit right now. There were a lot of new stores unable to get them as we were selling out in the first week of the month. Therefore I really did need that data to see how much we could hit and project out. Direct Sales representatives have the ability to change the parameters based on individual cases as well.

Example: Store Ian's Games has built his base to 30 players. Ian's cards also has 2 other stores that have communities of 6 and 15 players. 2 kits aren't enough so I explain this to the representative and he will allow upto two kits per store not chain. More than enough to supply what I need. Even if I had just the one store of 30 players I can outline the need and the rep can make a call to allow 3 or 4 kits.

So blame me for data trolling. The good news is we sold out still in the first week but we drove stores participating up, therefore more places have these materials and therefore it's good news for the future as we now understand how many we can potentially hit.

Will OP release bundles of cards later on in a kit?
Answer: Not at this time though it is something we could consider later. For every person that hopes we will there is one that hopes we won't and they can get another new card rather than yet another card they've already got. It's a fine balance.

Ok the BIG question. How do 'I' get a card?
Have your local store to participate and apply to be a premier store so they can order the kits.

I have no local store so how do I get them?
The reason we don't make kits readily available is for the reasons above though we recognise that is restrictive so we make the cards available online as well.

I don't live in the US so how do I get them?
Being English and having initially worked in the UK office I'm very sensitive to this. Our international offices make kits from the components we ship to them. They are the same materials but they are often 1-2 months behind due to international shipping and customs. This is also another reason we make cards available online. Have your local store contact their local Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro contact for OP kits and they should be able to help out with getting kits locally.

I live in a country that has no Hasbro/WotC office. How do I get kits?
I know some of our international offices have also set up kit shipping with a distributor. For instance I ship kits to Devir here in the USA who supply them to South American stores (yes we have a large and healthy DDM community in Central and South America). Best way to find out if you're in that situation is have your local store contact their distributor. those distributors will contact Hasbro/WotC if they need these kits.

I think that's it for now.