How profitable is D&D 4E for a retailer?

I just stumbled onto a thread that talked about the 'uber' cheapness of the new 4E D&D core books and gift set at certain German retailers. I was quite surprised about how cheap the books were and thought that the suggested retail price was far higher, I was quite right. I dug around some more and also found that amazon.co.uk was also very cheap, with shipping (to the Netherlands) and tax, the price of the gift set came to €63,50. Some German game shops are even selling them for €54,00 including shipping and tax (within Germany). If you order it from amazon.com it's €51 including shipping and tax (Delivery within 18 to 32 business days), €53 for quicker delivery (Delivery within 8 to 16 business days).

That made me wonder what kind of price the distributer set. We have two in the Netherlands (that I know of), PS-Games and Boosterbox. MSRP is €104.95 for the gift set, the cheapest I could get it at the distributor (with all the discounts and added tax) is €48,80. If I bought enough of them, I would not have to pay any shipping, but when I have to ship it to a customer I would have to pay €6,50 (the set is 6cm thick), add to that €1,20 for packaging and the cost of payment transfers (such as Ideal). For a total of €56,50.

If I had to compete with Amazon.com in price, I would take a loss. While it might bind some of the customers to me if I did that (and I might have if I wasn't in the middle of moving to another city), the loss it would create (around ~€5+ per order) and the labor involved would be significant. And while Amazon.com isn't the fastest deliverer of new productsn to international customers, not a lot of customers know that or care...

So it isn't profitable for me to sell these (not that I have time to do that at the moment anyway), if I want to compete in price with amazon.com, but that leaves me to wonder how happy fellow (European) retailers are with the new edition of 4E. These are significant savings compared to MSRP (over €50,00 for the gift set) and knowing people, they might browse through the books at the local book store and still order it online. Maybe a few brave souls can't wait for a somewhat slower delivery and buy it on release day from a local store at full price, but I suspect that those are few. Maybe the folks that don't know about online ordering or are not comfortable doing so, might pay the 'higher' prices, but I don't think there are that many this day and age.

Where does that leave the common retailers? Large amounts of the customers gaming budget goes to a popular, but unprofitable book series. Leaving customers with less cash to spend on actual profitable products. I suspect that most of the 4E releases will follow similar pricing schemes and 4E will be unprofitable for the European retailer. WotC really needs to adjust the MSRP on their D&D products in Europe. MSRP for the gift set in the UK is 60 Pounds, that's €81 (inc. tax). MSRP for the gift set in the US is 105 dollar, that's €75,50 (inc. tax)

Mixed support

I'm in the US. My FLGS is owned by a friend, and he's talked about the same thing. He's doing a deep discount on the books to be in the neighborhood of amazon, and can't touch the gift box in price. And he has to charge local sales tax on top of it.

WotC seems to try to support local stores - give aways and promotional material, but because local gaming stores have to order through a distributor not directly due to the small order size compared to amazon, they have an extra layer of markup in there. It's like D&D brand philosophy is to support FLGS, but the whole distribution process favors the big guys like amazon or chain bookstores that can take advantage of significant volume discounts.

I'm buying from my local store, at the higher price. But my gaming budget is fixed, so I'll be buying less product this year to do so.

Cheers,
=Blue(23)

Blue said:

I'm buying from my local store, at the higher price.

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Me too. I believe the ancillary benefits of having a good local game store is worth a few sheckels.

I bit the bullet and bought the 4e gift set from amazon.co.uk for just under £40 a few days ago, with free shipping. If it had been full price ca £60 I would not have bought it. I do buy a lot from the London games stores, but £60 for a game I don't know I'll be playing is too much.

Wormwood said:

Me too. I believe the ancillary benefits of having a good local game store is worth a few sheckels.

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This, absolutely.

Wormwood said:

Me too. I believe the ancillary benefits of having a good local game store is worth a few sheckels.

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Would that I had a Good local game shop.... all I have is a local game shop (I guess that means it is unaligned), who does almost nothing with RPGs. It's all about Cards and Minis, neither of which I buy.

A pity that smaller gameshop owners in a certain area can't unite together so they can buy the books at bulk discount.

That way they could possibly sell the books at lower prices, yet at a greater profit per book (and more profit with the increased sales). Would take some work and trust though. Although less trust if they had perhaps a joined bank account and papers drawn up so that none of them could screw all the others.

Where I am, there are really only two choices for buying locally. Both have the gift-set available for what comes to ~$115 (USD), including shipping in one case (the other is truly local) - and these are the two best options! Amazon (the US site) on the other hand, has it for around $73 (USD), including international shipping.

I figure $42 (USD) gets you a good amount of something, even RPG-related something.

Yeah, poor ol' LGSs.

S'mon said:

I bit the bullet and bought the 4e gift set from amazon.co.uk for just under £40 a few days ago, with free shipping. If it had been full price ca £60 I would not have bought it. I do buy a lot from the London games stores, but £60 for a game I don't know I'll be playing is too much.

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This. But that's the reason why I've bought KotS, as well as most hobby supplies (splatbooks, miniatures, and stuff like dice, mats, and so on) locally. Passing the local store some quids.

Cheers, LT.

Discussion at a party yesterday brought this up as well.

It turns out our local games shops (by local these days, I mean region-wide) just aren't getting any in unless they have been specially ordered. They can't compete with Amazon.

May explain why the Games shops here are blinking out of existence one by one. Ho-hum.