If you shopped at WalMart.com...

Doomsdaisy said:

That's right. Keep buying books from Amazon and Wal-Mart and when your local game store goes out of business you will only have those two to choose from.

Small comic and game shops are hurting nationwide because they can't compete with big chain stores or massive online retailers. But the one thing they do offer is variety. I just dare you to try and convince Wal-Mart to special order you some small press d20 supplement or a specific mini you want for your new character.

Support your local stores. Sure you may have to pay a little bit more, but by supporting their presence in the community you are contributing to the health of your hobby in general.

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Care to back that up with numbers? I doubt there are figures out there showing that bad sales at FLGS is directly due to mass distributors, personally.

Sounds good over the internet though, eh?

Skaros

I know that some people are saying that their walmart.com order has shipped, but mine certainly has not. I ordered on 3/28 and my status is still "processing." Makes me wonder how many orders really are shipping from Walmart.

Back in the 90s Wal Mart refused to stock a girls/teen t-shirt that said 'Someday a woman will be President' claiming it was anti-family values.

Ever since then I haven't shopped there.

-shrug-

So I didn't even think to look at their site to see if they might have DnD, and went straight to amazon.

That sucks...But then I tend to stay away from Walmart.

Mike

Skaros said:

Care to back that up with numbers? I doubt there are figures out there showing that bad sales at FLGS is directly due to mass distributors, personally.

Sounds good over the internet though, eh?

Skaros

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Hmm, let's see, I run a game/comic store and I sell lots of games at a base of 15% off. The revised corebooks are announced, Wal-Mart and Amazon and others announce 30 to 40% off cover price. I post that I'm selling the revised corebooks for 25% off on EN World to which I get many responses to the effect of, "I'm buying them from a massive online discounter. No thanks, game store owner!"

Then, which comes to no surprise, I talk to some other retailers and they report pre-orders on the revised corebooks aren't very good. I say to them, "did you know that Wal-Mart is selling these online at 40% or so?"
(Insert surprised look with a vulgar word exclamation here)

Couple that with Wal-Mart disregarding the street/release date and it's beyond a shadow of a doubt that "bad sales at FLGSs are directly due to massive online discounters."

So yeah, I can back it up because this is what I do all day, 7 days a week. And no, it doesn't sound good to me.

~D

Sweet. My order is showing that all 3 books are within 20 miles of me, so I should be getting them on Monday (if not today?). I sent off an email to customer service on Thursday telling them that I never received notification of the one month delay in shipping. Their response was to let me know that they were just being shipped AND take $6.30 off my order as a credit. Nice. Please no more attempts at making us lucky folks feel guility at getting a good deal. Many of us (at least me anyway) buy from local shops, but come on, this deal was too good to pass up for many of us. Good luck to everyone, gamers and distributors alike. I can't wait to see how much weaker my character is now.

TalonComics said:

Hmm, let's see, I run a game/comic store and I sell lots of games at a base of 15% off. The revised corebooks are announced, Wal-Mart and Amazon and others announce 30 to 40% off cover price. I post that I'm selling the revised corebooks for 25% off on EN World to which I get many responses to the effect of, "I'm buying them from a massive online discounter. No thanks, game store owner!"

Then, which comes to no surprise, I talk to some other retailers and they report pre-orders on the revised corebooks aren't very good. I say to them, "did you know that Wal-Mart is selling these online at 40% or so?"
(Insert surprised look with a vulgar word exclamation here)

Couple that with Wal-Mart disregarding the street/release date and it's beyond a shadow of a doubt that "bad sales at FLGSs are directly due to massive online discounters."

So yeah, I can back it up because this is what I do all day, 7 days a week. And no, it doesn't sound good to me.

~D

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Still no direct correlation between overall bad sales of books at FLGSs and discounts at walmart/amazon/buy.com.

You market to a large population that walmart.com doesn't overlap with...the people that walk into shops, pick up and flip through books, and then buy what is in their hands.

So if overall sales are down by a lot, well, we might wanna look at the economy and other factors than just the small percentage of folks that might have previously walked into your shop, but now buy online.

I just don't think the sky is falling because people now have the luxury of ordering over the internet.

Skaros

I feel a little guilty not buying from my local shop. They were offering anyone who preordered a free copy of one of the adventure path modules (Sunless Citadel, Forge of Fury, etc.). That's it. No discount, no nothing. $95.25 for three rulebooks and all I get is an adventure that I don't really want.

So, I considered Wal-Mart and Amazon, but I settled with Talon. Derek's discount is pretty good, and at least I'm supporting a gaming shop if not my local shop.

The reason I feel a little guilty is that my players followed my example and we all ordered one big bulk order from Derek. I've taken away some 18-21 core books from them. That's got to be pretty signicant for a small town gaming shop.

Its easy to say "screw them" because they didn't offer a discount and thus lost my business. In the long run, though, I'm screwing myself because if my FLGS closes, even though they kind of suck, it becomes far less convenient for me to buy my gaming stuff. My FLGS doesn't do much to support the gaming community (no real on site playing area, they aren't easy to order from, etc) but they do support it.

I just don't know. The whole situation is tough.

Where FLGS' and distributors should take their biggest issue with WOTC isn't as much holding the big chains to street dates, but in the amount they sell the books to the chains for.

Too often I've seen the big chain and internet retailers selling the books for barely above or even at what it costs an FLGS to buy them from a distributor. In order to do so and make a profit they would have to be buying them from WOTC at the cost that a distributor buys them from WOTC. That amounts to WOTC cutting the throats of both distribution and the hobby market by undercutting the pricing to a select few retailers.

Since Walmart and Amazon (and others) are retailers, not distributors, WOTC should either funnel them through regular distribution channels or charge them what the average distributor would charge them. This would help restore the competetiveness of the FLGS (the folks that put them where they are) and would reduce or eliminate the harm that deep discounting (in the words of WOTC, Games Workshop, etc) is doing to the hobby.

WOTC would not likely lose those sales channels because even under fair pricing conditions the big chains would still discount somewhat and there are tons of people that would still buy through those sources either due to lack of a nearby FLGS or just because that's what they prefer.

Once the palying field with regard to prices gets leveled somewhat, then they could consider looking into street dates. As it is now WOTC would merely be whistling into the wind and doing nothing to correct the more important root problem.

The execs at Hasbro need to think about how WOTC got to be the valuable company worth buying to begin with ... it didn't start in the big chains.

I do not support my local store because I told him i would buy from him if he would give me a 20%. He said that wasn't enough of a profit to make it worth his time. I said,"I guess that means you will be happy with zero profit."

Since then I went back to him and asked him if he would change his mind. I did this after showing him my printed list of all the gaming products I have bought to date, which retailed for over $3,000.00. He still said no.

Taloncomics, can you give me any insight to why I shouldn't think this guy is cutting his own throat?