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Message: <blockquote data-quote="embee" data-source="post: 8478732" data-attributes="member: 7026827">There are dangers in using FYs 2020 and 2021 as any benchmark for future revenue projections. They are anomalous and, frankly, quite a few companies have been pulled from the brink thanks to lockdown.[SPOILER="A very long story about the musical instrument industry"]Hobbies boomed during lockdown.  Case in point - musical instruments.Shifts in musical trends away from traditional forms of instrumentation, coupled with bad management decisions (fueled in no small part by declining sales) saw major companies founder, chief among them being Guitar Center, the largest musical instrument retailer in the US, and Gibson Guitars. Guitar Center, seeing its sales flag, tried to shift to a GameStop model - pushing memberships and subscription plans, all while hemorrhaging cash through overhead (inventory and rent). It wound up filing for bankruptcy protection. Gibson had several decades of mismanagement. This resulted in introducing products hated by its extremely loyal customer base, corner-cutting in QC that led to its main product line being viewed as inferior, and poor operations management that led to the company's factory being raided by inspectors over potential wood import violations, and poorly thought-out shifts away from the core mission to "becoming a lifestyle brand."Both of these companies were the 800 lb gorilla in their space. Both of them wound up almost failing. When COVID hit, resulting in lockdowns, a whole lot of people had idle time inside and idle money in their bank accounts. Many people spent it on playing the guitar.  As a result, virtually every guitar retailer had boom years and all manufacturers have sold through their inventory for the next few years. Additionally, values on the second-hand market spiked, leading to higher resale values. One company that benefitted was Etsy. Yes, Etsy. In 2019, Etsy bought Reverb, the leading site for selling musical instruments and equipment. When the lockdown happened, sales on the site skyrocketed, leading to huge revenues for Etsy because of commissions charged. [/SPOILER]2020 & 2021 have been anomalies. I read "non-book sales" to mean that WOTC figured that MTG was going to be its main revenue driver. But its hard to play MTG when there's a lockdown. So D&D became the main revenue driver. And D&D is, ultimately, book sales. That's not to say that MTG is dead. One thing that will never die is speculation. If something can be collected, speculators will buy it and flip it. It was that way with sports cards and memorabilia. It's that way with guitars (and amps and effects pedals). And it's that way with CCGs. I think the real question is whether MTG or D&D is going to be WOTCs main driver going forward. I don't think WOTC liked the news about Omicron in the least. I think that nothing scares them more than the headlines that read "New COVID Variant Spreads At Hobby Convention." D&D can survive lockdowns. MTG tourneys can't.</blockquote>

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