Guild of Blades in 2005
Well,
We'll likely print about 25-30 print products in 2005 and anywhere from 30-50 maybe a bit more in the PDF department. Oh, and two interactive computer games.
But truth be told, we're not "striving" for any quantity of releases. Our business is now so driven by sales of existing inventory that a "new release" adds a tiny fractional increase to the company's overall monthly sales. So in that regard, we are now focussing much much more on means to expand our marketing reach to places beyond the traditional marketing channels so we can expand our direct customer base and thus sales spread out over our entire catalog. But we are game designers at heart, so even while new game productions is not a company goal, getting us to actually stop designing new games just isn't going to happen. And heck, once designed, not much reason to not go ahead and release it.
And yes, I too see that the traditional distribution and retail systems for the hobby game market are decaying. In 2005 the Guild of Blades had our best sales year in terms of gross sales and by far in terms of profitability. The list of new print and bindery type machinery we were able to add to our operation this year due to those profits was impressive. In any case, we began the year recieving a few tiny distribution orders from our North American distributors, but off hand, I would guess we did not sell more than $2000 in total distribution based business in North America. A small hanful of distributors overseas easily generated more business. The lions share of our business 95%+ came from direct sales to the end consumers. Heck, if you watch what new products the leading game distributors have been adding, you see them adding little toys, candy, anime, dvds, poker and gambling supplies, manga and more. Basically, anything and everything but GAMES. Those they have been working hard to reduce the total number of SKUs stocked and the on hand inventory for most of the SKUs they do stock. This to me, suggests they have little faith on their future of their core market and have been craftily angling to become general hobby distributors and distributors capable of supplying the top mass market games and thier little cute non gaming wigits to mass market and party stores rather than game stores.
Game retailers seem to be closing up shop at alarming rates. As was mentioned by Gareth, I believe, the vast majority of retailers don't seem willing to fo through any trouble to order any products not spoon fed to them by their distributors. But as distributors continue to cut back on their game selections whilst they grow their other departments, game stores will begin to have more meager selections and find that there is less and less that differentiates them from the mass market stores that also happen to sell games. As this process continues the independent hobby retailers will get killed off by the Walmarts of the world, much the same way Toys R Us, K-mart and Walmart killed off the independent toy stores.
There will, however, be a few of the smart retailers that will not only survive, but thrive in the future. Those who embrace the fact that the diverse selection of product available to them is their strength and identity in a world where there is ever more competition on the industry leading products. And as their distributors reduce their ability to stock that diversity of products, those retailers will do what they have to in order to order that product directly to keep their stores stocked. Thats why when the last game distributors have either migrated out of our industry, essentially, and the others have all gone out of busines, those retailers will still survive.....and we'll be there to supply them products at good terms. Until then, there are thousands of viable ways to put games in front of potential consumers and we'll continue to explore more and more of them. Funny thing is, in this day of information technology, we seem to be migrating more and more to a catalog oriented business. *shrug* Whatever works.
Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com
People who are going to steal are going to steal no matter what is going to be used as security.
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