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Lorraine Williams: Is it Time for a Reevaluation?
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<blockquote data-quote="GreyLord" data-source="post: 8436912" data-attributes="member: 4348"><p>On a DIFFERENT personal note, there are some GOOD things that Williams did that are not noted...even with financials.</p><p></p><p>I wish I could quote the source, but it always evades me, but the thing is, Williams was actually incredibly GOOD for TSR for the first few years.</p><p></p><p>Under her, gross sales went up to around 100 MILLION USD! That's a LOT of money, and a LOT of sales of various products (I have to admit, not all of it was D&D, a lot of that were other items). </p><p></p><p>D&D, financially (though probably not customer wise, I have nothing to back this up, but I feel that a LOT of the sales were from a smaller player base, but a group that bought a LOT more material individually than the gamers did in the early and mid 80s, that D&D was more in the public's eye and popular in the early to mid 80s, and by the late 80s and early 90s it was more a fringe group than a massive popularity thing going) was having sales galore!</p><p></p><p>But, there were some things and deals that enabled those gross sales to happen that would eventually come back to bite them...and when you spend like you are going to earn 50-80 million USD a year without forethought, and continue to do so even if sales drop dramatically...well...</p><p></p><p>In the beginning, I think she did a GREAT job at pushing TSR forwards and being successful. </p><p></p><p>There are things she did I disagree with (more targetted towards Gygax and the actions TSR took towards some fans and fan material and such), but overall, what is missing from this conversation is that under her, at least at first, financially, TSR became FAR more successful than it had EVER been (and perhaps, even now, maybe gross sales wise may be on par if not better than even now...at least for a year or two). </p><p></p><p>It went almost as quickly as it came, but TSR was a hot company for a while after she took over.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="GreyLord, post: 8436912, member: 4348"] On a DIFFERENT personal note, there are some GOOD things that Williams did that are not noted...even with financials. I wish I could quote the source, but it always evades me, but the thing is, Williams was actually incredibly GOOD for TSR for the first few years. Under her, gross sales went up to around 100 MILLION USD! That's a LOT of money, and a LOT of sales of various products (I have to admit, not all of it was D&D, a lot of that were other items). D&D, financially (though probably not customer wise, I have nothing to back this up, but I feel that a LOT of the sales were from a smaller player base, but a group that bought a LOT more material individually than the gamers did in the early and mid 80s, that D&D was more in the public's eye and popular in the early to mid 80s, and by the late 80s and early 90s it was more a fringe group than a massive popularity thing going) was having sales galore! But, there were some things and deals that enabled those gross sales to happen that would eventually come back to bite them...and when you spend like you are going to earn 50-80 million USD a year without forethought, and continue to do so even if sales drop dramatically...well... In the beginning, I think she did a GREAT job at pushing TSR forwards and being successful. There are things she did I disagree with (more targetted towards Gygax and the actions TSR took towards some fans and fan material and such), but overall, what is missing from this conversation is that under her, at least at first, financially, TSR became FAR more successful than it had EVER been (and perhaps, even now, maybe gross sales wise may be on par if not better than even now...at least for a year or two). It went almost as quickly as it came, but TSR was a hot company for a while after she took over. [/QUOTE]
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