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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Troll Wizard" data-source="post: 3365449" data-attributes="member: 17513">Get rid of the distributors?  Then the whole shipping, warehousing, selling, billing, and collections falls on WOTC directly (that's a lot of overhead they don’t have right now), so you won't really save anything but perhaps the percentage that the distributor and retailers took as profit.   Also I am pretty certain that a major price determinant for WOTC’s minis is the discount they receive from the factory for their large production runs..Let me give you an example, back ~2002 for an electronics show we needed a plastic/foam 3D detailed model of a product (6"x6"x6") my company designed.  Not including engineering, artist, Autocad time, mockups, etc. time and money; if we bought 500 units it cost $9.75 each (2 colors only to save on cost); if we bought $1000 it cost $9.50; and if we bought 5000 $8.75 each, etc.  Of course there even more costs later, as this does not even cover the $400 it cost to ship it here and then the cost within the US to move and store them around until we eventually got rid of them.Produce-on-the-demand, is not really viable in my opinion, the costs per unit would be very high.  You might be thinking about a company like protomold that makes custom plastic parts over a few business days, but the last time I checked they were still doing only single color plastics only.  Then the quick startup costs were like $2K - $3k per model!What will happen is that pricing will be all over the place, even if the minis size is the same.  Small production runs of minis will have significantly higher costs than large production runs minis. Eventually only the most popular models would be produced.  As it wouldn't take long for WOTC's warehouse to overfill with minis that sell slowing or not all because of the high retail price.  (I have seen this already in gaming shops with old Reaper & Ral Partha minis on the shelves for years....).  Oh I am sure that eventually WOTC would reduce the price of the non-selling ones to get rid of them in their warehouse, but they would not reproduce those models; as obviously the costs would exceed the price people are willing to pay for them.Another thing to consider is that impulse and bulk sales would also disappear.  Many in my group buy them by the case.  I know other people that when they go to Borders or B&N and see DDM boxes on the shelf they buy one or two.  Not only will WOTC lose exposure for their products across the whole retail level, but will lose all the sales (impulse or otherwise) across the whole retail market as well.  Sales will be significantly smaller on website-only business approach.  Putting further pressure to make production runs even smaller, as only the people that go online to purchase would ever see it.The wish list would likely not work as well, too many opinions among us gamers.  given mini x (race, class, weapons, gender, pose, and other details), player A will only buy if it has y weapon, player B will only buy if it is a female with z weapon, etc.  Here is the price of a limited run plastic multi-color mini (size large I believe) <a href="http://paizo.com/store/paizoExclusives/v5748btpy7pol&source=top" target="_blank">http://paizo.com/store/paizoExclusives/v5748btpy7pol&source=top</a> $14.95.  Outside dragon/dungeon subscribes, who can purchase it for $9.99; I wonder how many Paizo has sold at $14.95?So how much are you willing to spend on your Gelatinous Cube? (14.95?) Right now WOTC price is $14.95 for 8 minis, which comes out to be about 1.86 per mini.  Right now you can go to <a href="http://www.reapermini.com/pdf/mailer/02-25-07.pdf" target="_blank">Reaper </a> and purchase medium size individual minis (unpainted) for $3.99.You know WOTC been producing DDM for what, about 3 years now?  And many, many people have complained and asked that WOTC produce non-random mini sets.  It really surprises me that a 3rd party gaming company has not jumped in to fill the void.  Obviously Reaper can't or is not willing to give people what they want, pre-painted cheap minis.  If the potential for a good business model is there, why hasn't a third party entered the market to fill the void?</blockquote>

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