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Message: <blockquote data-quote="guildofblades" data-source="post: 3294024" data-attributes="member: 27324">>>Because the lack of a distributor would crush every small company in existence. Do you enjoy purchase stuff from small companies like mine?<<Thats simply not true. The Guild of Blades is still a fairly company and we have been operating without the use of any game distributors in North American for almost three years now and we use very few distributors overseas as well. At the low point of our efforts in trying to distribute our products through the 3 tier system the hobby game market currently utilizes we were barely able to justify the production of new products. Our business got back onto a healthy track of growth only after finally making the decision to abandon game distributors and sell via other means and 2006 was by far its best years in our 11 year history.It is simply that the industry got "lazy". As the 3 tier system got established within our industry and access to retail stores become more stable for the early market leaders back in the 80's, those market leaders became very much vested with that system. As that system has always had somewhat of a captive audience and a core clientel (hobby game stores) of small and struggling businesses strapped for working capital, it is an entire business model that has hardly ever adapted to newer methods and new technologies to enhance its service and make its own operations and the channel as a whole more efficient. That need for innovation shrank dramatically in the late 90's as the distributor consolidations happened and the increasing dominance of the hobby game specific distributors in direct sales to the core market (ie, after the 1995 TCG bubble burst most general hobby distributors got out of games entirely or reduced to only selling just the core popular collectibles of the moment). In this isolated market outside ideas have been shunned and all concept of innovation has stagnated.The current distribution system for the core hobby is so fundamentally flawed its more harmful to the health of the market than it is useful. Of nearly all successful game publishing companies, from the multi million dollar ones to the small 2-10 man shops who operate profitably year after year I see one prevailing trend. They are increasingly deriving more and more of their revenue from outside sales through hobby game distributors. Some companies like the Guild of Blades have made the final decision regarding the worth of the 3 tier system and support it not at all, but in truth, most of the others remain wedded to the concept that it keeps the retailers around. More on that in a moment. As such, those manufacturers still support the 3 tier system and in spite of those efforts their business still has been migrating more and more around it. This is not a healthy business model. Ryan D. suggests distributors have to innovate and add a lot more value to prevent from becoming obsolete. My contention is they are already obsolete. It is just 20 years of manufacturer loyalty and doctrine that says the distributors are vital to retail stores' health has led to a heavy reluctance on the part of manufacturers to refuse to take a very hard look at the real affects of such a failed business structure on their company's and the overall market. Distributors would not only have to massively innovate in their offerings for us to even remotely consider a return to using the 3 tier system, they would have to demonstratively prove a level of business and financial stability before we could ever entrust such a vital function of our business to them again.Ryan S. JohnsonGuild of Blades Publishing Group<a href="http://www.guildofblades.com" target="_blank">http://www.guildofblades.com</a><a href="http://www.1483online.com" target="_blank">http://www.1483online.com</a><a href="http://www.thermopylae-online.com" target="_blank">http://www.thermopylae-online.com</a></blockquote>

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