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Message: <blockquote data-quote="guildofblades" data-source="post: 3301272" data-attributes="member: 27324">>>Which begs the question; Should the publishers tolerate (or even encourage) retailers to be able to stock their products if they can't demonstrate some minimal level of retailing competence? Or should they act to raise the bar, perhaps losing a lot of "new business", but being more likely to see that the new stores that do open and stock their products are more likely to be the stores ready to compete and succeed in today's very challenging market?<<Hi Ryan,The first year after we went direct we sought sales through any store possible. But as we took a hard look at the market with all the data and experience we gathered over the years we did ultimately arrive at one conclusion. About 75% of existing stores are not worth our time to try and do business with. If that business comes to us, at a reduced discount (42%...and only 20% for drop shipped orders) and orders from us online, its no big deal to fill the order. The account has been paid and the lower discount somewhat justifies the bother. But we don't even remotely think about soliciting those stores. Instead we selectively target a much, much smaller grouping of stores that we're interested in doing business with and work with them with regards to POP shelves and signage, catalogs, fliers, etc. We have found that  a "good" store that is dedicated to trying to make money with each product line it decides to service (notice I said service, not simply stock) will easily gross x10 more revenue with the line than stores that don't. The ones that don't aren't worth expending any resources on at all. We can service the end consumer better than them directly. The good stores, however, do add value to our products and are certainly worth working with and trying to cultivate.Thats been our experience in three years of only selling direct.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.1483online.com" target="_blank">http://www.1483online.com</a></blockquote>

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