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Rygar is completely right, and a smart guy to boot since I've been saying the same thing for a year now and the mark of a smart person is someone who agree with me
With the last week and a half of excitement the prospect of a WotC sponsored store is more viable , the question is how they are going to do this, if it were only a digital store than it's an easy answer, but what about physical products?
Warder
There are a few ways one could go about this...
1. Custom built web based solution.
Pros: Full control of the revenue, the ability to expand directly into subscriptions and web based apps
Cons: Deep commitment to hardware, E-Commerce expenses, and customer service costs
2. Third Party Platform (DrivethruRPG for example)
Pros: No need to spend a lot of money on software engineers, no direct maintainance costs so when they want to shut it down they can do so at the end of the contract, no additional customer service.
Cons: Have to pay someone else out of the revenues, run the risk of losing a customer to a competing product on the site
Odds are good they'll go with option 2, there's really no reason to build their own site and historically their software products have been iffy at best (MTGO). Plus, the ability to let a contract end and not have ongoing expenses for years is attractive to a company.
As far as printing goes, that's easy, there's a couple of ways.
1. WOTC can try to predict demand for physical product and produce only as much as they think will be needed for the next quarter, but this is costly given the potential number of products.
2. WOTC can state that there will be a lag time between order and fullfillment and have their printers print only what was ordered each month.
3. WOTC can just contract with a print-on-demand service negotiating a lower cost to customers due to the expected high volume.
Again, WOTC will go with #3 if they do what I'm thinking they'll do. Predicting inventory has always been the bane of businesses everywhere, doing a monthly order and asking customers to wait is more expensive for WOTC and a lot of people aren't fond of waiting. Option 3 gives them the ability to offer the opportunity for physical product while minimizing expenses (Read passing them off to the customer).
The real trick here is FLGS. They need to invest them in it. To do so, they'll use their affiliate program, normal affiliates will be able to order the product at a discount so that they can undercut the WOTC store's price. Premiere stores will receive an even better discount. This will let the FLGS remain the primary source of material, let the FLGS make the decision on which material to put on the shelves based on local and global sales feedback (Something they don't have today, a way to see "What's hot and what's not"), and still let the people out in the boonies with no FLGS get material.
The only question is, did WOTC recognize the opportunity they had here?
