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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7721261" data-attributes="member: 4937">In carpentry, there is a way to get US craftsmanship and control costs, but it's not easy.  You find some partners in the Amish community who are willing to work with you.  I disagree that Carolina Gaming Tables was simply cheaper than Geek Chic.  The big difference is that they have much more stripped down packages than Geek Chic seemed willing to offer, that put their tables on par with what you'd pay for normal furniture.  Geek Chic specialized in 'dream tables' for a high end market, and didn't really offer anything comparable to the very basic designs you get with Carolina Gaming Tables.  Notably, Carolina Gaming Tables stripped down designs sacrificed gonzo gaming functionality for something that looks much more like a normal piece of furniture, which is a good compromise when one spouse is a gaming fanatic and the other is a gamer but also wants a normal life.   I considered a Geek Chic table when looking for a dining room table, ultimately going with a traditional hand made Amish piece, because ultimately the features of a dining room table outweighed the features of a gaming specific table.  I agree with jhallum that ultimately all the 'geegaws' on a Geek Chic table meant that it was the sort of thing most families would only put into a dedicated gaming room, and that means you are catering to a very limited market indeed.I'm sad to see Geek Chic go though.  The very idea that they were doing $2 million dollars in sales, and putting that many high end gaming tables out on the market warmed my heart, even though I wasn't a customer.  I have no idea exactly what their struggles were, but I can't help but think one of the biggest issues was the cost of advertising such a heavy and difficult to transport product.  It can't have been cheap to transport the tables to conventions in hopes of encouraging sales, and yet is hard to imagine how they could have created excitement for their product without it.   I also have to imagine that 100 years from now, if there is still such a thing as 'Antiques Road Show', they'll have created some truly exciting and perhaps valuable and collectable conversation pieces.   I can't help but notice that the PnP RPG geek market is such that it's almost impossible to make money keeping things in print, but once things are out of print the prices on them can sky rocket.  Everything desirable seems to become a 'Black Lotus'.</blockquote>

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