Re: FT losing market share?

Laserlight wrote:

> Huh?	Where are you shipping to?  It was always cheaper for me to buy 
> straight from GZG than from a US distributor.  Not to mention the fact

> that I'd get it quickly and I'd have access to the newly designed
figures.

Me, too, both in Canada and Louisiana. In fact, even with Geo-Hex's 20%
off going-out-of-business discount, figures were _still_ cheaper shipped
from Britain.

I will say a couple of things about the market share issue.

First, I had a friend in Canada who produced an RPG product with a
partner. It was well received, but it took _forever_ to come up with the
follow-up volume. This killed interest and sales. People gobble up new
things. They do get tired of game systems, and they do get interested
when a new supplement comes out. Supplements are the life blood of
games, whether it is a repackaging of old material or brand new
material.

Second, lack of a store presence is killing interest in GZG stuff in
North America. I was at the main game store in New Orleans over the
weekend. They had the FT rule book, the DS2 book, and FB1. They no
longer carried GZG minis at all. Needless to say, most of the store had
converted over to GW. This has been mentioned on this list before. GZG
is a small company, and the fact is that Jon can make more profit doing
mail order to North America even if North America becomes nothing more
than a small, niche market. Some have criticized this, but Jon's
business model seems to be based on streamlined mail order, something
that the rest of the world doesn't have much of a problem with. It may
_never_ be too wildly popular in North America because of this. Instead
of lamenting, we should realize we should simply snort and behave like
the elitist snobs that we deservedly are! We have the superior product
in our hands, and that's that! (I know some will complain about lack of
a prese!
 nce meaning they can't convince people to play miniatures with them
that aren't based on Warhammer. To them I say, "You have friends who
play minis? And you're complaining???")

Third, the miniatures are what make Jon profitable, not the rules. You
buy one set of rules per player _maximum_ and usually far less than
that. You buy many, many figures per player. Knowing a little about the
publishing industry, I can tell you that the mark up is considerably
less with rules than with miniatures. Few can make money at rule books.
That being said, Jon's figures are pretty darn good. Having popular,
competing rules -- as long as they are generic enough to use any
company's figures -- is good for Jon's business even if FT goes down the
dumpster in terms of players. It's hard for Jon to justify spending time
working on rules instead of working on figures. I'd be interested in
knowing how many hours Jon puts into developing a figure line comparied
to working on a rule book. I'd imagine that his return on investment is
_way_ better for figures.

So, short of Jon farming out the rule book part of the business (and
don't think we haven't suggested it on the playtest list!) the rules
will always take a back seat to the miniatures, and putting food on
Jon's table.

--
Allan Goodall		   agoodall@att.net
http://www.hyperbear.com   agoodall@hyperbear.com