B5 Wars Distribution Problems

 Sorry to make some people think that they were not going to get the
Fleet 
 Book from my distribution example, it was just an example ;-).  AoG did

 have something specific to say on the matter.	The following was posted
to 
 the B5 Wars mailing list by AoG in response to the inquiries from
Canadian 
 gamers looking to find a copy of B5 Wars.
 
 This is my 2nd try on sending this, the 1st try bounced :-/
 
 Enjoy,
 Dean	 <dean.gundberg@bcbsnd.com>
 
 -------------------------------------------------------------
 
 AOG here...this is an across-Canada problem, and here's why. When we
went 
 to ship our first batch of boxed sets, we waited a couple of extra
months 
 (not weeks, months) receiving frequent promises from a certain
miniatures 
 producer that shipments would begin "in a few days" or some such. Well,

 problems of various sorts kept cropping up (like the UPS strike) that
kept 
 pushing "in a few days" back to "next week." Eventually, when we
finally 
 did ship, we learned that we still didn't have enough to fill orders,
and 
 the miniatures producer had quit by that point. This forced us to
scramble 
 to open our own casting house and also to hire another company, Reaper,
to 
 produce more for us. The bottom line, though, was that we didn't have 
 enough to fill all the orders. Someone was going to have to wait.
 
 Gaming distributors are very competitive, and have overlapping service 
 areas. If we shorted one distributor, but not another who serviced the 
 same zone, he would get irate, and we'd lose a customer (game
distributors 
 are the manufacturer's customers). Unfortunately, almost all the US 
 distributors, except those in remote areas like Hawaii and Alaska, 
 overlap. We discovered, with the orders we had and the product supply, 
 that the only way to handle the situation was to reduce the size of all

 the continental US shipments by the same percentage, and completely
hold 
 up all the orders from Canada and the remote Alaskan and Hawaiian 
 distributors.
 
 So the result was: (1) we got the product out, (2) we didn't ship
enough 
 and managed to annoy most of our US distributors anyway, and (3) we 
 really, really annoyed the Canadian and remote US distributors!
However, 
 this was really the only possible solution because if we hadn't shipped

 what we had, we knew it would have been 2 more months before more 
 miniatures would have been available, and our bills and debts would
have 
 caught up with us by then! And the damage to our reputation to the 
 Canadian and other distributors was somewhat mitigated by the fact that

 all of them were in the same boat, and didn't have to worry about one
or 
 two of them getting product while the others didn't. We do owe an
apology 
 to you Canadian folks for making you wait so long, but we really had no

 choice: it was release what we had, or die. On the plus side, you guys
are 
 first on the list for this new shipment we'll be sending next week.
 
 The major lessons, if any of you are planning to open your own gaming 
 company, are: (1) Don't hire someone else to do work for you unless you

 have no other choice, (2) If you do hire someone else, make sure they
are 
 in the same city so you can inspect their work and progress, (3) Don't 
 release a product schedule with specific dates on it! 
 
 Hmm, I did not mean for this to turn into such a long essay, but it 
 appears that it happened on its own. --Agent One
 - -- 
 Agents of Gaming: Designing the Next Generation of Games New web site! 

 http://www.agentsofgaming.com 
 Agent One: Bruce H. Graw; Agent Two: Robert N. Glass