RE: FT losing market share?

I asked my local store owner this question (Waterloo, run by the
owner/creator of Fantasy Games Unlimited and he hates GW so much that he
refuses to carry any more of their product.  Nice guy :) ).  He has no
problem going with whatever distributor can get him the stuff he wants,
but
GZG doesn't show up in any of his distributor books.  It still shows up
as
"go through GeoHex" followed by "GeoHex is dead".  Which means he could
try
to place an order via phone to the UK (yeah, right) or go through the
website (which, IIRC, doesn't say anything about what to do if you're a
store).  Either way it's too much of a hassle for him for minimal
returns.
I personally don't think it's unreasonable for him to expect a nice,
convenient manner in which to order product.

As a follow-up to the "Me and Now"... I've been talking up GZG for the
last
2 years (since I started going there).	I ran a couple of really small,
really basic FT demos down there.  Everybody (over a dozen) liked it and
wanted to play more, but balked at ordering figs from a
none-too-spectacular
catalog from the UK.  BFG is horrible, SFB is too complex, B5W is dead
and
they don't know about Starmada.  They want to play FT, but want to see
what
it is they're buying.  What am I supposed to tell them?

David

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-gzg-l@lists.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
> [mailto:owner-gzg-l@lists.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU]On Behalf Of Roger Burton
> West
> Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2004 8:36 AM
> To: gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu
> Subject: Re: FT losing market share?
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 11, 2004 at 07:30:56AM -0800, Bruce Gelinas wrote:
> >I think lack of a US distributor is hurting. It is hard to get
> new players when the rule books are not easy to obtain. I have
> run a couple of FT demos at my local hobby store and had great
> fun and a great turnout. But when I told the intrested players
> the only way they could get the rulebooks was to order them from
> England the next question was could I make a copy of my rules.
> Yes ordering from England is fairly quick and not that expensive
> but the "Me" and "Now" generation do not want to wait so they
> will go on to other games where the rule can be picked up at a
> local store.
>
> Perhaps a better question would be: why don't the _stores_ order
> directly from Jon? Possibilities:
>
> - they don't know how cheap and fast that might be;
>
> - it's too difficult for them to deal with a foreign supplier (can't
see
> why really);
>
> - they're already tied to using a single distributor who'll drop them
if
> they go elsewhere, even for things that distributor doesn't carry.
>
> Perhaps we should be talking to the game distributors and getting
_them_
> to order in bulk from Jon...
>
> Roger