Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[joncleaves]

I did not use the term 'paper boys.'

Chris and I have been talking offline. There is clearly some big confusion
about business practice here. It is not as simple as sending you some copies
free and trusting you to send us the retail price for each back at some
unspecified later date. Get the dealers at the con to stock Warrior stuff -
that's what they are there for.


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[joncleaves]

Don, Don, Don...

No, that is not a rebuff, that is telling you not to worry about it and not
to make it such a big deal. I didn't want you to be seen as FHE paper boys -
I didn't call anyone that. There is an important difference.

I was protecting you from getting involved in a business lesson you don't
really need.
But, since this seems so important that you two have to keep at it publicly,
what you are asking (I think) is to have us send you free some amount of
Warrior product, which you will try to sell at retail price, presumably at a
con that charges dealer space for sales and does not allow uncompensated
table sales, and then, at some unspecified time, you will send us the sale
proceeds and return the unsold product.

That is not how a smart business works. You want a public lesson in why,
keep this up...lol

If you want to help FHE, please recruit new players and have them buy their
copies over the internet or from local dealers. Also, if you want to help
us, please stop 'complaining' that we didn't ship you free copies of Warrior
to sell at a con game table.

Let it go....lol


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[Don Coon]

> > and were politely rebuffed.
> > Something about who assumes the risk etc.
>
> by one of us??

Perhaps memory has muddied the events, but we felt our offer of waving the
flag at Tcon was politely rubuffed by you. Later when you asked for ideas
from the field we mentioned again about selling product for you, and we were
told you did not need "paper boys" as near as I can remember. That is why
we did not even ask for FWW.

Don

[Don Coon]

From the warrior archives:

Post #5603 July 31 2002 12:19 AM by Jon Cleaves:

"no, no, Chris - I meant new guys ordering them from us, not you having to
hawk them like paper boys. recruit, man, and leave the selling to us."

My memory aint so bad eh? Thanks to my librarian wife for digging this one
up.

I would say this was a rebuff?

Don

Subject: Re: [WarriorRules] Product sales


> I did not use the term 'paper boys.'
>
> Chris and I have been talking offline. There is clearly some big
confusion
> about business practice here. It is not as simple as sending you some
copies
> free and trusting you to send us the retail price for each back at some
> unspecified later date. Get the dealers at the con to stock Warrior
stuff -
> that's what they are there for.
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> WarriorRules-unsubscribe@egroups.com
>
>
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> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>

[Mark Mallard]

I have listened to both sides of this discussion - maybe sale or return could
be used to make sure the vendors have the product. It should not be difficult
to get a list of vendors from organisers of events. With this list it should
be fairly easy to persuade at least one vendor to take some stock on a sale
or return basis.

It would seem the obvious solution to me.

mark mallard


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[joncleaves]

Ok, I warned you....

FHE cannot be at every con.
IF there is a con out there with participants who would like to sell Warrior
product (WP) at their tables, and
IF they are willing to ensure that the con permits non-dealer sales or they
are willing to pay the cons sales fee and
IF they are willing to sign an agreement that says they will attempt to sell
by an specified time a certain amount of WP and return in saleable condition
all that does not sell by that time at their own expense, plus all money
generated from such sales and
IF FHE deems said persons to be trustworthy, then
sure - I'd send them some WP

I submit to you, and this happens to be an expert opinion as I do this all
the time, that far easier than the above is for local Warrior fans to search
out the dealers that come to their cons and get them to stock Warrior. Such
fans have to sign for, pay, store, sell and ship NOTHING to do this. That is
the very reason for a dealer's existence.

If there are a couple of people out there who would only buy WP at a game
table and would not walk the x feet to a dealer to make the purchase, I'd
rather lose such a pseudo customer than ask a fan to do all the work to cover
his laziness, no matter what someone thinks Madison avenue would say about
our business practice.

Sad but true that there are dealers who have not yet had the light of Warrior
shed upon them, but there are no historical mini dealers who have not heard
of TOG, and a few seconds of explanation as to the Warrior-TOG connection is
all it has EVER taken to get a store to stock Warrior. How much easier those
few seconds and the small amount of research to find the email/phone of
dealers that habitually attend your local show than what is being asked of
the player above. Heck, just send us the email/phone of the recalcitrant
dealer and we'll handle the rest....

One more time with feeling - if you truly want to know what we at FHE would
like fans to be doing for the game system (rather than continue to press us
for a method we do not support) we would prefer you spent your effort
recruiting new players and informing us of dealers who do not yet have the
word, than try to arrange to be a pseudo dealer yourself. That is our
preference. No futher lectures from business experts are needed or
desired...lol

Put another way - if you get people to demand product in the stores, the
stores put demands on their DISTRIBUTORS. THAT demand sells the kind of
Warrior numbers we need to clear the warehouse and print again, or to afford
the next rules set or list book. If players expect and rely upon table
sales, dealers make no demands on distributors and sales are an unpredictable
trickle. FEUDAL WARRIOR does not get published thanks to an unpredictable
trickle of table sales, it gets published when distributors place large
orders...

Going through all the crap needed to do table sales = x amount of work. Take
1/4x amount of work and use it to look up the last set of dealers who came to
your con and email or call them with your request that they stock Warrior and
pass on our web address. Use the Warrior-TOG connection. Spend the 3/4x and
dollars saved on a beer with your friends.

Fellow Warriors who want to carry on with this thread, have at it. I am done
- Campaign Warrior needs me......lol
Jon


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[Mark Mallard]

i was trying to help as i could see you were getting frustrated and quite
rightly so.

mark mallard


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[Chris Bump]

In a message dated 10/16/2002 8:44:14 AM Central Daylight Time,
markmallard77@... writes:

<< i was trying to help as i could see you were getting frustrated and quite
rightly so. {Hmmm?}

mark mallard >>

All right, since we are loosing volleys here. How exactly did your comments
perport to help? I fail to see the difference between a promise of buy or
return and a straight consignment deal. I totally understand the concern
of FHE sending out product hither and dale on the possibilty alone of a
single or few being sold. On that position alone, Jon could and probably
should avoid sending product out. That would be difficult to control and the
very real possibility exists that if FHE did it for one group they would be
pressured to do it for more. Perfectly understandable and reasonable.

However, and I don't know any of the politics of game shop product
acquisition nor distribution, I do know marketing and sales. Regets knows
advertising, marketing and sales. Your proposal basically requires the fan
to now take time and go try to sell the game/ concept to one or more vendors.
This is obviously unreasonable. We all know where and how to get the rules
and lists. Any one in our area can do the same and we are happy to help as
would you or any other fan of the game- I assume.

The comments that were made were as much a statement of promise- that "hey
there seems to be a real interest bubbling up..." as much as any possibility
of sale for a few volumes of the rules. No one said "give us product and we
will sell it.." Everyone said that opportunities were being missed and maybe
Jon would have dealt with something like this in the past and has an idea or
solution.

Greg's wife owns what is probably the largest historical hobby shop in the
state. She knows as does Brian Thomas with Military Miniatures of Texas and
so many others that there is little chance of doing more than breaking even
with the travel to these various regional tournaments. Consequently few
attend and those that do are already strapped at trying to decide what
product they are going to bring with them and are therfore highly unlikey to
follow up and order a few sets of rules and lists from an unknown rule set,
sell or return guarantee or not. And to a shop owner, what is such a promise
worth anyhow? FHE is an unknown and could easily be some guy in his basement
wearing women's underwear. So who assumes the risk with your proposal? At
least with the implied proposal made with the various posts out here the two
parties know of each other.

The various querries at FWW were all given the web site to order the product
if they want. I think, based on the level of enthusiasm, that some of those
will order. But impulse buying is not possible if the product is not on
site. Much as we love the rules, none of us are going to take the time to
search out which vendor(s) is coming and then take the time and expense to
contact them and try to sell them on carrying the rules. And even if we did,
we do not have the authorization to offer any sell or return guarantee, so
regardless of what kind of salesmen we may be the store owner would still
have to make contact with FHE and negotiate carrying the "stuff". This route
does not look promising.

If your efforts were truly designed to help..........Nope.
Chris

[Greg Regets]

1. It is quite difficult to talk vendors into ordering a product they have never
heard of. Hell, it is very difficult to find out who the damn vendors are in
advance of a tournament.

2. Impulse buying has been proven again and again to be the most effective way
of selling. That's why car dealers try to get you to take the vehicle home for
the night, and competition for premium shelf space in stores, get store managers
trips to Aspen for said premium space. I have no doubt that were rules sets
available, we could have sold at least four, perhaps more. I also have no doubt
that half of those that would have purchased, spent their gaming money on
something else. Do you know how often the term 'Top of mind awareness." is
spoken at an advertising agency?

There needs to be a way to have product to sell at tournaments and conventions.
Its a problem that needs amelioration.

Perhaps the effort that is spent on the sales and marketing spin board (aka,
Warrior board) could be spent finding a solution to this problem.

Take care, G


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[Mark Mallard]

You have misunderstood - i meant FHE should do the deal not the gamer.

FHE could get the list of vendors and offer them some product on a sale or
return basis. It is a fairly common practice especially when trying to
introduce a new or little known product.

I too have a lot of retail/marketing experience.

I followed johns argument and can see why we the gamers cannot at most
conventions sell the product.

mark mallard


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