Inclusivity and the Blue Hair (Tradecraft)

My store has a reputation for being an inclusive environment.

Much to my surprise.

You see, I haven't put up signs saying we're against hate or networked with the community to be more inclusive. I haven't sought out a more diverse staff or advertised in the Pink Pages. I don't have a particular store policy on inclusivity and I don't have any rules in my Game Center, as I think rules postings are only necessary when they're really, really necessary. History has shown only crazy people post rules (or make laws) when it's not necessary.

The reason why we have a reputation for inclusivity is we try really hard, now get your notebook out so you don't miss this, we try really hard not to be a dick.

When other people show intolerance, it's not a "he said, she said" issue. The intolerant person is shown the door. Because they're being a dick, not because of some political stance, rule or policy. Most of the time I'm not even there, as this activity happens in the evening hours during events. It's ingrained in the store culture, and staff are part of that culture. There's usually one trouble maker in every group (two in Magic).

As for hiring, I've realized inclusivity provides me a great opportunity to hire excellent people overlooked in a more conservative environment. I don't care about the color of your hair, your gender, your orientation, your identity, your race or even your politics, provided you can do the job well. I do want you to be clever, knowledgeable and customer service oriented. Because other hiring managers do care about all the superficial things, I often find diamonds in the rough. Note how selfish I am. Note that I am finding a competitive advantage and not making a political statement. I am not hiring lesser people to make a greater point. I am not being a good person, I'm just being self serving. Most importantly, I'm not being a dick. As with everything in the game trade, the bar is low.

I want to mention when I was doing research for my store in 2004, I visited the local comic shop, Flying Colors, with a friend. As we were leaving I mentioned, "Do I really want a life managing young people with blue hair?" That was what I saw at Flying Colors and being in the professional world, you would never see that. I had no experience with blue hair (my son later had blue hair for years) or really anyone who didn't file down their personality to fit into a corporate culture. I assumed blue hair meant trouble and weird problems and unpredictability, when in fact, blue hair meant opportunity. I really do want a life managing young people with blue hair.

This diversity grows the store and brings in a diverse crowd like I could not have imagined five to ten years ago. It's a hiring dividend, not the core value of the hire. The hobby has become mainstream. If you would have looked at my store a decade ago, it would have been the stereotypical "sausage fest" of all males, acting male, smelling male, being their stereotypical male selves and expressing their dumb ass stereotypical male opinions. I get it. You become so blinded by testosterone that you can't even smell the sweat or notice the pee on the seat. Testosterone in the air blurs the senses. That was the community, whether you liked the smell or not. For some stores that haven't adapted, this is still the community.

There was good and bad in that group, like any group, but it was an insular community, that repelled others, especially women. That is gone for the most part, or at least lessened. The hobby has spread rapidly and the customer base has expanded to all types of people and most importantly, we have been there with open arms. We didn't change, we just provided the open environment that allowed diversity to stream in, and the understanding that there will be no hostility or intolerance allowed.

Not everyone agreed. Not everyone went quietly. One edge lord threatened violence against me. As someone who's not a squishy liberal, and more libertarian (a liberal who returns fire), this had me a bit fired up. I will go down with the ship and take you with me. I bought a couple Louisville Sluggers, in case we wanted a little spontaneous staff batting practice. But like most cowards, they made a lot of threats, trolled me on the Internet for a while, and eventually disappeared.

In any case, there was no change needed for this transition, no Sluggers wielded, just an understanding we would make hard decisions to defend people who chose us as their home. If you're not a dick, how could you not? Embrace the blue hair. Blue hair is here to stay. If you really are a dick, embrace it anyway, for your bottom line. Fake it for the money.

The Game Trade Pivot

When a game hits peak popularity, it's not uncommon for it to be taken away from independent retailers in some form or another. It might be a retailer exclusive, or a publisher's attempt to spread the wealth (and power). If Target came to you after publishing a hot board game and offered you a bazillion dollars for an exclusive to the expansion, what would you say? It might kill your company, but you would have a bazillion dollars.

This morning I had two examples of pivot math, in which I needed to adjust expectations based on publisher removal of market demand. One is for Wizards of the Coast and the other for Ravensburger:

How many should I buy?

• Saltmarsh: 30 days of Tomb of Annihilation sales (because those are my terms), with a 10% bump for growth, with this total divided in half because of removal of early release (it will be sold on Amazon the same day by idiot retailers).  I suspect Amazon gets half the D&D market. 

• Villainous Expansion: Total sales of Villainous base game, divided by three, because it's an expansion, divided in half because of early Target release by months. Everyone who cares will already have it and coming out three quarters after our huge sales push means it will be cold.

A younger me might have decided to drop Villainous entirely and avoid it, especially after we sold 50 or so copies over the holidays as one of our top picks. That's a really small number for some larger stores, but out here in the burbs, we run shallow and wide. As for Saltmarsh, I might begin slimming down my D&D overall and start banging the drum for Pathfinder 2.0, which is coming soon. That's all counter productive though, so I just pivot and move on. I certainly won't push Villainous again or most Ravensburger games, nor will I be looking to invest time in jump starting Adventurer's League, which can't seem to gain a footing. I will cultivate my indifference. 

This gets to the problem of the game trade in general, without allies we have cold war enemies. Publishers want retailers to do some lifting for their product, but we have product PTSD. We're not willing to enter into new co-dependent relationship in which we're beaten in response to our love. So most retailers put minimum effort into promoting products and instead focus on well established events and reliable staples. It takes a tremendous amount of effort and tremendous love for these games to do otherwise. The key to success is a series of co-dependent relationships in which we don't get angry, we quietly pivot. But it wears you down, let me tell you.

GMROI Application (Tradecraft)

This is a couple of posts from my Gary Ray, Author page on Facebook.  I've had this page for a couple years now and despite only a couple hundred people on it, there's far more engagement than this creaky old blog. I encourage you to follow me there, because there will come I time I give up on this medium.

Here are my posts, which I'll certainly use in inventory management or buying presentations in the future. It takes a rather arcane concept, Gross Margin Return on Investment, something I've talked about before, and uses it as a tool for ordering. Applying a tool, what a concept!

I don't want to spend much money this week on restocks. How many times have you been in that position, but you're not sure how to proceed?

I was in a seminar once and they suggested you work with your restock list with your distributor, going by code down the list, until you hit your purchasing budget. I found that astonishing.

Say you have $2,000 for purchasing and you really aren't sure where to spend it. This is where I was this morning and remembered GMROI, which I had just calculated for the store the day before. GMROI is Gross Margin Return on Investment.

For every dollar you spend, GMROI measures how much money you'll get back. Would you rather get $2 for your $1 investment or $1.50? You want the $2 of course, although you might decide you want to focus on short term velocity (turns) rather than long term return (GMROI). We have multiple tools in the tool box.

In my example below, I could spend my money on high turning card games for a short term gain, but the GMROI is just average. It's an average investment. If I need a snack run, I should probably do that order first, with its $2.06 return on every dollar I spend. Costco is my most profitable distributor, dollar for dollar.

What I used to do is place my Games Workshop order first, but now I see with GMROI that tactical miniature games are my lowest return. That's the last place I should spend my money, return wise. It also has a below average turn rate. It's marginal, but still worthwhile. It's certainly not my top priority.

So when I went through my orders this morning, I de-emphasized GW ($1.58 GMROI), made sure to re-stock every card supply option ($1.91 GMROI), and made sure my snacks were stocked (which I did on Friday), since it has the best GMROI of the bunch.

My store is healthy, but where you really see GMROI shine is with troubled stores or troubled departments. There have been departments where I've calculated sub $1 returns on my investment. In the GMROI example I'll link to, I was making 90 cents for every dollar invested in classic games. We shored that up, mostly by carrying far fewer of them.

---

I know from GMROI what department comprises my worst investment, but why is it my worst investment? Why are tactical miniature games my worst performing department when it comes to investing money?

The vast majority of that department is comprised of Games Workshop. I can see my COGS percentage number is far too high, 63%, when my average is 57%. What makes my margin so poor with GW? It turns out to be a lot of factors:

1. The base margin for most GW products is 45%, which is lower than many lines. 

2. Direct order products from GW are 35%, even worse.

3. My store offers a 10% discount for pre-orders, which brings a lot of product down to that 35%.

4. The splash nature of GW releases means I attempt to funnel as many sales through special orders as possible, at 35%, hurting my margin.

5. The splash nature of GW means I order heavily in hopes to avoid outages. This results in overstock, which is then clearanced at a discount.

6. The enforced once a work ordering AND the one week ship time for us means I can't rely on just-in-time ordering, like I do with the rest of the store, so I order deeper, taking more risks.

7. My 45 day terms with GW means I push my luck even further, which means when I lose, I lose bigger. 

8. My prize support tends to exceed my allowance of free product, to some extent, which is really a marketing expense, but it increases cost of goods.

So for that reason, tactical miniature games are my worst performing department. However, there are other considerations:

1. 4.1 turns is nothing to sneeze at. This is solid inventory performance, and if there was a worse performing department (there isn't), it might make sense to take advantage of this.

2. Metrics don't measure volume or profit, so Magazines might have better metrics, but I sell 30 times more miniatures making a much larger profit.

3. Tactical Miniature Games drives sales of paint and miniature cases, which are also weaker departments, but together make up even more sales.

4. Pre-orders and low margin special orders are risk free. It's low performing money, but it's free money.

5. The clearancing of product is painful, but GW products have brand value protection, so you'll always sell all of it, over cost, eventually, without a lot of work.

So what we see is tactical miniature games for my store should be of least priority, but they're a big enough draw to maintain, provided they're propped up by more profitable departments. It's not an area in which I should look to expand, unless I've exhausted all other options.

That's why when I had a little extra money from clearancing my last miniature game, I did the wise thing. I invested in ice cream.

Diversifying When the Show is S&#$ (Tradecraft)

The game trade has recently become, what's the technical term? Right, a shit show. So you naturally want to diversify into new product lines. I highly recommend this, provided you can find the right mix. Most veteran store owners will tell you, that mix is a struggle. It's not that we can't sell comics, toys, pop culture, or pop tarts, it's that getting those new lines to reasonable performance levels can be difficult.

Diversification depends on the kind of store you run. If the word "gamer" appears in your store title, we can assume you're likely to run a business that appeals primarily to hardcore hobbyists. However, if you've spent the extra money to build a store that appeals to the general public, you've got more options.

Even with a family friendly specialty shop, there is still the issue of location. My store is family friendly, but I have close to zero foot traffic. There are reasons to go there, as in it's a destination store with geeky stuff nearby, but there's nobody walking by.

I spent $20,000 on toys when I moved to my larger location because my competitor had a lot of toys and I needed new, diversified inventory when I doubled my retail space. Toys seemed safe. Boy was I wrong. This was a disaster, not because toys were bad, but because I had no foot traffic. My selection was just alright, not enough for my business to become a toy destination, especially when there were plenty of better options. I also misunderstood the nature of the toy market, which relies on a lot of volume to move low cost items, often stocked in depth. I would have a wall of board games in single quantities next to a wall of toys that only made sense stocked six deep. Toys were not for my store. Neither were comics, and a bunch of other things I tried.

Sending back a pallet of Melissa and Doug

What worked for me was gradually trying new lines, more in the category of gamer adjacent. What do my existing customers want to buy? What do they already buy from other people? What adds value to their lives rather than just idiotic add on purchases like wax candy lips? We dabbled a bit with Funko Pops. We tried pop culture items from distributors with limited success. We tried novelty candy and glow in the dark pirate figures. Eventually we found a few companies that made pop culture items, often things I would never have considered. For example, as our store has become more diverse, we've found success selling pop culture purses, scarves, jewelry and the like. Women were rare in the store, ten years ago, but the hobby has changed as has our store. I delegate these new categories to younger managers who know what's going on.

You want to ease into new waters, testing them out, learning what people want and adjusting to new problems, like loss control. We had homeless people who would wander into the store and flat out steal things, just walking away with pop culture wallets and hats. A lot of things we've learned need to go in display cases, for example. Suddenly we have things everyone wants, stuff that will sell on a blanket in front of a train station. It's a weird feeling.

The easiest form of diversification by far, is diversification of supplier. We make a point of backing a variety of Kickstarter games with retailer tiers. These games differentiate the store and although it took years to dial in what works and what doesn't, they've tended to be profitable. Likewise, there are many direct only publishers and suppliers that are worth pursuing, many of whom will be at the GAMA Trade Show in a couple weeks. We order direct for dice, dice bags, classic games, jigsaw puzzles, marbles, and even ice cream.  Hasbro mass market games sell well when we can get them. They didn't sell ten years ago, but with the demise of Toys R Us and a larger segment of the population playing games, there's newfound crossover back to the games of our youth.

Some diversification advice:

1. Examine your specific set of circumstances rather than following what others do.
2. Avoid declining markets (comics, Funko POPs, for example).
3. Find things that add value for your existing customers.
4. Ask around to see what people are interested in. Frisbee golf? Airsoft? 
5. Look for gamer adjacent products before striking out into new areas.
6. Find publishers who don't directly compete with you. I backed a Kickstarter today that offered me exclusive sale of their game!*  *except at conventions, on their website, in contests, at the BGG store...
7. Look for favorable terms, margins, or net priced items with flexibility.
8. Test the waters with minimum orders but remember to follow up quickly so you don't lose momentum.
9. Test the limits of your concessions with additional snacks, coolers full of drinks, and potentially hot food options.
10. Consider a long term investment, like diversifying into a coffee bar or real estate or anything else. 

SNAFU

SNAFU: Situation Normal, All Fucked Up

I just wrote about having time away from the business. There are various approaches to freeing up time, and I wanted to mention what I think is the wrong way and of course, what I think is the right way.

The wrong way is streamlining. The book The 4-Hour Work Week sounds an awful lot like how I described my extended vacations. It's a New York Times bestseller that my own book will certainly never live up to. I can take months at a time off with 3-4 hours a week of actual work, but it has nothing to do with streamlining. I tried streamlining after reading this book and it was a short lived disaster. This book is about creating a turn key business, a machine really, that shaves off all the hard edges so you can spend as little time as possible running your business. I've mentioned it before, but this is not a hobby game store road map for more time. We thrive on exceptions and hard edges.

There is a lot to learn from business process books about creating processes and procedures, but in general, more and better customer service, more and better options, are the answer, rather than streamlining and offering less. I think doing one thing well is the key, but offering everything possible within that one thing with stellar service is why customers choose you. It's your Unique Value Proposition. Once a framework of processes and procedures was in place, I then empowered managers to create their own policies and procedures, sometimes with a few tweaks from me. It requires they understand the philosophy of the company. Overall though, it's not unusual for me to stumble on a new policy or procedure in my own business that I've never heard of. That's exactly what I want.

Policies and procedures to me are about how we can regularly hit high performance goals doing our one thing. If I can't do something repeatedly with high levels of success, I don't want to do it at all. For example, people ask me occasionally to ship them a game. We don't ship. If I made an exception, we would be in new territory and we would most certainly screw it up. If I'm going to ship, I'm going to ship a lot and I'm going to do it right, with a plan. Policies and procedures created by staff are often ones I might have shaved off, 4-Hour Work Week style, but their desire to serve the customer has lead them to create new systems to make customers happy.

What you won't find in a 4-Hour Work Week scenario is the huge amount of variability and passion required to run a store like this. It's complete, but bounded, chaos. A primary goal for us is to create a wide range of possibilities with policies and procedures addressing each, along with boundaries that limit customer demands. There is always that guy (or girl), who wants it one way, but it's the other. That's unfortunate for them.

We saw this with our recent ding & dent sale, amazing deals with long lines. There was the person who complained bitterly about waiting outside, even though we had little control or ability to let hundreds of people in early. There was the customer who wanted an even larger discount because the box was damaged! People will always want more and ironically, the closer you get to free, the more of your time people will consume. Post a photo of free stuff on a table to your Facebook page and watch your time evaporate as you answer endless questions.

There's a Zen saying, "If you want to control your cow, give it a wide pasture." This is a reference to your mind. If you want to control chaos, give it wide boundaries. Let chaos roam about and eventually it will get tired and take a nap. Some employees will not like this, as the chaos is hard to wrap their head around. It's why it takes six weeks for new employees to gain basic competence. Some customers will attempt to game the system or call out inconsistencies in the chaos. That's all part of roaming the pasture. Bounded chaos is the strategy.

With our wide boundaries, we can have strong customer service ... with hard limits. It's a chaotic environment with many variables, but employees are empowered to make important decisions, with leadership being fairly flat so most everyone is empowered. Leadership has to back employees for this to work, so rather than the customer is always right, the philosophy is employees first. It's common with some big businesses like the Virgin company. Am I the best boss? Heck no, but I'll always back an employee if they're following policies and delivering great service.

Do I fire customers? Yes, but very, very rarely. We have half a dozen permanently banned individuals in year 15: the double dealer, the white supremacist, the homophobe, the serial shoplifter; you get the picture. I recently fielded the question, "Where in your book does it say I should go fuck myself?" Grab me a pen, my friend. There's always room for another chapter.

This all works because I have really, really good staff, especially managers. I support them and let them run with the vision. All the credit goes to them.

A Week In The Life

My weekly scheduled as a hobby game store owner is based on the needs of my business, my personal needs and desires, along with financial considerations. I could afford right now to not work at all, to not go into the store. However, I have the same problem as every semi-retired person. If you don't go to work, then what?

That does not mean I'm financially independent, only that I've created a system that works independent of my continual input. As I don't have a better use of my time, it is best spent maximizing the value of the business until I have my 'then what" answer. That answer might be a second business, a second location, or who knows, I might buy a boat and sail off into the sunset and work remotely. I spent a bunch of time writing a book in 2017, so there are answers to these "then what" questions.

Do you dread going to work on Mondays? So do I! So I don't go. I work from home Mondays, placing orders online from about 7am to 1pm. That's a decent day of work for me, but to be entirely honest, I could send off this entire workload to distributors to do this job. Many store owners do this, and when I'm on vacation, I do it as well. However, I think manually ordering every single item ties me into the store "hive mind." I may not play as many games as I would like, but I know what's hot, what's available, what isn't and why. I know things.

Tuesday is shipment and meeting day. The vast majority of the stuff I ordered on Monday shows up on Tuesday. Having next day arrival means we can rely on just-in-time delivery -- probably a little too heavily. I would like to have about 20% more inventory in the store and we could probably double the inventory, if we had the money. As we're paying down debt, we run lean. We only stock best sellers and we drop the bottom 20% to make room for what's hot. There is always a bottom 20%. The store makes over seven figures in revenue, despite only stocking the best of the best.

On Tuesday, I help receive all those things I ordered, another way I feel connected to the store when I'm essentially off the sales floor most of the time. I learn what each thing is, get an idea of the value proposition now that it's in my hand, and get a chance to see where it fits in the store. Later on I go to lunch with my manager. We have an agenda of items we go over as part of our process improvement plan. I'm usually responsible for about 20% of those items and the rest go to the manager and staff. My job is to remove obstacles and occasionally take over thorny issues. We make a point of doing this every week and the goal is to constantly "fill the hopper" with new issues. It's a process I learned from Dave Wallace.

Wednesdays and Thursdays are slower days and I'm there with just my assistant manager. The idea is I do mostly office work during these days, along with covering for him and helping customers. As we grow larger, I expect I'll have extra coverage these days, freeing me up to do more officey things, whatever those may be. Thursdays are also order days, but as I may get pulled away from those if it gets busy, I often spend Wednesday night placing my orders for a couple hours. In fact, if I'm home at all, I'm often logged into the point of sale making adjustments and tweaks pretty much all the time.

Fridays are another receiving day, like Tuesdays, but not nearly as heavy. Before construction, I used to take half the day off and go to the gym and the range, but the financial burden after construction meant I dropped those activities. I'll usually do a little office work, help with receiving, work with customers and if it's slow, take off a little early. I'm not really needed, which was great today (Friday), because I'm home sick (I was sick yesterday, but had to go to work anyway).

Saturdays are a big day for the store. In year four, I got weekends off and one of the goals of the manager was to keep me away from weekends. That was by design. Saturday morning I'll get an email from my main distributor of all the new items that week. I'll spend a couple hours researching each one and send that in. I do not look at email solicitations, the "dailies" restock listings, or other day to day buying related communications. I pre order absolutely everything for my store so I can free myself from the daily burden. If I look at a daily, I'll buy stupid crap, guaranteed. If I talk to you on the phone, I will likewise make bad buying decisions. I need to research at home, in a calm manner, with my POS history open, over a long period of time.

Sundays are off, right? It depends. During the holidays, while traveling, of if I know I won't be in any condition to place a Monday order, I might spend my ordering hours on Sunday instead of Monday. I will also be checking the POS constantly to see what's going on, making sure events are firing, items are selling, and checking performance metrics on sold items. I don't really need to do this, but it's part of my taking the pulse of the business.

Could I save money? My manager and I just talked about coming in Mondays to save money, but having that one day off is both a luxury and a bit of a necessity. I get a lot of work done at home that day.

Could I work less? You bet. I went on vacation for two months. I delegated my buying job to my manager and spent about three hours a week managing the business. Most of that included my finance work, making sure we were paying bills and had enough money in the bank.

My time on-site is pretty low, about 20 hours a week, maybe 30 when it gets busy (like last week with our ding & dent sale). My time running the business, if I'm focused on that, is probably a full 40 hours a week, with a lot of time spent on the laptop at home. That's sub optimal work, as I can see when I'm on vacation. While on vacation, a few hours a week course corrects, but it would be foolish to think I could do that all the time. How much time could I spend away before it all began to break down? That's an interesting question I may one day answer. This may all sound rather lazy, but the less reliant the business is on my being there, the more value it possesses. So my goal is to maximize value in a fashion that's independent of me. I wish to be highly effective while also being dispensable.

I've got a job I enjoy with an environment I've crafted, with a management team I've selected. I can take trips when I want of just about any length, provided I can afford them. There's not much better than that when it comes to actual work.

A Tale of Two Publishers (Tradecraft)

When I was building my Jeep, I was pricing bumpers when I noticed some companies, like Smittybilt were priced all over the map. Buying anything from that company made me feel bad. I always felt there was a better deal somewhere out there I wasn't aware of. Their products were middle of the road, with some very good and some very bad. I would buy things from them, use them for a while, and quietly take them off. Their reputation was ... mixed. Their shotgun approach to sales and quality are infamous.

Meanwhile there was AEV, American Expedition Vehicles, a high end company started by Jeep engineers that sold a narrow range of products, all highly engineered, and never more than a dollar or two difference between suppliers. One customer complained in an online review about how retailer prices were so similar. A retailer explained if they were to sell AEV products for a dollar less than their agreement, AEV would cut them off. So at the most competitive level, all product was sold at nearly an identical price. That's the difference between no brand value protection and brand value protection.

The advantage to the retailer is clear. If I'm selling a bumper, I would rather sell the premium product for $1,400 rather than the squirrelly discount product for $700, or $600 or whatever the market will bear that day. The manufacturer of the high end product is partnering with me. The higher priced manufacturer is maintaining value in their supply chain, maintaining a strong reputation, and thus selling to a well heeled clientele rather than a bunch of mud boggers looking for the lowest price. They make more money, which allows them to engineer quality, and the cycle continues. As a retailer I can decide what products to sell based on where I place my store in the marketplace. I can build a high end store and sell high end products at higher prices or I can sell everything, good or bad, and be the Smittybilt of retailers.*

Wizards of the Coast just dropped their MSRP on all their products going forward. If there is no price, there is no need for price protection. Ironically, this is exactly what I've called for many times in this blog, yet I'm disappointed and a little worried. What I was hoping for was possibly a bit utopian. I want to run a retail environment where price is inviolate and off the table, where I can focus on customer service, and events, all the various joy producing activities with the assumption customers will judge me based on my joy production, rather than my prices.

I would rather sell packs of stuff at a price than a shiny piece of card stock of subjective quality at a constantly fluctuating price. Yet the ability to sell the packs has fallen while the sales of the variable shiny has risen. It requires expertise and a fiddly system to sell variable shiny while it's much easier to sell new packs at a set price through my retail operation. And because it's so much easier, absolutely everyone can do it and I'm losing that battle. One reason stores close we don't discuss is they can't run the kind of store they want, and this is one example. They want it one way, but it's the other.

Asmodee has brand value protection as does Games Workshop. They're still competitors with retailers, but there are price floors that help me sell their goods. My initial reaction is to shun Wizards of the Coast and embrace Asmodee and Games Workshop as best I can. Their strategies are retailer friendly, while Wizards of the Coast feels predatory, the game trade equivalent of the soy bean king, selling their products as commodities. I have heard the next step may be dropping pre releases, and that right there is an exit strategy for quite a few stores that aren't Magic centric. We run events to get the cool stuff. Butts in seats! If you're going to drop events, you've removed our golden handcuffs. Don't get me wrong, I like gold, but the disconnect between "go buy on Amazon, but play at your FLGS" really pisses me off. Watching it all burn has great appeal.

This is all overly dramatic. The reality is nothing will really change. The offroad store will happily sell me that $700 low end bumper or the $1,400 high end bumper and they'll happily agree with me when I mention the value of the low end product or the superior engineering of the high end product. There are few retailers who get to truly pick their market position. Likewise, I'm not going to shun Wizards of the Coast any more than I'm going to turn my game store into AsmodeeLand. I will serve up both to the best of my ability. I will do my best to attract the Asmodee customers but I won't turn away Magic money probably ever. Taking stands is for politicians and priests. I have no such requirements for ideological purity.**

In the end, there's a lot more going on than my own needs. These brand value protection schemes are delicate flowers. Hasbro just discovered this when they were sued for instituting brand value protection in Europe. The larger the company, the harder it will be to institute brand value protection policies, as they conflict not only with international law, but laws between states. There is also the problem of brand value protection schemes holding independent retailers to a higher standard than mass market retailers, which is inherently unfair, even if we do cause most of our own problems. It's no surprise the consensus at WOTC was to have a consistent message on pricing. Do what you want.



*This is the same argument I've made for industry wide net pricing, by the way.
**But if you gave me a bucket of money, I would diversify away from the game trade.