Jump to content

Where’s the product?


Hot4Perdita

Recommended Posts

20 minutes ago, Hot4Perdita said:

Well, after the botched rollout in June, looks like none of the retailers have any of the July releases yet, and today is August 1. Also, still no word on backordered rulebooks and faction packs. What the heck is going on Wyrd? 

They've had to go to a second printing. They are coming, these things take time. Wyrd are currently at Gen-Con so don't expect an official response for at least a couple of weeks, as they handle the convention and the orders that will be coming in over that time. I know it's frustrating, but you will have to be patient for a bit longer.

  • Agree 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

Listen to the Covenant Cast from a few months ago, they had a whole series on the supply chain from studio, to manufacturer, to distribution, to store. It’s a crazy nonsensical system that is just so odd how it works. 

What is Covenant Cast?  A podcast or something? I’ll give it a look if I can. Not sure how it all works, but it makes a company look bad if their stuff is late, no matter who’s fault it is. You never see GW stuff not show up on time. If it did, they would drop that distributor like a bad habit. They have strict rules for their distribution and retailers.

  • Agree 1
  • Respectfully Disagree 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Understand your frustration Hot, but you have to remember that Wyrd (thank God) is not GW.  GW's business model normally is to have stores dedicated to them with only their product.  They are a multimillion pound corporation with a board, IP lawyers that will C&D at the drop of a hat, and major investing from stockholders.  Wyrd on the other hand is a world class company, yet run by a family.  When I mean family I mean 8+ people including a few additional warehouse workers out of Kennesaw, GA.  When they knew something was being delayed and it was out of their control they released all their material for free online.  You can literally play their game for zero cost.  

Give them some time and things will pan out.  They are a pretty sweet company, and they really do right by the community.  

  • Agree 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The M3e rollout has been a hot mess from the jump. Now that everyone is at GenCon, we won't hear a word for awhile. Unfortunately, no one at Wyrd seems at all concerned about the many roadblocks standing beteeen their customers and their product. Any criticism of Wyrd's business practices is seen as a personal attack on "the family", and those who critique Wyrd are "losers" "angry", and are told if they don't like it, "find another game to play".

  • Like 1
  • Agree 1
  • Respectfully Disagree 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

34 minutes ago, explorator said:

The M3e rollout has been a hot mess from the jump. Now that everyone is at GenCon, we won't hear a word for awhile. Unfortunately, no one at Wyrd seems at all concerned about the many roadblocks standing beteeen their customers and their product. Any criticism of Wyrd's business practices is seen as a personal attack on "the family", and those who critique Wyrd are "losers" "angry", and are told if they don't like it, "find another game to play".

Let's do a thought experiment:

You sell Widgets to a Widget Distributor. It takes a month to produce a batch of Widgets.

Your distributor tells you they project to sell 15 Widgets on day 1, and 10 each month for the next two months.

So you produce 35 widgets in your first batch, enough to last two months.

Then on Widget release day your distributor calls you up and says they underestimated Widget demand, they actually have demand for 50 Widgets just on day one.

What do you do?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, CD1248 said:

Let's do a thought experiment:

You sell Widgets to a Widget Distributor. It takes a month to produce a batch of Widgets.

Your distributor tells you they project to sell 15 Widgets on day 1, and 10 each month for the next two months.

So you produce 35 widgets in your first batch, enough to last two months.

Then on Widget release day your distributor calls you up and says they underestimated Widget demand, they actually have demand for 50 Widgets just on day one.

What do you do?

Since when do distributors dictate demand? Distributors are nothing more than a middle man to transfer a company’s product from manufacture to retailer. Manufacturers do their own analysis to determine demand to know how much product to produce. All distributors do is hold that product in warehouse to ship it out to retailers when they order it. They are nothing more than middle men. If there is a product shortage, that is on Wyrd for not analyzing the market properly. Companies will never mass produce a product without market research and knowing how many they will most likely sell. Businesses would never survive that way.

 So, that addresses the shortage of the first wave June products; now, how do we explain the absence of July release products? No one has received any of those at all yet, so can’t blame them on being sold out.

  • Like 3
  • Respectfully Disagree 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Hot4Perdita said:

What is Covenant Cast?  A podcast or something? I’ll give it a look if I can. Not sure how it all works, but it makes a company look bad if their stuff is late, no matter who’s fault it is. You never see GW stuff not show up on time. If it did, they would drop that distributor like a bad habit. They have strict rules for their distribution and retailers.

Never, ever, compare any other miniature company to GW.  GW are their own production and distribution (even though they do also distribute stock through traditional distribution networks).  They don't have the same delays or issues because they are a huge company (by comparison) and can do everything themselves so don't need to rely on third parties.  Unlike Wyrd who have third-party manufacturing and third-party distribution.

 

Plus, Wyrd have been quite open about the problems they've been experiencing with suppliers due to current US Presidential attitudes to international trade.  They announced that the Faction Books would be delayed because of those problems, and now the early Gencon release of the Euripides and Rasputina crew boxes has experiencerd problems.  Its not too much of a stretch to assume that the whole of July's releases have been affected by that.

 

Wyrd underestimated demand for M3E and distributors didn't order enough stock for the June release.  Now Wyrd are waiting on a restock of those items.  We are currently unsure what the problem with July's stock is, but the FLGS I go to seems to think that it has something to do with the Faction books being delayed.  If global issues are the problem, then Wyrd will have to adapt their stock ordering process.  The stuff will arrive.  We just need to be patient.

  • Agree 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Hot4Perdita said:

Since when do distributors dictate demand? Distributors are nothing more than a middle man to transfer a company’s product from manufacture to retailer. Manufacturers do their own analysis to determine demand to know how much product to produce. All distributors do is hold that product in warehouse to ship it out to retailers when they order it. They are nothing more than middle men. If there is a product shortage, that is on Wyrd for not analyzing the market properly. Companies will never mass produce a product without market research and knowing how many they will most likely sell. Businesses would never survive that way.

 So, that addresses the shortage of the first wave June products; now, how do we explain the absence of July release products? No one has received any of those at all yet, so can’t blame them on being sold out.

That's just not how it works. Wyrd analizing the market (just like board game / most other miniature game companies) is literally asking their distributors (who in turn collect these numbers from stores) how much stock they'll need.  

  • Agree 3
  • Respectfully Disagree 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Hot4Perdita said:

Since when do distributors dictate demand? Distributors are nothing more than a middle man to transfer a company’s product from manufacture to retailer. Manufacturers do their own analysis to determine demand to know how much product to produce. All distributors do is hold that product in warehouse to ship it out to retailers when they order it. They are nothing more than middle men. If there is a product shortage, that is on Wyrd for not analyzing the market properly. Companies will never mass produce a product without market research and knowing how many they will most likely sell. Businesses would never survive that way.

 So, that addresses the shortage of the first wave June products; now, how do we explain the absence of July release products? No one has received any of those at all yet, so can’t blame them on being sold out.

As I understand the market, Distributors dictate demand because they are the people that buy it from Wyrd. It wouldn't matter is Wyrd said "we think we need 500 faction packs", if the distributor only bought 10. The remaining 490 will sit with wyrd until the distributor comes back and orders more. And Wyrd only has so much storage space

And if the distributor gets it wrong, they lose very little. Most of the Games shops (as I understand but I may be wrong) only purchase from 1 or 2 distributors for a lot of their stock, so if those Distributors doesn't stock wyrd, then that shop can't sell it. So if Wyrd stopped providing the product to a distributor, in the end that just  means a wide number of shops that used to get their wyrd stock from that distributor will not be able to stock Wyrd products anymore. And the Wyrd market in a shop would have to be pretty large to justify that shop finding a new distributor just for Wyrd product.

 

I'm not someone that rushes to my local shop to buy the latest release, but I generally found that the month orders made it into my local shops within a week or so of the "release date", and that because the release date was the end of 1 month, I often didn't see the July release until August had started. I don't know how your shop does it, you might be more used to a prompt release than I ever was.

 

The GW model is a very different business model to the Wyrd one, and you can't really compare the 2.

 

I can understand you're not happy, but there have been several replies to the issue over the past month,. so I don't think its fair to say Wyrd haven't communicated. They might not have told you exactly what you want to know, because they might not know the answer, or even be aware of your specific issue (because the stock distribution between distributors and stores is not something that have a say on). The have told us that demand was under estimated and they know they couldn't forfill all the re-orders that distributors requested. They have told us they are on their second print run. They have also told us of the problems that was had getting the first print run to them, so I'm not surprised that they haven't given a firm date to get that second print run out to people,. because they probably don't know for certain, and experience has shown that setting a date and then not meeting it is bad even if they had no control over the not meeting it.

 

  • Agree 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I mean the issue is hobby gaming is a niche market, and in that niche market no one wants to assume the risk. Read about the issues that happened with Wingspan. I mean a publisher is constantly juggling the issue that underordering from their manufacturer is as bad or worse than overordering. Over order and not only is a large amount of your capital tied up in product that isn’t moving, it actually costs you even more money because you have to pay to store and protect that unsold product. Under order and you create image issues and scarcity problems and it can take a decent chunk of time to submit the order and get it fulfilled, and you then have no idea if the demand will still be there once you get the reprint. And even experts get that wrong.

Stonemeier Games Wingspan is one of the hottest games this year, and when they asked multiple experts in the gaming field how many units to print they got very conservative estimates, and demand VASTLY outstripped even what the experts estimated. And that created all sorts of problems. 

I mean it’s one reason Kickstarter is so popular for the board game market because you get a really good estimate on what the demand for your product is going to be upfront.

I’m not defending Wyrd and saying none of it is their fault, but the issue is very complex and not as simple as it is X company/distributor/manufacter’s fault. And then couple all that with all the uncertainty in trade tensions across the world at present.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is absolutley fair to compare companies that share market space. RC cola will never compete with Coke, but both can be judged in a side-by-side taste test. GW sets the standard in virtually every aspect of miniature design, production, marketing, and merchandising.

Malifaux is a niche game in a niche market; long-term sustainablity is dependent on superior rules (NAILED IT!), and basic levels of product management; from design to distribution.  Underdogs have to work HARDER and SMARTER to get results similar to companies that dominate the marketplace. Wyrd obviously put untold hours of work into making M3e a great game, unfortunatley the company fell down on launch.

Forget thought experiments...I sold high-end bread and pastries for years as a route driver for a national company. Our product was top rate, on shelves in stores, and sold well. 80% of my business came from grocery stores and 20% from restaurants. A coworker asked why I spent so much time supporting the restaurants when they only made up 20% of the business on my route; I told him, that 20% is MY MARGIN. I had to shower those little shops with my time and effort if I wanted to make money. I had to work HARDER and SMARTER to keep up with the major players, who would gobble up my shelf space in a SECOND if I let up one bit.

Mailfaux is by far the best, and my favorite skirmish game ever, but Wyrd is a frustrating company to appreciate. I have players in my area who are waiting for M3e product, but are now drooling over the new Marvel hero skirmish game, and Warcry is about to make a big splash as well. Wyrd is going to have to do better if they want to be sustainable. 

Is it possible that Wyrd held product back for GenCon? 

  • Agree 3
  • Respectfully Disagree 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

"The Covenant Cast is a weekly show where we talk about current topics in the board game community, as well as our upcoming releases and answering questions by our listeners."
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/team-covenant-2/the-covenant-cast ......

..... because no one answered that question.

  • Like 2
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, explorator said:

It is absolutley fair to compare companies that share market space. RC cola will never compete with Coke, but both can be judged in a side-by-side taste test. GW sets the standard in virtually every aspect of miniature design, production, marketing, and merchandising.

In some aspects yes, but not this one. GW has the ability to both create and ship their own product. They also have the capital to eat any overproduction issues easily so they have no reason not to overproduce their estimates. Wyrd does not. You're not comparing the quality of the game being made, you're comparing the capital of the company, and there is no comparison here.

  • Agree 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, explorator said:

It is absolutley fair to compare companies that share market space. RC cola will never compete with Coke, but both can be judged in a side-by-side taste test. GW sets the standard in virtually every aspect of miniature design, production, marketing, and merchandising.

You can certainly compare GW to Wyrd if you want. You could also legitimately compare GW to Tescos ( or Walmart to those in USA) as sharing a market space, but I don't think you could compare Wyrd to Tescos.

Comparing model quality, and game quality and support seem fair. Comparing the GW distribution model against Wyrds seems pointless to me, because Wyrd could not use the GW distribution model even if it wanted to. (unless it invests in several thousand physical shops staffed full time, as well as its own manufacturer and distribution. Which I see as unfeasible)

 

  • Agree 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, theamazingmrg said:

Wyrd underestimated demand for M3E and distributors didn't order enough stock for the June release.

Actually I recall Nathan saying they warned the distributers that they thought demand was going to be higher, but the distributers decided not to order more product. They warned them. And, as others have said, the game market and distributers work very differently than most markets. They are not just 'middle men' so to speak - they have quite a bit of power and often monopolies in service areas. 

1 hour ago, explorator said:

Wyrd obviously put untold hours of work into making M3e a great game, unfortunatley the company fell down on launch.

Again, with the way distribution works in this industry, I can't fault Wyrd. They did everything they possibly could, but in the end the distributers f'd 'em over. They don't care, as its a small product for them anyway and customers like you will just blame the company. Even if you wanted to blame the Distributer there is little to no impact on them - again they have monopolies. Stores often can't go anywhere else (think cable in the US - everyone hates Comcast, but if you live in a Comcast are and want useable internet, you have to buy Comcast). 

Look - it sucks. But blaming Wyrd when they've been as upfront as they can about it doesn't help build your player base either. remind everyone to be patient and that all the rules are free online! You can start playing now with proxies or whatever you have. hell, you can still order M2E models (often at a discount) and print cards for now. They tried to make it as easy as possible for that. 

Oh, and from what I've read, the gaming/toy industry, which a lot of wargames fall into, are getting hit very hard with current trade war and it's only going to get worse with the latest round of tariffs. 

  • Agree 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

Actually I recall Nathan saying they warned the distributers that they thought demand was going to be higher, but the distributers decided not to order more product. They warned them. And, as others have said, the game market and distributers work very differently than most markets. They are not just 'middle men' so to speak - they have quite a bit of power and often monopolies in service areas.

The announcement Wyrd made about the second printing did say that they had underestimated the demand and had run out of stock they expected to last a few months.  But yes, they did warn the distributors and teh distributors didn't listen.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

36 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

Look - it sucks. But blaming Wyrd when they've been as upfront as they can about it doesn't help build your player base either. remind everyone to be patient and that all the rules are free online! You can start playing now with proxies or whatever you have. hell, you can still order M2E models (often at a discount) and print cards for now. They tried to make it as easy as possible for that. 

Oh, and from what I've read, the gaming/toy industry, which a lot of wargames fall into, are getting hit very hard with current trade war and it's only going to get worse with the latest round of tariffs. 

New players (i.e. new to Malifaux) do not want to use proxies and download and printout cards. Some existing players are waiting for new cards to play as well. I understand gaming is a tricky business, but it is not reasonable to hold Wyrd unaccountable.  I like Wyrd. But, if I get a bad dish at me favorite restaurant, I SAY SOMETHING! Not because I am mad, or a hater, but because I want the place I love to eat and recommend to others, to be as good as I know it can be.

None of the previous tariff's affected gaming, and those that do are not in place until September. I would expect most miniature companies will move heaven and earth to get product shipped out of China before that deadline.

Does GW have a distinct distribution chain in the U.S. ? I think my lgs gets GW product from the same distributor as every other game product. They do occasionally get promo copies through direct mail, but actual stock comes in on the truck.

  • Agree 4
  • Respectfully Disagree 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

50 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

Oh, and from what I've read, the gaming/toy industry, which a lot of wargames fall into, are getting hit very hard with current trade war and it's only going to get worse with the latest round of tariffs.

Oh yeah, I forgot that Wyrd outsources their production to China. There is an easy solution to this problem. Manufacture your product in USA! Wyrd is a USA company, make it here! The whole purpose of the tariffs being imposed is to shift manufacturing back to the USA to restore those jobs lost to overseas. It is starting to work in some industries, hopefully it will in this case. I will gladly pay a few more dollars per model if it is made in my country and creating jobs. But I’ll leave it at that, as I’m not looking to get into a political speech or start any debates on here.

 

Also, in an earlier post I mentioned GW as an example. Many of you said that is not a fair comparison. I play a few other games beside 40k from other manufacturers. Warlord, Fantasy Flight, etc. They do not seem to experience these issues either. I think Warlord makes all their product at home in the UK, not sure where Fantasy Flight is based or makes theirs.

  • Agree 3
  • Respectfully Disagree 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Paddywhack said:

 

Again, with the way distribution works in this industry, I can't fault Wyrd. They did everything they possibly could, but in the end the distributers f'd 'em over. They don't care, as its a small product for them anyway and customers like you will just blame the company. Even if you wanted to blame the Distributer there is little to no impact on them - again they have monopolies. Stores often can't go anywhere else (think cable in the US - everyone hates Comcast, but if you live in a Comcast are and want useable internet, you have to buy Comcast). 

Instead of relying solely on these evil distributors everyone keeps talking about, has Wyrd considered offering their products direct to the consumer? I buy a lot of my stuff from Warlord direct rather than through retailers (partially due to availability and my local store no longer carrying it, I always buy from local stores to support them when possible). A lot of manufacturers have their own web stores. Maybe Wyrd should consider it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I hoped these arguments where everyone is Wyrd’s CEO were done with.

Wyrd wants to sell you stuff more than you want to buy it. The reasons for delays in distribution, whichever they are, are irrelevant. 

They want to get the product out and they’ll do it however they can. They’re on the same team as you are.

  • Like 2
  • Agree 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Hot4Perdita said:

Instead of relying solely on these evil distributors everyone keeps talking about, has Wyrd considered offering their products direct to the consumer? 

Wyrd does have a web store. They have stated that they choose to add the new release to the site after it should have reached gaming stores because they want people to use to stores where possible.  So you can use that to get products, but it is intended that you'll get new releases later that way. 

  • Agree 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quite honestly, there has been word zero about the July releases. Distributors received none of it. Not a one. All that we saw on webstores was a sudden change marking the release date from July 2019 to August 2019. 

I love Malifaux. I've been around, in some form or other, since the very day M1E released (the night before, actually). That said, I have a hard time believing that Wyrd couldn't store a couple truckloads of faction packs and rulebooks. Wyrd is not immune from criticism just because I love their game. I don't care who's fault it is, but stop playing the blame game and communicate to your customers where their product is.

The July releases cannot be blamed on Alliance or ACD. Period.

 

  • Like 1
  • Agree 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information