The Glass Die

Drew emailed me, thanks! 🙏🏼

Are retailers able to acquire copies direct at a later time?

Oh my 🙏🏼

I need a shirt for next year’s Small Business Saturday that says “anti-capitalist 364 days of the year” 😂

It’s wild to be breaking records at the shop almost 8 years into the business.

I was worried non-Poker players wouldn’t really enjoy it but that has not been the case so far!

Brought two copies of Just One, played nothing. Win!

The Gang is my favorite casual game of the year 🙏🏼

I’ve noticed a downtrend in consumers taking chances on anything >$40 this past year, although I don’t want to jump to conclusions before the year ends since Q4 is such a heavy % of the total.

I used to order 6 of most new games that looked great to me. Now it’s 2-3 copies max. 🫠

Minimum quantities are also tough. Some publishers don’t want to break cases, or have very high minimums that only cater to large operations. The majority of all LGS cannot move 6-12 copies of non-evergreen titles.

Also doesn’t help that small publishers can’t offer better deals that distro, generally in the form of free shipping. I buy direct from ~10 publishers (at the peak of retail probably 20) but sometimes it’s still just higher margin to grab stuff from consolidators.

As an LGS that is about to have my first >$500k net year, the business (aka myself, since it’s a sole owner LLC) will only see about $15k net profit. Margins are razor thin everywhere.

As a retailer who backed and sold over 500 projects (I’d hazard that we’re in the top 10% in that regard in the world) we’ve backed off entirely…it’s just easier for me to tell customers to support publishers direct than it is for me to tie up capital for years just to see a 20-30% margin.

Thankfully there seems to be room for both retailers and direct-to-consumer (via crowdsourcing) games, but the era of retailers backing crowdsourced projects is almost gone. Margins are even thinner (usually) than buying from distribution because the shipping is usually split.

Remembered how amazing Clans of Caledonia was today when I taught two new players. One of them utterly destroyed me.

They seem very out of touch to think that there’s some binary 50/50 split to the dichotomy. Red team and blue team, nothing else!

I wouldn’t really expect more from people who have most of their grey matter consumed with day to day hatred of others.

I’ve been visiting my hometown for the past few days, first time in ten years. It’s been a lot, emotionally, but this was a much needed trip for many reasons. Ready to drive back home tomorrow and prepare for the busy holiday season next week.

That’s a wrap, we did it. No more reviews please.

We had a book release party at the shop last week, another rad achievement unlocked. Rara Hope self published her novel that she was working on for years, often writing and editing portions sitting in the corner of the bar.

Our three cats 🥹

Finally over here. Our last post on Twitter seems like a fitting first post over here.