Privateer Press as sent a letter out to retailers (I have not yet seen the letter), announcing a new sales policy against online retailers with no brick and mortar presence. This definitely is taking on distributors as well, and I am curious as to the results this will bring. Privateer Press is following other companies like Wizkids and Wayfair games that have done similar things to limit online discount stores.
There is also the conflict of stores that have a store, but yet also sell online. So there are some questions that this raises that were not answered in the letter.
via ICv2
'We Do Not Condone the Free Riders' Parasitic Business Model'
Privateer Press, makers of Warmachine and Hordes, has announced a new sales policy which it hopes will end deeply discounted online sales.
In the letter sent out to retailers, Privateer Press President Sherry Yeary explained the rationale. “Over the last eleven years… online retailers with nearly no overhead and very little meaningful contact with our audience have been undermining the stability of the market by selling product at discounts well below retail value, depending solely on the efforts of our brick and mortar partners who offer services that nurture our audience and grow the market to move their product,” she wrote. “This model of business is widely recognized by experts and the justice system as ‘free riding.’ While this can be a viable business model for many mainstream products, it is common knowledge that in our industry it’s crippling and anticompetitive.”
Privateer plans to create a list of retailers that it views as “free riders,” which it defines as “retailers …offering Privateer Press products at an unsustainable deep discount and offer[ing] very little or nothing in the way of services” and will impose sanctions on distributors that sell to those retailers. The list will be updated by adding or deleting retailers as needed. Distributors that sell to retailers on Privateer’s “free rider” list will have their shipments of Privateer product, including new releases, delayed. The new policy goes into effect on April 4.
You can see the rest of the article by following the link to ICv2
http://icv2.com/articles/news/view/34100/privateer-axes-offending-online-retailers