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29 Aug
Posted by Yehuda Berlinger as Modern Board Games
Last year, Mayfair Games, publishers of Settlers of Catan and other games, took advantage of new laws that allowed publishers to dictate to retailers the maximum discount that the retailers could offer for Mayfair’s games. Mayfair told all retailers that the retailers could not discount more than 20% off the retail price or the retailer would no longer receive games from Mayfair. Mayfair’s intention for doing this was to weaken online stores in favor of brick-and-mortar stores, which Mayfair believed were critical in terms of marketing their products to new customers.
At GenCon, VP of Sales Bob Carty claimed to be happy with the results, and promised to enforce the policy even more strictly:
We’ve gone from 113 retailers discounting product in November… when we started releasing Third Edition [of Settlers of Catan]; we now have between six and 11 in any given week. And I think that’s a big step. Six of them are habitual and on the blacklist but they’re still getting product, and we know where, and we’re going to deal with them very shortly.
(source)
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This is too bad. I am in the military overseas and generally depend on the discount to make up for what often times is an outrageous shipping cost. Limiting the discount may help their bottom line, but in the long run I am not happy with the attitude and what it does to MY bottom line.
Mayfair’s policies do not take into account people who do not have access to FLGS’s. Which may be a large part of their customer base.
Yehuda