Armory's Hirsch Talks About Alliance Merger
Daniel Hirsch has been a busy man the past few days.Ever since the news broke about the merger between The Armory and Chessex game distributors (see previous story), Armory president Hirsch has seen his phone ring off the hook.
In a move that has so far generated "overwhelming positive response," Hirsch sees the merger as an attempt to right the course of a distribution tier that was in danger of losing all touch with its customers and its suppliers.
"We've said before that the distribution situation we have now has been way too fragmented," Hirsch said. "We haven't done the best to work together, to put it kindly."
The problem, as Hirsch sees it, has been too many distributors, none of them big enough to be effective. Cutthroat price competition has all but eliminated the service that retailers need in addition to mere order-filling, and paranoia among competing distributors left them reluctant to share the information manufacturers needed for fear that their competitors would learn too much.
"One of the primary impetuses behind this move was that retailers were making noises that they were increasingly dissatisfied with the distribuion chain. Manufacturers, too," Hirsch said. "No distributor could give the service that retailers need and the information that manufacturers need."
The Armory's Dave Cook said, "We feel like with the merger we'll be able to relate and interact much better with retailers and manufacturers, tying . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: May 14, 1998
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