Chessex and The Armory Form Alliance
The long-rumored merger between Chessex and The Armory, two of the largest distributors in the gaming industry, has taken place. The new company, Alliance, formed officially on September 30th, with a public announcement of the merger released this afternoon.
"It's really two mergers," explained Donald Reents, former president of Chessex and founder of Berkeley Game Distributors (which he sold in 1990). "There's a merger on the distributing side, and another on the manufacturing side." The manufacturing divisions of each company will be combined into Chessex Manufacturing, which will continue to produce the accessories both companies were known for, from the colorful Chessex dice to Armory's bestselling line of paints and painting supplies. Some Armory products, the paints in particular, will keep "The Armory" as a brand name, to best capitalize on a name recognized by many customers.
Reents described the merger as "good for everybody . . . It'll even benefit our competition!" After a summer of game companies closing doors and game shelves going unstocked due to distributor problems, Reents believes that Alliance will be able to make a real difference.
"I feel that too much effort was put into fighting each other. There were a lot of things they were good at that we weren't; there were a lot of things that we were good at that they weren't." By joining forces and putting everybody's strong points to work, Alliance hopes to . . .This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: October 2, 1998
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