Iron Crown Goes Direct to Retailers
In what may be the first shot in a drastic change in the way the adventure game business works, Iron Crown Enterprises announced that they were not going to sell products to game distributors any longer, and would instead sell directly to retailers. Chessex, one of the biggest game distributors in the country, is helping ICE in this effort -- not as a distributor in the classic sense, but as a warehousing and shipping fulfillment service for Iron Crown products.Chessex will still take the orders and deliver the products, but they will never own any of it. Instead of buying the products from Iron Crown and making a profit by marking up the price, Chessex will be paid directly by ICE for their services. The difference is a technical one, but very important.
"The Chessex network will serve as a hub for retail support," Iron Crown president Pete Fenlon said. "The burden will be on us, now.
"This is a rather creative direct to retail program. Chessex is involved as a fulfillment partner, but it is not an exclusivity deal at all," Fenlon said. Iron Crown will have access to the Chessex retailer database and sales figures, which Fenlon says will help them identify weak stores that need more support and strong stores to reward.
Iron Crown has been working on this arrangement with Chessex for about six months, and it arises out of a growing concern in the industry that, as Fenlon put it, "the current system is, at least for our . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: April 3, 1998
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