Segundo o BGG, a Mayfair vai ser a primeira empresa de boardgames a estabelecer limites de descontos tanto nos distribuidores como nos vendedores. Eis o uma mensagem enviada a um distribuidor nos EUA:
Dear Trade Customers,
Greetings from Mayfair Games! Our team wishes you all well. After all, we wouldn’t be looking forward to our 27th year of publishing fine games without your strong, enduring support.
We’re writing to you to outline our retail pricing policy. Our manufacturer’s suggested retail prices (“MSRPs”) reflect our firm belief in a healthy balance between “free trade” and “fair trade.” Mayfair Games embraces and supports healthy competition. We feel that in order for our market—and thus our company—to prosper now and over the long term all our partners in the distribution chain need to respect this balance.
Whenever a firm threatens healthy competition among our trade customers, and thus endangers this balance, we must act in a vigorous, even-handed fashion to police the distribution and sale of our fine products. Mayfair Games doesn’t intend to specifically dictate how its customers do business… but we will act in cases of predatory, irrational, or patently detrimental trade activity.
So, it’s important that all of our trade customers know where we stand on pricing and discounting…
• Distributors should sell Mayfair Games products at no less than a 25% margin or no more than a 50% discount off MSRP.
• Retailers should sell Mayfair Games products at no more than a 20% discount off MSRP, or the appropriate ratio given exchange rates.
Trade customers that violate these guidelines shall be subject to sanctions. If necessary, we will cut them off.
We’re well aware of the fact that our individual customers operate under individual circumstances. Some are more profitable than others. Some seek to establish themselves or need to acquire some critical market share. Mayfair Games understands, and sympathizes with, this reality.
At the same time, we’ve been in business long enough to know that that it’s far better for us to encourage healthy competition rather than cutthroat discounting. Ours is not a mass-market business, nor is it a business based on inter-changeable widgets. Our wares are special, unique, premium games. Savage discounting is unnecessary and counter-productive for everyone in the mid-to-long term. While some individual consumers might benefit in the short-run, rabid discounting only acts to erode the profits and incentives necessary to keep our market healthy.
As it is, consumers receive great entertainment value for full MSRP. It’s unnecessary—and even a bit insane—to subsidize folks who already enjoy a good deal. It is far healthier for us, our distributors, and our retailers to derive a healthy profit from the sale of our games than it is for us to see them dumped into the marketplace. Every viable firm in our distribution chain should collect its fair profit and have an incentive to further promote, buy, and sell our games.
Our trade customers should endeavor increase their profit margins, not their discounts. They can thus improve service, which—along with the high quality of our games—should be the principal means of growing our market.
Mayfair Games asks all its trade customers to understand that we are partners in growing a healthy games market. Again, we want free and fair trade. It’s healthy… for all of us. It’s in our best interest… and in the best interest of the entire social game industry.
That’s all for now. Take care.
For Mayfair Games,
Pete Fenlon
(CEO, Mayfair Games, Inc.)
Pior, o supremo tribunal dos EUA acabou com a lei que proibia price fixing. Embora isso não nos afecte muito, pode criar uma onda de price fixing também nos produtores Europeus.
Será este o fim das lojas online? Como economista, eu diria se esta tendência pegar eu diria que as lojas online vão perder o seu aspecto competitivo face às lojas normais.
O que irá acontecer agora? Discutam.
). Claro que, sendo o mercado de jogos essencialmente um mercado de importação directa, e muitas vezes de companhias extra-europeias e que porventura não têm representações oficiais nesta, a actuação contra esse facto pode ser complicada.