Official distributors should feel ashmed of themselves for ripping indies off.

I'm not at all clued up about how retailers buy games so can someone help me out. How can tesco sell the game to an indy at less than the distributors are selling it? Does tesco not get it from the distributor as well?

THIS IS NOT NEWS.. INDIES HAVE BEEN DOING THIS FOR YEARS

THERE WAS AN OLD INDIE BUYING GROUP YEARS BACK TOO - AND IT MANAGED TO DO NOTHING

BASICALLY PUBLISHERS SELL DIRECT TO SUPERMARKETS FOR EXPOSURE AND GUARENTEED NUMBERS and NOTHING ELSE

BASICALLY - MOST NEWS LIKE THIS IS OLD NEWS

BUT EXTREMELY SAD AND TRUE

BASICALLY KOCH IS NOT NEEDED AS EVERYONE CAN GET STOCK ELSEWHERE APART FROM THERE

By buying their stock from Tesco, they are bumping up Tesco's market share (and their apparent value) in the market giving them even more buying power and leverage on pricing.

@ka0znrky:

On a base level, Tesco are able to negotiate a lower unit price from distributors than indies can on the basis that Tesco will order a few hundred or even a few thousand copies of a title compared to the ten or so an indie will. This is a basic economy of scales, and is used across the board not only in retail but also at the production stage.

On a higher- and much more terrifying- level, Tesco will sell you game X at a (say) £5 loss in the hope that if you come and buy your games from Tesco instead of Game, you will stick around and buy an additional £5 of groceries.

Tesco is taking over our lives...little by little.

There is no getting away from it.

"Bigger boys made us do it!"

This is the biggest non story I've read this year. In a previous life as a Games buyer for a major supermarket everyone (Publishers, supermarkets, indies, specialists) knew that the independent channel bought from the cheapest possible source. In the past, this could be a supermarket one week, Toysrus the next week, PC World on a weekend special.... I also know that as many 5 years ago one indies second biggest distributor was ToysRus!!!!!

Overall its bit self fulfilling- if the independent sector wants a voice with the publishers, it needs to buy stock from publishers through distribution, but the commercial reality is that they will do this to be able to compete short term.

I know its been tried before, but the only way the independent retail community will get competative prices is by buying together to create enough volume for publishers to listen- its a simple rule- the more you buy the lower the cost will be.

@beemoh: thanks for replying, it get it now :)

Customers also like to buy from the cheapest place as well. So what are the indies gonna do if supermarkets limit 1 per customer or put the price UP on stuff like Tescos have recently.

The truth of this story is that Indie retailers are being discriminated against by publishers/distributors.

If its truly a question of economy of scale, how would I get on if I speak to Koch on Monday and place a order for 2000 Wii Fits & 2000 Mario karts?

Would I receive a more favourable trade price? Would I receive the stock at all?!!!!

How can distributors justify their existence when indies can purchase stock cheaper at retail than they can from them?

For example: Take Trilogy - Ubisoft DS games 2 for £30 in ASDA or £14+Vat each from Trilogy. Do Trilogy seriously expect to sell any stock?!

Its not always a question of price that makes Indies purchase from supermarkets. Quite often retailers are unable to get a supply of a product/game from 'official' distributors yet supermarkets will have stock.

For example: Mario Kart Wii at launch, indies were given a insultinly low allocation. Indies that normally ordered 100-200 copies of a AAA game per store were allocated 5-10 units total. Yet a trip to a nearby Sainsburys revealed they had 50 units!

How is it that though theirs a shortage supermarkets get the quantity they want?

This is what being an indie is all about, thinking about any innovative way to make the most margin. Be that trade ins at Game, buying from Supermarkets, grey imports or product obtained by other means.

You will NEVER be given a better price then the chains and supermarkets. This is the same it's been for more than ten years, when I used to work for a distributor reading CTW it was the same stories coming up again and again the phase was coined whinging indies, and that still sums up 80% of the stories from indies now.

It's a hard way to make a living and why anyone, bar the people with the small chains would want to do it now as a living is beyond me. High product cost low margin.

learning how the publishing / distribution side works then you'd know that and indie will never get the pricing to match supermarkets.

The publisher has maybe 2-3 staff in house to make sales to all the big customers, one selling to UK and one for europe typically. That's all they need. orders come in they allocate stock job done.
Now one of the publishers customers will be your distributor, andother customer will be a supermarket. Both of then are one delivery drop off one orders more then the other.
Now distributor gets stock and that's the hard work compared to the publisher selling. Phone round for orders, credit checking, multiple drop offs, mixed product orders, returns. Hard work, I've sat on a sales floor of an indie distributor and I know it's not easy at all. Indies need a lot of maintenance. Anyway, all of this is why distributors exist in the first place becuase you're hard work and the publisher isn't going to deal with all of that for minimum benifit, so it gets farmed out. In comparision to the 2-3 sales in the publisher a distributor needs 5 staff. All the extra staffing, in fact the whole distributor organisation is added onto the costs. So you're never going to get a better price than going direct to publisher.
Even when (back in the day at least) Konami had open distribution indies never got the better price, even the distributor.

Buying groups, wont work. Didnt work last time. That's becuase everyone is INDEPENDENT and not a chain. You'd need the whole group to commit in advance to buying a title. Can't back out when poor reviews come in or you get offered grey stock, everybody in the group needs to have good credit. Also the people that would make up the biggest part of the buying group really are not intrested in helping support a competitor in the indie market.

hi guys any info on where to contact say tesco abou getting stock off them
cheers

Errrr....

Go into your local Tesco, pick up what you want off the shelf, take it to the till and pay. That is all.

@13

But dont forget your trolley for all those bargin games

@12 was that a serious question?

i find that amazon r the only people who you can buy in bulk! any one no any where else you can buy in large numbers? as tesco will only sell me a limited number of copies ie gta 4 wii fit and asda for that matter.......

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