As a distributor, FRG is also caught in a foreseeable Malachi Crunch if the tariff situation continues for any real period of time. The industry is probably headed for a massive contraction as publishers collapse or scale back to direct sales only, which will starve the distribution network, which in turn will lead to retail stores failing - especially if sales overall drop along with discretionary income as the rest of economy stutters. If that pattern goes on for long, even if things turn around who’s a distributor supposed to sell to? A few surviving stores, most of which will have gotten used to ordering direct from publishers? And how much will even be available to sell with many publishers gone for good?
I’ve worked through the sports card and comic book boom-and-bust cycles. Those were mild blips mostly caused by speculators and publisher overproduction compared to this idiotic trade war, and they still killed half the specialist shops that existed before the booms started. I’ll be amazed if one game store in five survives this mess, and one in ten might be more realistic unless it ends tomorrow.
All of this information lines up with my spotting direct FRG employees lamenting their own layoffs on the social medias.
Yeah, that’s my concern. They don’t realize the podcast is its own product we’re willing to pay for separate from the games.
(As for the political situation causing all this, it also gets infuriating realizing this could end tomorrow if certain elements were willing to take back their souls they sold out. They have plenty of options and the issue is lack of willingness, not lack of opportunity.)
That’s exactly why I was talking about trade groups, up above. You and I live in states where our representation is already convinced, so any noise we or our states’ Chambers of Commerce make doesn’t move the needle much. But Missouri… “arbitrary Administration policies directly killed a St. Louis small business” is a powerful argument to use to hold certain Senators’ feet to the fire, and it gets even more powerful when it comes from an association of business groups rather than just one.
Stonemaier is joining a lawsuit against the tariff policies. Not sure if it’ll have any result, but it’s good that they’re making some noise, and having such a popular company involved should get more eyes on this.