Over the last 7 years, we’ve primarily sold our products to three different types of customers: Distributors (who sell to retailers), Localization Partners (who sell non-English versions of our products), and Consumers (who buy directly from our webstore. As I reported in our most recent shareholder report, “Last year, 91% of our revenue was from distributors, localization partners, and digital games versus 9% directly from consumers.”
A few years ago we realized that many brick-and-mortar retailers weren’t always getting what they needed to serve their local customers, particularly on popular products. A store might order 12 units of Wingspan from 4 different distributors in the hopes of actually receiving 6 units, and sometimes they wouldn’t even received that (or sometimes they’d receive everything they ordered, and now they’ve tied up their cash in surplus stock).
So we slowly started to build the Stonemaier Direct Retailer Program. The goal was to complement distributors’ efforts to serve retailers by providing a direct line to small, local retailers when necessary.
This was so important to us that we hired Susannah Eisenbraun to be our Retailer Relationship Manager earlier this year (previously this was the responsibility of Alex Schmidt, our Director of Sales & Logistics). Susannah is joining us today to talk about what the Direct Retailer Program is and how it’s evolving, both to inform retailers of what we’re doing and other publishers in case they see value in these methods as well. Thanks Susannah!
