Key Person

 If you are running a business and are the sole proprietor, or running it as an LLC or some other form of ownership which relies on one person to handle most of the business operations and decisions, you have what  is called a "key  person" and need to decide  how to handle what will happen in the situation that person is not able to carry out their duties. 

The thing that got me to thinking about this is a local Carbondale business, Chicago Hot Dogs, which has operated in downtown Carbondale for two decades and is now up for sale. One of the owners, Sang Eun Lee, died in a boating accident last November and without a plan to handle continued operations, the business is up for sale as it appears his wife does not want to or cannot handle the business alone. So if you are a small business and the sole owner, do you have plans for what happens if something happens to  you?

Something to consider is "key person" insurance, which is insurance that pays out in the instance that someone designated an indispensable part of the business becomes unable to perform their duties.

Death Guard Update

 If you pre-ordered any of the Death Guard items they arrived today and  your order is held behind the counter. As noted earlier, we got allocated on several items but will see if the have come back into stock tomorrow

Death Guard Update

The latest information from Games Workshop regarding Death Guard is that we can expect the books and miniatures to arrive Monday. Not sure what the delay is since customers who pre-ordered the Codex directly from GW have already received the book. 

Death Guard

 Our shipment of the new Death Guard codexes and related materials is running late. Typically, we would have received them by now and have them processed and out for pickup and purchase on Saturday but due to the vagaries of the supply chain, they have not arrived yet. .In addition, we have heard that a number of stores got allocated on the miniatures and codexes. Our rep did not say anything about this so we hope that we receive our full order.

Brzrkr

 For those of you who have been waiting on Brkrkr, here is the latest update

• BRZRKR #1 will be delayed 1 week for FOC and On-Sale Dates to ensure retailers have a PDF and all cover assets, along with additional marketing support, to make an informed decision.
• New FOC Date: February 1, 2021
• New On-Sale Date: February 24, 2021
• 1:1000 INCV Variant has been added, which will be illustrated by Jonboy Meyers and signed by Keanu Reeves.
• DEC208555 BRZRKR #1 C & DEC208556 BRZRKR #1 D will be FULL FOIL, open-to-order variants of the Rafael Grampá and Marks Brooks covers, respectively.
• These two covers will be on-sale March 10, 2021 to ensure allocation does not occur for retailers who place orders for these items.
• We have added an additional 1:100 INCV, 1:200 INCV, and 1:500 INCV for this issue and more information and cover art will be revealed throughout next week!

Perfection Fallacy

 Whenever the semester starts  I always send out an email to the students about the concept of the "perfection fallacy". The perfection fallacy is the belief by people that everything will always work out perfectly. A classic example is starting your car. You walk out in  the morning, put your key in the ignition and 99 times out of 100, it starts up perfectly. What do you do, though, on those extremely rare occasions when the key does not start the car? Keep turning it in the hope that eventually it will catch? Pound the dashboard and yell curses as if that will do any good? Do you have a back up plan for the rare times when that happens? Is the Uber app installed on your phone so you can call for a ride? Do you have a friend you can call to give you a lift?

In the case of a game store, what do you do if that order you expected to arrive does not show up? Most of the time they show up when expected but what do you do when they do not? Do you have a phone number to call to see where your product is or do you have another project to work on instead of checking in the shipment?

A common example I cite to students is setting aside time on Friday to finish up assignments, then finding out the internet crashed or they feel sick or their kids are sick? What happens then? The best way to avoid falling prey to the perfection fallacy is to plan ahead. If something has a deadline, endeavor to start it ahead of the deadline so that, if something interrupts, you still have time built into your schedule to accommodate the delay.

Hasbro Sales for 2020

 This look at Hasbro sales for the third quarter is pretty interesting. https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/46853/big-gains-hasbro-gaming-q3. Total sales for the company are up 11% for the year, including a 19% drop in April , May and June https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/46203/hasbros-total-gaming-sales-down-19-q2 and a 40% increase in WOTC sales in the first quarter https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/45666/hasbros-total-gaming-business-up-40-q1. D&D sales for the third quarter are up about 20% and Magic sales are up  “double digits” , although the company did not specify what percentage of those revenues  came from digital sales of the product line. So looking pretty impressive so far for the year and, based on the interest showing in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything and Commander Legends, not to mention Commander Legends Green, I expect to see Hasbro/WOTC closing out the year up by double digits.