Sunday, July 24, 2011

Information Shortage on New Products.

Working on putting in an order for new releases from our distributors and find that their catalogs (and websites for that matter) lack some very important information.  I can't truly blame the distributors  because they rely on the manufacturer to provide information information about the games (or other products listed).  However, in looking over one distributor's pre-order catalog, I find a brief blurb describing how cool the game is and, in most but not all cases, a photo. 

However, missing in almost all case is important information that people buying the game would want to know before they purchased it.  How many people can play?  What age groups can play?  How long should a game take to play?  That is important information a customer would want to have before they bought any boardgame off my shelves and I would really like to have the same information before deciding whether it is a good fit for my store or not.

In the case of RPG supplements, especially if it is a new company or one whose product I have not stocked previously, I want to know how many pages.  Color or black and white?  Is it suitable for beginning players or more experienced ones?

In both cases, I can ask my sales representative but it's woefully inefficient to expect them to go over over every items in the monthly pre-order form, especially when the manufacturer/publisher should have included such information.

No comments:

Post a Comment