I don't get group buys - help me understand

[jojobinks]

bpc = douchebag

[RogerZBT]

Are you the worst business man in the world or do you just believe that even bad press is better than no press?

HPC has done two very successful group buys recently and, to the best of my knowledge, there have been no problems. Now you come here and try to throw them and Tenpercenter under the bus with no results. That should probably have been a clue to back off. But instead of back-pedaling and maybe also "getting around the no advertising rule", you try even harder and make things worse for yourself. In short, you blew it.

[toots]

[ QUOTE ]
How's that different from a retailer coming out with a line of chips.

[/ QUOTE ]

I guess reading comprehension isn't on your list of priorities.

It's different because:

1) The artwork was designed by a customer, rather than the retailer
2) Retailers never come up with chips/artwork this interesting on their own
3) Maybe if a retailer did come up with chips that nice, and with the same decent discount we've seen in these group buys, we'd buy those instead.

Hey, you wanna sell me chips? Come up with some nice looking Paulsons at a decent price.

[warewulf]

I'm boycotting you.

Your obviously bitter that your chips are not selling well and trying to jump on the bandwagon that we have created.

You're only motivation -- to make money. Our motivation is to have cool chips and cut out the greedy middle man like you.

Get off our board and go back to selling your crappy, ugly chips. You're not getting any help from us. I have recomended the archetypes many times in the past, will no longer do so.

What I think of your attitude and your chips:

Bite me!

[Audioflow]

You're a class act Ten.

[BuyPokerChips]

My final post, guys… you can think that I’m just a retailer who feels he has “lost” but retailer or not, no one likes bad karma and I didn’t come to your forum to cause trouble. So…

Topic #1 – the tone of my original post

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about all this. I apologize if the tone of my posts sounded accusatory; as you all know, I don’t post often, and I was essentially thinking out loud in my original post without thinking through the nuances and qualifying my opinions. It has snowballed from here, and it’s human nature to defend yourself when under attack. As some of you have pointed out, I did have some valid points even if I used a poor example.

Topic #2 – attacking Ten

In my original post, I said

[ QUOTE ]
Let's take TenPercenter's group buy of 100,000 Paulson chips "you read that right, 100,000 chip order", on a different board, for example. Now, no offense TenPercenter, I'm not accusing you in any way of running a scam. Rahter I'm just pointing out that if a confidence man was to run a scam, they could do something very similar to what you've done and perhaps walk away with 2 years salary for the average person on this 100,000 chip group buy alone, not to mention replicating this on every product-specific board on the Internet.

Some out there might be saying, wait, TenPercenter already did at least one group buy (on the Pharoah's Club Chipco) and everyone got their chips just fine. So there's no risk right? He's proved himself trustful. Or you could take the perspective that it was just the first step in a long con, one that could really bilk a bunch of people our of some cash, like a 100,000 chip order. After all, why would he organize a 2nd group buy when he already has his perfect chip set from the first buy. Who needs two different sets of chips?

[/ QUOTE ]

In the first paragraph, I made it a point to say that I was NOT accusing Ten. However, in the second paragraph, I mention the long con and also Ten. I did NOT mean to connect these two and imply that Ten was conning anyone. I was simply going off the example and lumped Ten in. Someone could – though apparently you guys have set up safeguards that I wasn’t aware of.

Topic #3 - In closing...

Although I might have stated it clumsily, I was in fact trying to find out more about your market segment, and I have learned quite a bit. My general take away is this:

- There is a strong general consensus among board members that the currently available designs available to the consumer market is lacking.
- Board members want more say in design and pricing of chips, and are willing to make trade-offs, if necessary.
- Board members seem to dislike the word "Poker" on our Modern Clay chips.
- Some board members believe there is need for a downward adjustment on prices in the high-end of the chip market.

Lastly, I'd like to say we support poker chip consumers (Perhaps in a different manner than Ten and other group buyer organizers), but still we support the market. Do we have healthy retail margins? You can't survive and innovate over the long term without them. We're a business like any other, and we reinvest our profits in an effort to move the market forward and bring better and better chips to the market. We serve a specific target market of customers that want the highest quality chips, they want them quickly and without any hassles, and they're willing to pay a premium price to get what they want, when they want.

While some on this board say there is a need for a downward price adjustment, we and our customer base believe quite the opposite. The result of this perceived need for a downward price adjustment is what you're seeing from Paulson - a chip on a mold that is different than what consumers what (they just reused their standard demo chip mold), inlays that don't even fit the mold, and less and less variety of designs as they only are interested in 100,000 to 250,000 chip orders. So, in essence, more of the same. That's what consumers get for the price they're willing to pay is what the company line appears to be.

We're looking to get the best chips possible, and pay what is necessary. Price is not really a primary consideration. We believe there are tremendous strides left to be made in chip design, quality, and manufacturing technology in the chip market. Furthermore, we believe the high-end of the chip market can only be advanced by retailers and manufacturers that have an interest in improving poker chips for the home market, and this improvement requires investment, and a genuine interest in serving the needs of this market.

That's why we posted this thread in the first place. And now, we've said about all we can say, it's back to business.

[DerryABU]

[ QUOTE ]
We serve a specific target market of customers that want the highest quality chips, they want them quickly and without any hassles, and they're willing to pay a premium price to get what they want, when they want.

While some on this board say there is a need for a downward price adjustment, we and our customer base believe quite the opposite. The result of this perceived need for a downward price adjustment is what you're seeing from Paulson - a chip on a mold that is different than what consumers what (they just reused their standard demo chip mold), inlays that don't even fit the mold, and less and less variety of designs as they only are interested in 100,000 to 250,000 chip orders. So, in essence, more of the same. That's what consumers get for the price they're willing to pay is what the company line appears to be.

We're looking to get the best chips possible, and pay what is necessary. Price is not really a primary consideration. We believe there are tremendous strides left to be made in chip design, quality, and manufacturing technology in the chip market. Furthermore, we believe the high-end of the chip market can only be advanced by retailers and manufacturers that have an interest in improving poker chips for the home market, and this improvement requires investment, and a genuine interest in serving the needs of this market.


[/ QUOTE ]

This theory just does not hold up,at the end of the day your Archetype chips are simply a different Chipco design from the Classics,Crystal Oyster and Egyptians etc.The Archetype chips are the same quality as those mentioned but at a lot more $$.Is your design worth the extra $110 for a 500 set? I don't think so.

[msb]

[ QUOTE ]
Get off our board and go back to selling your crappy, ugly chips.

I have recomended the archetypes many times in the past, will no longer do so.

[/ QUOTE ]

So... you recommended crappy, ugly chips? [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[toots]

Oh, let's see...

I buy 500 totally unexceptional looking ChipCo "Archetypes" at about $1.15 each, or 500 really cool looking Egyptians, which at the second group buy was something like $.89 each.

In fact, I can still get oneseys of the egyptians for.. $1.05 each? I'd have to buy 1000 archetypes to get that sort of price break.

So, you lose on two important points:

1) Your chips aren't really that exciting
2) They cost more

... now, why was it again that I want to buy your chips?

[unloaded]

Wow, what a thread. Gonna have to put my $.02 worth in. While reading the original post I didn't get the feeling that he was attacking anybody personally. I haven't been involved in any of the group buys, so maybe that gives me a bit more distance from the subject. I do follow the threads closely though. I came away with the sense that he is noticing an unmet need, that the group buys are meeting. As a business man, he'd want to define the pie and how to get a piece of it.

HoldemPokerChips seems to have struck gold by offering to handle the final end of the deals. Even assuming they make nothing off the original order (which I have no idea either way), they get many benifits after the fact: happy (returning) customers from the group buy, very nice set of proven popular chips to offer the public (exclusively? again no idea), zero investment in the chip design or setups. That's just some simple observations of tangible things, not to mention the intangibles like word of mouth advertising or "covert advertising" of their name coming up a lot on the forums.

Both HPC and the "group" benefit from this relationship. I've listed some of HPC's gains, what does the "group" get out of the deal...? Biggest benefit would be security on the financial end, also the ability to get addons/replacements after the fact. Although the group does lose some of the uniqueness, which suggests thats not a major factor in the group buys.

Now I admit I don't know any details of the arrangements made between the "group" and the "servicing company" and I'm not insinuating anything, just stating the obvious. That agreement seems to be the area with the most room for wiggle. If I were a company wanting to break into this area I would focus on trying to offer the "group" a better service deal than the competing company. Lots of ideas on how this can be done come to mind. A slight investment in the deal should should pay for it self down the road. Although us chip-junkies are on the cutting edge right now, the main-stream will follow.

I know I've generalized and over simplified, but anybody with some business smarts can crunch the numbers and see what comes out.

peace.
unloaded