It’s been an incredible journey of growth and success and it’s time for several major changes to our Membership program to ensure that we can continue to scale and sustain as we pursue our goals of bringing safe inclusive gaming to everyone!
As always, we strive to be transparent with you, and it’s time to acknowledge several problems that are becoming clearer as we scale. In the past 6 months, we’ve seen Membership numbers skyrocket into the high hundreds with new members coming in almost every day, many of them to support our Mission and for perks that have nothing to do with our Wholesale Program.
Before we talk about the changes to Wholesale, I want to take a moment to address the major Membership changes that will affect all Members:
All orders will now receive free shipping above $100 (for many of you this isn’t new)
All orders are eligible for 3% cashback (again, not new for many of you)
3% cashback will include all restaurant purchases made at our new North Phoenix location
Store credit will be usable for non-alcohol purchases at our restaurant in North Phoenix
Private Rooms will no longer be eligible for free use. It’s overly complicated/labor intensive and has been consistently problematic over time, causing a need to re-evaluate it entirely.
Going forward, Tempe private rooms will cost $15/hr for Members on a first paid/scheduled basis. For Non-Members, the price is still $40/hr.
Members are guaranteed MSRP (or market value, whichever is lower), on products during the preorder period. Let’s use OP-08 as an example. Members can pre-order a case at $107.76/box. If they want more, it’s at market price, same as everyone else ($300+).
All events with sealed products will still keep to the current pricing structure we have in place, which is close to MSRP.
We are also adding event-ticket rollover for Members Event Tickets. Every month, you will get 4 more event tickets into your account, to a max of 8 eventticketsbanked. For example, if you didn’t use any in April, when May begins you get 4 more and go to 8 event tickets. Then if you use 8 in May, and when June begins, you go back to 4 event tickets.
We will always list no less than 50% of our large line product allocation for Members to pre-order (including OP, MTG, etc.) for at least a 2-week period (GW pre-order system is not changing)
Members will receive advance notice of member-only pre-orders going live and they will be posted on a first come, first served basis, with per customer/account restrictions as outlined in the advance notice email. Any attempts to create duplicate accounts will result in cancellation of membership and all outstanding orders.
We know these changes are major, some of them will be unpopular, and some of you may even choose to no longer support our Mission.
The intent here is to bring the Membership program to a truly scalable place where we can draw a firm line of support in good faith to all Members regardless of how many we have, and they can trust that we will deliver.
We sincerely appreciate your support of our journey to bring safe inclusive gaming to everyone this far, and appreciate your understanding that these changes are necessary.
Regarding the Wholesale Program,
Recent major changes in One Piece allocations triggered larger audits of the Wholesale Program in its entirety. When we set out to pilot this program, our intention was to regulate the market volatility of CCGs in a way that would reduce our risk, and also benefit the community with consistent pricing with integrity. What we’ve found were alarming patterns indicating unsustainable growth scaling issues. It’s not really even operating to our original intention anymore.
Additionally, in the past 6 months, we’ve had 4 different CCG SKUs get radically reduced allocations without warning. What we’ve learned is that when demand sharply rises for a product, everyone ELSE jumps onto it. The manufacturer doesn’t always compensate for that with additional printing, and distributors will prioritize making room for everyone, even if that means cutting pre-existing retailers like us.
We’d rather acknowledge the flaws in this program and pivot now rather than try to force it to continue knowing that at some point we’re going to hit a brick wall, which is in bad faith if we knew about it and didn’t admit it. It’s only a matter of time until we’re forced for some reason or another to refund a subscribed Member, and that is unacceptable. That brings us to some tough decisions, and we’ve made them.
Effective immediately, the following changes will occur to the Wholesale Program:
We will no longer be soliciting pre-orders nor supplying product at near wholesale prices for new sets going forward
We will no longer be accepting Open Orders as a general program/perk offer, it was seldom used and massively labor intensive.
All existing orders will stand unless you cancel your Membership, then any outstanding orders will be fully refunded and cancelled as well.
All grandfathered Patrons ARE part of this change as we are sunsetting this program
Going forward, no less than 50% of our allocated products will go live as a pre-order for Members, GUARANTEED at MSRP OR market price, whichever is cheaper. Every order will get free shipping above $100, and Members also get a 3% store credit rebate.
Notice for the orders going live will occur 1 week ahead of time and will go live at a precise day/time as stated in the notice, and will be first come, first served.
The notice will contain any limitations for the Member (such as 1 case per customer or 1 box or lottery) if applicable.
If the product sells out during the Member pre-order period, a sign-up list will be available on each product listing to save your place in line for purchase of any additional product that becomes available.
Every attempt will be made to fulfill and prioritize Member pre-orders in good faith, up to and including cancelling non-member pre-orders (even if those are more profitable to us).
If there is no MSRP, the equivalent to MSRP margin markup will be applied in good faith for Members
We are aware that manyreading this will simply discontinue their Membership and we accepted that possibility when we made these decisions. Please remember this was a pilot program, and ultimately we could not find a way to overcome industry instabilities at our volume. We appreciate your support in trying out this program and we wish you the very best going forward!
Sincerely,
Aaron C Managing Owner
Comments
I sincerely appreciate you being forward with this and open about the changes. Honesty in your business is a benefit that seems less and less common these days. I also have one clarification question: is the new member pre-order 1 week prior to OFFICIAL release date, or is it that we will receive notice via email 1 week before the pre order goes live? That is the only part I find slightly confusing here.
