Author Topic: CundCo Shop - Open Letter for the Community  (Read 23365 times)

Offline kettlefish

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Re: CundCo Shop - Open Letter for the Community
« Reply #15 on: May 03, 2016, 02:03:38 AM »
I'll hold my order until things calms down. Was just about to order another batch of some 90 thousands ti...
great - when you order the 90 thousands tiles - perhaps some of them could be the CropCirles I...

Offline hunnymonster

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Re: CundCo Shop - Open Letter for the Community
« Reply #16 on: May 03, 2016, 02:43:47 AM »
If he ordered 90000 "CropCircles I" tiles they might reprint it :)
Whatever it is, it's probably in the post from Germany...

Offline Decar

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Re: CundCo Shop - Open Letter for the Community
« Reply #17 on: May 03, 2016, 09:03:55 AM »
that would be one hell of a game

Offline Whaleyland

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    • Derek R. Whaley, PhD | Librarian, Historian, and Writer
Re: CundCo Shop - Open Letter for the Community
« Reply #18 on: May 03, 2016, 04:35:05 PM »
In response to the idea for a Kickstarter for out-of-print and hard-to-find Carcassonne expansions, I have sent Hans im Glück the following email:

Quote
Greetings Hans im Glück staff,

First, I wanted to thank you for the detailed and thorough explanation for the difficulties you have all had with managing the CundCo site. The site is something that evolved from a strictly spare parts service so it makes sense that there are some transition issues as it slowly evolves into a full online store. Patience is not, unfortunately, a valued virtue in these days, and even I have had momentary lapses of it recently.

That being said, I read from your statement that one of the difficulties is that you need to have a print run of an expansion that justifies the purchase price. Around 1,000 copies need to be ordered just to make a profit. I understand that. I am an author and have had to pre-pay for books before even when I was not certain of the demand. That being said, I personally have moved entirely to a print-on-demand system for my books. This, however, is not possible for printing tiles (at least I don't think it is). But I have a solution that should satisfy almost everyone, including you most of all.

The problem as I see it is that:
a) People still want rare expansions
b) People do not want Carcassonne II artwork tiles
c) You are getting too many requests in for out-of-print tiles/expansions

Why not satisfy all of these problems with an exclusive one-time-only Kickstarter campaign? The purpose of the campaign would be to make available for one last time all of the Doris Matthäus-art expansions that have never been commercially released. Then this would be it. No more reprints of any Matthäus art tiles. You could write off the entire Doris Matthäus line and dedicate all of your efforts to the new artwork. This way, old fans would get the expansions they have been looking for (and many do not know about CundCo or find the pricing too expensive for shipping overseas), there would be one last release of old art expansions to satisfy the traditional Carcassonne audience, and you could wash yours hands of the entire former series. It would be ingenious and it could revolutionise your future direction with Carcassonne.

And just to prove that this can work, Queen Games is only a slightly larger operation than your own company and they have recently completed their 41st Kickstarter campaign. The size of these have ranged from re-releases to new games to relatively small expansions (such as the 7th! for Alhambra and the 4th for Kingdom Builder) to large Big Boxes. I have backed a number of their campaigns and I promise that I, and other members of CarcassonneCentral and Carcassonne-Forum, would back a Kickstarter campaign for Carcassonne.

What I recommend is a massive three expansion release with a full game included as well:

1) Carcassonne on Tour: Includes Windroses, German Monasteries, German Castles, German Cathedrals, and Little Buildings for a total of 24 tiles and 18 tokens;

2) Carcassonne—Crop Circles, Tunnel & Plague: Includes Crop Circles I, Tunnel, Plague, and Besiegers for a total of 22 tiles and a bunch of chits and tokens;

3) Carcassonne—Phantoms & Halflings: Includes The Halflings I and II, the 10th Anniversary tiles (reprinted with non-10th Anniversary logo), The Mini Expansion (from Games Quarterly Magazine), and the Phantom for a total of 34 tile-sized items and 6 meeples;

4) Carcassonne: The Castle SPECIAL EDITION: Includes Carcassonne: The Castle and The Falcon expansion (with new cover art like with Hunters & Gatherers).

You could include as stretch rewards The School, Darmstadt, the Dutch Monasteries, the Labyrinth, the meeple stickers, spare meeple sets, etc, (or include no stretch rewards at all).

I feel that a Kickstarter that makes all of these expansions publicly available in a new format but in the old art will solve a lot of your problems. It will make an official outlet for fans to buy the expansions (rather than using CundCo), it will satisfy fan demand for expansions in the old art without you actually having to commission Doris Matthäus to make that new art, it will provide you with willing customers and a pre-order system to finance these expansion reprints, and it will supply CundCo with much-needed replacement parts for the short term to satisfy replacement (but not commercial) demand when parts actually need replacing.

I know you are busy with a lot of other projects, but I feel this proposal is really the solution you should consider for all of your problems with the Carcassonne community. I know it would satisfy me and I am fairly certain it would satisfy the vast majority of other Carcassonne fans and may even acts as a new viable method of releasing or re-releasing old games such as The City, The Discovery, New World, and the other spin-offs that have not seen a re-release in a number of years. I hope that you will consider this option seriously for the benefits it will bring to everybody involved, fan and company alike.

Sincerely,
Derek "Whaleyland" Whaley

Offline dirk2112

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Re: CundCo Shop - Open Letter for the Community
« Reply #19 on: May 03, 2016, 04:58:35 PM »
Well said Derek!   :(y)

I would have been happy with just a reprint of the rarities, but if they want to do it up, I will show them the money.

Offline Whaleyland

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Re: CundCo Shop - Open Letter for the Community
« Reply #20 on: May 03, 2016, 05:18:19 PM »
Well said Derek!   :(y)

I would have been happy with just a reprint of the rarities, but if they want to do it up, I will show them the money.
I honestly believe that full formal expansions for everything not collected would just work better for everybody since they could point people to the boxed expansions, when those are gone just apologise and say "wait for the reprint in the new art", and also tell people with more effect that they only provide replacement services, not full expansions. That final point is where I think they went wrong. I think they need to keep their replacement service and their commercial e-store separate. That would make things much simpler for them and for us.

Offline dirk2112

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Re: CundCo Shop - Open Letter for the Community
« Reply #21 on: May 03, 2016, 06:13:02 PM »
]I honestly believe that full formal expansions for everything not collected would just work better for everybody since they could point people to the boxed expansions, when those are gone just apologise and say "wait for the reprint in the new art", and also tell people with more effect that they only provide replacement services, not full expansions. That final point is where I think they went wrong. I think they need to keep their replacement service and their commercial e-store separate. That would make things much simpler for them and for us.

I think you are right about keeping the replacement separate from the expansion sales.  If they aren't going to print the Tower in the new art, I imagine the Plague and a few others won't be printed either.  So they won't be able to say "wait for the new art" for everything.  If anything, they could use this last printing as a way to permanently retire some of these expansions.

Offline Whaleyland

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    • Derek R. Whaley, PhD | Librarian, Historian, and Writer
Re: CundCo Shop - Open Letter for the Community
« Reply #22 on: May 03, 2016, 06:47:50 PM »
I think you are right about keeping the replacement separate from the expansion sales.  If they aren't going to print the Tower in the new art, I imagine the Plague and a few others won't be printed either.  So they won't be able to say "wait for the new art" for everything.  If anything, they could use this last printing as a way to permanently retire some of these expansions.
That is precisely what I was thinking. Let them go on a high note by being all included in some nice boxes with well-written rules and expansion watermarks. But the emphasis is on let them go, as in permanently retire them (except for legitimate replacement services operated by a separate division than the e-store). Until the public has one last chance to get these rare gems, they will not let them go and I think this is a good way of going about it. Granted people will still look for the different watermarks or the Cathars or Darmstadt, but this will conclude a chapter in Hans im Glück's history and allow the next chapter to truly begin.

Offline SRBO

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Re: CundCo Shop - Open Letter for the Community
« Reply #23 on: May 03, 2016, 11:54:27 PM »
And also some new expansions!

Offline hunnymonster

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Re: CundCo Shop - Open Letter for the Community
« Reply #24 on: May 03, 2016, 11:58:23 PM »
And also some new expansions!
Like "official" prints of the fan expansions that they've featured... as an example.

Offline Guy

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Re: CundCo Shop - Open Letter for the Community
« Reply #25 on: May 04, 2016, 12:08:43 AM »
And hopefully by doing a Kickstarter with an entirely new print run we might get an entire set of expansions with the same colour field!
I play orange

Offline Whaleyland

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Re: CundCo Shop - Open Letter for the Community
« Reply #26 on: May 04, 2016, 12:16:30 AM »
And hopefully by doing a Kickstarter with an entirely new print run we might get an entire set of expansions with the same colour field!
I'll admit that is an extra hope I have.

And also some new expansions!
Actually I consider this a less important goal. The point is to get everything that's hard-to-find out in the open, not make a bunch of new material.

Like "official" prints of the fan expansions that they've featured... as an example.
See above statement.

Offline totor66

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Re: CundCo Shop - Open Letter for the Community
« Reply #27 on: May 04, 2016, 01:21:30 AM »
great mail !

A question though, can they actually reprint stuff like Plague and tunnels or GQ, since rights should belong to others no ?

Like Spielbox, rio Grande, etc ...
Carcassonne Fan since 2014

Offline Whaleyland

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Re: CundCo Shop - Open Letter for the Community
« Reply #28 on: May 04, 2016, 02:10:50 AM »
great mail !

A question though, can they actually reprint stuff like Plague and tunnels or GQ, since rights should belong to others no ?

Like Spielbox, rio Grande, etc ...
From what I understand, Hans im Glück owns all the rights to Spielbox expansions, except for Cathars. They may or may not have rights to reproduce the Games Quarterly Expansion since that was printed as a Rio Grande Games license expansion, but since it had no expansion elements or anything unique in it, I see no reason they could not reprint it, possibly using their own slight variant.

Offline Jéré

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Re: CundCo Shop - Open Letter for the Community
« Reply #29 on: May 04, 2016, 02:25:38 AM »
I read from your statement that one of the difficulties is that you need to have a print run of an expansion that justifies the purchase price. Around 1,000 copies need to be ordered just to make a profit. I understand that.

Probably a very good email whaleyland but I had to stop reading at the second paragraph because you have misread their letter. They have never said "around 1,000 copies"... they say thousandS...

I like the idea of a kickstarter campaign though. I'd be one of the first to back it.


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