jpat wrote: I just want to take a moment to contrast this with ye olde days, as some already did. I remember having a nice conversation with Thadd about Tannhauser boards and the odd shapes and sizes of the French boards/boxes the previous owner of the IP had used, and then she sent me another board that (not her fault by any means) had the same misfold as the original. Although far less personal, FFG sent me a complete Eldritch Horror cardboard replacement for a couple of missing/damaged tokens, including one I'd confessed to having thrown away myself.
Thadd was awesome for getting replacement parts to you, as were the other staffers there, I have a spare board for BSG (from one of them) when I said my board was worn from so many plays and got a new set of base Skill cards after getting the expansions and telling them the original base cards had grey edges from so much play and stood out in the combined decks.
I think I am actually going to join in with Michael this time and not buy any more Asmodee stuff
Thaadd had a post on this on BGG but I can't find it. She more or less said she can't imagine how they will sustain this, because on a good day 2% of FFG games have an inventory error on delivery. Returns for replacements lock up 4% of stock at that point. It seems to me you have a lot more labor involved if you want to recoup the bad units, although for all I know maybe they'll trash them and take the loss rather than attempt to turn them into complete products. Given they only get 20%-30% of the MSRP it may be cheaper to dump them than to pay hourly rates to complete the recovery business process.
If that's the case, Amsodee may have just looked at the cold numbers and said, "less people on our health care plan and payroll" and figured they're ahead in raw numbers.
I'm doing this sort of analysis for my current client right now. People ain't cheap. The more I think about this the more I'm wondering if they've just done the study and this is the optimal path. Can't rule it out.
Employees cost a lot of money, especially if the effort results in an additional hire to carry it out. A full timer with basic benefits may be $25k in non-salary costs. Warehousing and organization efforts, management . . .
On the surface this sounded stupid to me, but when I started working the math, 2% product error, 20-40% of MSRP loss per unit, say $80 for 10,000 units gives you $4800 in lost revenue if you trash the errored copies. Tax deductible. If one person can do this for 40 titles simultaneously that's $192,000 in avoided loss. 40 titles would mean 8000 CSRs, 250 business days would be 32 tickets per day (i.e., 10 minutes each after corporate BS time is removed), needs to include communications and packaging (added expenses). An aggressive schedule for one person.
These are really trumped up numbers. But the guys with the spreadsheets likely have pretty solid data.
I'm not trying to bring The Discourse into this, more to support your point and +1, but the disincentive to hire people because of the cost of benefits, especially health benefits, is one of the big things the medicare for all folks focus on.
Sagrilarus wrote: Employees cost a lot of money, especially if the effort results in an additional hire to carry it out. A full timer with basic benefits may be $25k in non-salary costs. Warehousing and organization efforts, management . . .
On the surface this sounded stupid to me, but when I started working the math, 2% product error, 20-40% of MSRP loss per unit, say $80 for 10,000 units gives you $4800 in lost revenue if you trash the errored copies. Tax deductible. If one person can do this for 40 titles simultaneously that's $192,000 in avoided loss. 40 titles would mean 8000 CSRs, 250 business days would be 32 tickets per day (i.e., 10 minutes each after corporate BS time is removed), needs to include communications and packaging (added expenses). An aggressive schedule for one person.
These are really trumped up numbers. But the guys with the spreadsheets likely have pretty solid data.
Time to dumpster dive FFG.
I’m sure they ran the numbers and this saves money — they’re not idiots. Stonmaier says they spent more than $43,000 in shipping, personnel, and warehousing for replacement parts for 9 games in 2019. I’m sure with Asmodees catalog it really starts to add up
I don't think anyone ever thought this wasn't purely a number on a spreadsheet decision. The question is whether saving $x is worth the optics and the ill will this will generate with their retail partners. They decided yes, and time will tell I guess.
Sagrilarus wrote: Employees cost a lot of money, especially if the effort results in an additional hire to carry it out. A full timer with basic benefits may be $25k in non-salary costs. Warehousing and organization efforts, management . . .
On the surface this sounded stupid to me, but when I started working the math, 2% product error, 20-40% of MSRP loss per unit, say $80 for 10,000 units gives you $4800 in lost revenue if you trash the errored copies. Tax deductible. If one person can do this for 40 titles simultaneously that's $192,000 in avoided loss. 40 titles would mean 8000 CSRs, 250 business days would be 32 tickets per day (i.e., 10 minutes each after corporate BS time is removed), needs to include communications and packaging (added expenses). An aggressive schedule for one person.
These are really trumped up numbers. But the guys with the spreadsheets likely have pretty solid data.
Time to dumpster dive FFG.
Two years ago, Asmodee converted most of their employees to salary. My friend often works six days a week for them. They also laid off many of their older employees and have been replacing some of them with recent graduates who will work for less money and also cost less in terms of health insurance coverage. Many current employees are nervous and unhappy, but don't even have the time or energy to look for a better job.
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