3 ms·

I fail to understand the grey area that grey imports exist in, but I wish I could. I live in Russia and e.g. Apple products are notoriously over-priced here, s

by listic 12y ago

I fail to understand the grey area that grey imports exist in, but I wish I could. I live in Russia and e.g. Apple products are notoriously over-priced here, so lots of local resellers make profit by doing grey imports. iPhones and iPads imported from practically any other contry turn out to be cheaper, even from nearby Finland, which, being Euro-zone country, is not cheap by American standards at all. Note that mobile operators in Russia are not in a position to subsidize phones, so all iPhones are being bought at full price. Mobile operators tried to sell iPhones, too, but could not compete and all balked out, taking great losses. At the same time, prices for most PC hardware seem to be at about Amazon US level. Bizzare? Sure. On the other hand, I am a brony and got interested in My Little Pony Collectible Card Game http://mlpccg.wikia.com/wiki/My_Little_Pony_Collectible_Card_Game_Wiki http://mlpccg.wikia.com/wiki/My_Little_Pony_Collectible_Card... (apparently, it doesn't suck? I was at a con in Finland and played with some enthusiastic fans there). No local stores carry the game here, and the developer (EnterPLAY) is very reluctantly replying my persistent inquiries. The best I got from them was: It’s difficult for me to officially support an event when I can’t officially sell the game into that country. Exactly what is stopping them from selling the game officially in Russia? Is it is the lack of interest from the retailers, or some sort of embargo, or legal obstacle? Maybe I will have better luck 1) buying a couple dozen of decks on Amazon, 2) organizing an impromptu unofficial tournament in a friendly board game club 3) convincing a club to start buying the game themselves and maybe then the developers will take interest and maybe support this all officially, or just talk to me? As a fan, the worst I can lose so far is the cost of a couple dozen decks, am I right?

T-hawk 12y ago
Holy Celestia, a fellow MLP CCG brony on HN. We've really got all types here. The constraint on global distribution is Hasbro, who owns the MLP intellectual property and chooses to license it out on a per country basis. Enterplay is not Hasbro and cannot take and sell the MLP characters where Hasbro doesn't permit it. The Enterplay game developers can't help this, they are far removed from this situation, it's all at the corporate management level. Hasbro has an odd relationship with MLP CCG in the first place. Hasbro owns Wizards of the Coast and is fearful of introducing competition with their own other successful CCGs.
- listic 12y ago
  Brohoof! Did you read Less Wrong? There's a FiMFiction group for that. http://www.fimfiction.net/group/1418/lesswrong http://www.fimfiction.net/group/1418/lesswrong Also, I was there when that science-fiction-y, technological singularity-touting pony story was written: http://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/friendship-is-optimal http://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/friendship-is-optimal In other words, you think Hasbro hasn't made up their mind whether they want to sell MLP TCG in Russia? That's what I thought, too. Though I personally think it's kinda stupid from the business POV to pay for producing the intellectual property and not selling wherever possible (look at Apple, I think lately they maintain their profits just by selling their wares in even more countries, and even faster) Also, there's much evidence that shows that companies can successfully sell several similar brands in parallel, effectively expanding their profits by market segmentation, price discrimination or whatever. But Hasbro is a big сo., moves in mysterious ways and has the right to it. What ticks me off is that Enterplay representative wouldn't (couldn't) even tell me as much as why they can’t sell the game into my country. Indeed, it took pestering him with repeated inquiries to even admit that they can't! Enterplay is a small company, and should be approachable in theory. It doesn't look like they are overwhelmed with demand for their game and can easily afford ignoring honest inquiries from fans that wont to help promote it, either. I think I can well be the first Russian (or one of the few, anyway) to email them. So it almost looks to me like they are afraid to talk to me because they don't know if they can. The few times they did reply, they did pretty fast. Hasbro does license MLP brand in Russia, to some extent: the first couple of seasons were dubbed and shown on kids' channel (no love from the fans for that, of course) and the merchandise is selling, too. So I really don't think there's a reason to not license MLP TCG, when they do already sell other MLP stuff. Speaking of which, I haven't up to this moment thought that the situation with Hasbro or with Trader Joe's can do something with licensing, or that apparently parallel import _can_ be illegal at all. I guess I naively believed in the primate of private property and that if you are selling something you may not forbid buying it (unless it's some kind of regulated thing e.g. guns or drugs). All this makes me want to become an anarchist of some sort. Hasbro has an odd relationship with MLP CCG in the first place. Cannot argue with that. Do you know that the reason you don't "tap" cards in MLP TCG, but "exhaust" them instead is because "tap" is a registered trademark. Apparently, Hasbro can't or won't allow one of its subsidiaries use a trade mark of their other subsidiary, even if it's basically their own! Crazy stuff, right? Finnish fans told me that. I talked to Finnish fans at Crystal Fair con, who introduced me to the game. I was a couple of minutes late to the start of the panel and I was used to GDC (used to take part in Russian one), so when I saw guys confidently explaining how the game works, I thought they were the developers (that's the way it is at developer conferences). Turned out, those were the enthusiastic fans who learned of the game and wanted to promote it in Finland to create a wider audience, so that Hasbro/EnterPLAY would notice and start selling it officially, which should drop the prices, bring in official tournaments with developer-supplied prizes and expand the audience even further; that's their plan. They arranged the first ever unofficial (draft) tournament in Finland on the next day of the con. Half the people just heard of the game, like me, and I found it fun. So I thought: why not try the same in Russia? Only the situation is one step further removed for me: to the best of my knowledge, there's no store that sells the game in Russia, so thought of buying stuff on Amazon myself to get things going. With the ridiculous markup on TCGs in Russia, I could even break even with all the postage included, if I get lucky. In Finland, they already had the stores that sell the game, despite not being released there officially; so they only had to find the one that allows them to sit and play, and went from there. Here's the store (Poromagia) representative setting up a stall in Finlandia Hall: http://i.imgur.com/WZoJERP.jpg http://i.imgur.com/WZoJERP.jpg Everything sold pretty well, even though half of it was the non-pony stuff.

by listic 12y ago

T-hawk 12y ago

Holy Celestia, a fellow MLP CCG brony on HN. We've really got all types here. The constraint on global distribution is Hasbro, who owns the MLP intellectual property and chooses to license it out on a per country basis. Enterplay is not Hasbro and cannot take and sell the MLP characters where Hasbro doesn't permit it. The Enterplay game developers can't help this, they are far removed from this situation, it's all at the corporate management level. Hasbro has an odd relationship with MLP CCG in the first place. Hasbro owns Wizards of the Coast and is fearful of introducing competition with their own other successful CCGs.

listic 12y ago
Brohoof! Did you read Less Wrong? There's a FiMFiction group for that. http://www.fimfiction.net/group/1418/lesswrong http://www.fimfiction.net/group/1418/lesswrong Also, I was there when that science-fiction-y, technological singularity-touting pony story was written: http://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/friendship-is-optimal http://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/friendship-is-optimal In other words, you think Hasbro hasn't made up their mind whether they want to sell MLP TCG in Russia? That's what I thought, too. Though I personally think it's kinda stupid from the business POV to pay for producing the intellectual property and not selling wherever possible (look at Apple, I think lately they maintain their profits just by selling their wares in even more countries, and even faster) Also, there's much evidence that shows that companies can successfully sell several similar brands in parallel, effectively expanding their profits by market segmentation, price discrimination or whatever. But Hasbro is a big сo., moves in mysterious ways and has the right to it. What ticks me off is that Enterplay representative wouldn't (couldn't) even tell me as much as why they can’t sell the game into my country. Indeed, it took pestering him with repeated inquiries to even admit that they can't! Enterplay is a small company, and should be approachable in theory. It doesn't look like they are overwhelmed with demand for their game and can easily afford ignoring honest inquiries from fans that wont to help promote it, either. I think I can well be the first Russian (or one of the few, anyway) to email them. So it almost looks to me like they are afraid to talk to me because they don't know if they can. The few times they did reply, they did pretty fast. Hasbro does license MLP brand in Russia, to some extent: the first couple of seasons were dubbed and shown on kids' channel (no love from the fans for that, of course) and the merchandise is selling, too. So I really don't think there's a reason to not license MLP TCG, when they do already sell other MLP stuff. Speaking of which, I haven't up to this moment thought that the situation with Hasbro or with Trader Joe's can do something with licensing, or that apparently parallel import _can_ be illegal at all. I guess I naively believed in the primate of private property and that if you are selling something you may not forbid buying it (unless it's some kind of regulated thing e.g. guns or drugs). All this makes me want to become an anarchist of some sort. Hasbro has an odd relationship with MLP CCG in the first place. Cannot argue with that. Do you know that the reason you don't "tap" cards in MLP TCG, but "exhaust" them instead is because "tap" is a registered trademark. Apparently, Hasbro can't or won't allow one of its subsidiaries use a trade mark of their other subsidiary, even if it's basically their own! Crazy stuff, right? Finnish fans told me that. I talked to Finnish fans at Crystal Fair con, who introduced me to the game. I was a couple of minutes late to the start of the panel and I was used to GDC (used to take part in Russian one), so when I saw guys confidently explaining how the game works, I thought they were the developers (that's the way it is at developer conferences). Turned out, those were the enthusiastic fans who learned of the game and wanted to promote it in Finland to create a wider audience, so that Hasbro/EnterPLAY would notice and start selling it officially, which should drop the prices, bring in official tournaments with developer-supplied prizes and expand the audience even further; that's their plan. They arranged the first ever unofficial (draft) tournament in Finland on the next day of the con. Half the people just heard of the game, like me, and I found it fun. So I thought: why not try the same in Russia? Only the situation is one step further removed for me: to the best of my knowledge, there's no store that sells the game in Russia, so thought of buying stuff on Amazon myself to get things going. With the ridiculous markup on TCGs in Russia, I could even break even with all the postage included, if I get lucky. In Finland, they already had the stores that sell the game, despite not being released there officially; so they only had to find the one that allows them to sit and play, and went from there. Here's the store (Poromagia) representative setting up a stall in Finlandia Hall: http://i.imgur.com/WZoJERP.jpg http://i.imgur.com/WZoJERP.jpg Everything sold pretty well, even though half of it was the non-pony stuff.