It’s always nice to see my company in the news for good things–Profits up. Stores opening. Stock price climbing.
It’s never nice to see my company in the news for bad things.
Today is one of those latter days. Sigh.
(ETA April 2007): I went through the archives, adding tags to old entries. Some of these entries I haven’t read in forever and a day, and I had to stop and think what this one was about.
Then I remembered.
EB Games used to sell new DVDs. Spider-Man, Minority Report, etc. It was never a focus of our business as we were always priced a lot higher than the Best Buys, the Wal-Marts, and the Targets. Stores never carried much in the way of a new DVD selection, maybe two or three copies of a title, and unless they sold out on release day chances are they were never going to sell, until they were recalled and returned to vendor.
The company decided. We were going to get out the new DVD business. And the last DVD we were going to carry was…
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.
No store received more than three copies of the DVD. And we were selling it at 24.99, the MSRP.
The company sent out a directive. “As soon as you get it, sell it. Even though you’re going to get it a week before street date.”
Stores did what they were told. We sold the DVDs, at full price, before the street date.
And New Line Cinemas blasted the company for it. I recall one article that said that the DVDs were “flying off the shelves, and our corporate was indifferent to their concerns.” I wouldn’t say they were flying–as best I know the Return of the King DVDs went mainly to employees, though even with our discount they still ran about twenty-one dollars. Another article said New Line would never do business with us again–not a major concern, as we were getting out of the market.
That’s what this post was about. New Line pitching a fit because EB Games wanted to get out of the new DVD market. Knowing the internal dramas and reasoning made it a little… depressing to read about.
Now you know, readers from the future! 😉