Joint booth with Projekt Odyssee at Spiel in Essen/Germany?

[Eero Tuovinen]

I'm a bit hard-headed (perhaps thick-headed) on the business side of things, so I'm gonna ask:  Do you guys have stock to sell?  Or the provision to at least get stock in a reasonable manner?

To clarify for others as well: the deal is, you pay for the booth and ship us the product (paying shipping), we take care of the rest here in Europe. Our provision for getting the books is the fact that I've got books from all of you before this, so it's not like we're doing this for the first time. The books are your property from the beginning to the end, we'll just sell them for you. Frank, me, or some other respectable Forgite can take care of organizing the practicalities of moving money in cooperation with Nexus.

I don't see this as a major hurdle compared to the still uncertain financing side; we have several months to arrange shipping from the US. We can either put together a common package and land-mail it in June (the cheaper land-mail takes two months or more from US), or if there's important products coming out at Gencon, figure a faster mailing method for those titles. In either case I might well want to fold the effort with my own retail package; I've been planning to make a large order of various indie titles for Arkenstone coinciding with Gencon, but I might as well do my order a bit early: for example, I'm planning to order a dozen books of Sorcerer from Ron anyway, so we might as well mail my Sorcerers and the Essen Sorcerers at the same time, and save some postage.

Because if the booth doesn't have a cash register and a substantial number of books waiting to be put in the cash-paying hands of those who have just had a wonderful demo then that seems like a lost opportunity.

A cash register we don't have, unless the Nexus people have something. Perhaps that should be added to the project budget? Or figure out a smart alternative.

I'll repeat here that we'll need to think of other expenses than the booth as well: furniture and display shelves, for example. I don't have any sense for many of you Germans live near Essen, for example, so I don't know if you can just lug something appropriate there, or what. It'd be grand if we got some realistic numbers for these needs, to include with the 1000€ expense for the booth space itself.

At the same time, shipping a substantial stock of all these games to Europe and then shipping anything that doesn't sell back to the U.S. seems like a logistically challenging and perhaps-expensive operation.  Have people got that under control?

It's under control. As discussed, there's a number of controls:
- It's up to you and me to figure out how many of your game we can reasonably expect to sell. No reason to ship any more.
- Leftover books can be sold at future conventions; namely, there's apparently a big convention in Stuttgart the next week.
- Anything left after those maneuvers can be retailed by European retailers. Arkenstone, for instance, is a bit low on books; we're happy to take up to ten copies ourselves of almost all prospective titles (on individual basis, of course), and we can find other retailers who can take the rest.
- Individual designers are, of course, free to make any additional arrangements they want. I'll be happy to mail books to your personal retailers or warehouses in Europe after the convention, for example, if you have special connections.
In other words, I estimate that we have about 20 book buffer per title; as long as we can estimate the sales to fall within that zone, any leftover books can be dealt with. In the unlikely(?) event of having over 20 leftover books mailing them back to America IS pretty sensible, as they represent a pretty large investment compared to the cost of mailing them. Another alternative is to arrange for longer term storage in Europe, and ship the books to European web customers from here; you'll even save some postage there if some agreeable fulfillment plan is reached. In any case I don't find the concept of left-over books too worrysome, as long as nobody expects me to find storage space for 500 books alone in Germany at midnight without my cell phone or something. Postages inside EU are much cheaper than overseas anyway, so it's not like your stock is left landlocked in Essen in any case.

James, answers:
- How much you need to contribute: we will find this out within a week, as we tally any interested people. What WE need to know is how much is your maximal contribution; that way we can include or drop you from the calculation, depending on how many others we get. Remember that the actual decision about whether this will get off the ground at all happens when we see if there's enough financing available to pay for the booth.
- When you need to contribute: I suppose we don't know the exact deadline at this point, but I imagine it's not the end of May or anything. Perhaps Nexus knows when the money is needed? In any case, we'll set up somebody to collect the cash (Nexus probably, if they have the means and the trust) and make the payment to the convention organization (definitely Nexus).

[Frank T]

Crosspost with Eero, I'll let it stand anyway:

Tony, there is no stock of Forge games yet. That would have to be organized. The problem of possibly having to ship stock back to the US may be resolved by the perspective of taking a reasonable amount of books "on tour" with PrO to sell them on later conventions and fairs, and have Eero take however much he can handle with him to Finland to sell there. I could also offer to store a reasonable amount with me, so when you receive an order from Europe, you don't ship it from the US, but send me an email so I ship it from Hamburg. We'd need to figure out some procedures for that, but that could be done.

I don't know what's the cheapest way to ship considerable amounts of books, but that can be found out until October. The required stock will probably be more than what I can just store in my flat and drive to Essen in my car, so we need to work out some logistics. There will surely be a way, but the costs of the shipping would have to be borne by the authors initially, so that's on top of what you pay for the booth, as Eero already pointed out.

As I see it, we would do sale or return (hopefully sale). So there would be a sales agent contract between each individual author and, well, probably Nexus e.V. Or Wilde Lande Verlag (meaning: me), if you like that better. That contract would be something like: You provide the books shipped to Essen for the fair, we try to sell the books, we'll replace them at print costs if they get damaged or lost due to our gross negligence, we don't charge anything beside your share in the booth costs, any Dollar we make on sales goes back to you, we will provide you with accounts so you can check how many books we sold by when. If there is stock left, you tell us what to do with it: Ship it back to you at your expense, or take it with us at our expense to sell it on later occasion and then return the profit to you.

If you like, I can draft a contract. That's what I do for a living, after all.

- Frank

[Frank T]

P.S.: We also need to figure out how to handle VAT, but as I happen to be a tax lawyer, I think I can see to that. VAT on book sales is 7% in Germany (it's a privileged good).

[Blankshield]

James, answers:
- How much you need to contribute: we will find this out within a week, as we tally any interested people. What WE need to know is how much is your maximal contribution; that way we can include or drop you from the calculation, depending on how many others we get. Remember that the actual decision about whether this will get off the ground at all happens when we see if there's enough financing available to pay for the booth.
- When you need to contribute: I suppose we don't know the exact deadline at this point, but I imagine it's not the end of May or anything. Perhaps Nexus knows when the money is needed? In any case, we'll set up somebody to collect the cash (Nexus probably, if they have the means and the trust) and make the payment to the convention organization (definitely Nexus).

I'm willing to commit up to 200 Euros, in straight booth share and other expenses (advertising/furniture/material/what-have-you)

thanks,

James

[Eero Tuovinen]

Oh noes, we have a lawyer in our midst. No, seriously: I find it a good idea if Frank would, indeed, write a common document for the deal, spelling out what we're doing (a suitable moment could be the coming weekend, when we have the framework tightened some more). I don't find that it needs individual subscription (signatures), but having something definite to refer to would be good in case of disagreement; the kind of project we're proposing here requires a magnitude more of trust and coordination than the Gencon one, as the unity of publishers and salesmen will be practically nil. Also, such a document ensures that we don't drift the agreement without explicitly finding a concensus on any changes later on; I imagine that we'll find a lot to be tweaked between the end of May and the convention.

VAT: I'm no tax lawyer (so my opinion might be ridiculous, even if logically sound), but here's my argument for why it's not an issue: the actual party doing the sales is the American authors and their companies, we're just working as free work-force, not as retailers. Like any other international sales, the seller pays his VAT in his own country; in other words, it's business as usual for the Americans. The contrary argument would be that there is actually some European party doing the selling. Who might that be? I suspect that the tax office would nominate Nexus, if they'll take care of the booth. Because this is patently preposterous (as they have no trace of any sales in their own finances), the only other possible target are the American designers, which brings us back to the above; if they pay VAT in US, they can't be forced to pay it in Germany, am I right?

To illustrate, here's how I'd handle this if I did have a game of my own to sell: I go to Germany and sell some games, but because I'm a Finnish company, I don't submit a VAT breakdown for the German government; it's business as usual, and will be handled in Finland. In our case, no VAT would be paid, because this year we're most likely still exempt from paying it. But that has nothing to do with the fact that the games were sold in Germany, the procedure would be identical if I sold them at a convention in Helsinki.

The whole situation changes, by the way, if you, I or Nexus indeed makes an array of official retail contracts with the American authors, as then the retail sales would possibly be made by a German (or Finnish, in my case) party, who'd pay VAT in Germany. Of course, the amount would possibly be 0, if the price of the service rendered is nil (that is, we work for free), but then you might have to prove that to the tax office. I find that problematic on multiple levels, not least because of the hassle with getting everybody's agreement into some official contract.

[neph]

Hi,

without consulting Daniela just a quick reply concerning the prices:
The prices depend on the location of the booth (in the row, at a corner or at the head of a row)
The wall at the back costs 17.40 Euro per meter (I will include this)

- a 5x2 m booth like the one we used is 
  row     680.92 Euro
  corner 723.84 Euro
  head 762.12 Euro

- base price for 20 square meters in a row would be
  2180.80 Euro 

corner and head are more expensive but I don't have these prices at hand right now.
I hope I didn't forget anything but these figures should be more or less accurate.

So two 5x2 booths are actually cheaper than a big one.

[Frank T]

Andreas, do you think we could fit three demo tables into one 2x5 m area? I think if we had two slots that are in line of sight of each other, there would be no problem of walking people over from the booth to the tables for a demo. I'm already drawing sketches. It'd be pretty cramped, and we'd need tables exactly the right size.

- Frank

[neph]

Andreas, do you think we could fit three demo tables into one 2x5 m area?

Actually if it is possible to do two booths (I don't know if Nexus is allowed to get two small booths) it would be great to have
them on both sides of a walkway, but that's all highly speculative especially if we order this late.

On our last appearances half of the booth was used for a stand, the other half for one (very small and not very comforting) gaming table with stools instead of chairs. We used them for 1 hour demos (although that 15 minute concept is very intriguing, i will read into this).

[Frank T]

Okay, so we'd have to go actually book the space in order to find that out. What is covered with the costs above, do you know? Especially: What else do we need to run the booth, and how much would that cost?

- Frank

[TonyLB]

Frank T:  You're basically talking about a deal that is almost money-free though, yes?  You put no money up front and take no percentage?  I mean, don't get me wrong, enthusiastic sales-people charging nothing is a good, good deal for me but ... I'd almost rather you were making some money off of the thing, y'know?  First, because it seems fair and responsible and second because it would give you an incentive to sell even when it's no longer fun, fun, fun.

[Brennan Taylor]

I will volunteer my services as the US shipping consolidator, if folks want. I have a lot of the games in question already thanks to IPR, and I ship packages several times a week already. We just need to establish two deadlines, one for slow surface shipping in June, and one for the more expensive last-minute air shipment close to the convention. I figure everyone involved can split the shipping bill.

[neph]

to sell even when it's no longer fun, fun, fun

The last times we managed to keep the fun-factor up. The PrO-team also works for free but we don't actually have so much to sell (because the bigger members have their own booth by now).

The prices are for a bare space with white plastic walls at the back. No carpet, no stand, no electricity. Usually we bought a very cheap carpet that is thrown away after the fair and brought a wooden stand for the booth.

[Frank T]

Tony: I can only speak for myself. I've got a decent income and selling ten more copies on Sunday for my share of another 10-20 bucks would be no incentive whatsoever to me. You can give it to me if it makes you feel better, but I honestly do not care about the money. I care about boasting on the Forge later how many copies we sold. I care about my own reputation in the German role-playing scene. I care about one day having an English version of Barbaren out and you guys selling it at GenCon with the same effort that I'll put up at Spiel. Just my two cents.

- Frank

[Eero Tuovinen]

What Frank said, word for word. Also, however, the other side of the coin: while I don't care for the money, per se, the social respect it signifies is nice. But I'm reluctant to start discussing percentages when that might endanger the project. Considering how little time there is to get it together, I prefer to give the investors everything we can at this point, to make it as easy as possible to sign in. Of course: if Tony feels that he needs to give us money to sign in, then we need a provision for that, too.

My suggestion: I recognize the validity of considering our part of this project a financially worthwhile service, but the logistical schedule doesn't allow us the luxury of taking our time in finding some agreeable percentages for everybody. Thus I suggest that we leave it up to each publisher/investor whether they want to kick back any percentage of their prospective earnings. Purely voluntary, just like our coming to the convention in the first place. Being voluntary, this can be dealt with during the summer, instead of right today. (My principle at the convention will be to sell everything equally regardless of whether there's percentages involved with the product, but I won't mind if somebody thinks differently, as long as it doesn't devolve into lack of respect for the product.)

So, Tony: I suggest that you think about (and discuss in a new thread?) an appropriate kind of deal and just promise us that. We're OK with nothing, but I'll take any money if nobody else will ;) My suggestion is 70/30 in your favor after covering your investment; that's around normal retail percentages for selling on provision (which this is, because you still own the product), and your investment risk is covered by taking care of the investment first. 50/50 is IMO also defensible if you consider our expenses for travel and accomodations, but that's also more mushy, as we have our own reasons for coming in the first place, have different expenses, yadda yadda.

And to make it clear: if any designers feels it necessary to arrange whatever deal for sharing potential profit, the money will be shared equally between the booth workers, whether Nexus or Forge in origin. This being the case, the chances are that we'll be talking about pretty small sums individually; probably are we'll just pool it and buy food and drinks, or something like that.

Anyway, the situation: by my calculation we still need some designers. The annoying part is that we'll most likely get more interested parties before the convention proper, but that's no help now, as we can't guarantee the participants that more paying parties are indeed coming.

Brennan: excellent! That's one hurdle less, as doing those big consolidations can be a bitch (he says from the other side of the ocean).

[Zoombot]

Heja alltogether,

I'm Stefan Unger, the one who will organize the booth for Projekt Odyssee this year - Sorry, that I'm writing so late but I had to chill a week after NordCon and its 5.000 to 7.000 visitors.

Last friday I wrote a mail to the orga of the game fair, if we can get two 5x2m boothes close together or if we have to book a 10x2m booth what would be more expensive, but because of the public holiday last thursday they had company holidays and so I'm still waiting for an answer. When I have that answer, I can tell you the exact price for the whole booth and the exact deadline to book.

Greets from the always rainy Hamburg

Stefan