I think this debate shows that the views on what is at stake here are varied. Let me just clarify a few things.
1. The law is judeged on a case by case basis. No case history exists in Germany, since WWII for obvious reasons, which means that today a judge could say "i agree your book is a historical product" and tomorrow another judge in a nother town says "i disagree". Every time somebody complains the case is heard and each time a new decision is made.
2. We spent over a year working with the legal IP specialist firm of Mueller, Fottner & Steinecke based in Munich to see if we could get a ruling to declare our books as "historical product" but were told the law only works as in point 1 so that unlike in the US or UK where we could get a senior legal officer to declare our products okay we just had to deal with each case as they arose. This is pretty much why it is rare to have complaints and most companies just deal with them as they arise.
3. The cost to research this problem and discover how to deal with this issue, which came about due to the first complaint lodged against one of our books in five years of selling, was that fighting to win on a case by case basis is unpredictable and when the fine is only 250 Euro's per complaint the business decision was not that complicated. Spend thousands of Euro's fighting each case as it arises, which when you win does not get reimbursed, spend thousands of dollars changing our products or pay a 250 Euro fine each time somebody complains. This is a cost and resource reality and unless compalints come in think and fast, and the last five years does not support this theory, what other choice would anybody else have made.
This is not us ignoring the issue in Germany at all but just us choosing our best strategy for our business based on what we can do today. I love the fact the community thinks we have grown to a size like GW that we can have dedicated language studio's. Maybe a few years down the road if the market grows enough we will have decidated versions of every book and when that day comes i will be the first person to say make our German version comply to avoid any issues but until that day comes our studio is working on the best product they can make based on the gloabl market we sell to. We dont glorify any units outside of thier combat prowess, which for our game is pretty much the point of doing a list about that unit, and we have absolutely no politcal view on any part of WWII at all. We are wargamers all and our pleasure with FOW is the act of painting, collecting and building tabletop forces to play against our firiends. This is why Pete and I are in business, nothing more sinister than that.
My reluctance to reply to the issue of pricing in Germnay was deliberate as nothing i can say will fix the global ecomony, the currency variations around the world or that fact that this year it has gone against the Euro and this time last year it was the US having the same issue. As a business we have chosen to set local currency r.r.p and live with the fluctuations of the market internally but give gamers in each country continiuty. A tank costs what it costs in each market and each shop and gamer knows what it is. Each country has varying taxes so no r.r.p is a clean comparison, Europes has taxes ranging from 16% to 25% off the retail, the US adds states tax when you buy it and depending on your state is can be from 0% to 10% and every global business has to choose how to handle this. Our choice was consitency and to cope with global changes at home rather than having local pricing changing every time the currency against the NZ$ moved, which given its link to the US$ would have meant that the last few years would have been much more profitable should we have done this and simply recalculated the price we sell our product for each month, like with petrol for example. We chose the other method ofnot passing on the changes to help keep markets stable so that your local LGS is still selling the same tank for the same price no matter what things are going on around th world. Some market somehwere iin the wrold s paying the most at any given time and it changes every week, reacting to this is just not something we every wanted to do for all concerned. The key is that your stores and your gaming friends all know your local price and as long as that stays constant the market will stay stable.
We try to run our business as best we can at any given time whilst focusing on being able to stay in business to keep doing what we enjoy and service our stores and our community in a way that feels right to us as both business men and gamers. Explaining every choice we make is a hard thing to do, something that at times i am always willing to try, and not something i would like our forums to get filled with as at the end of the day there will always be some of you who find any choice i make wrong or odd. I have been in the toy soldier industry my whole adult life, having joined GW straight out of university i am in my 17th year right now, and i surround myself with other managers who have similar time spent wokring in the industry. We know one thing for sure, today, next week, next month or next year we will still get some things wrong but as long as we get more things right that wrong we are still in business, learning and growing from our previous choices. FOW has evolved over the past five years as has our business and despite not being able to please everybody we are trying our best. I hope sharing our choices helps frame things for most of you and given we are a grown up community this is how i would like it to stay as long as everybody occasionaly reminds themselevs of what i have said, we try our best, we make mistakes, we move ahead and we want to be doing this more than anything else. Our passion is why we are here the same way your passion is whay you play FOW. Our shared passion is what binds us.
I am going to lock both these threads now to let everybody cool down and digest what has been said so please do not start a new one until next week as open debate is great but things have got very personal and letting this topic cool down for a while seems the best way to get back down to earth.
