Warning, the following episode contains adult language and screaming goats. Listener discretion is advised. Thanks again for the ongoing support as a Pinball Show Club member. Enjoy this exclusive TPS content and make sure to visit the Pinball Show Club Discord to chat about the bonus material. The tales of a pinball distributor, Dennis and listener. Oh no, we've done this before. We have. Well, kind of. You've shared little bits, like tits and bits and sometimes tit bits. I don't know what to do with my hands. See, this is where editing helps. I was trying to say, what's the thing? Tickle bitties is what I was trying to say, but I said that on the other. It is what it is. I slipped. I'm a boo. Tell us your woes, Zach. We want to feel your pain. The reason I wanted to do this is because I've been working a lot. And for those that know, I'm a pinball distributor, flipping out pinball company. And I really, really, really work hard. And I tried to like I want the most for pinball. And I'm not going to sit here and lie and say, oh, I do it because of my heart and the passion. Isn't that what a lot of these people say? I mean, I don't. It's not about the money. It's about the whatever it is. It is about passion because I'm passionate about this industry and this hobby. But it's about money, too. It is my career. I want to make money. But if I'm going to be in this industry, I want to make things easier on people. I want to make things better. If I contribute to something in the world, I want to be part of making something better, Dennis. See, that was a little flowery, wasn't it? I mean, I guess. Maybe more like just like a regular vine plant. an invasive Yeah, kudzu. Of the kudzu? The kudzu of pinball. Okay. But once you're entrenched, then you can never get rid of it. I was just, I really try to put in a lot. And I just, behind the scenes, You just got to give 110%. There's a lot of shit that I don't think dealers, I don't think people realize that dealers do. But as I'm running this company, A petty episode, this will be great. No, I'm just, No, actually, it's going to be like a rant. Here's what I've been doing over the last month. It takes all of my time. So what do you think the pinball distributor? You just buy shit, right? Well, you sell it. You got to ship them. I imagine dealing with shipping, yeah. But I imagine there's a lot of invoices, a lot of ins, a lot of outs. Yes, a lot of tids, a lot of bits. Yeah. But I've heard before, like, it's not hard being a pinball dealer. Do you just drop ship stuff? You don't even have to hold inventory. So there's a lot that goes into it. Lately, we've been doing a lot of trade-in stuff, a lot of shipping stuff. Yeah, but you choose to do the trade-ins. Absolutely. Remember, I want to make things better for people. Yeah. I want more opportunity, more used games, more machines moving around for collectors. So, yes, we do trade-ins. And there's a lot of problems with doing trade-ins, a lot of problems. and I don't want to be bitchy this episode, but I'll rant and stuff so that you can see what it's like on my side. But anytime you're trading in an old game, Dennis, old games are not fun. I almost, when people ask for evaluations, what if I trade you in this hot hand for a, oh my God. As soon as I hear old game, my evaluation, I'm always evaluating, like seeing what the price is on something in a trade evaluation. Like how much is shipping going to cost? What's the condition of that game? How easy is that game to sell? What are they trading it in for? That kind of stuff. So the older the game, my head's already thinking there are going to be more issues I have to deal with. And if there are more issues I have to deal with between when I get that game to when I sell that game, that is time. And we always equate time to money. so lately I've been finding that I'm giving worse evaluations on older games than I am compared to what the norm in pricing is on newer games because chances are I don't have to mess with the newer game as much, they're not as dirty, they're working I had a Star Trek Next Generation for those of you who know Star Trek Next Generation Steve Ritchie can't even believe they work they just so So they may work when it's at our place, but then when we ship it off and it bounces around across the country, those cannons ain't going to work. It's just not going to work. It's like shipping to Theater of Magic. We just shipped to Theater of Magic, and I can almost put money on the fact viewer that when the customer gets it, he's going to be like, wait. I thought in the drains they were supposed to – like the magnet was supposed to throw the ball out. And I'm going to say they are, and they do. They're called eddy boards, and they're so inconsistent, and they never work because they get out of alignment. So you're going to have to lift up the play from them, walk them through how an eddy board sensitivity thing works, so you've got to tweak it until you can get the ball on the other side and then boom. Needless to say, they take more time. Wizard of Oz, I'm throwing that into a garbage pile. I don't want to trade any more in. They sell so well, so easy. But as a dealer, they're nightmares, Dennis. Nightmares, I tell you. Especially the earlier ones. Oh, Jack didn't know what he was doing yet. From an engineering standpoint, damn, they are rough, dude. I had one that we got traded in. And it's always traded in. Like the guy said, and he was up front. He said, it doesn't boot. I thought, okay, I've heard that before you jump it. Why do you have to jump Jersey Jack games with a paperclip? It's fucking weird, but okay, I'll deal with it. so I gave him a pretty good evaluation so I was like it's probably just a jump issue I get the game it's not a jump issue nope nope it's not a jump issue so you gotta figure that out it's like a computer if it's a stern I can figure it out it's node boards I can figure that out even like Bally Williams stuff pretty much figure it out pretty quick but computer based stuff like BIOS shit booting American Pinball same way you get into that. So this was, wouldn't, I couldn't get anything. So then at that point you start swapping boards. I started swapping every book. So I had another wizard of Oz. So I was like, I'll just swap a damn board until I figured out. I figured out it was the motherboard. Boom. Okay. So I'll order a motherboard or the new motherboard. George Jackson's made a new motherboard. It's a different motherboard than the original. So it has different plugins and shit. That's when you wipe your hands and say, I'll take a loss. Get it the fuck out of here. So a lot of trade in stuff, a lot of games coming in, not as described. Yeah, it's home use only. Are there any dings on the cabinet? Well, different people have different definitions. You have to be very clear. I try to be very clear. I ask now, are there any dings on the cabinet? Because nothing, viewer, this is a tip for you, nothing will lower the price of a game and the value of it quicker than any dings to a cabinet. You can almost say to yourself, if you're looking at comparables online, how much is my game worth? if you have a single ding on a cabinet, your game is now worth 500 less. But wait a minute, Zach, that decal only costs like 25 to 50 bucks. Doesn't matter. $500 at least, depending on how bad it is. If it's on multiple decals, it's a good rule of thumb to use if you have any decal dings. Most people don't care. They're like, well, whatever. Especially if you have another decal that comes with it, a replacement, just for if you pass it along, you want that security. But, yeah, a lot of people say it's perfect, and then you get it, and there's decal things. Or shippers. Shippers are horrible. Our rate of shipping, like, a game from a customer to us via STI, a lot of people are familiar with STI. They're the ones that will go into a home with it on legs. They'll take it off legs. You don't have to pallet it. You don't have to pallet. So that's what a lot of people use. more expensive than most every other freight company because they're going into the home and that. But their, per our experience, their rate of tearing up a game is substantially higher. We're like 70%. 70% of the games that come from a customer via STI will have decals all scratched to hell, backs of cabs all scratched to hell, bent games. They're horrible. So So I have to adjust that in mind whenever I'm evaluating trading games and trying to then, so what am I trying to do to help the industry? I'm trying to create a different method to not use STI, a different method to assure simplicity for you trading in a game and for me to get a game quickly. Instead of STI, I've got over five games that are in limbo somewhere for over a month now. It's take forever to get the games. So who knows what the hell's happening to them. So we're working on, so that's another job of mine, try to work on a better system. Let's see, finding ways to minimize loss while increasing efficiency and speed. Shipping management is a big part of my job, and a lot of people don't realize it. Dealer, it's a lot of shipping. I spend a lot of time a day setting up shipping, honestly, a lot of my time in the day. So a lot of people think every game gets drop shipped. Here's something, and I'll rant. This is just going to be a big informational thing. Not every manufacturer allows dropshifts. Most of them do, but they all are done differently. So what we're talking about for those that are not accustomed. What about a new game like Harry Potter? Whenever J.J.P. says, hey, Zach, you've got 45 Harry Potters. I'd love to hear that. You've got 45 Harry Potters ready to ship. You've got three or four, and I'm like, and we'll explain why later. But, yeah, if you're a Harry Potter, does that go direct to the customer? Or does it come to me first, and then I ship it to the customer? It all depends. A lot of these manufacturers will charge you a fee for drop shipping. So Jersey Jack used to be $50. So if I wanted to send a machine from Jersey Jack direct to a customer, I could, but it was going to cost me $50 more. They've recently bumped that up to $100. Damn it. That is not good for my pocketbook. We do not pass that to the customer. Some dealers may. We don't. So we just take it out of a profit. But the benefit would be it's going to be cheaper to ship from the manufacturer to them with that $100 added fee than it would be to ship to me and then me to ship to them. Also quicker and theoretically shouldn't tear up the machine as easy. But our job as a dealer is to inventory games. so that's why whenever a game comes out we have more in order than we have customers wanting them because it's our job to inventory a game give them a reason not to if the dealer is not inventorying games my argument to manufacturers always is multiple times a year why the fuck are they your dealer what are they doing for you get rid of them we don't need them because what is the benefit alright so shipping is a lot of stuff it depends on what shipper you use Different carriers have different limitations and benefits Some are like FedEx They have the least amount of damage They all suck They have the least amount of damage, but they're the most expensive. They're the quickest. So there's differences in price, speed, quality, et cetera. A lot of my job is growing a business. Manufacturer communication, we were talking about it in the main episode, trying to aid in the evolution of the pinball distribution model. I feel like that's like one of my goals for whatever reason, Dennis. Why would that be? I have no clue why that's my goal. Why do I want to make that better? Well, but do you even think that I understand why you would want to make it better? But like, do you do you think manufacturers are going to listen to like, do they care what you think on this? I think initially they probably don't because just. It's not a I don't think most people want to change if they don't think. Right, and that's what my thought would be is you want to evolve the distribution model, and their perspective is probably why is distribution models meeting our needs? It's meeting needs, but if it could benefit every party involved, why not evolve and make things better? Why not make things more fair, logic-based, data-based? So for whatever reason, and maybe I don't think most dealers do this, but I always feel like it's part of my job to help evolve that distribution model because it is sloppy at times. It's downright just shitty, horrible business at times. That's like a really big spot in this industry that I've found since working in it. It's pretty pathetic in some parts of it. The battle continues to be, for us, communication around allocation misalignment and the associated models and systems within that. And what I mean being whenever a game comes out, product, we'll call it product, whenever a product comes out from a distribution model, my job is to sell that product. But I have competitors. Anybody else selling the same product as me is considered a competitor. Not that I want bad things upon them, but it's my job, because if I think I'm doing a better job than anybody else, it's my job to secure a sale from a customer over that person or else my kids don't eat. So when it comes to, like, if I buy 50 of a product, it's important to me to know how much each of those products cost, when I'm going to get those products, so that I can communicate with the customer when they're going to get a product. Because this isn't – pinball is weird in that when we talk to finance people, our even like our attorney our accountant and stuff they have to learn a different way of business with us because it's it's such a weird industry where you're selling a product you don't have and it's delayed so far they're like we work with businesses like if a hot product comes out that's fine supply chain you know but never six months a year like our accounting people are like they're running into like well if you're billing a pre-order in 2024 but then they don't get the game until 2025 it has to be a separate order because you're closing out 2024 like it's just it's very weird for them it sounds like they need to move you to accrual accounting well yeah they they tell us all kind of like and you know it just can't be done by one person this is a messy messy model because it's very if you're if they're doing your books on cash-based accounting, which I'm assuming they are, it is very confusing with the multi-year stuff like that. And it can be messy. But like this whole pre-order thing that this industry relies upon. But it's important if I'm getting 50 of something and my competitors are ordering 100 or they're ordering 10, at what rate are they getting theirs compared to me getting mine? And in my opinion, in my business practice belief, is that there should be a system that should be shared that everybody understands how that is being managed. It's also my belief and what I'm trying to get all manufacturers to do, to have a transparent system that makes sense, that is fair. In other words, if company A, manufacturer, I'm telling the manufacturer this, if company A is making you this much money way up here and company B is making you this much money here, you need to create a system that makes sure that A is taking care of more than B. To me, that's common practice in business. That is common sense. the person who does the most for you and your company should get at least as much as the same terms as the really the person who's not generating as much revenue for you. This is common sense. Who here watching or listening is going to argue that? Here's the issue. It's not being done. The systems in place are not transparent. I don't have one system that I know of throughout Jersey Jack, Stern, Spooky, Barrels of Fun, Pedretti, Pinball Brothers, and others. There's not one transparent system that tells me, that gives me any type of expectation to know of the potentially millions of dollars that I am providing and consumers are providing through us. We have no known system of expectations. To me, that's a problem. Just that is a business problem. Uh, but then once data does come out, that shows that somebody doing not as well, it's a sales, like sales and distribution is in this manufacturing. You reward the basic psychology, reward the person that's doing the best so that they continue doing the best. You don't reward the lowest. So, and every one of these people are different. Jersey Jack pinballs. They do it differently than Stern does it differently than spooky doesn't differently. And that is tiring, and it is very inefficient whenever we can't tell consumers any expectations. But we talked about the Jersey Jack one in the main episode, Dennis, where I have no clue. No clue. And I said, I'll take you to Patreon. One of the frustrating things the last couple weeks was we've sold a lot of Harry Potters. We've done very well with our business partners at Jersey Jack Pinball. so much so that we feel like that we're able to support their product in a way that helps their company. Some argue that, oh, the manufacturer is the ones with all of the leverage and everything like that. We've been able to sell enough product for some of these companies that we feel like we truly are an asset to what they're selling. a couple weeks ago they had a new dealer that was advertising that they had like four perry potters coming in the next month so that that gets gets one of the that gets me fired up a bit because as a new dealer i know that they're not pushing a lot of products and when I say I'm assuming that between us I know that they're not. So why is a system created that does communicate zero to me selling a shitload of product but has a new low-generating, revenue-generating partner of theirs having product in stock? That makes me look bad. It makes my brand look bad. And it makes me look like I don't know what I'm doing because I'm telling all of my customers who have been paid up in their pre-orders for months now that we have no clue when they're going to get their game but if they go to this very new dealer they can they can get one within the month here to me it's a broken system and uh it it compromises the integrity of all your business partners within your distribution network and it's whether or not you know a certain company would believe that and just trying to find a better way of doing it but you can imagine if you were how frustrating that would be to deal with that every single day and then your customers who you're trying to protect are like, Zach, I don't understand why you wouldn't know that. That's bullshit. This dealer told that guy that he can, I can't run that through, you know, whether they're telling the truth or not. That's frustrating. The Stern pinball does it very well. They still don't have a transparent system though. Whenever a lot of people are like, oh, you get so many LEs based on, a lot of people inaccurately think that you have to sell this many pro and premiums in order to get this many LEs. It's like that loosely. So the way it is, it's not, again, nothing is supported by any type of equation, system, data, or anything like that. It's more feely. And until they show me an algorithm or an equation I can use that backs this up, then it's more feely to me qualitatively. So I know that if I sell more products within the last year that my allocations of LEs will go up. That's the general measurement. If my sales of products in general go down, I can anticipate I won't get as many LEs to sell. It's a good system. It would make more sense if we knew what thresholds these things were. But nonetheless, it is a good system. but when a new game comes out i don't know how many le's i'm going to get until they tell me that that's tough that's tough to know when i first started this and i would like to think i helped push this when i first started when products would come out viewer we didn't know how many le's we were going to get we would just hope like hell we didn't oversell the problem was they told me looking back, they told me that it was never really an issue of how many LEs a dealer was going to get because they would never oversell their allocation. But I kind of messed that system up because our consumer base is you hobbyists, you people that care enough to watch a Patreon episode about pinball. So you guys are the hungriest and the quickest to respond because you have your finger to the pulse of the community. So when something new comes out, I don't have the brick and mortar that people have. I have a brick and mortar, but it's not a large metropolitan area. I sell a hobby. So they're quick, on the spot with wanting to order something. So I kind of changed that system in that I didn't want to oversell what my LE allocation was. So now they tell us beforehand now so that we can prepare. That makes sense. That's good evolution. Spooky Pinball, they've evolved of how they do it they do more of a they'll give us an allocation they used to give us an allocation after our launch and i pushed and pushed until they changed that because i need to know what i have to sell so they've changed that we get it before they do a really good job of within the first couple of weeks you know what numbers you have now again the frustration comes in dennis where i will say i order 50 of something right i order 50 of something they give me 50 different numbers but how do they determine what 50 I get That not a transparent system I don know They give me the numbers and I have to just think that they use some type of adequate system to do so Barrels of Fun, they do it pretty good, but they're newer, so it makes more sense the way they do it now. The first with Labyrinth, it was weird. It was like whoever ordered first gets in queue first, and then they realized, oh, crap. That's really tough to do in the future because if Zach orders quick and he orders a lot, then we have to fulfill all of his before we go to the next one, and people are going to get pissed. So then dealers were fighting with nudging to see who can get first in line, and then they were trying to order before the order back, so that's a mess. So they've got that handled now. What has helped is working within a team now. I've got Greg and Ken that we have meetings every week, them helping conceptualize new ways of growing a company. That's helped a lot. Because sometimes, I mean, oftentimes, most times, if you had an idea, it may make sense to you until you present it and brainstorm with other people. And they're like, oh, no, that's a bad idea. Do this instead. Customer communication. That's a lot of my time as a dealer spent on timelines on games, trying to figure out when people's games are going to come. I spend, in my opinion, an inordinate amount of time answering people on when their games are going to come. Sometimes I don't know. It's okay if I know and I can let them know. So right now we're averaging probably about 10 to 15, 10 or 15 requests a day for Harry Potter alone. Any more information about when my... And if you don't message people, they can get mad too because they think it is your job and arguably so it's my job, even if I don't have any information, to message everybody with an order and say, hey, I just want to let you know I don't have any more information, but I am updating you, so give me a cookie for that. I don't do the best job at that because it's an efficiency list on what I need to get done. There's only so many hours a day. But, yeah, so I'm answering. But it's not quick. It's not like I have memorized where all those people are at. So if they tell me, here's how it works. Again, transparency, this may be interesting, this may not be. but when somebody messages me or texts me and they say, hey, where am I at on Harry Potter? First, I figure out who in the hell the person is. They have a phone number there. So then I have to go to my system. I have to enter in their phone number to see if it will associate with the name. Then once I find that name, then I have to go into my system where I have the orders and to see where they fell on that list. Then I have to count how many they are. And then let's say they're number 17. Then I have to think to myself, all right, 17, I don't have any schedule of knowing what 17 means. I might get 17 next week. I might get two next week and not another one. So I don't know. But based on the past cadence, let's say it's four a month, so four, eight, 16, 17, so three months. And then I've got to type them back and tell them that. So a lot of people think, well, it's quick. It's not. It's not quick. It takes a lot of time. And usually when a person asks that and you respond and tell them, it's going to come with another question of, okay, well, and then it's another question of something that you're. So it's just a lot of customer communication is probably half of my job. A lot of it's shipping. A lot of it's customer communication. And the other time is spent trying to make more efficient use. Interested lists, this is a blessing and a curse. I was the dealer who kind of made this popular, the whole interested list. Before, dealers would, I guess, all just kind of agreed, hey, we're just taking orders whenever. but now there's interested lists. So if people want to go on an interested list, you've got to open up your system. Again, you've got to figure out who they are. Hey, I'd like to be on the Goonies interest list. I'll put you down. Phone number. Got to find out who this is. All right, got to find out. So you've got to do that. The other issue with the interested list, one of my pet peeves, again, you guys got to keep doing it because I don't. It's part of my job. It's just transparency-wise. It's a pet peeve of mine. When somebody messages me and says, hey, am I on your Goonies list? I'm like, guys, I've already taken your name. Do me the solid of even at least knowing if you're on the list or not. Like, damn, now you've got to take the war just to see if you've been put on the list and you only remember if you've been put on. So that does take some time. Trading processes, Greg is quickly finding out because he's assisting me with evaluations on trades that maybe 15% of our job is just crunching numbers for trade scenarios. It's kind of killing us right now, to be honest. It's taking too much time because people are realizing that they can get free evaluations from us on what their game's worth. Oh, yeah, like an estimate, yeah. Or because they're wanting to trade it or they're wanting to sell it on Pennside. but if they run it by our, they're like, well, what would you give me? And we try to be specific with it because, and this may not be a good system, but it's a system we're using right now. If you want to trade into me a theater of magic, Dennis, I can't just, I could give you a number, but it's going to be such a conservative number because it's basing it on a number of scenarios. So I'll give you the most conservative measure, but you're not going to like that number because there's other numbers that look way better depending on what you're wanting to trade it in on. So if you're wanting to trade it in on a game that I really kind of need to get rid of, your valuation at Theater of Magic is going to be better than if you're trading on something that I only have one left of and I really don't want to cut any deals on it. Hmm. Right? Okay. So you're not actually doing a fixed value for the trade inherently? I could, but we are not going to get as many trade-ins because they're going to have the most concern. We're going to have the built-in, the most conservative number on that. And from a sales perspective, it's not the best way to present if you want to increase sales. Right. Okay. Now it makes sense. Well, I guess. But it makes it more worth it. Well, you know, if you were buying used games, then I guess, because, again, this is something that I see with the used watch market. They'll do a, hey, you want to get rid of a whatever, and be like, all right. You want us to buy it? There's not a lot of – when I've done trades and stuff, they said, look, what you're hawking is not worth very much. There's a limited demand on Grand Seiko right now. We have a whole bunch of them. If you want us to buy it, we'll pay you $2,000. If you want to trade it, it's $2,500 worth of trade. Yep. So but then I could, in theory, pick whatever product I want and just, you know, I'll take twenty five hundred off the top as a trade. But if I want to sell, I always get less so that we could we could even do that. And we do that to an extent right now. But even within that trade thing, they're conservatively giving you twenty five hundred and we can do that. But using that analogy, I would say that I want to capitalize because if some people are wanting to trade in that game, depending on what they're wanting to trade it for, I could give them $3,000 for that. And $3,000 sounds better than $2,500 flat rate. Right. I guess I was surprised that you're going to the level of basing it off of what they want to trade because ultimately I assumed that you're – well, it's always going to be more conservative than if they sold it themselves, even if they trade it versus selling it to you. because obviously when you involve a professional entity that has to do work to then resell it, there are steps. Again, in the watch world, there's very few places that will take a watch that's worth to an in-sell under $1,000. It's not worth the time to photograph it. It's not worth the time to pay the shipping. It's not worth the time to inspect and service it. They're just like, just sell it on eBay. There is no trade value. It's too low quality of an item. but uh not man maybe some of them do but just like it's never seemed like i would have thought all right they want to trade me a whirlwind and whirlwind's a four thousand dollar game if i sell it trade wise i don't want to give more than twenty five hundred dollars on a whirlwind because i want to make over a thousand dollars on the whirlwind sort of you know so i need a marcher but not not going well they wanted john wick so it's 2700 if it's john wick but they want harry potter it's 2200 i don't know again i was i just thought it was interesting that you actually factor in the game they want into the equation we're trying yeah we're trying to create a system that maximizes sales so creating very specific scenarios will get will yield you probably them saying yes more than uh more than any other thing as well as like shipping so me and greg go back and forth on this. Again, for those not interested, I'm so sorry, but this is very in the weeds. But Greg and I go back and forth on, do we present shipping at all built into the scenarios? I always, and I've trained him to do so, but it's substantially more work to do so. So our scenarios will look something like this. Hey, I want to trade in a John Wick premium. What's the value? We can crunch some numbers, give us specifics as to the condition of your John Wick, the total place, and what you'd like to trade for as well as your location whether or not you'd like shipping set up. Because I've found that if you present this whole scenario, and then they're like, okay, I like that. I can throw in $2,000 if I'm getting this game. What's shipping like? And then you hit them with how much shipping really is. That deal is debt because most people do not realize how expensive shipping is. But if you lump it into the equation and the presentation, they're more likely to take that offer because it's quick, it's easy, it's right there. So I built it in. So the scenarios would be they're like, I'm interested in a Jurassic Park and a Toy Story. Okay. So I give them the scenario. Here's what it would look like. Toy Story shipped to your door for the John Wick, picked up and shipped, plus whatever it would be price-wise. And then here's a scenario for Jurassic Park. So they just have one thing. Some people get frustrated, but they're like, well, yeah, but I just want to know how much my game's worth. And I'm like, it all varies. I can tell you that, but the numbers aren't going to add up. Because if you need it shipped, then I'm using, am I using STI? Am I using FedEx? Can you pallet it? Can you not pallet it? Is it coming from a dock? Is it coming from residence? Did you know, viewer, that when I'm setting up shipping, it's for FedEx anyway. I'm setting up a game coming into your house. If I want them to contact you just to call you to set up an appointment rather than just showing up, that's a $100 to $150 fee just in and of itself, $100 just for them to set up an appointment. If it is going to a residence and not a business, even if it still needs a lift gate, lift gate is like $100, $150 if they need to have a lift gate on the back of the truck and not a dock. Most people need lift gate. But let's say you're going to a business that needs a lift gate versus a residence that needs a lift gate. That residence is still like a $50 to $75 fee because they have to go through, traverse through maybe a suburb or something. There's not enough parking. They factor all of that in. So all of these things get factored into our evaluations as well. But so you can see how that would take up compromise a lot of time. But and so we got to find a fix to that because it is it is taking a lot of time, especially when somebody is like, I've got these three games I'm considering selling and these four games I'm interested in. So now you got like 12 different scenarios that you have to calculate It a fucking nightmare That trading process But we trying to create something I let the Patreon people know Some people have we prototyping it right now so some people have experienced it We're developing, we've got like a crate system that we send the crate with their game in it, and they open it up with latches, no tools needed, just unlatch it, open it all up, put their used game in it, latch it back up, next day it gets picked up and taken away. So we're working on that, and it's been going very well. So we're going to continue doing that. Tech repair and warranty, that's a lot of work, so much so that we have a dedicated person, Greg Bone, does our tech repair and warranty. So any time that you as a buyer of Flip N Out Pinball have an issue with your game, whether it was used or new, you contact Greg at Greg at FlippinOutPinball.com, and he submits a warranty to Stern or whoever it is to get the parts you need or to troubleshoot initially on what all you need. If you want to save any of your dealer's time on needing a warranty part, present what is going on, pictures, because Stern's going to want that, and they want the serial number of the game. You can save a couple of emails that way. Non-customer questions. Believe it or not, Dennis, we are in there with a lot of non-customer questions. These are questions that come in every day of people, and bless them, They're not ill-willed, but they're not putting themselves in our shoes. So when they'll message and say, hey, my dealer's got this game priced at this, but I know that you feel strongly about a premium. Tell me, why would you go pro over premium? I mean, so the hobbyist in me is like, hell, yeah, you definitely want to go premium over pro, But I can't take my time too much of the day to neglect my business when I'm trying to explain to them one model over the other so that another dealer can make that sale. It just doesn't make sense for me to do that. I would love to discuss that if I'm earning your business, but if you're going to somebody else, I'm not trying to be rude, but you probably need to ask them. Ask them what they're – the pros and cons over one or the other. That's the benefit of them being. That's the side effect of your content creation. That's not driven by you being a dealer. Yep. And we, we acknowledge, we accept that and we help as much as we can, but there are some limits to what we can do with that respect. It just are. So we have an, a lot of non-customer questions adding to the product line. We're believe it or not. If I want to sell dartboards, I fucking damn near have to beg companies to allow me to sell their products. This is one of the things that's most frustrating as a dealer. Like we're trying to expand our product line, and if I want to sell different arcades or different forms of entertainment stuff, maybe I want to sell like grills or golf simulators. I can have this portfolio that showcases that I'm one of the fucking best at selling luxury products or gaming products, and I can prove it to somebody. but people just don't care they don't they just don't want to add dealers for whatever reason it's boggling to me and i'm sure there's some really smart reason and that they do this but they limit their distribution network even if i can see if it's just some schmohawk coming off the street wanting to get cheap games for themselves but if you're pretty established and you have proof of it, why do I have to be given an interview? I feel like I'm applying to different colleges and a lot of them just won't get back. They're like, no, we don't want you to sell our product. I just don't understand it. That's maybe just a tangent, but that's so frustrating to me lately. It's like, yeah, we'd like to buy and spend a shitload of money on your product and we'd like to represent it better than all your other dealers are doing currently with the use of whatever. and just fill out this, and then we'll evaluate whether or not we're willing to let you sell. For what reason? Why? Do you want to sell more product? Yeah. Okay, explain to me why I have to beg you to sell product. Any thoughts there? Am I doing it wrong, Dennis? I don't know enough about what they might be factoring in. Some of it may be a concern I've heard about with Stern distributors, like that there may be pressure from their existing distributor network to quit broadening the pie. Absolutely. Yep, I've heard that. What I always tell manufacturers in meetings when I'm pitching why we should be a dealer, I always tell them at the end of the day, you've got to sell the product. If you guys are content with where your numbers are at product-wise and selling as much as you can make, then without a doubt I wouldn't want to piss off the people selling my product either. But if you do have a dealer network that's not selling as much as you would like or not supporting your products as much as you would like or exposing those products through advertising then you may need to question taking a flyer on somebody that wants to sell your products. Preparing an organization. Hiring. You know all about that, Dennis. Hiring in a business. That's always fun. Studying inventory trends and anticipating fluctuations of product inventory. I've got to do that a lot. That is a guessing game that I've become pretty proficient at. I'm pretty good at that. For example, Jaws 50th. Felt like it was coming. So I had to make some really important decisions on Jaws premiums. How many I wanted to purchase. because I knew that once Jaws 50th comes out, the sales of a Jaws premium, they're going to drop significantly. How long can I manage having inventory of that product while these Jaws 50ths are being made? How popular is the product going to be? We have to factor in things like, okay, it's an Elwin game. Okay, it's this IP. And we've got to factor it in fairly quickly too because these companies in pinball are very hush-hush. Arcade world, they know shit coming out in six months and they don't even care because they're not in that collector community of leaking stuff. So we have to make really quick decisions. But some of them I just have to like, hey, we're going to be running X-Men next month, and we're not going to run it until next year. I have to guess how many we're going to need because if you run out, then any time you're out of inventory on something, you're losing sales in my mind. You need to always have inventory of something or you're losing sales. But you don't want to overorder either. Ask me about my confidence of uncanny X-Men premiums. I bought a lot of those. But over time, everything does so. Ordering ahead of time, we talked about that. Media marketing, advertising, something I do a lot of dealers don't do, but you've got to be quick for advertisement. Creational product launches. We're going to have this cornerstone come out from Stern. It's going to come out probably on a what? What do they come out on? Tuesdays, don't they? Yeah. they're going to tell us an hour before time what the game is what it looks like all the attributes of it and within that hour no actually they stop talking sometimes they'll it'd be like a half an hour between product launch and you capitalize on the numbers of sales you get based on how you hit the market uh fast whether it's the algorithms on google seos there's a lot that goes into it that some of it's like trade secret kind of stuff i don't want to get but But within a half an hour, we have to create advertisements, educate ourselves on the product. We have to find ways to reach out to customer base, communicate with customers. At that point, they're already interested in the product, so they're contacting you. And if you don't respond quickly, those go to the next person. So you have to answer questions. You have to answer questions when you don't even know the answer to some of them. When are they streaming the game? When can I see the game play? How many are they making? I don't know. So that's hell. It's the best hell to be in, but that's a mess. But, again, until we evolve that system, that's sloppy. Managing an e-commerce website is a full-time job, and then we'll be done, guys. But I found that it's almost a full-time job just for somebody to keep up on the inventory of stuff you've got on your website, updating product information on there, how each item is worded, what it's categorized at, sales coming in, invoices, all that goes to accounts receivable and sales and accounting and everything. But a small business like a dealer, for most of the dealers out there, the pinball machines, most of the hobbyist dealers, it's like a one-to-five-person job. A lot of people are doing a lot all at any given time. Producing content, creating general content creation. That takes a lot of time as well to do it right. Sponsoring tournaments, events, other media channels for others to call them shills. Those poor guys out there. So there's a lot to that. So this is crazy, and I don't want this to get me in trouble, but when we sponsor tournaments or events or stuff like that, Dennis, it's not that it's a lot of money, but it's a significant amount of money that you're giving. But as a business owner, I've got to figure out I'm wanting to sponsor things and support the community, but it's still a business, so what am I getting in return? We're sponsoring the Northwest Pinball Championship coming up. The return on that is really good because the rates are very good for sponsorship. Something like Papa, we're one of the main three supporters or sponsors of of um pinberg of the whole pinberg this last couple years here it's pretty pricey it's pretty pricey uh and it should be because it's a huge event and a lot of exposure but then you get into your own head of like what am i getting for that dollar i have to break down that dollar to see what i'm getting and then like how are they presenting this well they're presenting on stream all right well then you watch the stream you're like all There's my logo there. Okay, it's alternating with other logos. Okay, other people's logos are up there. Well, that wasn't in discussion. How does that work? How often is that other logo with competitors not supposed to be there be with my logo? It seems petty, but it is all part of the bigger picture of crunching your dollar and your efficiency and your time and stuff like that. So, yeah, I'm crazy for doing this. maybe I care too much maybe I don't know maybe I should just be a psychologist again it's so much easier sorry I don't know if that was boring or interesting they can comment and tell us I guess on the Patreon feed I've probably given too much information honestly on some of the ins and outs of distribution or pinball retail but if you do have questions or if you'd like to hear more specifics about any of this stuff Maybe we can make that into another Episode as a follow up If they're like hey wait You talked about this but you didn't say this Or how does this work And I'll be happy if I can talk about it Then I'll be happy to talk about it Oh Is that it for him? Yep okay I guess I can push stop Okay