No hard feelings...

[J6A]

Iys all relative. If each KSF sheet costs AP an extra $1.50, I'm sure they are still doing okay. I suspect the bigger issue is all of the preorders which aren't generating cash flow.

[larry marak]

Exactly, all the pre-orders have to be produced, and then new orders will be done at higher cost. Wote-reissued and Sword of David will be the first purely new money products of the company. There is still a long way to go.

[upintheattic]

I was pleasantly surprised to see Kursk produced with the laser-cut counters, mainly because I never thought that Mike would actually pay more to make his customers happy. Pennywise and pound foolish was the order of the day at AP HQ when I was an employee, but perhaps the appearance of the Kursk Klock on PG-HQ got the message through that any remaining customer goodwill was receiving the Last Rites. If so, good on y'all for making him see the light! I never could.

[J6A]

It may have also been that having 3K sheets produced was a bigger cash outlay than AP could afford now and at least getting some out the door for goodwill purposes was more important thannsaving a few hundred bucks and habing the game delayed another month. I'd love to see laser cut in everything going forward and that may be a pipe dream.
?
Hopefully this is the start of a better future for Avalanche including treating their designers and developers better

[Poor Yorek]

all of the preorders which aren't generating cash flow.

That's because they (preorders) have been generating cash flow for, oh, somewhere between 1-3 years. Don't expect me to weep over APL's cash flow when I've floated them a loan for 18+ months.

[larry marak]

We've all floated them loans of time or money or both. As Mike has said repeatedly, the sane thing to do would have been to declare bankruptcy long ago. Filling pre-orders reduces the net indebtedness of the company, and for those products which are now 2 or 3 boxed sets instead of 1 (Imperial Grenadier-2, PG Citadel-2, 1866-3) we are finally getting paid for our money with interest. I'm just glad Mike stuck it out.

Right now day to day operating funds are coming from new orders for new and already published product.

[Shad]

Given what has been brought to light in this thread, I'm not sure you can even objectively call AP a company. More like some sort of quasi charity, except a lot of the participants didn't realize they were "volunteering" their services...

Has anyone ever stopped to think about why AP should be struggling so mightily to right the ship? Is there something achievable in the future that makes all this pain worthwhile? I'm not so sure.

(edit - typo)

[upintheattic]

I was certainly volunteering my services much of the time, though I only found out about it after the fact. Toward the end I got tired of not getting paid, and I told him I'd be working for Paula until he paid me. That usually got me paid promptly. But at the very end I wasn't getting paid at all; I was just cashing checks from the stack he'd sent me to pay back loans I'd floated him. Working to produce revenue for him so that he'd have enough money to pay back loans made no sense; he owed me the money anyway, so why should I work for it? So I quit and kept cashing the loan checks.

As for why they should be struggling to right the ship, I didn't think they'd be able to and that's one of the reasons why I left. I'm amazed they've lasted this long, and I congratulate them on their new releases. But publishing hex-and-counter wargames as a fulltime job is not a winning proposition in this day and age. We wargamers are a small niche market and a rapidly aging one at that, and almost the entire industry has left us behind--even GMT is getting into producing computer games now. The world doesn't run on paper anymore and the future lies in the tablet or smartphone in the palm of one's hand, not on a game board. There will always be board wargamers, but enough of them to support a for-profit company with fulltime employees? I doubt it. Outfits like GMT and Victory Point Games are doing very well because they're hobby shops, not companies that have to pay salaries big enough to support people with families. They can pour all their revenues into producing new games because their people have day jobs, and that's why they work. AP should have gone down that road a long time ago, IMO.

[vince hughes]

Pennywise and pound foolish

Sage words indeed ......

BUT

How come I see that as no surprise on such a subject matter from an icon sporting the Scottish Lion (some things never change)

[vince hughes]

I was certainly volunteering my services much of the time, though I only found out about it after the fact. Toward the end I got tired of not getting paid,

I am amazed that Mike stuck at it and never threw in the towel. He could easily have done that. Working through it all in during those days of misery to get promised product out is certainly a 'tick' next to his name. Many would have run.

I think many of us are grateful to the products you and other 'volunteers' produced. In fact, it was those quality items and ideas of those unpaid contributors that kept people staying with the system(s) and probably gave hope to Mike that there was still some kind of market to tap.

In future, MB will have to have a planned vision for each product he sees fit to place on sale in that he will need to target market, glean numbers of individuals that will buy it or shops that will order it and somehow, based on previous sales, (NOT pre-orders), produce just the amount he needs to at the best price possible to him. That will be his way forward ................. using a focussed production plan.