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One thing I loved about Games Workshop when I played Warhammer 40K was how easy it was to find a local supplier. Their magazines and website had a regularly updated list of their GW Stores and independent hobby stores that carried their product. It was categorized into stores that just carry models, models and paint, models, paint, and supplies, etc. When I was visiting New York, I knew the exact locations of stores I could visit to get their stuff.
Is it feasible to get a similar directory of hobby stores that carry Pathfinder supplies?
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Given how good the sales are at my FLGS I'd doubt there are many game stores not carrying Pathfinder products that carry other RPGs.
Still, a store finder might not be a terrible idea if it's not too much work. Suppose it'd come into effect whose registered and who buys from a distributor and all that jazz.
Does Paizo even know every store that's carrying their product I suppose?
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Given how good the sales are at my FLGS I'd doubt there are many game stores not carrying Pathfinder products that carry other RPGs.
True, most stores probably carrying a copy or two of the Core Rulebook, but how convenient would it be to know at a glance if a store carries the Chronicles line, Game Mastery products, and Pathfinder fiction?
Adding a retail locator to the website is on Ross's list of things to do this year. Exactly at what point in the year that gets done is still up in the air. But it is in the plans!
-Lisa
Excellent.
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Just a thought but if the community wanted to I could add a spreadsheet onto d20pfsrd.com which allows open access and editing. Anyone who wants to can add in the retail information. I'd just need to layout what fields we'd want and then add it to a page as well as open edit access to all. If I see a lot of spam or garbage appear in it I'll have to lock it down though.
Chief Technical Officer
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Does Paizo even know every store that's carrying their product I suppose?
We don't. We sell to distributors, and distributor sell to retailers, so we're sadly isolated from retailers. That's part of what makes a retailer locator tricky—we'll have to set up a place where retailers can come identify themselves, and then we'll have to verify that they are in fact a retailer. So even once we have the tools up, it'll take a while to populate—but we have some ideas about perks we can offer to retailers to encourage them to list themselves.
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Chief Technical Officer
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I've got a question, and I hope it's not perceived as a threadjack, because it does relate. My FLGS carries a good stock of all things Paizo generally, but I did run into a problem and I'm not really sure how this works. I was trying to get ahold of two of the basic flipmats for some time, and the owner of the store kept telling me that people were asking for them consistently, but that his distributor didn't have them. He said that if they came in he'd grab two for me and hold them, and that I don't doubt as they've held things before and I've bought quite a lot of stuff there. My confusion is the process itself. My only previous retail experience that relates at all was in standard bookstores, where we would place a specific order for any item we didn't have in stock but that a customer wanted. Does this sound like just some quirk of my FLGS, or the distributor he uses, or what? Have I just become spoiled by the 'would you like us to order that for you' world of books I'm used to?
As I mentioned above, retailers order from distributors, not from us... Our better distributors have stock of pretty much everything that's in print, so asking a retailer to place a special order for an in-print item *should* work pretty quickly in most cases.
Flip-Mat: Basic *was* out of print for a little while, so that may have been the issue for you. It's back in stock now, though.
(Another thing that can cause delays is that most distributors offer free shipping with orders over a certain dollar amount, so smaller retailers may only place orders every couple of weeks to ensure that they have enough stuff to beat the minimums. So if you try to place a special order right after they've made their last order, you may have to wait a bit.)
It's easy for GW to list stores because they own those stores. And the independent hobby stores that are listed (if they are still listed) that carry their stuff have to go through a good bit of bureaucratic rigamarole to be able to get listed.
I have seen places offer a service where the Retail Store themselves can simply ask to be listed in a directory of retailers. This does take some maintenance, and you don't always get a 100% accurate list (for example, I know Reaper Miniature's store locator lists a store in my area that closed a little while ago). But hopefully it would be helpful.