Quoted from dgarrett:I read all Trekkies stuff in this thread, which hijacked it btw . Erroneous Posts & HAD to respond. Not trolling or a flame post - but errors can't be left unanswered...so I wanted to squash that rabbit trail and get back to the Jjp cool open house comments and pics
Trekkie said "Profitability is the biggest driving force in business.
Remember, he has an investor now who may force them to change their design to increase profits.
Once the business grows, the direct sales to customers will be dropped and they will be dealing exclusively with selling them at wholesale prices.
I can't imagine cost effective -in their machines several years from now.
They need $5,000 machines. collector only won't be able to cut it from a sales standpoint.
Don't forget, Stern was on the verge on bankruptcy several years ago. Their infrastructure has been intact for years,
Trekkie, you must be new to the pinball scene, Jjp strategy, and Gary sterns strategy. Jack is a business guy, operator, collector and player - you see all those at the factory or in talking to jack. The production output - as discussed everywhere, isn't a function of assemblers or the line length , it's parts quallity and timing - that's the stuff Jjp is learning, and many major issues like which suppliers are reliable timing and quality, adjustments to the mix are likely fewer and the end result is faster, better game assembly.
Will we see $5000 games ? Not likely. Demand seems to fill the factory capacities at all companies, not only Jjp and stern, but up the supply chain too - and at small boutiques producing small run quantities.
Demand is way up for $7-10k games, mm remake, woz, hobbit, Iron Man remake, big labowski, Spooky pinball games - that's where profit viability pushes dreams into real game design & production resulting in real products.
Jjp is a real distributor through Jack's pinballsales.com ???
So a lot of what you said in three posts on this thread don't add up.
Perhaps you haven't been following he market the last few years, and I see your low karma and post count, so your have not been on the scene long or talked with Gary and Jack about the business, but I see you have strong opinions and wrong assumptions .
Rant off.
Despite my attempt to school you, please take it as another opinion and positive criticism. Glad you've joined the fray. My advice is take more time to before you post or readership will dismiss as noise.
Post edited by dgarrett: Corrected typos and reordered thing
At the end of the day, Jack needs to be profitable. Businesses that lose money, don't hang around.
Secondly, the collector market is a limited market and one that is hard to judge. I'm sure if Gary could do it over again, he would've produced a lot more Tron LE and a lot less Transformers LE.
Thirdly, jack has an investor. Like all investors, they want to see a return on their investment. No one invests with the idea of losing money. If that were the case, Jeff Vanderbeek would still be the owner of the Devils.
I know jack has a distributing company, my brother bought a pinball machine from him years ago. But the matter of the fact, is stern doesn't do direct sales to customers. If jack grows big enough, the distributors will demand that jack doesn't compete with them.
Fifth, looking at eBay, it looks like distributors may be having a hard time selling WOZ. Last I checked, 12 were up there for sale. Seems like an awful lot when compared to other new releases.
Maybe a lot of what I said does add up.
I'm not a fan of WOZ or pinball machines that play like WOZ. That doesn't mean I don't want jack to be successful. He's in my backyard, he's a local guy, I'm rooting for him. Looking at the hobbit play field yesterday, to me, looks like a big improvement over WOZ...but until I play it, it is nothing but speculation.
Shrewsbury, NJ
Vancouver, BC
You can sit on every jjp thread and tell everyone how much you dislike it, the question has to be.....Why? Then follow up with why are we all children?
