Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University. This week, Thorne looks at the companies that waited until now to ask for tariff refunds, and shares examples of promo items showing up with no info.
In tariff news, larger corporations, while not filing cases in court seeking to overturn the tariffs imposed by the Trump Administration, have filed lawsuits seeing a refund of tariffs paid should the Supreme Court rule the administration exceeded its authority in imposing them (see “Importers Seeking Tariff Refunds“). Essentially, large corporations like Costco, Bumble Bee Foods and Revlon let smaller companies and organizations like GAMA, among others, do the heavy lifting in bringing the lawsuits against the administration and pushing them through the system to the SCOTUS (see “Returning to Tariffs“). Having seen the Court appear friendly towards the arguments made (see “Tariffs Now and A Quick Revisit to Accessories“), these larger companies, which had not wanted to antagonize the Trump administration by joining the lawsuits against the tariffs but wanting to be at the head of the line in getting repayment should the Court find against them, filed these lawsuits.
It certainly would have been nice for them to put some money and effort into the lawsuits against the administration, but it does indicate they think the Court will rule in favor of the plaintiffs; otherwise, they would not be risking the administration’s ire by getting involved.
Yet another example of how much easier operations could be for stores appeared in my mailbox this week. Well, two examples. As I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, shippers could save me some time and frustration if they are sending promotional items by simply including something indicating how the store is supposed to use the promotional item (see “A Plea for Invoices and Some Thoughts on Universes Beyond“). This past week retailers received a box from Wizards of the Coast containing two dozen copies of Fated Flight of the Recluse, a third level adventure featuring material from Eberron: Forge of the Artificer with no indication included in the box as to what we were supposed to do with it.
Digging around in emails produced one from last July mentioning that WotC would be sending out a promotional item stores were to hand out to purchasers of Eberron: Forge of the Artificer as an apology from the company for the lengthy delay in sending out the books. It should not have been any trouble for WotC to include a letter in the box indicating why stores received them. We, and most other stores, started handing them out with purchase of a copy of Eberron: Forge of the Artificer but it would have been nice to have confirmation of that from the start.
Similarly, this week the store received a poster from Asmodee promoting a contest the company is sponsoring, but no details on the poster or in the envelope as to what the contest is, only instructions to scan a QR code for details. According to posts I found on social media, it is part of Asmodee’s 30th anniversary and players scanning the QR code can enter a contest to solve puzzles, earn XP, and climb the global leaderboard leading to the grand finale of the contest on March 31 next year. Great, but including some information along with the poster would help stores explain what the contest is and how customers can participate.
Comments? Send them to castleperilousgames@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
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