For ICv2 Retailer Week, we caught up with ACD Distribution CEO Bob Maher, to discuss the hobby game business. Maher acquired ACD in November of 2007 as a two-location company (Madison, Wisconsin and Fresno, California) and has expanded it into a four-location distributor, adding Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and Dallas, Texas,
In Part 1 of our two-part interview, we discussed the hobby distribution business in general, ACD’s place in it, and the major events of 2025. In Part 2, we discuss the future of the hobby game business and ACD’s plans for the future.
ICv2: How do you describe ACD’s current position in the hobby game distribution landscape?
Maher: I think ACD is very strong for customer service, for timely shipments, for shipments showing up undamaged. We’re almost never the least expensive option, but we believe we make up for it along the way. We like to believe we’re easy to deal with and that you only have to deal with it once: the products come as expected, on time, no mis-shipments, as few damages as possible.
We also concentrate on a lot of the non-TCG portions of the industry. We have great TCG partners, but we value the RPG publishers and the board game publishers and the minis and supplies just as much. The game industry is really having a huge surge with TCGs right now, but it always ebbs and flows, and we want to make sure we’re keeping our offerings as well-rounded as possible.
You’re kind of unique among the hobby game distributors in that you do not sell Wizards of the Coast product (see “WotC Says ACD ‘No Longer an Option’”). How does that make ACD different?
ACD has had to adapt a bit from not having Magic, and then after that, we got passed over on a few other TCGs. We don’t have the Bandai card games right now, and I don’t know how many distributors carry Flesh & Blood, but we don’t carry that either. Once we didn’t have Wizards anymore, a lot of card games, when they come to the market, thought, “OK, we need to get into distribution, who distributes Magic,” and then they start their calls there.
That has started to change in the last few years. We have the exclusive relationship with the CookieRun Trading Card Game, which has gone far better than we expected, and we are a distributor for Riftbound. I believe we’re stemming that tide a bit at this point because TCGs are still very important to us. It’s just not all we do.
You talked a little bit about ACD’s differentiation from your competitors, primarily service areas and category emphases. Any other ways that you differentiate from your competitors?
Between us and all of our competitors, the windows have gotten a lot narrower: a lot of people have good websites now; a lot of people have decently well-rounded product offerings. I believe we stock product deeper than a lot of our competitors, so product is available for restock more often or more regularly. Historically, that’s been true; I don’t know exactly where my competitors stand currently. Three quarters of our purchasing time is spent on non-TCGs, so we try to keep all of those areas very well stocked, stay on top of them as best we can. I know some of our competitors are far more centered on TCGs or a number of them also do sports cards and we don’t do any sports cards either.
You added toys after the Wizards of the Coast breakup. Is that something that the hobby game stores buy from you too or are those mostly separate customer bases?
The customer bases are more separate than similar, but we have a little more crossover every year. When we distribute Hasbro, or especially the Hasbro Black Series, they’re higher-end toy lines. Star Wars is a huge license for them, and Star Wars is a huge license for the game stores also. Sometimes they find interesting Black Series figures that they want to carry, or items that tie into other parts of their hobby gaming.
The more people discover in the toys, they usually find bits and pieces to carry, but it’s still the toy stores that are the big customers for toys or also have entire orders from us that are toys.
We’d like to talk a little bit about the major events of the past year. How do you think the Alliance bankruptcy and acquisition changed the distribution business for hobby games?
I think most of the change with the Alliance bankruptcy was short term. It was probably (having gone through it in different businesses) a tough transition.
We picked up a lot of business at a couple of different windows when Alliance was having a hard time getting a hold of product and when they took their website down (outside looking in I’m assuming they switched over ERP systems and put everything onto the Universal side of things). When they took their website down, we had a big influx of orders and I expected more of it to flow back out when they were functioning again. I think that some of those customers hadn’t dealt with us in a long time and we managed to keep some of those customers that were happy with the way we do business that hadn’t had a reason to order from us in some time.
That all being said, [Universal Distribution CEO] Angelo Exarhakos is a tremendous business-person and I think he’s going to do a very good job of figuring out what needs to happen. Universal will be a strong partner for gaming companies moving forward. I’ve been friendly competitors with the people previously at Alliance and Angelo at Universal for a long time.
I’ve never been huge on exclusives. It’s good for retailers to have a couple of options or publishers to have options or multiple distributors in order for there to be a healthy marketplace. Angelo is a great fit for that.
The other event that was pretty significant was ACD’s acquisition of Luma Imports and Synapses games (see “ACD Acquires Luma”). Talk a little bit about your reasons for doing that and how you think that changes your business and the business as a whole.
The reason for doing it was pretty basic. We have a good relationship with Flat River and a good relationship with Jules [Vautour], who was part of the Flat River team. They were just in a tough spot and could really use some capital.
We went through and found a few of the assets they could live without, and we turned that around pretty quickly. Flat River was a great partner of ours; we were looking to help out; we’ve worked with Jules in his capacity at a number of different businesses and always wanted to work with Jules.
Also, Danni Loe and Kevin Krieger were at Flat River previously, and we also brought them in-house. So that’s been tremendous talent, and then Compile and Medium and the other games that Carl [Briere] is working on at Synapses, I actually had no idea the volume that they do on those games. That part of it, the work that Carl does at Synapses has already paid for the acquisition. It’s been wildly positive.
Also, from what I hear, Flat River has also really righted the ship. I believe they were able to get back to a focused core competency, and I think they’re also doing very well now. It wasn’t a need, it was just an opportunity.
The distribution structure in hobby games is a little bit complex. I count seven major distributors, three of which are also master distributors. Why do you think there hasn’t been more consolidation in the distribution business? Because that seems like a lot of distributors.
I can only comment to what our own internal thinking was on it, and it was also the same when we added on toys. A long time ago, we looked at it as we either needed to sell the same products into more regions or sell more products or develop the business domestically a little more vertically.
I actually think that the other distributors have gone the other direction. Sito [Sanchez, of PHD Distribution] has a tremendous presence in South America with Coqui Distribution. I know he also has Bliss in the UK. I believe GTS is in Europe and China now. Some of those other distributors just took a different approach, and I think they went wider geographically, where we went just a little more vertical domestically.
At this point, how well served are hobby game retailers?
I don’t think the hobby game retailers are as well served as we’d all like to say that they are. It can be very difficult to know where all the product is going any time a product gets hot. There’s all sorts of speculation in the industry of what happens to any of the TCGs once they get allocated because it has to be very tough from the point of view of a retailer when it feels like you can never get anywhere near as much product as you’re looking for. There’s just a certain opacity in hobby distribution that almost by its nature, it can’t benefit the retailer.
Now, on the other side of that, like you said, there’s a number of major distributors that I think are all very financially healthy at this point, and I believe having choice is great. Having the options to figure out who lines up better with your store is a great opportunity. There are a number of good options for retailers and it’s not like there’s a right or wrong decision, or that there’s a best distributor but maybe they choose not to work with you and you’re forced to work with a step down.
All the distributors are just better at different things so it’s nice that there’s a lot of healthy distributors. I don’t think there needs to be too much worry from any of the stores that their distributors are going to go out of business. Even if they did, with Alliance that was a very structured bankruptcy that got put into DIP financing and picked up as an ongoing entity. I know there was some disruption to the retailers, but it wasn’t like they disappeared. If anything in the future happened to one of the distributors, it could be very similar. It’s a valuable enough asset. I don’t think it would greatly impact the retailers.
The floor for retailers is pretty high. They have a lot of options of quality distribution. It just gets very difficult for publishers and retailers and even distributors to know what’s happening with the highly allocated products.
We have products at this point that our pre-orders are anywhere from 10 to 100 times what the supply is that we actually get. No matter what you do in that situation, you’re wrong, and it’s never going to feel fair to the retailers.
Sometimes I wish there was a little more clarity, a little more visibility, a little more ability for the retailers either to understand whether they are or are not getting a fair shake or just getting a good idea of what that looks like in the industry.
It’s very frustrating for us to tell new retailers that, no, I can’t get you Pokémon or Riftbound or all of these other things that are selling like crazy. I’ll only send you a box or two. Like brand new retailers who just set up a store are probably getting zero of those things from us. They get allocated actually zero and that doesn’t make anybody happy.
Would it be fair to say then that the competition, the number of distributors, is one reason that the retailers are as well served as they are?
There’s a lot of great options for retailers to get the primary products in their store, but if you talk to retailers right now about their ability to get different paint lines or reliably stock individual colors of paint or packs of sleeves or play mats, the business being splintered in different places is making some of those commoditized products (the products that will never be collectible, they’ll never be red hot) be a little more difficult for any of us to stock appropriately because it’s such a fungible asset that if one distributor doesn’t have it, the order can easily move over to another..I think a lot of us are having a hard time figuring out what our actual demand is.
By and large, the retailers are well-served in that they can get core products in their store to stay open and stay in business, but some of the items that aren’t marquee items, that don’t have a bunch of marketing behind them or a big buzz or a release, can be difficult to get your hands on.
It’s a concentration for us, but I’ll also say we’re not outstanding at it. I believe we’re getting better, but there can definitely be a bandwidth issue for us. If the business was more consolidated, if there were fewer distributors, I think there might be a better handle on those other things.
There’d be fewer small frustrations for the retailers (or at least to me, it feels like a small frustration). At the point where some retailer decides to totally change what paint lines they’re carrying because they can’t restock the paints effectively, that’s probably graduated from a small annoyance to being a little more impactful.
Again, there’s lots of places to get paint, lots of places to figure out what you’re going to do with that area of your store, but it would be nice if things were a little more automatic.
I do think it’s in a healthy place right now.
To go to Part 2 of this two-part interview, click here.
For more great Game Store Week features, click here.
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