As far as pricing and discounts, Sideshow changed their Terms with its Retailers the first part of this year allowing retailers to ONLY discount Sideshow items by 8%. You are correct, in that it was originally 10%. Additionally it was my understanding as a Retailer that the 8% max discount would only be on new products in going forward. This might account for some older products still being listed on some websites at the 10% discount.
Additionally, I think you will start to see Retailers discounting less and less in going forward due to allocations and shrinking discounts from Sideshow. I know that we have personally been allocated on the last three HT releases and have not been able to order as many as we have in the past. I have been told that these allocations are to ensure that Sideshow has more product for their retail site as their customer's #1 complaint was that products would sell out too quickly.
As I have talked to quite a few other Sideshow Retailers who agree, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to work with Sideshow. Don't get me wrong, they are a great company and put out some great products however it’s become quite apparent that most of their policy changes, pricing/discount structure, allocations and the fact that they will no longer drop-ship on behalf of their Retailers have made it very difficult to compete with their own retail website.
As a business owner, I can understand the economics of these changes however that still doesn’t make it any easier to swallow.