I understand the complaint retailers have completely. I've heard it from several now. Sideshow is giving them very little to sell, choosing instead to sell most of it themselves. This will hurt small retailers, but it's in Sideshow's best interest, if they can do it. Sideshow's job isn't to keep small retailers in business out of some sort of charitable generosity - it's a business.
One of the things you learn early in business school is that you want to be the big fish in any product to market value chain. For example, Wal-mart is the big fish over many manufacturers, squeezing them dry. And when manfacturers can manage to be the big fish - like Sideshow has with their product, or the way Ty did in the early days of beanie babies - they will use that to increase profits. That's business.
Now, the retailer that owns the statues.com forums (which is another issue altogether - you should try to avoid getting all your information from a place that's owned by someone with a stake in the information you get) wants Sideshow to treat him better so he can make more money. Maybe he's just struggling to survive - what he's doing doesn't mean he's trying to be a fat cat. But he's serving his own interests first and foremost. He's rationalized this by implying that if he can sell them to you instead of Sideshow direct, he'll sell them to you cheaper. It's an intersting argument, and one could also argue that once Sideshow is no longer dependent in any way on outside retailers, they can actually lower their own prices (they don't have to hold them as high to avoid cutting into retailer margins) and it will actually be better for the customer. But in the end his argument is merely a rationalization to avoid appearing like he's only serving himself.
Hey, I don't mind any of that. I don't mind that he's serving his own needs -that's the same thing Sideshow is doing, and that's business. What I do have a problem with is when he (or any one running a website as a business) starts to claim that he doesn't owe his readers anything, and that he's doing this as a favor to them, which he clearly stated. He is running a business, and he's using the forums to bring buyers to his store. The ones reading his forums are the ones doing him a favor, but it's unlikely he'll see that. I also mind when someone tries to use the customer as the front for their behavior. Hey, just be up front about the whole thing. If your customer's pocket book were your top priority, you tell them to go buy their product from another retailer if they were selling it cheaper than you - I doubt that's going to happen any time soon.
He's trying to have things two ways - he wants people to think that the forums are some sort of all encompassing home to discuss all things statues and busts, but only wants you talking about stuff he sells. He wants the former, because it brings in more traffic. He wants the latter, because he doesn't want his readers spending their disposable income on things he doesn't have, since it means less of the overall pie for him. Unfortunately, he can't have it both ways.
BTW, I find it amusing to see this happening on a site where there are regular complaints about ebay dealers undercutting MSRP's heavily, hurting the 'value' of their collectibles, and the regular discussion of 'flipping', their rationalized version of scalping.
