OK, so here are some in teresting tidbits of information that i picked up today from the ESP rep.
ESP don't plan on selling to anyone that just has an ABN (like JHL would) and they aren't interested in selling to online businesses like eBay stores etc.. They only want to deal with businesses that have a legitimate shopfront. They want to discourage the selling of single cards....the feedback they have received from retailers is that they think the selling of individual cards undermines the market. I'm pretty sure that these same retailers plan on selling individual cards in their shop and their websites so effectively the advice ESP is receiving from retailers is that they don't like competition. He said all distribution is through Ikon and they have 4 main retailers at the moment (obviously footycards and Dan's NRL are two of them).
If eBay businesses are slowly getting wiped out and these select few retailers are now dictating prices with little competition i fail to see the benefit here for the end customer? The kids who collect. I see a lot of benefit for the retailers. He said if a retailer does get into bad habbits eg. individual cards, searched cases etc, then they could easily stop selling to that retailer.
Anyway, we'll see how it all unfolds but i do have some serious concerns now and it also explains why all these other small businesses can't get any reply from ESP via email etc.
Here is the info i got regarding
future ESP products planned:
2012 September- Limited Series- Representative Set (tap twist posted details above).
2012 December- Trying to get a deal done with Marvel at the moment in conjunction with The Avengers to have a 5 card NRL set feature an Avenger on each card and an NRL player from one of the semi-final teams (I guess the 5 players would be players that were heavily featured during the semis. He said they would be Lenticular cards where an Avenger could morph into an NRL Player. He is waiting to hear back from Marvel as to whether he can get the artwork. It would be sold as a set in a nice box at approx $300 and /1000 sets.
2013 February- NRL Traders - Will be their main NRL series with a volume of 350,000 packets in the release. Basically their Series 1 product.
2013 March- NRL Power Play - Will be a Game Card Series. I think similar to the Match Attax style cards for the kids where players have attack and defense ratings etc on the card and can be used to play a game.
2013 May/June- NRL Limited Series (Looks like they call their higher end sets Limited and i'd expect them to do NRL teams instead of Rep with this set). He mentioned future limited releases would also involve using pieces of Game Used balls in the cards.
2013 TBC- Said maybe a Series 2 after the Limited set releases (follow-up to the cheaper NRL Traders Set from February) Said they will play this one by ear because they don't want to flood the market (LOL)
2013 September- Limited Series- Another Representative Set.
2014- Said in early 2014 they plan on releasing NRL Dreamteam (the name of the NRL's Fantasy game on their website). Will be another Game Card style Series but the Redemption cards in this series will be to win a car!. There will be 6 Car redemption Cards in the set which will win you a car from Toyota.
Well, i think that's all i have for you. Happy to have helped given how hard it seems to get any real feedback at the moment
