Bobby Stickel, Head of Marketing & Customer Service for Sabertooth Games saw Steven Olsen's comments on pre-release events (see 'Steven Olsen of A Little Shop of Comics on CCG Pre-release Events') and says Sabertooth is interested in supporting brick and mortar stores:

In response to Steven Olsen's article, let us at Sabertooth Games be the first to say 'YES! We can talk about this!'

We're just happy that someone has stepped up as the voice of hundreds of brick-and-mortar core hobby stores. We're also happy that these stores have heard us loud and clear on our message: The Universal Fighting System (UFS) is not sold in mass-market stores. We've put it in magazine ads, our trade show booth, all over the Web-- we've shouted this message from the rooftops ever since UFS launched, and it seems that the core hobby market is now shouting with us, for the exact same reasons Mr. Olsen stated: 'Why would a brick and mortar shop put all that effort into a game just to share the sales with the mass-market empire down the street?'

I've worked in one of these stores, and like every store manager has experienced at one time or another, have given a demo of a game to a customer who walked out and bought it at the supermarket. My time and effort was more valuable than that, so I began to put my efforts into products that I could actually reap the rewards from.

For those of you less familiar with the situation, Sabertooth Games has a staff of about 17 people. We're not the size of WOTC or WizKids or UDE. But we're 17 people who spend our days calling core hobby stores, and talking to store owners and players. We make over 1000 phone calls a week, just to talk to stores and ask 'How can we help you promote UFS?' And if we're not on the phone, we're driving to stores to interact with staff and customers alike.

The core hobby is our focus. We demonstrate this every single day.

Sabertooth Games does not run huge cash tournaments. It simply isn't in our game plan to spend that cash on the top 1% of super-competitive players, who at that stage in their TCG lives have tapered off their spending habits. We simply take the money in our budget and re-allocate it to helping core hobby stores promote UFS. We use it to pay for window clings, sales flyers, posters, counter displays, free demo decks, in-store visits, etc, all of which are free to the brick and mortar stores that sell UFS every day.

Regarding the other points that Mr. Olsen stated in his article, Sabertooth runs its pre-releases out of brick and mortar stores. We're not going to show up in your back yard and take cash out of your register. We're making money off of our product, trust me, but we're doing it because of the sales in the core hobby stores. If anyone makes a buck off of UFS, it's the core hobby retailer, who doesn't need to be under a time pressure of selling it in a 60-day window before the big boys get a hold of it. Every demo the FLGS runs, every pre-release they event they host, every table they set out for UFS players is going to turn into profit that only the brick and mortar store will make.

Yes, our stores work very hard to promote UFS, and Sabertooth Games is right there with them. We give them demo decks, they run demos. We give them posters, they put them up. We give them free Organized Play support; they host events in their store. They profit, we profit. They win, we all win. That's a partnership.

The opinions expressed in this Talk Back article are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.