Strange But Good:
A Look Into the Future
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
President, Avalanche Press
March 2010

The strangeness started a couple of weeks ago. I was driving my family home from a basketball game (UAB vs. Memphis) and as I made a left turn, a guy ran into the street and tried to cut me off. As he approached, he reached into his shoulder bag as though he were pulling something out. I didn't think, just reacted the way the sheriff's deputies taught me in my reporter days: spin the wheel, hit the gas and go right for him with the fender, not the bumper. He dropped his man-purse and ran. I didn't stop to see if it really contained a gun or not.

Since that moment — and it was less than 2 seconds, even though it felt much longer — I've thought a lot about the future. Seeing's how I might not have one without Sgt. Hale's tutelage.

Among other things, I've had to think about and articulate my vision for where the company is going in the future, as we've been conducting interviews for a bookkeeper/customer service position. We had an unexpected rapid turnover in personnel, with one employee quitting without notice and a new one begging off taking up the job due to health issues. So I've been spending a lot of time interviewing replacements. I wrote a 2009 Year in Review for our Gold Club members, but marketing priestess Lys Fulda thought I should put at least as much effort into a look forward as well as back.

We started 2010 with a series of minor setbacks: the aforementioned employee turnover, the web store going haywire for 10 days, a switch in shipping services that of course took far longer than anyone planned, and a printer declaring that they'd laid off all their graphics department except one guy, and promptly let that one guy go snowboarding in Colorado (yes, that's absolutely true, or at least it's true that they offered that as an excuse; the rep had the good grace to lead in with, "I know this sounds #$^%ing stupid ..." and has offered repeatedly to drive to Alabama to receive a physical ass-kicking — not that I have any clue how this would help get our stuff delivered or could spare the time to administer it). And we ended 2009 with a few, too: I gave a print contract to a former employee who'd just lost his left leg to cancer, wanting to help him start his new business but not realizing that the chemo and the recovery from the chemo meant he was unable to work for two out of every three weeks. And our since-replaced shipping company managed to lose an entire load of overseas parcels.

I'm just going to leave that paragraph above intact, because it is accurate (that's what I was really told; note the subtext that I didn't really believe the snowboard story), and quote here what I received today from the snowboarding people: "We had to close our company Feb 20 due to lack of operating capital. We have been negotiating for several months to transfer our business and assets to a local company and were supposed to be operational on Feb 24 but it took a week longer before employees were authorized to come back to work."

Readers may recall that we had a printer go out of business without telling us in January 2009. This one bought up the equipment of the last dead printer and hired part of their staff. Assuming they don't go out of business again, we lost about three weeks (the down time was longer than their dates imply) on August 1914 and the other games printing with it (Coral Sea, Pacific Crossroads, 1866 Frontiers). They are moving again and they have given our stuff priority, promising them this month.

Will we give them more business? Probably — depends on the new ownership. Something I've learned over years of running this business is that vindictiveness is a luxury. If they satisfy us that they can do the job, they can keep the work. We do have another order ready to go to press, but obviously we need to know if they can still deliver the current print run. I have a backup printer ready just in case.

So those crises are fixed or in the way of being fixed. But they're only symptoms, not the real problem. Avalanche Press has to change to be what we want it to be. I've known that for a while, and we've gotten feedback from fans and I've been consulting with many people. All of those things I listed above happened and none of them were our fault (or at least, mostly not our fault). But a well-run, well-organized business is capable of withstanding setbacks, and the others that will happen next week and next month, without getting thrown off track. That's the sort of business that we have to become.

There's a tendency within the game industry to run companies pretty much like game clubs; I've often read online postings by both wargamers and role-players referring to employees as "members" of such-and-such a game company. And Avalanche Press definitely started that way; in the past, I allowed some things to happen that in retrospect were utterly insane in order to keep the peace and feed an ego. And I knew better even at the time, but convinced myself it was necessary to keep the "club" together.

We've made a lot of changes over the past year: moving the warehouse from Virginia to Alabama, reducing staff, adding new product lines and a whole slew of others. That's not enough. We'll make more, eventually in top management as well.

"A vision without resources," I heard some NASA scientist say the other day, "is a hallucination." I have all the hallucinations I need, so I've taken some steps to make sure we'll have at least a few more resources this year. Because we have a lot of work to do.

First off, we have to keep the plant staffed 40 hours a week, and always have at least two employees fully capable of using all of our software. That ties into a mantra chanted by Doug McNair, a former salesman who heads up game development here. "Ninety percent of selling," Doug likes to say, "is customer service." We'd like to make sure every order ships within 48 hours (not counting weekends, of course) if everything in it's in stock. We'll never be able to match the speed of the big online operations, but we definitely need to turn things around quickly. That requires sufficient staff in the office every day, well-versed in both product and procedures.

Making that very achievable goal also leads to the second step, a new package of order management software. The one we have is totally insufficient and was designed for a much different sort of business than ours — even if it worked correctly. As it stands, it performs on a seemingly random basis and most definitely costs us business when customers don't get their orders because it refused to cough up their invoices.

Related to that is a total replacement of the web site and web store. The store is an older software package that hasn't integrated well with the modules added to it over the years: Buy X Get Y, club membership, download sales and a few others. All of the orders come through, but they require an excess of processing on our end. And as I'm slowly learning, stuff has to be easy to do. The web site's not so bad, but it requires an actual web designer and specialized software to make even the slightest changes. That's made even minor updates (spellings here, dates there) difficult to effect. A pair of 8th graders showed me this morning how they easily update their school web site and do things we can't.

After I wrote that paragraph (it was a busy day, starting at 3 a.m.), our web provider informed us that they'll no longer support our current web site and store. Basically, they agree with what I wrote above. And I strongly suspect that 10-day interlude is directly related as well. We must use their selected e-commerce system — in which, after reading some web reviews, I do not have great confidence — or find a new host. Either way, you'll be seeing a new store within 30 days, because they've decreed a deadline.

When I asked for customer feedback on improving Avalanche Press, the most common theme had something to do with better communication with customers. Our current web site just isn't getting that done to the extent we'd like. Web site updates have to be quick and painless. Daily Content has become one of our hallmarks and it's a powerful marketing tool, so the new site will of course continue this feature. We may or may not be able to bring the existing content over without re-entering it.

Most of all, we have to put out new stuff faster. That's how we make our money, and Avalanche Press (like any business) exists to make money. It just doesn't do a very good job of it. In 2010, we have a lot of long-promised boxed games to deliver. We'll also continue our very successful line of book supplements, and our dual-format printed/download supplements now that we can make specialty counters in small quantities. We've taken on some new freelance talent and have a lot of stuff more or less ready to print.

Three new series will show up in 2010: the long-delayed Infantry Attacks and Ironclads, and the long-rumored 1955-1975 sister to Panzer Grenadier. All of those will get the same support through Daily Content and supplements that we've given to Panzer Grenadier and the two naval series. Other than the stuff we've already offered for pre-order, we won't be expending much effort on products we don't think will sell very well. This is the year of the cash cow, and you can expect mooing in the most popular fields: tanks and battleships.

It's going to be a good year. We'll improve the company and bring out good stuff. Second chances don't come often, and somehow I got one in those two seconds on 23rd Street South.

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