Hey everyone, new thread because last time criticism was levied, that criticism was removed. It was also never addressed even though it was supposed to be. Criticisms towards the criticism of FA was that it shouldn’t be in the FA thread, so, here we go.
Giving a heads up here on the most recent announcement by Focus Attack for some “new” iL products. The purple stick was originally done by Paradise Arcade. All the short barrel iL Convex translucent buttons are also done by Paradise Arcade. These products would not exist had it not been for them. Paradise Arcade had to basically finance the manufacture of these products in order to bring something new to the table and do something a little innovative. It’s a shame another vendor has to go and carry that product after all the foundation had already been done by a competitor. Paradise hasn’t even had the translucent convex buttons on sale for 6 months, they were posted in November not to mention plenty of site work and down time. Not even enough time to sit back and enjoy having something new and “exclusive” and to get their moneys worth out of bankrolling the manufacture of these items.
Is there any respect here? Was there any credit given to Paradise for being responsible for bringing these products to fruition? No mention at all. Just “hey look at these new products I’m selling!” Not even a thanks. I know this isn’t “wrong” or “illegal” or anything like that. I suppose FA has every right to sell them. I would like to point out, someone with a little respect and integrity would give Paradise some space to sell something they’re responsible for bringing to the community. Not because they have to or anything like that, but because that would be the right thing to do, regardless of whether or not the person is a competitor.
Want to stifle innovation in the community? This is how you do it. Why would anyone want to put their money on the line and try to do something new when someone else can sit back, wait for all the work to be done, and then ride the coat tails of someone else’s success? This is just like when FA rebranded an open source project someone else was responsible for with no credit given and the original creator’s condemning the project. I believe FA has an ethical dilemma and has no idea on respecting other people’s hard work or understanding where a line may or may not be drawn. Quite obvious from their past behavior.
We also have yet another rebranding effort. .dab? Can’t it just be called Shin Etsu?
First off, I’m not aware of purple IL joystick being credited to Paradise Arcade. All I know about the color is that IL made the range of colors available to me for purchase. The same for short barrel convex translucents. IL never told me that PAS should be credited for their creation. How am I to assume PAS made them, or gave IL the idea to make them?
I say new only in that the addition is new to my store. I make no claims that IL products are new or exclusive.
I mention Shin-Etsu in the promotion for FA.Dab as well as the product listing. There is no intentional misleading that .Dab is a wholly new product. FA.Dab is merely a reference to the amount offered for the low price. A “dab”.
Don’t play coy. I’m sure you’ve seen Paradise show them off. If you haven’t seen the posts because you aren’t subscribed to the PA page, I’m sure someone has told you about it. Seriously, don’t play dumb here. We aren’t that stupid, and it’s insulting you think we are.
Are you really going to sit there and claim you had no idea? Are you going to sit there and tell us all that you’re oblivious to your competitors, even though you’ve stated numerous times your competitors watch you? *Edit: How would you know your competitors are watching you if you aren’t watching them? - Are you going to sit there and make the claim that you have no idea what so ever about what your competitors are doing, when you constantly make purposefully vague references in your news letters and facebook posts? By the way, since you’re so obviously ignorant, have you any idea that Paradise has also done quality control on color tone and clarity for these products? Oh, I think there was a facebook post about that as well… shall I dig it up?
What the fuck does this have to do with anything? Why would you make a claim of exclusivity? Is this some sort of oddball deflection technique? However, I will note, it is interesting how you listed a new item in your store that is a new iL product only recently launched in very late November / early December.
Congratulations! You mentioned the real brand underneath your brand because, wtf? .dab a new product? Can I get your dealer’s number, because you’re smoking some really good shit. You mean a new to your store Shin-Etsu? Can’t just list it as Shin-Etsu .2 oz? Oh, but then you couldn’t tout a “new” “brand” under your store banner.
And the purple Eurosticks were sometime before that.
I guess in my mind it’s just understanding your market is the answer. Convex translucents have never been available anywhere. Nor have purple IL sticks.
It is unfortunate for us that once these initial bulk purchases are made others may purchase these products in smaller quantities. While some might suggest trying to make these parts exclusive, purchasing 5000 buttons per color to have exclusivity would make bringing these products to market prohibitive. Seeing products we invested heavily into show up in others shops in the community does decrease the incentive to take all the risk, while others can jump in after and take the reward.
So now there is no veil of ignorance, I guess the question on the table is. What do you do?
Right? Because for the last 3 decades iL offered all these options waaaaait a second no they haven’t. It takes a little innovation to go to them and ask them to, which in 3 decades, no one did.
Oh boy, the protectionist crap again. If you want something to be exclusive, make it yourself- or get the agreement to have it that way. If I propose an idea to a supplier for them to offer a new/better product, are they obliged to only sell it to me?
seems to me the beef should be with either the people who sold them to FA or for Paradise themselves for not making an exclusive deal as part of the arrangement. like I understand the argument but in no other industry would the argument “you should let your competitor keep an advantage because they earned it and it’s a nice thing to do” count for much.
Ok, so because it’s not exactly against the rules means it’s ok to not give a fuck about someone else’s work? Perhaps you are simply ignorant of the logistics of what it would take to sign an exclusivity deal. No one has said FA isn’t within their right, only that, considering this is a community, taking away incentive to be innovative is clearly damaging. Again, PAS put a good amount of money into this effort and a lot of time and communication during quality control to ensure color consistency and so on. What incentive is there for them to ever do this again when a competitor can just come in and ride the coat tails of their hard work? Do you see Jasen Hicks stocking these? No because he knows that this was a project PAS was doing and on top of that, wouldn’t blatantly step on Bryan’s toes.
I don’t think anyone would have a problem if it was a year after PAS got some good sales. Even a friendly email correspondence about stocking the items, but nope, it comes out of the blue.
Again, what incentive is there for anyone to do something new? Especially since we know a certain party has copied a certain product, with no credit due? This is yet another reason to say fuck it and screw you guys.
Sure, but this isn’t big industry. This is a small community. Hurting a small sect of that community hurts the community at large. There are very few players in parts distribution in a nation of 330 million people. It’s really that small. Everyone knows everyone.
Regardless, a person with no ethical qualms about doing anything to get ahead would obviously not care in this regard. It’s happened several times in the past, in worst ways than this actually.
Put it this way, if I found out who the manufacturer of say, the Focus Attack Silencer was, and rebranded it and sold it under my store, would that be ok with you guys? What if I found out where Toodles got MC Cthulhu manufactured, and decided to buy the same boards, chips, stock, and so on, and sell it in my store? Would that be ok? What if I found who made the Link and decided to stock it?
I mean what’s it matter right, unless these guys paid for exclusivity, all fair game right? I wouldn’t be a dick at all!
If you’re going to get pissed at someone, get pissed at IL. There was plenty of rage going around from friends of PAS every other time FA stocks something that PAS had prior to FA, this is more of the same. Yeah, nobody wants competition in business, but tough shit- compete or get out. Without competition the consumer takes it up the ass, I’m glad people have to fight to earn and keep customers.
As for why Jasen isn’t stocking them, surely you’ve noticed that he backed out of selling parts that competed with PAS pretty much altogether? Kind of ironic that the source of Jasen’s beef with FA was FA pulling out of a deal due to not wanting Jasen’s competition in the parts resale business, then he backs out of it anyways at the behest of PAS (also not wanting competition). **(EDIT: this was incorrect)**Nobody has clean hands here, let’s stop pretending that they do- this sort of thread (along with every other anti FA onslaught from PAS’ buddies) itself is an effort to kneecap a competitor, and a lower one in my eyes than stocking product that a competitor sells.
How many products do you think you buy from the original reseller who stocked them? How many products do you buy from the company that first invented said product? Was PAS the first business to sell arcade parts? No? Then why is it ok to buy from them? What about the other guys that they might have put under?
At this point, there has been so much ball kicking and kneecapping from all sides that the smart thing to do is ignore this bullshit and base your decision on where to to shop on price and customer service. Only a fool would expect no competition reselling products from a non exclusive distributor whose primary interest is selling to as many resellers as possible.
The bottom line is that if you want to succeed, your first priority is taking care of your customers. Fail to do that, and someone is going to take those customers from you sooner or later.
Competition is survival of the fittest. It would be a dick move, but I would have to say tough shit just the same (provided that the items aren’t patented). I would buy them based on customer service and price.
No they are not, as I stated, 5000 buttons MOQ to have an exclusive. There are 8 colors. So that’s 40000 buttons to be exclusive. I will give you a hint that buttons are more than 1 dollar a piece. So that would have been 40k to bring these to market.
Simply put it’s like this. If we are loosely a community, then we should at some level support the betterment of that community. Taking things found by one person, weather or not it is illegal to do so, eliminates the incentives for people to contribute. This was the heart of the open source debate before.
I could easily produce the link at my overseas manufacturing facilities for a fraction of the cost or copy any one of the number of pcbs out on the market without copyright or patent. What about gamer finger buttons, I could do them with round bezels, same design otherwise maybe with a few small tweaks. But we don’t do this to each other, not because we can’t but because it doesn’t end up in a good place.
Anyone can do what they want. But it’s an issue of adding to a community and building it.
So I put this question forward… @PresidentCamacho @IglooBob
You would be supportive of me reproducing:
Links
Gamerfinger"esque" buttons
Panzer style sticks
USB repair tools
Shin-etsu in a tub (instead of the grease in a syringe that we already sell)
The community jumped all over people for copying B15’s acrylic stick design because they were just benefiting off his hard work. Where are these lines drawn. It seems like most of the time the lines are drawn where people play favorites. It’s ok for the store I like to copy or benefit from someone, but those Chinese shouldn’t copy B15 and people shouldn’t support them…
You won’t see me jumping in any of those attacks or drawing arbitrary lines. Like I said in a prior discussion, the Chinese will copy whatever they want and are able to anyways, it’s the reality of doing business today. The company I work for deals with the same thing- they sat on a gold mine until their secrets got out (through actual industrial espionage, not copying some simple circuit of piece of plastic), now it’s a fight for survival. Also, there’s a difference between being supportive of an action and accepting it as the harsh reality of competition.
Comacho so what you are saying is that it’s dick, but ok.
IL would have never produced the buttons had we not purchased enough to get them to do so. So I guess the lesson is, don’t do things that others can jump in on. The sad part is that these would have never been done if Susan had not fronted 1000’s of dollars to do them.
And for price… here’s a comparison for you
4 Purple IL stick, 12 IL buttons with Cherry’s, 12 IL buttons without Cherry’s
Shipped to Philadelphia, 108 dollars from PAS, 136.40 from FA. That’s over 20% off, not bad!
In regards to Jasen’s, actually your facts are 100% wrong. We gave and continue to offer Jasen Sanwa direct pricing on all the products he bought from us. Jasen found that after trying to stock the items it just wasn’t worth it. People were sourcing them elsewhere. Please do not spread rumors, this has been a very bad thing done on the forums and is not helping anyone. Bottom line is that Jasen decided it was not in his interest.
I think the thing you are missing on who to buy from is. If you always buy from the person who just jumps on after others have paid to pave the road, at some point, there won’t be any new roads paved. Now if that’s ok, then go ahead, but I think life with only me too’s would be a bit boring.
Like I implied, I would be more upset at IL if I were you here. You can bet your ass they’ll be selling those buttons to anyone else that wants to buy them also. It sucks, but that’s how it is, and I would hope they made clear that these would be for sale elsewhere before taking your money. If not, they’re bastards, and you need to get that sort of shit in writing beforehand. You should know by now to expect FA to stock anything they can get their hands on that customers might want.
Also edited my prior post on after reading your edit.
So, I know you know exactly what I mean when I type this, copying a product as a means of fighting to earn and keep customers is ok? This also isn’t more of the same, this is something PAS put money into that FA didn’t that FA is reaping the benefits of, because tough titties. Again, a person with some ethics within a small community wouldn’t have done this. There is also good competition and bad competition. Good competition is bringing new products to the table, if a competitor brings a similar product, bring out v2. Not someone brings something to the table, and competitor brings the same thing to the table, rinse and repeat.
Actually, Jasen stocks what he needs for PFS. Other than that, he doesn’t care. He stocks parts and lists on his store because he already puts them into his sticks, and if a customer buys from him and needs a single replacement button they can go back to him without having to deal with a third party. If it doesn’t go into one of his projects, I don’t think he stocks it. Also, at the time Jasen and Jaleel parted ways, PAS and Jasen were not really talking. Jasen had been told Bryan was essentially a piece of shit and it took a while for Jasen to realize that wasn’t how things were. They’ve been collaborating since. Jasen and Jaleel’s falling out was certainly not at PAS’ behest, not by a long shot.
I’m not going to chime in for Jasen, perhaps he will, but FA backing out with Jasen was for a number of issues, and it doesn’t seem like your information is correct? There was a deal about Jasen getting a printer and putting down a significant chunk of change which after the money was already spent, Jaleel backed out of. Jasen?
You know, these things come up because most people on this side of things does their best to avoid having to deal with the drama. I can’t tell you how many times Jaleel has gone on a misinformation spree spreading falsifications about competing products on pages he has full control, such as his facebook. He also has a newsletter where he makes knocks constantly. What is PAS supposed to do? Anytime someone speaks up for them it’s seen as kneecapping, but if there is no one speaking up, then Jaleel gets to keep spreading his non-sense. It’s a one way street and a lose/lose situation, but if someone doesn’t speak up then Jaleel gets to continue to misrepresent competitors and their products.
This goes far beyond stocking a product another sells. I know you know this.
I have no idea where you are going with this. Again, this isn’t big business corporate America, this is a few dudes selling things to people all across the world in a very small community of arcade parts enthusiasts. A little context, maybe?
Again, most of the time anyone speaks up for PAS or against FA (sometimes not even relating to PAS) is in defense of PAS or another party. Also, by ignoring it and continuing to shop at FA is supporting this behavior and essentially voting with your wallet that this is acceptable within the community. By doing so, it hurts this community.
The bottom line? Ok, how about when your competitor is playing dirty? Fuck ethics, lets throw them out the window! Money money money fuck competitors fuck you guys you’ll buy from us anyway!
If we stop drawing lines then people stop caring and no one will ever bring anything new to the table. With that attitude, this community will die out. Again, it’s a very small community and such things can be greatly damaging. Accepting the harsh reality that there are dirty players out there and then supporting them by purchasing goods from them is supporting their actions!
Pres, you and I get a long great so I’ll provide clarification for accuracy: I stocked some buttons for a while to help the folks have one location to get their Panzer and the parts. While I did get some on a trip to Japan and a few from a Japanese supplier; most came from Bryan and Susan at Paradise Arcade Shop. Ultimately, the demand to purchase buttons from me with the Panzer was too low for it to make sense to keep them on hand in my shop taking up room and collecting dust.
I don’t make business decisions based on what others ask me to do and not do. I do what makes sense for the products I produce and what people ask me to make. Being a custom based shop affords me the opportunity to not have to carry everything and to try things out. Working with Bryan and leveraging connections he made has been beneficial in some of my efforts and the two way communication has been much better than the demanding attitude of FA.
Now… back to the issue at hand:
I wanted to stay out of this thread, there is no clear winner or loser here. In fact, everyone ends up looking silly at the end. Everyone. However, I there are a few things that I can add to the conversation.
Everything in this community gets copied. Everything. Nothing is sacred. With a few exceptions nothing is “new” or super innovative; but some things are indeed done better than they were in the originally by different shops, people, etc. I haven’t been around long enough nor paid close enough attention to cite a lot of examples and I am sure that I have built or made trinket type things that were similar to form or function as others have. Not because of outright copying, but because a standard to follow exists. Adaptation of these things to a specific use is obvious at times. Smart people figure out ways to do things; most of the time people also don’t spend hours searching the net or books to see if its been done similarly in the past. They see a problem in their personal hobby and solve it. I can point to the ATX to Naomi Power Supply Adapters as a point. I know someone has to have adapted an ATX power supply to work with the Naomi in the past because 1. its obvious 2. we’ve talked about it before here on SRK and 3. someone asked me if I could make them a couple because I had made one for myself.
Exclusivity is key if you don’t want a product you work with a larger company to produce sold to others. Exclusivity costs money, a lot of it. (Honestly, if you think people are getting rich of buying and selling arcade parts, you don’t know the business.) That huge investment for exclusivity ends up taking away from other projects R&D costs further hindering new or improved things from being released. So, understanding this … it makes sense that Paradise didn’t want to go the exclusive route and wanted to get the 8 (or however many it was) new buttons and sticks out because the demand was there; it was worth the investment to buy 300 or so of each version to make them available to the community. Nobody else stepped up or out of their comfort zone to do this. Did they?
Interestingly this tactic can end up severely stifling new product developments with big companies because the fear of making it easy for rival companies to gain access to the new version, etc. of the product. This appears to have happened here. PAS invested the time and money to convince iL to get them done, FA stepped in and took advantage of the work they did.
What does this do to the community? It fractures the community and causes problems. To the less informed people they think its something standard that any shop can get; to those in the know they either care or don’t. The original person or shop that pushed to get this done gets upset because someone gets to benefit from their time and energy by simply throwing a few bucks one way and making some fancy graphics.
PAS now has the tough decision to continue pushing for more colors and products and investing the time and energy into working with iL and other companies to come up with new colors, version, improvements, etc. because they get no credit and the MOQ for exclusivity precludes it from making business sense. Ultimately, the community suffers because we can’t stay out of each others chili and some are just profit driven. They use the guise of good customer service and or fast shipping to make them seem better than they are.
Since PC brought it up:
I find this most entire situation interesting because of how FA and I’s relationship ended, which was rather abruptly. Let me shed some light on the interesting nature of it all:
I make the Panzer Fight Stick (originally called the Tank Stick) and as a good FA customer send them an email asking if they thought it would be something they would carry in the shop. After all, every single newsletter sent has the same bottom tagline “We’re always looking for new and worthwhile products made for players by players. If you have a great item that deserves some exposure, please contact us at [redacted] with details and we’ll review.” Eventually agreements are made and some decisions were made to invest in some pretty expensive gear on my end to get the Panzer out there in another place besides my little website that had very little traffic. Over the next couple of months I start stocking up some random pieces to sell alongside the Panzer because it makes sense; specifically The Link, the PS360+, and some USB cables, etc. Things that are needed to build the Panzer or would work with it. Finally, FA puts the Panzer for sale on their site and then realize that I have some of the essentials available for the panzer on my page as well. I get a nasty email about ‘why would anyone buy the Panzer from me if they can get it and most of the parts from you?!’ Not a direct quote but pretty darn close. I go on vacation, the panzer is pulled from their site and I return to an email requesting a final bill for the goods shipped and not to contact them again.
It wasn’t until MUCH later that I added more things that would work with the Panzer such as the CROSSBONE, sanwa buttons, cheap JLFs (thanks PAS for working that out and extending the pricing to me), balltops, etc.
As I reflect back on this, it makes me realize that the way they conduct business is crappy for the community. Sure, I was fooled and bought into it as well. I was glitz and glimmered with their cool graphics and snappy lines. I was told Bryan was the worst and I was going to get contacted by him to sell my stuff through PAS just because FA was doing it. I should take extreme caution when dealing with him. (Interestingly, that never happened until I reached out and asked why FA bad mouthed him to me… Even more interestingly I had no idea who the crap PAS was at the time. After having spent time with Bryan and his family in Hawaii he’s definitely not the devil and very much a working member of the community. I tripped over a monitor and parked my shoes next to a Killer Instinct cab in his foyer) FA wants to become the center of mass for the community without investing the time, energy, thinking, or money to do it. If you truly look at the unique things they bring to the community you’d be hard pressed to not find someone that has been doing it for longer. Lets look at their recent offerings:
[list=1]
[] iL parts. PAS sells it; honestly they are the only people I know that sell it. The folks at Twisted Quarter make their own sticks and buttons; Doing a quick google search for it only PAS shops shows up.
[] HAPP parts. They are junk. Moving on.
[] Custom plexi overlays for fight sticks. Yup, Arts Hobbies has been doing it for years.
[] Remember the failed attempt at selling a SLG? At least a dozen of them exist and theirs was nothing more than a repacked version of an open source project.
[] JAMMA Harnesses and such… find an arcade site that doesn’t sell them.
[] Lubrication for your pivots. Yup, everyone else has them too. Just not in a handy “dab” amount.
[*] Silencing pads. Their design choice is different but SANWA has some and PAS has Moonchilde’s version that sits on the top of the micro.
[/list]
All of these things other people have been making or selling for years. FA saw an opportunity in each of these to try and expand their reach. From a business sense, its obvious. But lets look at the facts:
[list=1]
[] The owner of FA can’t answer any questions on his own. He relies on the talents of people much more technically inclined that he is to answer his questions. While I may not personally care for some of the banter back and forth I have had with some of the tech support guys, they are smart people that provide good insights and knowledge back to the community.
[] FA has intentionally driven Q&A from their SRK thread (in Tech Talk mind you) to their site. Only when pressed do answers end up in the thread to questions asked in the thread.
[] FA created a lot of hate and discontent at a tourney out west for charity because he wasn’t getting his moneys worth in advertising. The Stream wasn’t working 100% at the launch time but it was feverishly being worked. It was pointed out publicly, it was removed by moderators.
[] FA makes it a point to bad mouth people when forging business relationships with them.
[] They have said they follow our (competitors) threads so claiming ignorance of the origin of a product that was blatantly pushed as the result of ones efforts is not accurate.
[] At least they ship fast and you can earn points by spending with them.
[/list]
Ultimately, this is all based on what the community thinks is acceptable. When you spend money with a company you are saying that its OK to act and do whatever they do. We all have our faults and or missteps, don’t get me wrong. PAS had a rough patch of it, I had some delays getting things out due to defects, etc. I personally don’t like what FA does or how they do it; I think they are just pissing people off that are willing to make initial investments and taking advantage of it. From my business perspective though, I don’t care what they do. They haven’t treaded onto my very niche spot… yet. Good thing I operate in a hole making my stuff, I think I’m safe for a while.
//Out, I have freedom and democracy to defend and deployments to prepare for. LCDR Hicks, USN.
BTW, iL does not list the new buttons on their site or in their catalog. They’re also not listed in new products. This brings into question how Jaleel would have known since as he claims he had no idea PAS had them. Unless he was lying and knew PAS was stocking them and decided to ask iL himself for them. Unless he could prove otherwise, perhaps provide some correspondence that a iL rep offered them to him, which would be much appreciated.
, only one of the reasons)
