Boutique Manufacturers

"the boutique Pinball companies have just failed. So many of them have just failed to understand the very principle of how to be successful in Pinball and I'm just going to say it, the most important thing is theme"

Boutique pinball companies have fundamentally failed by not understanding that theme is everything

"I'm here to say to all the boutique dreamers out there, the market is saturated. Why would you try and make a new company, make it all yourself, make it not as good as what's available and then expect it to be successful?"

Boutique pinball market is oversaturated and most new companies make inferior games

"Both Spooky and Barrels are really the only two companies with these like crazy appreciating collectible items. They're the only two. Name me someone else out there that has anything headed north like this, nowhere."

Spooky and Barrels of Fun are the only companies creating appreciating collectibles by making limited runs and never remaking games

"Look at like barrels of fun, for example, growth. No, David Van Es just needs to make great games and he knows. Like, see Dune, making Dune is like the result of picking a theme you think is going to be successful because of how big it is... You take a multi-billion dollar movie franchise and it can barely sell. And then you go to this obscure, unique, culturally interesting place called Winchester's Mystery House."

Boutique pinball companies understand the community better than Stern

"If Dutch pinball had said we're going to make just 500 of these and each one, and I'm not even fucking with you here, if each one, they could have said each one is $15,000, okay? Only making 500, they would have sold every single one."

Boutique pinball companies should charge much higher prices

"I think a lot of these boutiques they rely on the goodwill and and the charity of people to support someone who's not a big company to survive and again I think that goodwill runs out at some point and it has to be a great game"

Boutique pinball companies rely too much on goodwill and charity rather than making games worthy of their higher prices

"you can make a boutique pinball company successful, but you need the game to give people what they want. Right. You can't make the game you want to make and hope people will buy it"

Boutique pinball companies must focus on what people want, not what they want to make

"In one week they blown away what Heighway Pinball is able to ever ship out to people. It's almost laughable. All the companies that came out and said they're going to compete with Stern."

Boutique pinball manufacturers are laughably incompetent compared to Stern

"I put all four of these companies in the same box and I think they all four of them have managed to do one thing and one thing only. They have destroyed the promise of boutique pinball for people. They have added more harm and more pain and more suffering to this hobby than it deserved."

Boutique pinball companies have destroyed the promise of boutique pinball and caused more harm than good to the hobby

"why doesn't Robin just lock the big Lebowski thread and kick those mother fuckers off a pinside why don't you ban those guys"

All boutique pinball companies should be banned from forums until they deliver games

"these boutique companies came in they swooped into the pinball hobby and all of them collectively have taken millions of dollars out of the hobbyist pockets millions of dollars out of people's pockets and delivered nothing"

Boutique companies have collectively taken millions from hobbyists and delivered nothing

"with no customer service and no support in the long run, these new companies, they make you nervous to invest in if you don't feel like there's going to be support down the road"

New boutique pinball companies make collectors nervous to invest due to lack of long-term support

"So that leads me to believe that everybody, all these new boutiques have no clue on how to price a pinball machine when it comes to actually pricing it to a point where they can survive the manufacturing process."

All boutique manufacturers fail at pricing pinball machines properly

"These boutique companies are destroying the happiness of this entire hobby. And if you don't think that's the case, simply go in to the alien thread, go into the Dutch pinball thread, go into the J-Pop thread, and go into the Skit B thread."

Boutique pinball companies are destroying the happiness of the hobby and sucking the life out of it

"I also believe that a lot of people out there saw this Pinball resurgence coming and they jumped on board without the knowledge and the know how to run successful Pinball companies. So as much as there's going to be great victories and great new Pinball machines that come out over the next year or two, I think we're also going to see companies fail."

Other pinball companies will fail because they lack business knowledge

"I still stand behind my belief as much as I want to stay as positive as possible that not all these guys are going to make it"

Not all boutique manufacturers will survive

"I've been saying this for months now in this podcast that there is going to be a contraction of companies in the pinball industry happening in 2017 and there's no way around it. It is simple mathematics that these companies cannot survive. They cannot survive going years without shipping games."

There will be a contraction of pinball companies in 2017 due to simple mathematics - these companies cannot survive going years without shipping games

"this type of stuff, I think boutique pinball has almost ruined pinball for so many people out there"

Boutique pinball has almost ruined pinball for many people

"I honestly don't think there needs to be so many new inbox offerings for this archaic hobby it is a toy of yester years"

There doesn't need to be so many new pinball companies for this archaic hobby

"the promise of boutique Pinball I've said it before I think the promise of boutique Pinball has failed it's totally failed and it has yet to deliver games quick enough and it is yet to deliver the quality consistent Pinball that everyone is looking for when it comes to boutique"

The promise of boutique pinball has totally failed to deliver games quickly and consistently

"And this could be Stern's move to just bully a lot of the boutique guys out. And I think it's going to be really interesting. I just think I'd be really nervous and I, if I was a boutique, I would say, look, we need to be able to ship pins faster."

Stern's move will bully boutique manufacturers out of the market

"You can blame every single boutique company for where we're at right now because all they did was show that there's a market and there is a threshold Propricing and But they failed to fucking deliver."

Boutique companies showed Stern what's possible but failed to deliver, enabling this situation

"I think boutiques for them to make it, they've got to have themes that have long lasting universal appeal. And I'm going to say this, when I see a company like Dutch, it's like you're not going to survive making a theme that's pretty niche that is the game you want to make, but not the game that has the buyer base that you need to survive."

Boutique manufacturers need every game to be successful, can't afford misses

"The boutique industry showed Stern what was out there. Stern was just going to keep cranking out titles between like $5,000 and $7,000 and they were just going to stay at that price range and they were making profit at that price range. But what the boutique industry showed Stern? ... that there is a lot more money in the pockets of pinball collectors than you're charging."

Boutique pinball companies taught Stern they could charge much higher prices by targeting collectors instead of operators

"I just don't think all these boutique companies can survive the next couple of years. I mean, they... There's just no way"

Most boutique pinball companies won't survive

"I think people are naive to think that all pinball is gonna survive the next two years you're gonna seek a company that is a boutique not make it it's just it's the law of averages"

Not all boutique pinball companies will survive the next two years

"you're gonna seek a company that is a boutique not make it it's just it's the law of averages and you these there's not gonna be a market for all of them it this is not that's my prediction"

Prediction: A boutique pinball company will not make it in the next two years due to market oversaturation.

"these new boutiques I just don't understand why they think they're going to make it if they're not again raising the bar over what Stern is giving you with a pro... I think there's a little bit of if we build it they will come mentality and I think it's more like if we build it and it's not great we will go out of business"

New boutique companies don't understand they need to raise the bar over Stern Pro games