Pourquoi SPI a disparu

Je me suis toujours posé cette question. On peut trouver une cause établie par Greg cotiskian voilà ici la réponse de Redmond Simonsen:



1. WHY DID SPI DIE ?

There were several reasons, not the least of which was the lack
of real business expertise on the part of any of the managers
(including this writer). Strategically, SPI croaked because it was
profoundly undercapitalized. This was OK so long as the magazines
and the game market was growing; it began to squeak when things
plateaued in the late 70's. At the same time, SPI was moving into
traditional distribution in a big way (i.e., selling through stores
rather than direct mail). This greatly exacerbated the cash problem
since we would then have to WAIT 30 to 180 days to get paid rather
than to get paid 10 or 20 days in ADVANCE when a game was sold. In
the financial downturn of the early 80's, many dealers were hard
hit and stretched out their payments bigtime.

SPI never had the financing to go wholesale. In addition,
management did not properly control costs and pricing in the days
of Jimmy Carter's inflation: SPI games and S&T were radically
UNDERpriced in the late 70's. We lost money on a lot of our titles.
And we had too many titles in print at once; i.e., we had too much
cash tied up in inventory. SPI did NOT die because of sf or RPG
games. Most of the titles we did in that area were quite successful
and lucrative.

Tactically, SPI died because of an enormous cash flow problem.
When SPI changed presidents in 1980 (Chris Wagner replaced Jim
Dunnigan), the company was more than a half-million in the hole.
Around the middle of *his* tenure at SPI, Wagner managed to get a
venture capital company to put about $300K into SPI even though it
was at a point in it's life where it was ever more seriously in the
red (1981). This money got burned up pretty quickly given SPI's
debt situation and the venture guys quickly lost their willingness
to venture any further. They put a great deal of pressure on SPI to
either instantly turn into a highly profitable computer game
company or to sell out to a competitor.

In this pressureful situation, Avalon Hill at first seemed like
a White Knight based on some encouraging noises they made when we
sought them out. Time was running short, but we felt relieved
because we felt that help was on the way. About 10 days went by and
suddenly Chris Wagner was called to a meeting in Baltimore where he
was informed that Avalon Hill had changed its thinking about its
involvement with SPI and instead would make a flat offer for most
of SPI's game properties. From the SPI side of the table, the offer
and its conditions were grossly unacceptable and unrealistic from
the point of view of saving SPI. So now we were really up against
it. Time had just about run out. Creditors and the venture capital
guys were about to turn the screws the final time. Parallel to the
AH talks, a contact was made with TSR. Hurried meetings took place.
TSR agreed to lend us over 400k against our assets and intellectual
properties (most of this loan went directly to the "venture"
capitalists who walked away unscathed, check in hand). The loan had
lots of conditions attached to it, but we had few other options, so
we went along in hopes of at least preserving the position of the
subscribers. TSR officers (by the way, *not* the present management
of TSR) took positions on SPI's board and were in fact the
principal officers of SPI itself for a brief time.

Within about two weeks of making the loan to SPI, TSR called the
note and in essence, foreclosed on SPI.

We were dead. End of a great era in wargaming.

It would have been cleaner and less humiliating, to simply file
bankruptcy and be done with it. The whole end-phase of SPI's
existence was very unpleasant and melancholy. And in addition to
the emotional pain, I lost almost 50 thousand dollars of my own
money in unrecovered loans to the company and lost back pay. Brad
Hessel, another of the last captains on the burning deck lost a
similar amount. Brad deserves a lot of credit for making herculean
efforts to save SPI in its last desperate days; unfortunately the
wargaming community hardly knows of it. Other people at SPI also
lost significant amounts of money as the company vaporized.

History should note that none of the principals and stockholders
of SPI came out on the positive side of the ledger.

interview en tiotalité ici:
http://grognard.com/zines/so/so43.txt