A word about web store changes
Hoplo New Year, everyone!
In the last week, many of you have likely noticed a change on our webstore. We wanted to explain what’s going on, why we’re making a change, and what to expect.
The first thing to know is that we are starting to split up our stores by region now rather running everything through a single store and leaving you to figure out monetary conversions on your own. We’re doing this to make the purchasing process more transparent to our customers around the world and to accommodate changes that may affect certain regions without modifying our pricing or business practices worldwide. Eventually, some region-specific changes will likely be making their way to each region’s store, but the changes we’ve made in the last week apply only to our European customers, so if you’re buying our games from somewhere else, none of the logistical changes we describe below will affect you.
What’s changed?
Besides the store split, there are two primary changes for our European customers. First, if you’re ordering from Europe, your order will now be calculated in pounds sterling (GBP). Second, the price in the store is inclusive of all relevant taxes, including value-added tax (VAT), so there will be no price additions when you get to the check out. Though prices will rise somewhat, if you do the math based on our current prices, you can see that we are actually absorbing a lot of those costs ourselves.
Why are you doing this?
There are a lot of reasons. Our customer base is growing, and a larger worldwide customer base means more specific rules, shipping rates, taxes, etc. depending on where you order from. Breaking our store down into region-specific hubs allows users to have an experience that more accurately speaks to the circumstances of where they live, without extra annoying steps like currency conversion or sussing out shipping rates. It also allows us to split out region-specific cost differences like VAT without A. surprising you with an additional cost or B. requiring us to raise our prices for customers who aren’t affected by those cost differences.
Because we value your business and want to make our games available to you without a prohibitive price hike, we’ve absorbed some of the additional costs where we can, so that you won’t see a huge jump in price across the board. That means that even though purchase costs will be slightly higher for many CTG products in Europe, our margins for those games will actually be lower. Ultimately, it’s a move we felt was necessary to keep our games affordable and accessible. Board game companies around the world are still figuring out the best way to handle online sales overseas, and we want to be on the forefront of offering the best solutions. We plan to continue monitoring the situation and listening to your feedback so we can best meet your needs moving forward.
What else do I need to know?
We switched the store over on Jan. 4. If you are having trouble seeing an order you made prior to that date, it still exists in the North American store. To check on it, simply change your region to North America in the footer section of our website. If you’re still experiencing issues, file a ticket with us at https://chiptheorygames.com/support. We know this issue, combined with the shipping backlog we’re experiencing with some of our distribution partners, is causing some people to worry, but don’t fret! Your order is not lost, and we will work to reunite you with it!
That’s all we have today. Your feedback is welcome on this transition; remember, we want this all to work as well as it possibly can for you. As we start a new year together, we hope that one of our games brightened your day a few times over the last year, and our fingers are crossed that 2021 will be one that allows for more in-person gatherings, family get-togethers, and board gaming sessions.
