For ICv2 Retailer Week, we caught up with ACD Distribution CEO Bob Maher, to discuss the hobby game business. Maher acquired ACD in November of 2007 as a two-location company (Madison, Wisconsin and Fresno, California) and has expanded it into a four-location distributor, adding Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and Dallas, Texas,
In Part 2 of our two-part interview, we discuss the future of the hobby game business and ACD’s plans for the future. In Part 1, we discussed the hobby distribution business in general, ACD’s place in it, and the major events of 2025.
A few questions about the future. The billion-dollar question: what happens when TCGs ebb instead of flow?
We’ve been prepping for that for almost a year, and it hasn’t really slowed down any.
I believe the game industry always finds what it needs to lean into. There was a point, probably over 10 years ago, that I remember we used to sell some new releases of board games in the thousands of copies. There might be a new board game we sold 5,000 or 7,000 copies of on release. That’s not really a thing at the moment. Or when Essen was a huge source of news and the new release board games were a big deal, and it was really great when the consumers could get their hands on whatever the hot new release is. I don’t feel like we’re in that space right now, but I believe we will come back to it at some point. The Gundam Assemble minis game that’s coming out, I think, could be a big hit. I think that could draw a ton of attention.
I think the interest will land somewhere. The game stores build outstanding communities that people want to be a part of. It’s just how they’re engaging changes from time to time.
Do you feel like the retailer base is healthy, and how are they positioned for this potential shift in the market coming up?
The retailers on the whole feel healthy, I would say. Our receivables are doing great. I think retailers are making very good money off of the current boom of TCGs.
I can only hope that things are going as well in store for them as I hope it is. I don’t have a lot of visibility. There’s a few retailers I talk to regularly, but they seem to be retailers that I think they’d be successful no matter what they put their mind to. It’s not unique to what’s hot in the game industry or what the current ebb and flow is; they’re just successful business-people.
I’m not sure it’s really going to slow down the way we were worried about it six months or a year ago. It really feels like the audience for TCGs in the last couple of years has grown significantly. Even when it slows down, I don’t think it’ll go back to even what it was or below that. I think you’re looking at a new normal.
So it’s not all froth?
I don’t believe it is. I think some of the fervor around Pokemon can’t last forever.
Pokemon’s actually doing a great job of adding in production. I know it doesn’t feel like it to the retailers or the consumers right now, but they’re doing an absolutely tremendous job of trying to get product into the hands of the fans.
Even looking at Riftbound, we didn’t know how great the League of Legends license would be. I think it took a lot of people by surprise. A number of those people are here either in that TCG or other TCGs to stay. It’s the first time I can remember, and having grown up in TCGs, that there’s this many healthy TCGs.
You can have stores running organized play in 10 different card games and be getting a reliable turnout in all of them right now. I’ve never seen it before.
There was a big surge in the number of games in the early aughts. There were a bunch of anime games and other licenses. It certainly wasn’t like this. They were just coming and going practically overnight. This is definitely different.
They were all fighting to find out if they could be the fourth. Everyone always named the big three as Magic, Pokemon, and Yu-Gi-Oh. They were trying to see if they could edge out one of them or be the fourth game.
Now there’s tons of games. There’s games that sell in that range, like when you’re talking about Lorcana and Riftbound. I don’t know the volumes on Flesh and Blood, but they seem to have a very healthy game also.
Then you have One Piece, Dragon Ball, and all of these fan bases that really enjoy engaging at the TCG level. It’s nice when the cards are sought after, and the secondary market is going strong, but a number of those fans just want to engage with the IP. I don’t think that necessarily goes away even if things slow down.
What are ACD’s key initiatives for the next year or two?
Our key initiatives surround easing the touch points with our customers, trying to make getting orders put in a little more smooth, giving them a better idea of what they might be able to expect on back orders and pre-orders. There’s really no visibility on a lot of that stuff, which makes it very hard to plan. I wish we had better information delivery than we do right now.
I’m not worried about putting it off and delivering the bad news later so that there’s less time to hear about it, that’s not me. A lot of times right now, we just don’t have the information to give them in a timely fashion. I wish they got it earlier. Even if it’s bad news, I wish they got it earlier so they could plan around it.
We’re looking at either bigger warehouses or more warehouses. Our top-line sales have grown significantly in the last two years. Our fiscal year ’26 will be over double what our fiscal year ’24 was. That creates with it a number of its own issues, growing that quickly in distribution. We’re weighing different ideas as to what to do.
During big releases, and I believe it’s true for the other distributors also, it’s really hard to get just a regular restock order out the door. When you have a Riftbound release or a Pokemon release, or something that you have a huge percentage of your customer base ordering, you have to get those orders picked, packed, and shipped to make it for release date.
It starts to become very hard to get the board games, and role-playing games, and sometimes even sleeves and play mats out in a timely fashion. We all separate it, and we take our own crack at how to separate it.
For some time now, I think you can do up to a 20-line order with us, and it’d still go out with the release product. That’s probably changing very soon because even that has become cumbersome, and it’s caused us to get really close to being late on the release product. For us, it still is and probably always will be the touch points with the retailer.
I want to be one of the easier things the retailers have to do because it’s better for all of us that they’re spending more time building their community and their touch points with their customers.
It really is the driving force behind the whole hobby. I feel bad when they’re spending a big chunk of their day dealing with us or the other distributors. It’s not where the publishers want them, it’s not where we want them, and it’s not where they want to be either.
The first part of that, giving the retailers more visibility on what they’re going to get on a back order or a pre-order, are you talking about the part that you control, or are you talking about trying to get better information from your suppliers as well?
Both. Moreso getting earlier allocation numbers from the suppliers and trying to explain how important it is in the industry to give people reasonable expectations. Then when we do get the numbers, us going through and setting the allocations earlier than we are currently.
You want to know what financial status those retailers are going to be in before you start allocating them product. Some of our allocations have moved closer to when we actually ship out just to make sure we don’t have to change the allocations later or do different things. Like I said, the retailers are pretty healthy right now, and our receivables look pretty good, so I think it’s safe to start moving those dates a little bit forward.
Just also trying to react to some of the feedback we’re getting from retailers: that it’s one thing to get allocated, but it’s one thing to find out you got allocated five days before it ships.
Then a really broad question, how do you see hobby game distribution as a whole changing going forward over the next few years?
Boy, if I knew the answer to that, I’d be far more successful than I am. [laughs] It’s interesting. I think there’s a lot of different moving pieces in hobby distribution right now. Some distributors might be looking forward to retirement or at least getting close to slowing down. Some might be for sale. I think it could go any direction, and that changes really quickly.
It doesn’t necessarily need to contract any further than it has. I think it operates in a relatively healthy fashion right now and that the hobby gaming industry could definitely survive with a more compact distribution network. Then if we end up in a tough time or back in some rough situations, if you get down to three or four distributors and then one happens to go out of business and not in a way that gets picked up by somebody, you’re in a really tough spot.
I think there’s a certain amount of safety to the way that hobby distribution is set up right now. It seems to function well. That’s also the point of view coming from someone who doesn’t distribute Magic. When you start to look at the hierarchy of things, I don’t think I’m at the top of the list.
Anything else you want our readers to know about ACD?
We really do care about the retailers. We love engaging in hobby gaming and fandom. We really appreciate what the retailers do for the customer base, because it is that engagement, it’s that touch point, it’s people engaging with the IPs they want to engage with, engaging with the games they want to engage with that makes the whole industry possible.
We want to be a better partner wherever it makes sense (sometimes, the way retailers think it makes sense and the way we think it makes sense doesn’t always match up). We’ll never be all things to all people. Even if decisions don’t go their way or we don’t make specific changes they’d like to see, we still really care about the overall health of the gaming industry and the individual retailers. We’ve always tried to work with people if they had a hard time of whether it’s payment plans or just figuring out different things. We’re not a nameless, faceless organization.
We want to be a functioning partner in the game industry. I think most people, at least the people who choose to do business with us now, already know that, but I think it’s the most important part, so it’s the one I repeat every time.
To go back to Part 1 of this two-part interview, click here.
For more great Game Store Week features, click here.
Source: ICv2
