A Brazilian overview of the facts and regional issues

[7ropz]

Ladies and Gentlemen, first of all I would like to introduce myself:
My name is Vinicius Santos Rodrigues, I live in Brazil and I am a regular player of this good game Magic: The Gathering and regular follower of the news within the game, championships and so on. As I follow the Pro-tours and Grand Prixes, something got my attention for that is the number of foreign players attending to some event.
As a viewer of both sides of the matter, I believe that there are somethings that WToC could do to improve sales as it can be the main reason to the current events affecting either players and the organization as U.S walks through a recession: Look to the market Overseas.
I believe that is needless to say that Magic is a worldwide game. English is a widespread language so the game IS easily acquired by most countries even if the cards are translated(nowadays over to ten translations. from Chinese to Italian). So why not invest in those markets? Of course it is a sugestion i propose. We cannot forget the American market of course, but there are Johnnys,Spikes and Jimmies waiting to get into the grip of the game.As a comment i would like to say that regardless of the other trading card games like World of Warcraft and Yu-Gi-Oh, the main reason I believe Magic is still alive is about the Organized play is way better than the other games. Although there are some problems we players out of America face that don´t belongs to either WToC or Hasbro. Now I would like to dissert about a issue that has been a pain for several years here in Brazil that could be certainly a problem solved long ago and it has been crushing to the Magic spread in South America:
the Brazilian Dealer of cards: Devir.
First of all let me start by this statement is by me only as a consumer of the only dealer in brazil that spreads Magic products nationwide.
Devir is an amateur non-logistic enterprise that does not respect the consumer of any products by WtoC(From Dungeons and Dragons to MageKnight).
I could be wrong, but as the only importer of Wizards of the Coast Products in Brazil, Devir´s prices are way high than normal, the WtoC main events are barelly kept with the schedule and other stores that could be offering way better services buying directly from Wizards and make a competition to Devir can´t because of some contract clause no one could ever figure out how.
As an example for measure: Until february 15th(the day of this topic) no one in Brazil had a pre-release of Morningtide. And we don´t have any dates in schedule for that event.Even worse. The Pro-tour Qualifier for Hollywood is february 23th, the Morningtide set will be legal BUT there is nowhere we consumers can buy the product ! There are some issues as DCI updates on events, event coverage and so on. The list keeps going and going.
Note to the readers that Brazil is not a wasteland, it is easily reachable for any store as a continental country like mine. The market grows in every big city but Devir does not care for that because it has the monopoly of distribution of the products. We willing to buy but they refuse to sell. Sad but true.
My porpouse of this thread is to ask for help making the commercial department of WToC or Hasbro to pay attention not only to Brazil but to the overseas market They are losing money with some easily thing to solve like distribution in markets that are just waiting to be discovered.

Thank you for your time reading it, I am sorry for grammar errors but I tried to show you guys that I am simpatizing with the cause and I believe I am not alone as my statement.

[morgop]

Sounds like someone needs to set up a store/distribution outlet. Can you order cards online? Wouldn't this keep the cost cards somewhat in check?

[7ropz]

Sounds like someone needs to set up a store/distribution outlet. Can you order cards online? Wouldn't this keep the cost cards somewhat in check?

yes we can order cards online from most sites like Starcity, but we cannot pre-order, order some products like booster cases because the Distributor holds some kind of exclusivity over it

[in5ano]

Yes, Devir sucks. I hear they used to do a poor job in Portugal too, WotC then just cut them off (not sure, remember this from hearsay). What was said here is very true, and Devir has done it before multiple times. I remember dissension was over a month's delay, for example.
The big problem for us Brazilians, however, is who to contact. The old "w/e WotC doesn't care" is probably true, but maybe with enough people acting, they just might -- and the union could be it.

Rooting for GP Sao Paulo or GP Rio 2008, hopefully not ran by Devir.

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