Читать книгу Drachenväter: Die Interviews - Konrad Lischka - Страница 70

This is not accurate. The last nail in the coffin was TSR’s production facility refusing to print more books until their enormous bills were paid. TSR could not generate cash without new products, and it could not get new products without cash to pay down its debts. This ended the company's life.

TSR had begun operating at a P&L [note: profit and loss statement] deficit a year or two prior to its final demise, and for a year or two prior to that it was operating close to break even. During this period it spent cash on developing future products and on inventory for things like „Dragon Dice“, „Spell Fire“, „Blood Wars“, and other products that had high up-front cash needs. To generate the necessary cash, TSR borrowed against the value of its copyrights and diverted cash from paying down its bills. It was spending a lot more cash than it was generating.

One way it generated cash was through its arrangement with Random House. Under that arrangement, TSR received payment for anything it shipped to Random House. TSR was essentially responsible for managing Random House's inventory (this was not that uncommon in that era, and is one reason why nearly all those book companies went bankrupt or collapsed; their business practices were atrociously bad). To offset this practice, TSR was required by contract to maintain an account with cash sufficient to absorb returns from Random House of a certain amount, but they were actually responsible for paying back ANY returns Random House chose to make. TSR abused this relationship by shipping in a lot more product than Random House could sell, and by not keeping any funds on hand to offset returns.

Random House eventually cleaned up under pressure in the book trade as a whole, realized it was holding an insane amount of inventory for TSR (which it had already paid TSR for), knew the inventory it was holding was not moving, and shipped it back for credit. TSR of course didn't have the money to pay Random House back, so Random House became another huge creditor and essentially ceased doing business with TSR, which cut off TSR's ability to service its book trade accounts – another Catch-22 situation like the problem it had with its printers.

In the end, TSR owed money to banks it could not repay (secured by the copyrights and trademarks to D&D), to printers it couldn't pay (secured by inventory in its warehouse that had no market), and to Random House (secured by essentially nothing). It was in the very most classic sense ‚bankrupt’. Had the gambles TSR made on „Dragon Dice“, „Spellfire“ and „Blood Wars“ paid off, and had it been making more profit per unit on the stuff it was selling than it did, it might have been able to save itself. If „Spellfire“ had been „Magic: The Gathering“, all would have been well. Those gambles all backfired, and the company just ceased to be a viable operating entity.