Bicycle effectively guts Club 808, can it survive??

[Mike Ratledge]

The recent changes in the business model for Club 808 has basically almost eliminated the reason for it to exist.

Now anyone can buy Club 808 merch, and basic membership is free. Until recently, the only way to get any Bicycle uncut sheets was by being a paid member, and they recently short-cut that as well.

Other than the twice a year (?) discount - which they have not explained how it works now, whether only paid members get the Black Friday discount, etc - there are articles and information that anyone can get now.

All of the uncuts were $10 until this past year and now we have $20 for all, $30-$50 for admittedly limited, special sheets.

Can this new paradigm survive?

[sinjin7]

For Bicycle to change things up so dramatically, I have to conclude that the original paradigm for Club 808 was not working for them. My suspicion is that their renewal rate for Cub 808 was not high enough, in additional to not attracting new membership at a sustainable rate. They still want to continue making custom decks but weren't getting enough membership to be able to sell off their stock fast enough, resulting in excess inventory, so they opened it up to the public.

Does this effectively gut Club 808? Of course it does in certain regards. But I don't think the USPCC is much concerned with a few Club 808 members' ability to sell off uncuts and limited custom decks for a marginal profit on eBay. They threw current members a bone by calling them "Gold" members (for whatever that's worth) and gave them a free t-shirt. Bicycle is easily going to offset the cancellation of the $20 membership fee by selling their decks and merchandise at a faster rate to a larger pool of customers.

I feel at the end of the day this is a win-win for both Bicycle and collectors. We'll still be able to get access to future custom decks produced by the USPCC, but we won't have to pay any more membership fees. Who cares if these decks are now available to the general public instead of a relatively select few? Clearly Bicycle doesn't, and neither do I. Its not like Bicycle is going to stop making 808 merchandise and decks, nor are they going to stop putting out articles and information, and their custom decks will still be printing in "limited' runs of 5000, so as far as what we can get from Club 808, nothing really changes. This new paradigm is going to absolutely survive because it now no longer requires Bicycle to put any effort into sustaining it.

[chach]

Once again, Sinjin states what I'm thinking only more eloquently than I could ever hope to.