Oh yes, Conte is back. - Listen to an sympathic man and his "way of termination":
Dear Conteco Dealer,
A long overdue update for all of you: Some housekeeping, some announcements and a much needed clean-up of our dealer network and the rules by which Conte product can be marketed and sold.
Our move is largely complete and all sorts of new product is at last in the pipeline and I want to make absolutely certain that new product--when it arrives-- is not cheapened by the selling practices of the few.....( I wish it were only a few)
I fully expect this email and its contents to generate mixed reviews depending upon which type of dealer you are & how my attempts to clean up 'things" and/or to police matters may harm or help you. I expect that those of you who care about 'supporting the product' rather than making a quick buck will be thrilled that bad-acting dealers are being cutoff & discontinued and disallowed from carrying Conte product. I have been shocked at the dishonesty, the 'games' and the abuse of trust exhibited by some of you and on the other side of the equation, have been absolutely amazed that those of you who are above board dealers have put up with these competitive abuses for so long while my former staff at Conteco did nothing to police thangs.....
My recent announcements on our web site that we will be discontinuing a sales relationship with many USA based dealers created a huge influx of calls & emails in which collectors & dealers accused other dealers of bad practices. While this finger-pointing against competitors conjured up images of the French Revolution, it also made clear that many of you law abiding citizens have suffered at the hands of dealers who cared only about greed and self enrichment.
Effective IMMEDIATELY, in order to be a dealer you must either (a) own and operate a bona fide shoppe at which Conte product is displayed & sold & brochures/catalogs kept available OR (b) be a museum or historical park gift shop, OR (c) attend at least five (5) toy soldier shows per year and prominently display Conte product at same. Plain & simple--no exceptions.....
Those who sell the product only on the internet & are terminated. Your pending orders will not be filled and you are not welcome to attempt to any new orders. Recently, we commenced selling on EBAY some of our older sets at discounted starting bids in order to combat and undercut the ridiculous prices at which a few have been selling our sets .
Those who have a shop but sell on the internet at prices discounted below the range pre-approved by us for all dealers will be terminated.
Those who lie to collectors & tell them that sets are 'sold out" --when they are not-- will be terminated. A recent case of a dealer telling a collector that several sets were sold out and then charging the collector 250% of suggested retail for these rare sets is criminal fraud.
Those who have made offers to purchase product(and actual purchases) secretly from my employees 'out the back door" of the warehouse are terminated. And when If I can garner appropriate evidence will be arrested if I can accomplish same. The new warehouse does not have a back door & everything must pass my office.....
Those who alter our products and then claim to collectors that they are rare (and of course highly priced) Conte items are hereby terminated. A recent example of a dealer painting our plastic figures and then passing them off as official Conte product is especially galling. The collector who bought these false rariites called me us to complain that the paint was flaking and he wanted a replacement set----only problem was we never made the items he had in a painted version.....
Those who remove figures or parts from playsets or figure sets then sell these removed items separately are terminated. In one case, a dealer was removing rare figures from blistercards , selling these at a single figure premium at toy shows and then selling the cards with a missing figure to his mail order customers. When they complained of missing figures, collectors were told that Conte makes alot of packaging errors.....after the 4th or 5th phone call to us named the same dealer as the seller of this 'defective merchandise' even I could discern who was doing this.....In another case, parts from play sets were sold on ebay or at shows and collectors who bought the play sets wer told that Conte quality control is horrible & that our playsets are often missing key parts.
Those who carry only a portion of or select sets from one of our ranges & then lie to collectors and tell them that the sets which you do not carry were either sold out or never made (!!!) are terminated. It's one thing if you don't carry every set in a historical range, but when you lie & tell a collector that that other sets do no exist you undermine the product & do a disservice to all fellow dealers. Recently, we found a dealer who was making loads of $$$ selling our Roman boats and Medieval Cogs was telling collectors that the reason he did not carry our Romans or Medieval sets was that we Conte was sold out of them........another who only purchased plastic Spartan sets #1 through #5, told collectors that Conte had never made sets #6 thru #9......hmmmm
Those who promise collectors that they will discount prices by a certain percentage below 'what any other dealer offers" or Conteco will sell them for are terminated. Recently I heard some rumblings from one dealer about another doing this and asked a collector to stage a phone call to see if this practice was really ongoing. Almost immediately, the accused dealer made clear to my caller that he'd discount as much as he had to....my collector friend had the dealer agreeing to sell metal sets at only a few dollars over what he paid us for them...... selling sets at $2 or $3 more than you've paid to us seems incomprehensible yet it regulalry occurs.......this is to be stopped.
Those who convert or alter Conte figures & then attempt to sell them as extremely rare Conte approved product are gone as well. One dealer even advertised that they were "Rick Conte" approved and actually stated in writing "brought to you by Rick Conte & his name.. Threats of a copyright lawsuit forced him to alter his web page quite quickly
Those who intentionally pass out wrong information to collectors are being eliminated. Recently a small-time dealer--who was being eliminated by us-- intentionally told people on a web forum and at toy shows that he had stopped carrying Conte plastic as the quality had deteriorated when we let one of our former sculptors 'go' several years ago...... Interestingly, this silly man specifically pointed to our plastic Zulu War, our WW2 Germans and our Foreign Legion as 'proof' of our early good works allegedly sculpted by this former sculptor who the dealer liked...the only problem with the tale was that NONE of the sets he referred to were sculpted by his buddy........NONE
Those who fail to'pass on" specials to collectors are terminated. I am tired of giving extra discounts to dealers when we run specials only to find that the dealer never passes the special along to collectors.....instead he just increases his profit margin. One dealer going to the February Florida toy soldier show called and asked for special discounts so he could match these at the show. We offered to do so, IF he agreed in writing to pass the specials along and told him we would prominently post on our web page that he would be at the show and offering the specials.......he didn't like either idea....wonder why....
Those who buy our product & then sell or trade it to unapproved dealers will be terminated. You are only a 'distributor' if we have entered into a distributor " contract with you & at present no one is or likely to be. Your selling product to those disapproved as Conte dealers or any other dealers is wrong and will be grounds for immediate termination......
And so on..... so many infractions..so little space and time to write about them all.......and I haven't even touched the ones dealers have brought to my attention in the past week.......
Suffice it to say , the playing field is being made level....and those wrongdoers who claim to so love history have now become history ..at least so far as we are concerned. I've eliminated many dealers from this blast. If I've sent this to you and (a) you want to be deleted from the mailing list please let me know < and (b) if you don't meet one of the underlined conditions listed above, please facilitate the process by letting me know.
We are open for business and taking & shipping orders. And very thankful to have this relocation behind us.....
Office # 919 957-3700
Fax 919 293-1708
email
einar1eye@aol.com
Looking forward to hearing from those of you who want to carry our product in this new environment.
My apologies to those of you who have 'played by the rules'while others did not.
Thanks for your patience.
Hail Ragnar
RC
--- I respect the great job RC had done in the past, absolutly great! Todays politicians are without any comment of mine. - Hans
