We lost some ground in 1999. No big money titles (DAK or THG, for example) combined with two weak releases (Malvern Hill-927 units over 8 months and Aspern-Essling 724 over two months) show an overall drop in revenue to $347,539 from 1998's $387,624. Meanwhile, overall unit sales (Gamers' Games) dropped from 7,798 to 6,680. That's the bad news.

Significantly, the new game portion of the total revenue went from 55% in 1997 to 32% in 1998 to 39% in 1999.

This shows three things:

1) The carry-over of 1997 new game sales into 1998 (DAK),

2) the major early 1998 effect of our "Fire Sales", and

3) the relative weakness of two of the 1999 releases (MH and AE). It also shows that about 60% of our income is something other than "new games" (old games, other stuff).

Lastly, of the money poured into inventory (another cash expense as far as I'm concerned) most all of it (less amounts spent on magazine production and counter trays) comes from new games. Much of the loss from the year can be traced to change in inventory value-something the IRS and accountants point to as not an actual expense, leaving us with a technical (and taxable!) profit for the year (not in my book as I prefer cash basis accounting, but they didn't ask me ... )

Postage rates soared during the year. We shipped lots of stuff, plus did a number of extremely large (for us, anyway) mailings. In the latter part of last year, we developed over $15,000 in postage fees owed to the postage machine company (they run a sort of credit card for their postage). This load had to be shifted about to avoid the exorbitant interest they charge for the "privilege". We will be paying that off over the first half of 2000.

Was last year all negative for us? Certainly not! Burma and (to a lesser extent) Gazala sold quite well (Burma will be out of print sometime next year). The Japanese and European Service Bureaus really took off last year and I'm looking forward to their results in 2000. Cash Expenses for the year dropped by some 20% from 1998 levels and include some major costs that won't be incurred again in 2000 (capital improvements and such).

Further good news is that the new batch system worked well at redistributing my work load and the new Honcho/Helper set up will (finally) break the logjam of games in development.

The web site continues to grow and improve with the new shopping cart becoming operational last year and many more features and functions will be added. It won't be long before you can down-load all the older game's game specific rules as PDF files there.

Late last year we did our first e-mail flyer to over 2,000 of you. More and more of our marketing effort will be conducted via e-mail and the web site. Frankly, we can't support the kinds of old-fashioned mailings we did last year. We are too small to get the full-blown bulk rates, but too large to just suck it up.

Active customers climbed by around 200 and the raw customer list continues its climb to over 8,000 and has finally begun to show a small amount of population normalcy (it is no longer a straight line, but has changed its climb rate by some 10 degrees ... ) .

We brought in no less than $53,000 in all the odds and ends we sell (and that doesn't even count our older game sales, the over $10k countertrays brought in, or the $28k from Operations itself). This is a pointer to the future for us. See my Outbrief for more.

Game Units Sold:
1996: 8,996
1997: 9,152
1998: 7,798
1999: 6,680

Customer List:
(Jan of each year)
1997 6,250
1998 7,075
1999 7,587
2000 8,148

Revenues and Releases:
Year	Revenues	Game Releases
1996	$288,799	4
1997	$434,375	5
1998	$387,624	2
1999	$347,539	4

Cost of Manufacturing Games (Cash put into Inventory)
Year	Cash	Per Release
1996	$49,830	$12,457
1997	$77,651	$15,530
1998	$31,617	$15,808
1999	$72,974	$18,243

Cash Expenses
1996 $255,636
1997 $396,664
1998 $395,545
1999 $316,462

Cash Flow
1996 $33,163
1997 $36,680
1998 ($7,920)
1999 ($41,897)

Game Unit Sales
In Their Quiet Fields 129
No Better Place to Die 65
April's Harvest 100
Champion Hill 83
Gaines Mill 82
Seven Pines 126
Malvern Hill 927
Matanikau 58
GD'40 65
Hunters from the Sky 58
Black Wednesday 131
Leros 120
GD'41 119
Semper Fi! 115
A Raging Storm 95
Enemy at the Gates 126
Tunisia 127
Hube's Pocket 113
DAK 18
Burma 1,320
Stalingrad Pocket 164
Ardennes 116
Yom Kippur 96
Crusader 143
Gazala 1,085
Austerlitz 100
Marengo 125
Aspern-Essling 724
This Hallowed Ground 149