We woke up this morning with news that Forces of Valor will once again be distributed through our principal supplier, Historic Sales. Under ordinary circumstances this would come as welcome news, however, Waltersons, the owner of Forces of Valor brand, seems to be bouncing between US distributors, claiming they are working with one distributor one minute, then another and finally another. Now, in their defense, its not unusual for a major manufacturer to work with more than one distributor particularly in the key North American market, however, changing wholesaling sources only serves to confuse both the retailer and consumer alike, with no real hard-and-fast information to work off of to either plan advertisements, alert our customers or distill these changes in a meaningful way.
Be that as it may, the latest sales solicitation calls for certain products to arrive during the late November/early December time frame. If its true, this is certainly great to hear since it means we can sell and ship out a lot of product for the upcoming holiday season. Truth be told, with nagging supply chain issues still affecting the distribution network, COVID, slowdowns in mail delivery and finally FOV’s spotty track record of hitting their release dates, we have decided to sell their upcoming items with the proviso that they will likely not make it in time for the holiday season. Prudence being what it is, I just want to make this fact abundantly clear if you plan on ordering any of their fourth quarter releases and hope to have them in hand prior to December 24th. I honestly do not think they will be available for sale until after the holidays, perhaps as late as January given what we are seeing in the global supply chain. I’m not trying to play the part of a Debbie Downer by poo-pooing this latest announcement but the fact remains that there are simply too many headwinds conspiring against them to say for certain that they will be in stock for Santa’s sleigh to go skis up and hit the air ways.
Anyway, the product in question appears under our November 2021 Upcoming Releases section. Anything else FOV may have been discussing on Facebook or elsewhere are more than likely expected some time in 2022. It is certainly possible that several items could be shipped to us by other distributors but that’s neither here nor there as far as this announcement goes. Now I don’t know about you but I’m going back to bed.
