Thursday, July 10, 2008

Class-Action lawsuit filed against Ganz, maker of Webkinz

Ganz, the folks who bring you the über popular Webkinz line of plush, was sued by a California retailer, who claims the company is in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act. Allegedly, Ganz has required retailers to order non Webkinz items in order to be eligible to purchase the Webkinz themselves. Check out this article on Playthings.com

They strong armed us, 'suggesting' we order non Webkinz stuff to keep Webkinz coming in. Our sales rep said it was all stuff that would sell anyway. Famous last words. We still have 90% of the Halloween 'stuff' they sold us. And it's stuff I never would have stocked if it wasn't 'suggested' to us.

Funny stuff, reminiscent of the way the Beanie Baby folks treated customers back when they were all the rage. Check out this old post to see my thoughts on them. I'm not sure exactly who writes the book on dropping customer service when your product is hot, but it seems to me that you might want to keep customers interested in your products, due to the inevitable day coming when your 'fad' items pass into history.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There are currently four federal cases filed against GANZ - three class actions, and one other.

The first one in line is Station Enterprises, Inc. vs GANZ for basically all the same things that the three class actions are talking about.

The others are Nuts For Candy in California, a company in Chicago, and a company in Boston. GANZ is moving to consolidate the classes in California where the courts tend to rule in favor of the plaintiff in business cases.

Fun, huh?

Anonymous said...

Does anyone know if other retailers can join this lawsuit? We were totally screwed by Ganz and now their collections attorneys are on us. I want to return their crappy product they forced us to buy to get Webkinz that we did NOT ever get!!! Any suggestions??