- Yo, what's up guys and welcome back.
Just one second.
Much better.
Why are you wearing the Golden state,
well I wore the hat because I like the color
and yeah, I didn't realize I was wearing
a Golden State Warriors hat.
Forgive me?
Say goodbye to USPC.
What's up guys?
I just wanted to chime in today
because there is some big news right now
in the playing card industry.
I've been receiving so many DMs and so many messages
from people who are very, very worried
about what is happening with USPCC.
That's the United States Playing Card Company.
Now I realize this video is not going to be for everyone.
There are a lot of people out there
who don't give a crap about playing cards,
and that are just here for other content.
That's cool!
We'll see you on the next video,
but today we're going to talk about playing cards.
Cartamundi, which is a European playing card company,
these guys by the way are massive.
They produce playing cards for board games
all over the world, and they also produce playing cards
for magicians and cardists alike.
So, they are a massive factory
that produces playing cards all over the world.
So big, in fact, if you look at the sales from last year,
USPCC sold for 112 million dollars of playing cards.
You've got to expect that this is like
a two, three million hundred dollar deal.
Now, I know a lot of you are worried
about what this is going to mean to the quality
of playing cards because some of you, like myself,
are so used to cards coming out of USPC.
They are by far my favorite cards.
I don't think any other company compares to their quality,
and not to say that Cartamundi or the cards printed
in Taiwan are not good quality.
They're great.
They're just not what I'm used to.
So, I understand a lot of you are scared
what's going to happen.
Will there be any major changes, and that type of thing?
Well, right now, this is the beginning phase.
You have to understand that there's a transition going on,
but aside from that, I don't think
that much is going to change.
So I reached out to both Cartamundi and USPC
if they wanted to go on the record
and kind of talk about what's going to happen.
So this is a message from Jirs.
If you don't know, Jirs is J-I-R-S.
This guy is really cool.
He's a cool dude.
I see him at magic conventions a lot,
and actually, as of last year,
I believe there was talk around Cartamundi acquiring USPC.
So for some of us, it's not a big surprise,
even though it came quite suddenly.
One thing I like about Jirs and what I like about Cartamundi
is that they are so invested in independent creators.
They are hugely invested in cardists and in magicians.
Not to say that USPCC wasn't, but the extra attention
that they go through to please the market,
obviously it's a market that they want to conquer.
They've got a whole team
that's basically helping out the guys on Kickstarter,
helping out people producing their cards.
So he writes hello Chris, we just want to take the time
to assure you and our other customers
that there is no need to worry
about possible changes in the future.
USPC is a renowned company with highly skilled staff
who, like us, are passionate for the products and customers.
The worldwide markets which USPC
operates are perfectly complementary to those of Cartamundi.
This transaction is expected to close
in the second half of 2019,
subject to customary closing conditions,
including regulatory approvals.
Until the acquisition is finalized,
it is business as usual for both Cartamundi and USPC.
So for now until the business is done,
until the final contracts are signed,
everything stays the same.
There will be no changes.
He continues, Cartamundi and USPC have
a very long heritage of outstanding manufacturing.
On top of that, it is our strategy to manufacture products
in the countries where they are consumed.
So they are not going to be taking
the United States factory and moving it to Europe.
I thought that would be a bad idea anyways.
I mean, import charges would be way too insane
for anybody to want to purchase playing cards
if that were the case, but that doesn't mean,
if I'm reading in between the lines, that doesn't mean
that their factory will stay in Kentucky.
He words it in a way to say that our manufactured products,
we want to manufacture products in the countries
where they are consumed.
So they never said they were going to keep the same factory.
These factories are state of the art and a great addition
to the Cartamundi manufacturing network.
We have no plans to make any major changes
to the products or finishes.
So there you have it.
No major changes coming, which is really good,
unless they're for the best, I'm totally on board.
I think it's great.
Obviously, I was a little worried as well.
He goes on by saying another very important point.
Both companies will continue
to operate independently of one another.
USPC and Cartamundi each have their own
manufacturing process and cost model.
Both companies are committed to delivering great value
to their customers in this competitive market.
Bicycle and other USPC brands
are iconic brands in their categories.
Together, we plan to further strengthen the brands
across the globe, and to even better service
the playing card community.
I hope this will answer your questions.
That's the official statement from Cartamundi.
I'm actually kind of excited because it's kind of like
rejuvenizing the whole playing card industry,
and it kind of needs to be shaken up,
and I think, you know, what better way to do that
than to take on a world wide market.
I also have a statement from USPC.
This is from the president, Michael W. Slaughter.
Dear customer, as a valued customer of our business,
we want to share with you that Newell brands announced today
that it signed a definitive agreement
to sell the United States Playing Card Company.
The buyer is Cartamundi Group,
a leading manufacturer and distributor
of playing cards and board games.
I believe that Cartamundi Group is the right owner for USPC.
The synergies between USPC and Cartamundi Group
will provide strategic value for both companies
and unlock significant growth potential.
We greatly appreciate your business
and anticipate this will be a smooth transition.
At this time we expect no changes
to our working relationship with you or organization
if you have any questions,
please do not hesitate reaching out.
So here are my two cents on this breaking news,
I'm quite happy that this is happening,
I think it's cool that this company,
Cartamundi's not a young company by any means,
they are massive and they've been around
for a very long time and they have literally
the utmost attention to quality,
even though their playing cards are not necessarily
something that I wanna use on a daily basis,
I have to admit, the way that they print cards,
the things that they can put on cards
are unlike anything we've seen in USPCC.
So when that goes with foil stamping,
it goes with all sorts of really really cool things
that they can add to the tuck case and the cards
that we've never thought of over here
or that we just can't produce.
Hopefully they can bring some of what they're doing
over at Cartamundi over to the United States
and improve the quality of USPCC playing cards
or should I say, the new Cartamundi.
That's also gonna be confusing.
I think that's something they're gonna have to look into
as well is how do we name these cards.
Because people are so fickle about their playing cards,
so they're gonna be Cartamundi which is their head office,
but then there's gonna be Cartamundi USA,
so it's gonna be tricky for people on Kickstarter
to be like, oh these cards were printed by Cartamundi,
people are gonna wanna know which factory
by Cartamundi they were printed by.
So I think that's something that they're gonna to have to
probably suss out for us to be able to tell the difference
before we end up buying the product.
Another point that I wanted to make is,
Cartamundi is very, and so is Taiwan by the way,
they're both extremely precise when it comes to
printing and cutting their playing cards,
although the quality of USPCC card stock and finish
is impeccable and amazing and I wouldn't change it,
the way that they print cards sometimes,
you get offset cards and I'm sure you guys
have received these or you've seen these
and that's just nothing that you have control over.
So in a batch of 20 or 30,000 decks,
you'll have a percentage of those decks,
maybe one to two percent that'll be off printed, off center,
so it makes the back design kinda wonky and weird looking
and it becomes a defect basically
and I've never seen that with Cartamundi,
the have a really really precise way of printing their cards
and cutting them as well, so that's really good.
Hopefully they can bring some of that technology
with what they're doing over there
and introduce it to the machinery
that we're using to print these cards over here.
That would be great.
Something else which I'm really excited to see
is how involved Cartamundi is going to be
with the cardistry community and the magic community,
now they're already quite involved,
by the way I have seen USPC at magic conventions as well
but I feel like the team over at Cartamundi
is just hungrier, they're the type of guys
who wanna innovate, they wanna make their customers happy,
they wanna grow this market exponentially,
they don't just wanna feed casinos with their cards
and Walmarts with their bicycles,
they absolutely wanna grow and better their company,
so I think that's a really good thing for both you and I.
I'll reiterate, as long as they are printing USPCC
quality cards, I have no quarrel with any of this,
you know there's gonna be some questions,
like what's gonna happen to the tuck case,
are they going to have the Cartamundi logo
on the bicycle backs, or probably not,
but are they gonna put it on the tuck case,
you know these are just small changes,
minor changes that we're probably gonna end up seeing.
It's gonna be interesting as well to have all the cards
that used to be printed in the Cartamundi factory in Europe
now have potential or chance to be printed over here
in North America, so we're gonna see a lot of those
really great cards that we fell in love with
at Cartamundi but the finish and the stock was like,
not the best maybe and now we're gonna be seeing them
maybe perhaps with a USPCC quality, which is really great.
As of right now, both companies are pretty,
pretty safe with their generalized statement
saying that nothing's gonna change, don't panic
and I really hope that they work hard to keep doing that
and I think that it's in their best interests
to make us happy, even though we're just such a small market
compared to their world wide market of board games
and casinos and everything else,
I think that the cardistry and the magic
and the playing card collecting market
is a big part, custom playing cards is a growing market
as you can tell by all the Kickstarters and everything else
so it's in their best interests to definitely keep us happy.
So that was my two cents on the whole matter,
sorry for the drawn out video, I just wanted
to hope on camera and give you guys a quick update
about how I feel and let me know
what you feel in the comments,
I know there was a lot of people on Twitter
and on Instagram hating on this and being like,
no the quality and everything else,
but hopefully this video reassures you a little bit more
that everything's gonna be fine, at least for now,
and let me know your thoughts below about this transition
and what you think it might bring
and what you hope to see with this new change coming up,
I look forward to reading those comments,
thanks for watching guys and we'll see you on the next video
peace.