by JohnnyDollar
Thanks for the updated info. I'm glad he was able to rescue 7000+ copies from getting trashed, that would've been a tragedy.(If Z-Man were at the point of dumpstering them couldn't they just donate them all to a local school system or something?! For a nice tax write-off too. I don't understand that "trashing" policy.)
Personally I really like the look of the Z-man edition, it's very stylish and different from Chess (I would have a hard time playing Chess with these pieces). Honestly even with different pieces and a rethemed board I don't think that would make much difference in sales... abstracts are just too hard a sell, too much of a niche. Maybe more of a marketing strategy would help, or maybe try to pitch it towards the educational system, like have high school or middle school promotional activities.
Then again, DVONN was published around the same time and has 6X as many owners on BGG despite having a similar average rating, and it's an abstract, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. :D Although DVONN does have more publishers than Arimaa, so maybe that reflects more of an international sales vs. domestic thing...