Some things Topps could learn from Panini

For all the crap I, and you out there, give Panini for a lot of it's products I firmly believe it's a card company that gets it, at least with customers.  While we bitch about their over use of foil board, lack of inspired designs, and some of the terrible insert designs, there are things that Panini has started doing that I never thought I'd see from a trading card company. 

First lets start with Panini's website.  It's up to date, easy to navigate and  you can find checklists from the most recent products. As a matter of I wanted to see how up to date there checklists were so I went looking for the Patches and Plates checklist and guess what?  It's there. And P&P came out this week!  The last checklist Topps has up is for 2010 Platinum Football which came out this time last year.  Not only that but Panini maintains a blog,   The Knight's Lance, which is updated almost everyday,  Topps not so much.  And Panini has been using their blog to reach out to customers, consumers to Topps.  And Panini has been showing transparency by posting videos of their production techniques, how they do quality control, showing off teaser photos and other drool gallery stuff, and showing off there signing events.  None of which we have ever seen from Topps.  Will we ever?  Probably not.  And that's unfortunate for Topps because if you look at how Panini has embraced it online media outlet and seen the goodwill it puts towards it's customers and collector's you see exactly what's missing at the Topps Company. 

I'm not going to get into the whole controversy over Panini's redemption debacle.  I think that's been dissected and ranted about enough.  I will say that Topps not addressing  it's quality control issues or reassuring it's "consumers" has been one of the biggest points of contention with me this last year.  I find it disheartening that Topps had to hire a guy specifically to hand nothing but complaints and quality issues.  I am glad he's there but I would think that tightening the QC a little might save more money and face down the road.

QC at Topps has been a hot topic as of late.  Head over to the Priceless Pursuit and The MojoBeard for some heated debates on Topps, Quality control, boycotts and the like.