Flavien Loisier, CEO of Hachette UK, announces the launch during his panel
It’s Saturday night, final talk of a packed day at Tabletop Gaming Live 2026. Flavien Loisier, CEO of Hachette UK, has promised something exclusive. Given that the company has already been at Toy Fair 2026 and Spielwarenmesse 2026 (Nuremberg Toy Fair) and made numerous announcements, what could there possibly be left to say? Just the fact that Hachette launched a B2C website half an hour before the talk, which contains all of its games. No biggy, then.
Flavien says the new website will contain around 280 lines in all, including accessories. But it isn’t looking to put anyone out of business and its practises will reflect that.
What is Hachette’s B2C website?
Here’s the edited text from the talk at Tabletop Gaming Live 2026, where Flavien was discussing the different roles that Hachette plays before making the announcement:
“So, we are a bit of weird one in between, we do the localisation and we do the distribution. So we share the love and because I’m gamer, it’s in my DNA as well to share that. And if I sign a game I have my energy from playing and seeing people enjoying them as well. So that’s, that’s why we are doing both.
“Which leads to the big announcement. So. you’re the first ones to know we launched 30 minutes ago, our own B2C website. Because we have now like 280 different games. There’s no shop in the country, we cannot ask a shop to carry them all. It’s not reasonable. But when I sign a game, I love it, and I want to share the love.
“And at the moment, for people who work on in IT, and to build the image of a game online, to build the SEO, it’s not possible. It’s a lot easier if you own the brand, basically. So it’s what we will do. So, weirdly enough, we will do a shop not expecting to sell on it, but it’s to build the image of the games. Obviously, if somebody wants to source and love our games, we will deliver, but we will not underprice anything, that will always be at the MSRP.
“So what you will find, most of the shops, online or even physical, we give a discount. When we are in conventions, we give a bit of a discount as well. You will not find it there [on the B2C site], but it’s really to build and to have the technological tool to share the love. And the last bit is for the older promo. It’s a logistical nightmare for shops. Therefore, gets to give them, or they don’t always have them, at least if people want the promo, they will have it on the shop.
“For the spare parts. It’s easier all that. So for us, it’s a big, big step, because I never wanted to do that, because we have so many shops. We have the games in but we found this technical limit. We want to increase what we spent in marketing online. But we cannot. We don’t want to direct [to a retailer], even if we love Zatu let’s say, we don’t want to. I mean, that wouldn’t be fair for others if we direct to a page or another. So that’s an exclusive for you. Any question on that, does it make sense? Does it shock you?”
It did indeed shock us. Flav went on to say that the B2C site will only offer a discount after other retailers have had the opportunity to benefit from that.
“And when we will put discount on it, we will have offered the discount to the shops two months in advance, so they will be able to give the discount for themselves, take their margin, and then we will offer it there as well. And the promo, all the additional time and all that, we offer them to the shops as well, but it will be there. We will have it at the same time than the shops, obviously as well. And you will have the convention pick up as well. So you place your order. If you want to secure the next Akropolis expansion, you can do book and pick up.”