USPCC would only buy a company that has tech that it wants (and doesn't want to develop itself). Look at the purchases of Kem, Fournier, Gemaco ... This was for the technology and presses. Buying and killing the likes of E or T11, or The Twins will not gain USPCC anything it doesn't already have. They would simply be taking over a customer, bad for business. Don't bother wasting time speculating on this, USPCC will not spend the cash on buying customers, it would be bad for the bottom line.
It wasn't always tech - it was sometimes just a fast way to grow, not much different than Microsoft has done - though for MS it IS usually the tech they want! But with USPC, sometimes it was buying out a competitor to simply have one less competitor.
Many of the possible "targets" do have something USPC lacks - some degree of creative vision. It's why T11 is consulting for them in the first place, really. (Although there are people here would would argue whether T11 actually has creative vision or just a case of cataracts...)
I think some of us are taking this thread a little too seriously. The question was a what if" question. I don't think any of us think that something like this will actually happen. But the question is what if it did happen?
EXACTLY! We're spitballing about what the ramifications would be IF some such thing occurred, that's all. I mean, what if USPC waved a check in front of Brad Christian's face that had too many zeros in it to ignore? Or John Bayme, or the Buck twins, or David Blaine or any other company.
Alex, what if USPC tossed you a big, fat check, said they want your business, but they wanted you to continue on as a VP in charge of R&D and Custom Card Design? Imagine further if they tossed in a budget to go with it and said "we like your vision, and we want it to be our vision in custom card manufacture."? Could you imagine yourself saying "yes"? How about you, Paul - what if they wanted to do this with Encarded because they loved what you did with the Tendril deck?
Granted, all this would entail a sea change at USPC - perhaps a big loss of market share or another buyout by the company's employees or something. Otherwise, yes, they would simply be absorbing your firm to cut out a competitor - though you aren't really a competitor since they're doing practically nil in the creativity department other than reprints of old designs. The most "creative" things I've seen them do recently were the Dog and Cat decks, "America the Beautiful" and Tragic Royalty. And they really aren't even recent.