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 Peregrine wrote:

 frozenwastes wrote:
If you want a sports game or a smaller model count game, or a space ship game, or a variety of other things that GW used to sell, now they are not selling them at all. You simply have to go elsewhere. So even if they were cannibalizing the sales of 40k/WFB/LotR, cutting them didn't necessarily help.

Unless of course GW starts to believe their own propaganda about being their own Hobby (tm) independent of the miniature wargaming hobby, and having devoted fans who spend all their money with GW instead of customers who pick from a wide range of business depending on who is producing what they want.

I love this, from the own webpage:

Games Workshop wrote:Competition: There is no other retailer that competes directly with Games Workshop. However, as a distributor, we are mindful of not encroaching upon our third party retailers.

 puma713 wrote:
How often do you go into Barnes and Noble looking for a book you don't know exists?

IMO this is one of the few things they're doing well. If you go browse the scifi section you'll see Black Library novels displayed in a prominent position, and plenty of people still go into bookstores to just browse the shelves and see if anything looks interesting. And, unlike GW's own retail stores, these bookstores tend to be located in major malls and open during normal business hours.

 Peregrine wrote:

 puma713 wrote:
How often do you go into Barnes and Noble looking for a book you don't know exists?

IMO this is one of the few things they're doing well. If you go browse the scifi section you'll see Black Library novels displayed in a prominent position, and plenty of people still go into bookstores to just browse the shelves and see if anything looks interesting. And, unlike GW's own retail stores, these bookstores tend to be located in major malls and open during normal business hours.

I can see that. But in an age where digital books are making a giant push, I am willing to bet that bookstore foot traffic is down as well.

Also, if you want an interesting read (that pertains to this discussion), read up on their 'Retail Strategy' from their homepage. There's 12 pages, but it is interesting to see what they think of themselves and how they believe they portray their market:

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?aId=3500005

 puma713 wrote:
I can see that. But in an age where digital books are making a giant push, I willing to bet that bookstore foot traffic is down as well.

It's two different markets. Digital books and online stores for paper books are big, but most appealing when you know exactly what book you want and just want to get it as quickly and cheaply as possible. But that's not a very good substitute when you don't know what you want yet, and you're likely to go into a bookstore to browse. Plus, unlike GW's stores, bookstores are often in high-traffic locations (like major malls) where they can catch people who are out shopping for other reasons and decide to stop in the bookstore for a bit and see if anything catches their attention.

 Peregrine wrote:

 puma713 wrote:
I can see that. But in an age where digital books are making a giant push, I willing to bet that bookstore foot traffic is down as well.

It's two different markets. Digital books and online stores for paper books are big, but most appealing when you know exactly what book you want and just want to get it as quickly and cheaply as possible. But that's not a very good substitute when you don't know what you want yet, and you're likely to go into a bookstore to browse. Plus, unlike GW's stores, bookstores are often in high-traffic locations (like major malls) where they can catch people who are out shopping for other reasons and decide to stop in the bookstore for a bit and see if anything catches their attention.

Let's assume that that is enough to get them some advertisement - the question still looms: is it enough to sustain the business model, or does the new customer suffer the same problem that the foot traffic and the video gamer suffers - prohibitive startup costs?

 puma713 wrote:
Let's assume that that is enough to get them some advertisement - the question still looms: is it enough to sustain the business model, or does the new customer suffer the same problem that the foot traffic and the video gamer suffers - prohibitive startup costs?

Of course it's not enough to sustain their business model (see my previous comments about how stupid GW's lack of marketing is) by itself, I'm just saying that BL books and their presence in mainstream bookstores is one of the few intelligent marketing decisions GW has made.

 cincydooley wrote:
I see no problem with killing the B&Ms to one man operations. Is the retail space in any of them really large enough to warrant more than one FTE anyway?

It does risk being seen as inappropriate though. From their own corporate pages their sought after demographic are young males 14-24. Now you have an adult, on their own long term in a shop with minors. I work in a school and am aware of the very nasty situations that could arise from this, but GW seem unaware, as they continue to promote single man stores. Its asking for trouble, and then what will they do? Will their refusal to talk to the media serve them then?

I work in a school and am aware of the very nasty situations that could arise from this, but GW seem unaware, as they continue to promote single man stores. Its asking for trouble, and then what will they do?

Do GW staff get CRB checks? I suppose at least one person in a store must do if they're planning to run events and days that are aimed at a young audience.

Not that it's a cast-iron guarantee against something happening, but it's at least something to point to if people start talking about anything inappropriate.

As far as this disturbing trend goes.

Imagine a poor soul staffing a GW one man store. He sees a kid shop lifting, but is powerless to stop it , because his mates threaten him with accusations of inappropriate behaviour..

So this means the shop takes the standard practice of corner shops everywhere.<NO MORE THAN 2 CHILDREN AT A TIME IN THE SHOP>

CRB check only finds people who have already offended. I'm not actually worried that children will be molested in a GW store more than anywhere else. But I do think that one man stores place individual staff at risk. Teachers shouldn't be in a classroom alone with a single student for this reason unless the door is wide open. These are the sorts of boundaries to be aware of, and you will be if you work with children regularly. Shops catering to teenagers run by one unsupervised adult need to be careful, especially given GW's niche hobby, their sometimes socially inept customers/staff, and refusal to talk to the media ever makes them seem a bit secretive and weird, easy to be portrayed very negatively.

Just wanted to say that I agree with the analysis by frozenwastes and Peregrine.
And you don't need to have a Ph.D. in economics to look at the history of GW business decisions and see what has work and what not.
GW got the most new customers when:
1.) MB made standard advertising for Heroquest and Star Quest (including TV ads) and sold it in general toy stores.
2.) De Agostini made standard advertising for LOTR (including TV ads) and sold it in general newspaper stores.
Guess what: GW sales imploded when noone made standard advertising and noone sold in general toy or newspaper stores.

Random question:

Can you buy digital versions of GW's books (BL books specifically) at places like Amazon or Barnes & Noble, or are they all BL website only?

 Kroothawk wrote:
Just wanted to say that I agree with the analysis by frozenwastes and Peregrine.
And you don't need to have a Ph.D. in economics to look at the history of GW business decisions and see what has work and what not.
GW got the most new customers when:
1.) MB made standard advertising for Heroquest and Star Quest (including TV ads) and sold it in general toy stores.
2.) De Agostini made standard advertising for LOTR (including TV ads) and sold it in general newspaper stores.
Guess what: GW sales imploded when noone made standard advertising and noone sold in general toy or newspaper stores.

Milton Bradley in the 90s and De Agostini in the early 2000s did great things for GW. While my first contact with miniatures was through AD&D in the 80s, The very first miniatures I ever painted myself were from Heroquest and that game is pretty much the only reason I'm in the miniature wargaming hobby. I know this is true for tons of other people as well. And the massive sales GW reported during the LotR boom testify to the success of the De Agostini campaign. To the point that GW has said it was too successful in that they had to expand so rapidly to keep up with the demand it generated.

So I've changed my mind. That's where GW should be reinvesting their revenue. Marketing that reaches people outside of the typical gamer circles. Have De Agostini do a "Battles in the Dark Millennium" magazine for 40k. Match it with some great faction starters that come with a mini rulebook and some stats cards.

Just one commercial before the 2nd Hobbit movie would do wonders ... until potential customers see the Hobbit prices that is

Also keep in mind that toy soldiers have been THE toy product for boys for 200 years ... until GW's abysmal marketing made it a niche.

 frozenwastes wrote:
So I've changed my mind.

I still agree with you

I have no idea who's actually supposed to be buying The Hobbit stuff. I don't know where a local Canadian 13 year old is supposed to get $100 for just the rulebook. A $50/37.50 €/£32.50 starter product they advertise before the 2nd Hobbit movie and try to get into other toy stores and department stores and they could have another revenue explosion on their hands. Unless they've damaged their ability to produce by laying off their highest paid production staff over the last five years. They weren't able to properly produce Tau to the right quantity so maybe GW simply can't handle increased volume anymore. Maybe they've cut back too much to be able to ever grow again without investing heavily in production again.

If the Hobbit is selling at any volume that actually makes GW happy, then it's more proof that they can keep jacking up prices on 40k and WFB and people will pay it. It's like they are testing doubling down on their current strategy with the Hobbit. If it doesn't do great, they can be happy they prevented any competitor from getting the license but if it actually sells, then the sky's the limit on future 40k/WFB price increases.

 cincydooley wrote:
You all must run the most successful businesses! Where can I buy your company stock!

Have to say, this comment just made me laugh (out loud, in fact).

It's just such a neat, conservative, little beauty of a trolling post. Made more powerful by its elegant simplicity, just dropped in there when people had been making 4-5 paragraph posts previously in an attempt to put across their point of view, and it must have served to anger every one of them.

Absolutely stunning - years of posting on forums can help you to appreciate the skill behind such a comment.

 cincydooley wrote:
You all must run the most successful businesses! Where can I buy your company stock!

Ok! A little late, but so we are clear.

I have studied business at college (in the UK not American sense)
I was one of the top sales people in the third largest company in its sector by 23
At 25 I became one of that company's youngest branch managers
At 26 I became responsible for 9 separate stores.
When that company fell victim to poor management (believe me, I see parallels with some of the actions GW takes) and the recession, 4 years ago, I became self employed and director of my own company.
Last year I had to close the company due to ill health, but my company was well regarded by my customers and was growing despite the prevailing economic situation.
I have been unable to work since June 2012.

Hopefully that makes me qualified enough to offer my own opinion, if not, kindly let me know and I'll go away and try to become a better person so my opinion is worth something in your eyes.

Shhhh. Whiteknights don't care about facts. GW management could walk into their house, kill *insert pet* in front of them in a grotesque manner and charge them $100 for it and they'd still defend them. Kirby could record a lewd session with their mother while the whole GW team watched and applauded and they'd still defend them.

Hell, I own GW stock and I don't defend the company. I do, however, use my dividends to buy my armies; kind of like GW paying me to buy their toys. After selling half of my stock, I buy less now though.

 agnosto wrote:
Shhhh. Whiteknights don't care about facts. GW management could walk into their house, kill *insert pet* in front of them in a grotesque manner and charge them $100 for it and they'd still defend them. Kirby could record a lewd session with their mother while the whole GW team watched and applauded and they'd still defend them.

H

Good to see that simply pointing out that GW might not be going bust, despite the evidence of a few acquaintances and vague anecdotal evidence, really draws such a rational response!

Every single time, without fail, when there is a thread discussing GW's financial health, someone will come into the thread and say something like what cincydooley posted.

It used to also be that there would be, also like clockwork, posters who pop in to declare the end of GW is right around the corner. Kroothawk probably comes the closest in this thread, by pointing at the doubling of LOTR and Dire Avenger prices as being a sign of something dire. But even he didn't repeat the tired cliche of predicting immediate catastrophic failure. And later in the thread he expanded on his position with some actual data. And still no prediction of immediate collapse or catastrophe.

This has been one of the most balanced discussions of GW's business on the internet.

Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:

 agnosto wrote:
Shhhh. Whiteknights don't care about facts. GW management could walk into their house, kill *insert pet* in front of them in a grotesque manner and charge them $100 for it and they'd still defend them. Kirby could record a lewd session with their mother while the whole GW team watched and applauded and they'd still defend them.

H

Good to see that simply pointing out that GW might not be going bust, despite the evidence of a few acquaintances and vague anecdotal evidence, really draws such a rational response!

Naw, don't you know the internet is all about hyperbole? You HAVE to take things all out of proportion or no one will take you seriously.

I agree the company's not going belly-up but they could do things so much better in a marketing sense; it's like they don't care about growing their customer base. I communicated with Tom Kirby via email about this about a year ago and his response was just party-line drivel. Companies that don't advertise, have difficulty growing. Kroot made some good points a few posts up, the proof is in the numbers; when the company put itself out there, it sold more. I actually have "put my money where my mouth is" in that I invested my own money in the company because I believe in it and want it to succeed; of course when I was a Social Worker, years ago, I felt the same way about the meth-heads that walked into my office.

I would also like to point at this thread:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/519620.page

In March this year, within one week of CEO Mark Wells stepping down, large investors massively sold GW stock, while a few bought it:
The Nomad Investment Partnership LP 16.2% (- 645,859 shares, January 18.7%)
Investec Asset Management Ltd 9.7% (- 2,612,235 shares, January 18.3%)
Ruffer LLP 8.1% (+ 1,757,260 shares, January 2.5%)
Tom Kirby 6.7% (same)
Phoenix Asset Management Partners Ltd. 5.9% (- 1,034,782 shares, January 9.3%)
FIL Limited 5.5% (+ 953,900 shares, January 2.5%)

(Sold 4,292,876 , bought 2,711,160)

This is going on in May:
The Nomad Investment Partnership L.P. selling another 105,000 shares (9th may)
Ruffer LLP selling again 75,000 shares (17th may)
although in April:
Artemis Investment Management LLP bought 50,001shares.

Keep in mind that for years, there was almost no change in shareholders.

And we still don't know, why Wells stepped down so suddenly.

 agnosto wrote:

Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:

 agnosto wrote:
Shhhh. Whiteknights don't care about facts. GW management could walk into their house, kill *insert pet* in front of them in a grotesque manner and charge them $100 for it and they'd still defend them. Kirby could record a lewd session with their mother while the whole GW team watched and applauded and they'd still defend them.

H

Good to see that simply pointing out that GW might not be going bust, despite the evidence of a few acquaintances and vague anecdotal evidence, really draws such a rational response!

Naw, don't you know the internet is all about hyperbole? You HAVE to take things all out of proportion or no one will take you seriously.

I agree the company's not going belly-up but they could do things so much better in a marketing sense; it's like they don't care about growing their customer base. I communicated with Tom Kirby via email about this about a year ago and his response was just party-line drivel. Companies that don't advertise, have difficulty growing. Kroot made some good points a few posts up, the proof is in the numbers; when the company put itself out there, it sold more. I actually have "put my money where my mouth is" in that I invested my own money in the company because I believe in it and want it to succeed; of course when I was a Social Worker, years ago, I felt the same way about the meth-heads that walked into my office.

Don't we have have to consider that GW most probably believes their stores ARE their advertising?

Not only that, but don't we also have to consider the marketing of their competitors and their subsequent options? I don't know if I've ever seen GW advertise in any trade publications in the US (never have seen one in GTM, Geek, or Wired). In that same regard, I don't know that I've ever seen any for Warmahordes either. When Space Marine was being released for the consoles, I saw ads for that (though I'm sure Relic was responsible for that). But I can honestly say I'm not sure I've seen ads for any miniatures game apart from in Ravage.

We agree that GW could do more to advertise, but where do they start? And are there any precedents for them to use as a basis for that marketing?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kroothawk wrote:
I would also like to point at this thread:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/519620.page

In March this year, within one week of CEO Mark Wells stepping down, large investors massively sold GW stock, while a few bought it:
The Nomad Investment Partnership LP 16.2% (- 645,859 shares, January 18.7%)
Investec Asset Management Ltd 9.7% (- 2,612,235 shares, January 18.3%)
Ruffer LLP 8.1% (+ 1,757,260 shares, January 2.5%)
Tom Kirby 6.7% (same)
Phoenix Asset Management Partners Ltd. 5.9% (- 1,034,782 shares, January 9.3%)
FIL Limited 5.5% (+ 953,900 shares, January 2.5%)

(Sold 4,292,876 , bought 2,711,160)

This is going on in May:
The Nomad Investment Partnership L.P. selling another 105,000 shares (9th may)
Ruffer LLP selling again 75,000 shares (17th may)
although in April:
Artemis Investment Management LLP bought 50,001shares.

Keep in mind that for years, there was almost no change in shareholders.

And we still don't know, why Wells stepped down so suddenly.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't GW stock the best it's been in the past 12 months?

And again, I'm not great at reading the stock ticker or shareholder sheets, but doesn't Nomads sale only account for like, 2% of their total holdings? Is 2% really a sky-is-falling situation?

1.) It's still ca. 4.5 Mio GBP sold and more than 10% of their total (about 2% of GW's total).
2.) The more interesting part is that #2, Investec Asset Management Ltd, almost halved its stock.
3.) There is obviously something serious going on there with CEO gone and major changes in shareholders, we just don't know what it is.
4.) I am not saying that the collapse is imminent, but we have a steady decline, and this is a non-linear process with a threshold above one customer buying one plastic box for 20 Mio GBP.

 cincydooley wrote:
Don't we have have to consider that GW most probably believes their stores ARE their advertising?

For all we know, GW could believe that Tom Kirby's dog is their advertising. Not unthinkable for a company, that tries to prove in court that they invented halberds, arrows and Roman numbers
The only thing that made them known to a wide public recently were the follies of their lawyers, with C&D letters being GW's idea of public relations

 cincydooley wrote:
You can have an opinion, but unless you've run your own business or been a part of a public company's decision making process, it means about as much here as it would for me to give le maz lessons.

Good old times, when only nobles with proven noble ancestry were allowed to post their opinion

The tourney/competative growd have never been GW's target audience. I doubt they even consider them when designing rules/models, so anecdotal evidence of tournament go-ers giving up 40k isn't that helpful.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kroothawk wrote:
. Not unthinkable for a company, that tries to prove in court that they invented halberds, arrows and Roman numbers

Source on this?

Chapterhouse lawsuit.
Actually they included this in their claims, but when asked couldn't prove that they owned the IP on fur, haberds, skulls and Roman numbers, so the most obvious false claims were retracted. Still in is the shape of big rounded shoulder pads (a.o. featured in Judge Dredd) and Moorcock's Chaos Star. Background: Chapterhouse made shoulderpads with arrows and Roman numbers etc. and GW claimed IP breach.

Keep in mind that this lawsuits costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more than a million, while GW thinks advertising is wasted money.

 BryllCream wrote:
The tourney/competative growd have never been GW's target audience. I doubt they even consider them when designing rules/models, so anecdotal evidence of tournament go-ers giving up 40k isn't that helpful.

Yeah, GW has never given prize support or run their own tournaments, nor did they ever mention tournaments in any rule books.
Oh, wait, they did all those things. I forgot.

 cincydooley wrote:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't GW stock the best it's been in the past 12 months?

And again, I'm not great at reading the stock ticker or shareholder sheets, but doesn't Nomads sale only account for like, 2% of their total holdings? Is 2% really a sky-is-falling situation?

GW's share price is just a bit off their yearly high. All it takes is one bad press release and things can spiral down so fast. Or some really good news and they can shoot up. That's the nature of trading in smaller companies on the stock market. They are far, far more volatile. Too much risk for me.

The thing to remember about 2% of their total holdings is that typically the actual volume of shares that trade for GW are relatively low. An average of 45,000 or so. So when the daily average shares change hands in a day. This is out of almost 32 million shares. Years and years have gone by without one of the major institutional investors selling their shares and now the institutional investors have sold (net of purchases) around 50 times what normally trades in a day.

The fact that the stock has not plummeted in the face of such a large volume being sold shows that these fund operators are experts. They're selling into strength and unwinding their positions patiently so as to not spook the market with large sell orders. The fact that the market absorbed these sales and continued to increase the price of GW's shares also goes to show that their stock is in high demand.

But the market as a whole doesn't have the real info. They (like us) don't know why Mark Wells left. While the institutional investors can likely get the man on the phone and get his candid opinion about the operation. And I bet Kirby called every one of those fund managers to do damage control so they wouldn't sell. When you have a sudden departure of a key member of management, you need to have a chat with your institutional investors.

Whatever the cause was of all these events was, it is at the very least a departure from the status quo.

 BryllCream wrote:
The tourney/competative growd have never been GW's target audience. I doubt they even consider them when designing rules/models, so anecdotal evidence of tournament go-ers giving up 40k isn't that helpful.

Which, when you think about it, is a problem all of itself.

They aren't willing to accommodate a sub faction of wargamers who will spend a fortune in order to try and construct the most competitive list possible, then completely dump it and purchase a new load of models when the next update rolls around.

Of course, one could argue that a balanced competitive scene wouldn't result in quite that behaviour, but anyone who is serious enough about something to do it competitively is normally willing to spend serious money in it.

Perhaps its another example of GWs apparent desire to manage its performance rather than earn to its full potential.

Appreciate that explanation frozen. I don't actively manage my portfolio so I'm not real accustomed to reading some of the stock information you can find on the various google money sites.

It looks like the GW stock is, at least really stable, with a dip (presumably when Wells left?) that seems to have been completely recovered from.