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Azreal13 wrote:Well, seeing as I haven't yet written this in a post today..

The issue isn't price, it is value. Value is a much easier issue to address and potentially much less traumatic to the bottom line than price cuts.

I think you're definitely talking sense here.

I listened to an interview with the guy who owns Victrix (maker of historical plastics) and he was talking about the pricing issue per kit and how things people may only buy one or two off just need to cost more. So where did he end up with the reletively recent ancient Greek release?

£22.95 for the regular kits and £29.95 for the ones that will sell at lower volumes. The key difference beyond the price: Normal kits have 48 figures and the expensive ones have 56.

The exact opposite approach of GW's 5 model elite boxes. And Victrix is able to do this without owning his own tooling machines and having to outsource much of the production process.

GW likely can't survive slicing the price of kits, but they can revisit their contents and sprue design going forward. The Blightkings are a perfect example:

5 models with 21 weapon arms with the 11 torsos and 17 head options. All they had to do was find the room for 5 more legs and the kit could have been released at 10 models per box. 11 torsos for 5 models is just wasting sprue space to intentionally give your customer less models for the money.

Over the weekend I got bored and so I decided to find out how GW has fared since January 2007 to October 2014 within the Australian Market.

What I got was a shock at how bad the situation has befallen GW and why it posted sales loss after sales loss.

During this period GW started out with 28 stores (previous WD magazines did not list GW Stores).

From 28 stores its gross expansion rose to 53 stores, meaning they opened a further 25 stores, however in that time they have closed 16 stores.

A net increase of just 9 stores in under 4 years, however the bulk of those stores were Hobby Stores and one Battle Bunker a massive reduction of the size of their stores.

From January 2007 to October 2014 has had at various times 425 Independent stockists reaching a peak of 290 independent stockists.

Now the barely have 90 independent stockist and for what ever the reason GW has lost 335 independent stockists that no longer sell their product.

I can tell of what I have been told and that GW is looking at posting a record sales loss for their mid-year reporting period, it is expected that they are looking at over 1.5 million pounds.

They are looking at a total year of over 3 million pounds, that means that GW again needs to cut over 3 million pounds out of its operational expenditure to make an operational profit.

GW standard practice now is to cut costs yearly rather than try and sell more product.

 Achaylus72 wrote:

I can tell of what I have been told and that GW is looking at posting a record sales loss for their mid-year reporting period, it is expected that they are looking at over 1.5 million pounds.

They are looking at a total year of over 3 million pounds, that means that GW again needs to cut over 3 million pounds out of its operational expenditure to make an operational profit.

GW standard practice now is to cut costs yearly rather than try and sell more product.

Forgive me, your phrasing is a little unusual, but are you saying someone has told you that GW are tracking to post a loss for the first half of this year?

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Achaylus72 wrote:

I can tell of what I have been told and that GW is looking at posting a record sales loss for their mid-year reporting period, it is expected that they are looking at over 1.5 million pounds.

They are looking at a total year of over 3 million pounds, that means that GW again needs to cut over 3 million pounds out of its operational expenditure to make an operational profit.

GW standard practice now is to cut costs yearly rather than try and sell more product.

Forgive me, your phrasing is a little unusual, but are you saying someone has told you that GW are tracking to post a loss for the first half of this year?

Sorry for the confusion. What I meant was that following on from the full year report of 2013/14 which saw a full year sales loss of over 2 million pounds, the next half year report for the later half of 2014 will see a massive half year sales loss of 1.5 million pounds.
Also the following full year report of 2014/15 will reveal a massive 3 million pound + sales loss in their forward projections. Incidently will see GW go under the 10 million pounds of total sales for the first time in its history. So this again would mean that GW has to gut a further 3 million pounds out of its operational side of things to post a false profit. GW only know one thing to make the investors happy and that is rather sell more product they slash and burn their operational regime year in and year out, they know no other way, it is entrenched policy.

Question is are they going to shut down in the year future if they don't change direction?

 Achaylus72 wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Achaylus72 wrote:

I can tell of what I have been told and that GW is looking at posting a record sales loss for their mid-year reporting period, it is expected that they are looking at over 1.5 million pounds.

They are looking at a total year of over 3 million pounds, that means that GW again needs to cut over 3 million pounds out of its operational expenditure to make an operational profit.

GW standard practice now is to cut costs yearly rather than try and sell more product.

Forgive me, your phrasing is a little unusual, but are you saying someone has told you that GW are tracking to post a loss for the first half of this year?

Sorry for the confusion. What I meant was that following on from the full year report of 2013/14 which saw a full year sales loss of over 2 million pounds, the next half year report for the later half of 2014 will see a massive half year sales loss of 1.5 million pounds.
Also the following full year report of 2014/15 will reveal a massive 3 million pound + sales loss in their forward projections. Incidently will see GW go under the 10 million pounds of total sales for the first time in its history. So this again would mean that GW has to gut a further 3 million pounds out of its operational side of things to post a false profit. GW only know one thing to make the investors happy and that is rather sell more product they slash and burn their operational regime year in and year out, they know no other way, it is entrenched policy.

Eh? Where on earth are you getting this from?

It his opinion, although he appeared to phrase it as some sort of inside news, based on extrapolating their recent couple of reports, as far as I can tell.

kerikhaos wrote:Question is are they going to shut down in the year future if they don't change direction?

In a year? No. In the "near" future? The answer changes depending on your definition of near and your definition of shut down, but still likely no.

They'll continue on their managed decline, prioritizing protecting their margins over supporting their revenue and unless they get a huge revenue shock, they'll be able to keep doing so. You can see why in people's signatures when they list multiple armies of thousands of points each. There are probably enough people willing to keep paying what GW is asking even at FW prices for plastic miniatures. Instead of having 5000 pts of this and 4000 pts of that, we'll see people with 2000 and 1500 but having paid the same amount of money.

 frozenwastes wrote:

kerikhaos wrote:Question is are they going to shut down in the year future if they don't change direction?

In a year? No. In the "near" future? The answer changes depending on your definition of near and your definition of shut down, but still likely no.

They'll continue on their managed decline, prioritizing protecting their margins over supporting their revenue and unless they get a huge revenue shock, they'll be able to keep doing so. You can see why in people's signatures when they list multiple armies of thousands of points each. There are probably enough people willing to keep paying what GW is asking even at FW prices for plastic miniatures. Instead of having 5000 pts of this and 4000 pts of that, we'll see people with 2000 and 1500 but having paid the same amount of money.

What makes you think it's a managed decline? Their costs dropped slower than their revenue. Also why on earth would any company want to be in a managed decline in a market that they not only used to have a near monopoly on, but one that is expanding by double digit percentages YOY?

 Daedleh wrote:

 frozenwastes wrote:

kerikhaos wrote:Question is are they going to shut down in the year future if they don't change direction?

In a year? No. In the "near" future? The answer changes depending on your definition of near and your definition of shut down, but still likely no.

They'll continue on their managed decline, prioritizing protecting their margins over supporting their revenue and unless they get a huge revenue shock, they'll be able to keep doing so. You can see why in people's signatures when they list multiple armies of thousands of points each. There are probably enough people willing to keep paying what GW is asking even at FW prices for plastic miniatures. Instead of having 5000 pts of this and 4000 pts of that, we'll see people with 2000 and 1500 but having paid the same amount of money.

What makes you think it's a managed decline? Their costs dropped slower than their revenue. Also why on earth would any company want to be in a managed decline in a market that they not only used to have a near monopoly on, but one that is expanding by double digit percentages YOY?

Because their management is insane and arrogant and think that they still have a near monopoly. A constant stream of new products isn't a bad thing but when it's all very overpriced for what you get, plus the expensive rules and a lack of caring about writing concise or balanced rules...

I just find it hard to believe the peeps in charge are such plonked. To what end will this play out having this kind of business mind? Isn't it obvious they are losing power under the GW hood??

 Daedleh wrote:

 frozenwastes wrote:

kerikhaos wrote:Question is are they going to shut down in the year future if they don't change direction?

In a year? No. In the "near" future? The answer changes depending on your definition of near and your definition of shut down, but still likely no.

They'll continue on their managed decline, prioritizing protecting their margins over supporting their revenue and unless they get a huge revenue shock, they'll be able to keep doing so. You can see why in people's signatures when they list multiple armies of thousands of points each. There are probably enough people willing to keep paying what GW is asking even at FW prices for plastic miniatures. Instead of having 5000 pts of this and 4000 pts of that, we'll see people with 2000 and 1500 but having paid the same amount of money.

What makes you think it's a managed decline? Their costs dropped slower than their revenue. Also why on earth would any company want to be in a managed decline in a market that they not only used to have a near monopoly on, but one that is expanding by double digit percentages YOY?

It's considered a managed decline because they are still fighting against it. If it wasn't managed, they would be in the red a year ago if not sooner. I doubt they want to decline, but the company is failing nonetheless because of mismanagement and dartboard marketing.

Yes, "managed" doesn't mean intentional. It means they're doing the best they can to control a decline they see happening anyway. Sometimes industry insiders get it wrong. I don't know how many times Ryan Dancy (ex Wizards of the Coast guy) has predicted the end of table top gaming and been wrong.

I think GW is making the wrong choice going after protecting margins over their market share. But it is what they are doing.