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I'm a new FLGS owner, opened in October. This week ACD Distribution of Madison, Wisconsin held their Games Day for store owners. Basically, a convention/open house for retailers to check out new products coming out and to meet distributor reps. Manufacturers are present to show their new releases and informm retailers. This was my first appearance as a store owner. I knew that GW would be there to do a seminar and to talk to retailers of any problems, including new trade policy. Backstory leading up to Thursday.

On Monday, I ordered our store's Tau, I went reasonably conservative. On Wednesday after running some errands, I come in to store to hear that we may not be getting our order due to shortage of product. I'm like I have to call rep and hear this myself. He confirms that he has no idea what will or will not be getting. I'm like what a mickey mouse outfit. I proceed to start reading various online discussions, mildly amused. I decide I should go down to ACD day the night before instead of very early Thursday morning. GW seminar was scheduled for 8am. I'm all fired up to hear what GW's North American director of sales has to say. I get a front row seat and eventually room fills. GW's boys start by saying they will be doing a powerpoint presentation, show quick effective ways to teach painting, and a quick game play demo called "space marine paintball". At 8:04 GW NA sales director Brandan Bell, says he will take a few questions while they get computer going. He starts by saying a list is going around for everyone to sign, signees will get starter paint set for being at seminar. Brendan filled a cup of ice water and began taking questions. It wasn't pretty, many answers were cookie cutter company line nonsense including no information on upcoming releases, relunctance to tell why corporate refuses to extend lead time of new releases, the Tau debacle, etc. He really doesn't have answers or is probably directed to say nothing by GW. Two more glasses of ice water and several mouthfuls of ice later, the computer still has not fired up. All the time Brendan is taking some tough questions. He has little to offer, but simply saying that GW has a supply chain problem that may take 3-6 months to resolve. He They go into miserable demo of SM paintball. Simply rolling a 4 to wound grants a flick of brush to smear paint on SM. Really, really? That is their idea what retailers can do to promote the Fantasy/40k hobby? The room is very agitated at end and I never see sign-up list, nor did we see the computer fire up.

Next up, I go to WoTC's presentation on next MtG prerelease and the year's upcoming releases. WoTC's people answer every question and explain what is coming out and what retailers should be expecting. It was informative and well presented.

Next up, Privateer Press. They reveal the years' release schedule via video presentation (their computer works), 7 games/expansions and new WM faction are discussed. Well presented and informative.

Fast forward to 8pm, demo night to learn some new games. I wander around and stumble upon this picture below. I was like, very fitting way to end the day.

GW please wake the up and realize you are destroying yourselves and your customer base.

I shouldn't do this, but...

Old Man Ultramarine wrote:On Monday, I ordered our store's Tau, I went reasonably conservative. On Wednesday after running some errands, I come in to store to hear that we may not be getting our order due to shortage of product. I'm like I have to call rep and hear this myself. He confirms that he has no idea what will or will not be getting. I'm like what a mickey mouse outfit. I proceed to start reading various online discussions, mildly amused.

This has been covered in three other threads.

At 8:04 GW NA sales director Brandan Bell, says he will take a few questions while they get computer going. He starts by saying a list is going around for everyone to sign, signees will get starter paint set for being at seminar. Brendan filled a cup of ice water and began taking questions. It wasn't pretty, many answers were cookie cutter company line nonsense including no information on upcoming releases, relunctance to tell why corporate refuses to extend lead time of new releases, the Tau debacle, etc. He really doesn't have answers or is probably directed to say nothing by GW.

Shut the front door. People who have nothing to do with making decisions on new release lead time or supply chain issues give you the company line? Even if he does know the reasons he doesn't lay out the company's dirty laundry on the table for his customers? No way.

The room is very agitated at end and I never see sign-up list, nor did we see the computer fire up.

Packed room and you don't see the sign-up list? Strange. I'm of two minds for the computer thing. Either they are being dumb and can't run a computer or he got tied down answering questions and blew all their time. Either way, they screwed up.

Fast forward to 8pm, demo night to learn some new games. I wander around and stumble upon this picture below. I was like, very fitting way to end the day.

This is just dumb on their part.

Brandan had an assistant and venue worker on the computer. Never got the screen up.

Other 3 threads do not involve my personal observations. Anyone who was there can confirm what happened.

That empty table was a bit saddening to see. They could have put two others game on there to demo!

This seems to strengthen the idea that GW has moved from mostly neglecting independent shops to complete neglect. Sad to see.

Admittedly, selling to salesmen is the hardest kind of pitch, but there are a lot of things a company can do to smooth over a fiasco like the tau release. GW is doing none of them...

How's privateer press's supply chain these days?

Selling products to sales people isnt that hard...especially what was once a top returning product for many stores.

Many years ago, I worked for a contractor supply house (construction contractors) and we would get reps from big tool companies in each year to show off the new stuff...guys from Dewalt, Milwaukee, Bostich... The brands sold themselves, the reps just would brief on changes from last years models and then deal with any concerns of the sales people. One of the easiest jobs in the world...other than the traveling.

They are not attempting to set up new accounts or doing cold calls to comic book stores trying to convince them to carry game materials. If the people were in that room, they already were dealing in the product and would just like to be able to do so better.

If that is what GW brought, they should have stayed home.

Really, is anyone surprised?
Im know GW is run by either two things. Idiots, Or genius with IQ's so vast that we cant possibly understand their logic.
Im going to the latter, even stupid people would realise when they are possibly failing.

When I sold cameras, I attended dozens of seminars run by the camera companies and photo vendors. The ones that were run well were usually the ones run by the better companies. This sounds slipshod and pathetic. I can understand the rep may have been hammered by dealers and their complaints, but it is no excuse to be a major company in the industry and not have a really cool presentation, and then not to even show for demo time.

-5 on professionalism...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Really, is anyone surprised?
Im know GW is run by either two things. Idiots, Or genius with IQ's so vast that we cant possibly understand their logic.
Im going to the latter, even stupid people would realise when they are possibly failing.

We should be surprised. With the level of professionalism we should expect from a business rep to his constituent sales accounts, he shouldn't be doing this job at all. A good sales rep can convince a dealer to sell his stuff, even if it is expensive or hard to sell. He sounded unprepared and unwilling to be there. Most likely, he really has no experience in games or maybe even in selling period.

Orktavius wrote:
How's privateer press's supply chain these days?

According to PPS_Simon, things are fine at their warehouse and the failing is on distributors.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:


We should be surprised. With the level of professionalism we should expect from a business rep to his constituent sales accounts, he shouldn't be doing this job at all. A good sales rep can convince a dealer to sell his stuff, even if it is expensive or hard to sell. He sounded unprepared and unwilling to be there. Most likely, he really has no experience in games or maybe even in selling period.

I would be willing to bet he was extremely constricted on what he can say to the point where he has a company mandated response.

This was an interesting post. The observations and the sad conclusions they lead to are regrettable. Poor showing GW.

I am hoping that GW has a major collapse, kinda like the crusty old man who has a heart attack and sees the errors of his ways. Being protective of your brand and product is one thing, but it seems more and more that GW is getting drunk on its own power.

orkybenji wrote:

Indarys wrote:
Hey look it's a topic about how much GW sucks on Dakka! Never thought I'd see one of those.

Old Man Ultramarine's post was actually very informative and interesting. Your post, however, was basically spam.

True. So very true. Thanks OMU for the information and to let you know there are those that appreciate giving us this kind of input.

Why hope that a company that hires thousands of people, ships products around the world, and makes games loved may thousands collapse?

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
I am hoping that GW has a major collapse, kinda like the crusty old man who has a heart attack and sees the errors of his ways. Being protective of your brand and product is one thing, but it seems more and more that GW is getting drunk on its own power.

GW has had a serious downsizing of their sales market since 2010. I have access to the yearly flyers sent to LFGS. There are also a lot of new faces. Kind of sorry for those people as they are the ones that get the brunt of bad news.

 pretre wrote:
I shouldn't do this, but...

Yeah, should've stopped there. About as meaningful as the second post in the thread, just a little more chiding.


@Old Man Ultramarine: I think the last picture says it all. In regard to their customer base and their fans, the company is absent. No matter why their presentation was terrible, it was starkly contrasted by other companies who care about their customers (or at least where their revenue stream comes from). The biggest company with arguably the biggest market share should have the grandest showing at these sort of shows. They should be showing the other companies why they are number 1, or at least, why they believe they are.

In a professional briefing, the projections/ graphic presentations need to be preset BEFORE the audience even walks into the room. The guy responsible for that craptastic showing should be walking into a pink slip on Monday.

The discussion is leading to the opinion that it is beginning to look like their company is falling apart around them in an Emperor's New Clothes sort of a way.

Rather amusing Anecdote, but it is leading to a trend of the inept or intentional misconduct.

I really do hope they shape their act together soon.
Im going to stay optimistic about this and believe they change sooon.
Maybe it will be when the new hobbit product fails again.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I really do hope they shape their act together soon.
Im going to stay optimistic about this and believe they change sooon.
Maybe it will be when the new hobbit product fails again.

I applaud your optimism, but it just seems to be fail after fail to me. They seem to be relying extremely on the addict nature of their customers and being able to pull new customers out of nowhere (seeing as how they have little to no advertising and their word of mouth is increasingly tainted). The sooner they take some big hits in their financial reports that they can't gloss over by reducing expenditure and price hikes, the sooner they can go back to being a company that is run for the customer instead of for the "net profits" line on the next annual report.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
I am hoping that GW has a major collapse, kinda like the crusty old man who has a heart attack and sees the errors of his ways. Being protective of your brand and product is one thing, but it seems more and more that GW is getting drunk on its own power.

Who are you and what have you done with SoloFalcon?

orkybenji wrote:

Indarys wrote:
Hey look it's a topic about how much GW sucks on Dakka! Never thought I'd see one of those.

Old Man Ultramarine's post was actually very informative and interesting. Your post, however, was basically spam.

I agree. Compare the Indarys contribution with Pretre's, who engages with the content and offers rebuttals that can lead to further discussion on both sides of the issue.

We already did KK. As puma said, it holds about the same content as the first reply, only it uses more words and amps up the derision.

Whilst a lot of what GW did here is inexcusable I have to let them off with the whole presentation not working thing. Having had to do thousands of such presentations in my life I'm fully aware that you can have tsted it 100's of time, had the thing working 10 minutes before you need it and then when it comes to the big moment you simply cannot get it to work, it really isn't something you can plan for.

That said, the 2 times it has happened to me I have been able to make some kind of presentation, I remember once actually having people intently looking into the screen I was frantically creating by waving my hands aroud as if they could actually see the screens I was describing, I even managed to get the contract for that one.

So, all in all a poor showing from GW, and they should have been able to present "something" even with a broken PC, but I really don;t fault them for the PC not working.

Spacemarine paintball. Really

This thread literally makes me feel ill. I can remember when FASA went down and it was a very hurtful experience. I wouldn't wish that on any gaming community, but at the same time, GW needs to wake up to itself.

Before thread: used to think GW just didn't care about customers that much.

After thread: GW would probably be a more sensitive, socially active and positively publicized company if it was run by Charlie Sheen.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Why hope that a company that hires thousands of people, ships products around the world, and makes games loved may thousands collapse?

GW hires thousands of people because they fire thousands of people (mostly redshirts that fail to meet GW's sales expectations, because surely it's the redshirts fault )

Only jobs created were, guess, in administration. Here the numbers, Sean O'Brian posted in this thread:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/515615.page

2002 2001 Production 324 359 Selling and distribution: Full time 1,224 1,133 Key time 631 483 Administration 303 232

and the most recent figures:

2012 2011 Design and Development 114 90 Production 172 163 Selling and distribution: Full time 1010 1032 Part time 254 233 Administration 412 383

 Old Man Ultramarine wrote:
Brandan had an assistant and venue worker on the computer. Never got the screen up.

Other 3 threads do not involve my personal observations. Anyone who was there can confirm what happened.

If there was both an assistant and a venue worker trying to get a single computer working then it makes me think that there might have been a technical issue.

The recent news and trends are starting to give me a uneasy feeling for GW, one I have never really experienced in the many years I have enjoyed this hobby.

Downsizing retail outlets.

reducing FLGS access to products.

Restrictions to non GW internet sales.

Shutting down of production sites.

Lack of consumer interaction.

A Ambivalent attitude to sales shows and demos.

Supply problems and shortages.

Canceling gamesdays in many countries.

even now a accelerated release schedule, but with no preview or glimpse at what is really coming from them.

And the latest release the Tau codex, as much as I looked forward to it, on the face of it there are not many new models, and some that have been waiting for a very long time, (farsight model for example, was shown many years ago, and explained away as sculptors demo model).

Its just all starting to point to a grim picture of a company that's trying very hard to make a bottom line that it knows it will not make, just kinda going through the motions.

I hope I am completely and totally wrong on my feelings to these events.

I grew up with GW, and I want to grow old with it too.

I just think I am starting to hear the fat lady singing...

 M4cr0Dutch wrote:
\GW needs to wake up to itself.

Not when the guy calling all the shots doesn't give two gaks about the company and will just fall back on his nice big retirement fund when they do inevitably die. His only interest is in squeezing every last bit out of them that he can and bailing at the last minute. There won't be any "waking up", GW is destined to go the way of FASA and TSR before them and mainly because Kirby simply doesn't care enough to steer them in another direction.