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I think the individual e-mail adress is there because this is a trade show and there needs to be a trade contact for retailers interested in carrying the Build & Paint line. I don't think it means more than that.

 Talys wrote:

frozenwastes wrote:
Talys it doesn't really matter that google returned a variety of results and includes things you find funny. It also makes sense that google would return all types of toy stores, doesn't it? So how about you just count the ones that might have a model section or could be talked into starting one with these sort of products. The fact is that in pretty much every major urban centre there are still independent toy and model shops. They may not be in malls anymore like they were when I was a kid, but they're there. And they represent an untapped potential for GW trade sales that these new products are probably meant exactly for.
--

This was exactly my point, though: The kite shop, adult sex toy shop, lego shop, rc/drone shop, and store selling toys carved out of maple wood... are not going to sell GW models.

The sex toy shop, well obviously, but why not the rest? There are a few hobby stores here, the biggest is right in the town centre and stocks airsoft weapons, RC vehicles pre-built and kit-form, lego, assorted toys, train sets and accessories, general hobby supplies, and military modelling kits of all levels. Even the almost-totally-dedicated hobby train shop that reeks of pipe smoke and flat caps has a few shelves of Airfix boxes. Any half-competent salesperson should be able to shift a wee chunk of these to a hobby store providing GW don't insist on their ludicrous trade terms.

Completely agree. It's a contact for the purposes of opening up lines of communication/business. Nothing more to read into it.

GW will not be able to impose their usual rather onerous trade terms on toy and models shops because these shops have less need for GW than GW has need for them.

It's not like game hobby shops where a substantial part of sales used to come from GW products.

How many people would it really take to develop this product line? And why not have a single guy be the sales guy for this line until he can show some results and make the case for more of their trade sales force being assigned to this new channel?

GW has centralized their admin and sales departments and is very hawkish about costs, so why not have one guy that is the toy store guy in the sales department? And when he closes some orders and shows this product line is working, they can expand. Or perhaps he'll be the one organizing their trade sales force to go after this segment in general and this new line will be what they open with.

I don't think it's really reading into anything to assume the guy's name on the flyer is the guy who's the sales guy for these six products. I think it's more of a stretch to assume this is some huge new branch of GW or something. Or that GW trade sales in general is switching directions from game stores to model and toy stores. One guy as the sales guy for this sort of thing makes more sense than that.

It could well also just be a cultural thing. In my own business to business sales experience the flyers will have generic contact info and the specific sales person's info will be on a business card.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
GW will not be able to impose their usual rather onerous trade terms on toy and models shops because these shops have less need for GW than GW has need for them.

It's not like game hobby shops where a substantial part of sales used to come from GW products.

That's why I think if they go with that approach, this new sales channel won't get developed. It just won't work to have a new product line for a new channel and then saddle it with the baggage of other sales channels and other product lines.

-

I think it comes down to price again. These are going to be sat next to the revel and airfix starter kits. Will these be cool enough and cheap enough for Timmys dad to buy over a spitfire of a mini cooper?


It's a great idea in theory, but i don't trust gw to make it work. It might benefit vets that are short on time though.

I guess I'm just shocked that GW is doing anything differently than their approach of cutting costs, raise prices and concentrating on high pressure sales to their captive niche. It's just strange to think of GW actually having a plan to enter a new sales channel and develop products specifically for it. I just can't see Kirby bragging about how they looked at how this new market works and then designed a product to meet that analysis. Maybe Rountree isn't just a hand puppet for Kirby.

Hum. Well, it seems to me that the new guy at the top, Rountree, actually is coming through with some changes of strategy to try and address the longterm decline of sales.

When his appointment was announced, a couple of years ago, I was worried that he would be a mere figurehead yes-man for Kirby, the power behind the throne, but this clearly is not the case. Unless Kirby has changed strategy, of course, though that comes to the same result.

Herzlos wrote:
I think it comes down to price again. These are going to be sat next to the revel and airfix starter kits. Will these be cool enough and cheap enough for Timmys dad to buy over a spitfire of a mini cooper?


It's a great idea in theory, but i don't trust gw to make it work. It might benefit vets that are short on time though.

They look like they will be a touch more expensive than similar Revel or Airfix kits particular where the latter appear in discount supermarkets etc.

But I don't think that's not a problem. Picture a boring wet weekend, Dad says to little timmy "lets get a model what like I used to make when I were a young 'un".

He shows Timmy a Spitfire/Tiger Tank but Timmy is already looking at the Explodey pictures with the Space Knight riding a and Angry Aliens on them. Dad buys the slightly more expensive kit as he has no choice. I've been there, it happens.

People will pay higher prices for bigger models with more paints, and so on.

The Airfix starter sets are £12. The larger gift sets, containing more models and paints, are about £25.

If the GW sets come out over £30 then I think it might cause some raised eyebrows.

What GW should think about is making an Age of Emporer rulebook that could be included free with each starter kit.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
What GW should think about is making an Age of Emporer rulebook that could be included free with each starter kit.

And then not make the rules intentionally devalue the models by requiring a ton of them. Instead find a way to have the individual bike or individual captain be awesome. Or the individual trukk. So a kid can play with his friend and have a real game experience with just a kit or two each. Even if it only takes 20 minutes to play. The "everything is awesome" version of 40k. That kid should be zooming his bike each turn even though he's being shot at. Not just remove it from play after one attack the first time it drives out from behind a book pretending to be a hill.

The G sets are listed £10 Bike, £15 Land Speeder/Truck and £25 for the Squads, so the same ball park.

An edit of the Dark Vengence starter pamphlet would make sent to include.

I'm not sure if Age of [EEEE]Emporer might be you playing the wag Kk, but it isn't a bad idea if you could balance the fact that your not getting both sides. I'm sure people would moan if they felt they were buying a game but then having to buy something else.

 notprop wrote:
He shows Timmy a Spitfire/Tiger Tank but Timmy is already looking at the Explodey pictures with the Space Knight riding a and Angry Aliens on them. Dad buys the slightly more expensive kit as he has no choice. I've been there, it happens.

It's a shame. My parents only ever gave me money for chores and then it was up to me to decide what I wanted, if I wanted to spend more on a kit it was up to me to decide if it was worth waiting another week or two to get.

When did parents start just buying gak for their kids instead of teaching them the value of money?

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

When did parents start just buying gak for their kids instead of teaching them the value of money?

I hear it happened shortly after the invention of money!

 notprop wrote:
The G sets are listed £10 Bike, £15 Land Speeder/Truck and £25 for the Squads, so the same ball park.

KK was talking about the airfix starter sets that come with paint, glue and a couple of those awful brushes. The smaller starter sets (1/72 aircraft) are actually more like £8, 1/32 cars are more like £12-18.

Airfix obviously make a massive range of kits, they start from about £6 for many of the 1/72 WW2 fighters up to £150 for something like a 1/24 DeHavilland Mosquito with over 600 parts and a wingspan of over 2 feet.

 notprop wrote:
The G sets are listed £10 Bike, £15 Land Speeder/Truck and £25 for the Squads, so the same ball park.

An edit of the Dark Vengence starter pamphlet would make sent to include.

I'm not sure if Age of [EEEE]Emporer might be you playing the wag Kk, but it isn't a bad idea if you could balance the fact that your not getting both sides. I'm sure people would moan if they felt they were buying a game but then having to buy something else.

No, I genuinely feel that GW's objective should be to get people to buy a couple these kits, start playing rather than just building them, and then graduate to bigger games and more models. This argues for inclusion of some simple rules.

Since the kits are cheap and aimed at a young audience that won't necessarily have support in playing, the included rules need to be short and simple. An AoS style rule pamphlet would fill this role. GW could print the game stats of the models on the end panels of the boxes, as a colour war scroll.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 notprop wrote:
The G sets are listed £10 Bike, £15 Land Speeder/Truck and £25 for the Squads, so the same ball park.

KK was talking about the airfix starter sets that come with paint, glue and a couple of those awful brushes. The smaller starter sets (1/72 aircraft) are actually more like £8, 1/32 cars are more like £12-18.

Airfix obviously make a massive range of kits, they start from about £6 for many of the 1/72 WW2 fighters up to £150 for something like a 1/24 DeHavilland Mosquito with over 600 parts and a wingspan of over 2 feet.

Thanks, never heard of them.

 Shandara wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

When did parents start just buying gak for their kids instead of teaching them the value of money?

I hear it happened shortly after the invention of money!

Maybe it's just where I grew up. The majority of kids in my class going through primary school got some amount of pocket money to spend from the age of like, I dunno, 7, 8? Parents just randomly buying gak was something special and not just to appease little Timmy for another few days

Maybe that's what I get for growing up in a working class suburb, lol.

 Shandara wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

When did parents start just buying gak for their kids instead of teaching them the value of money?

I hear it happened shortly after the invention of money!

I find its a ratio between peace and quite and cash.

I don't get allot of one but have plenty of the other. I try to equalise the ration as best as I can.

Two things about the kits.
1. there is a sprue in one of the pictures with the deff copter. no box, but it would be great to be able to get that model again.

2. here in the US, a lot of the larger hobby stores carry an isle of model kits. Michaels and Hobby Lobby both do fairly decent model sales, and there aren't a lot of Sci-fi and fantasy kits so they may sell well. it would be worth it to GW to look at this as advertising and exposure to a wider market. They may well just make the deals these larger hobby stores require. The boxes have self contained, so it could just be a toe in the water to see if they move.

 pox wrote:
Two things about the kits.
1. there is a sprue in one of the pictures with the deff copter. no box, but it would be great to be able to get that model again.

2. here in the US, a lot of the larger hobby stores carry an isle of model kits. Michaels and Hobby Lobby both do fairly decent model sales, and there aren't a lot of Sci-fi and fantasy kits so they may sell well. it would be worth it to GW to look at this as advertising and exposure to a wider market. They may well just make the deals these larger hobby stores require. The boxes have self contained, so it could just be a toe in the water to see if they move.

I'm not sure it would work out to well for the store you mention if Hobbycraft in the UK are anything to go by. They carried GW and FoW in their (large retail chain) stores much like you mention but they didn't last much more than a few years as stock. The only time anyone I know bought from them as desperate need for a kit now and big discount vouchers.

I think wargames kits need the games themselves pushing to generate and maintain interest with the general. It didn't seem to work here at similar stores.

 notprop wrote:

Herzlos wrote:
I think it comes down to price again. These are going to be sat next to the revel and airfix starter kits. Will these be cool enough and cheap enough for Timmys dad to buy over a spitfire of a mini cooper?


It's a great idea in theory, but i don't trust gw to make it work. It might benefit vets that are short on time though.

They look like they will be a touch more expensive than similar Revel or Airfix kits particular where the latter appear in discount supermarkets etc.

But I don't think that's not a problem. Picture a boring wet weekend, Dad says to little timmy "lets get a model what like I used to make when I were a young 'un".

He shows Timmy a Spitfire/Tiger Tank but Timmy is already looking at the Explodey pictures with the Space Knight riding a and Angry Aliens on them. Dad buys the slightly more expensive kit as he has no choice. I've been there, it happens.

Assuming the boxes show something cool enough; the mock-ups aren't of much more than the model, and whilst I know it's a space marine on a bike, to the complete novice, it's just a big blue dude on a motorbike, or a big green dude on some platform thing. By the target age, they'll probably have seen a lot more old war films on TV than sci-fi stuff, so I'm not sure they'd automatically go for the Warhammer stuff in the same way we did in the 90's (where the box art was like a heavy metal cover).

If there's a price difference, will Timmy want the GW stuff enough that he isn't won over by his dad saying "But if you go for that one, you can get a yo-yo too, or an ice cream".

In essence, I'm trying to say that in this new market, their IP has no market penetration or value, so it needs to compete in other ways. They could make a big play on it being part of a game with rules (and provide rules that allow them to play simple games with 2 boxes - a model each). Like what Zvezda do with their 1/100th scale individual model kits (which cost about £4 each and come with a unit card link).

I'm not sure if I can agree with that.

Kids like the fantastic (bright colours help too). You have a ton of WW2 and modern tanks/planes and something different, the something different will catch your eye.

I mean the existence of this site and a nearby thread to this one describing the fascination of our younger selves with mostly GW products contradicts the notion that it has no penetration or value. It does have a cache with children and thats what it will compete on.

War films don't appeal to children these days anyway, they have live streaming cartoons and youtube instead.

As for War films, that was the last generation; and we only watched them because they were better than whatever gakky Cowboy film had been on the day before!

Yeah, you could be right.

alphaecho wrote:

 keezus wrote:
Ah... the old Gorka Morka truk. Nothing but the latest and greatest models to put your best foot forwards, capture the imagination and entice newbs right?

That model was already horribly primitive when it was released in 1997, mercifully put out of its misery in 2009... and now lives again as (an ill conceived) lead-in product in 2016!

-edit- That looks like the discontinued ork bike too... with the tracks and the nonsense side-guns. Ugh.

It's covered in the main News thread but the boxes and art are watermarked with "Mock Up" so who knows what the final product will actually be.

If you consider the intended target audience though, the Gorkamorka era Trukk may be less daunting to an 8 year old splashing out some pocket money.

Get them hooked on a gateway product before ensnaring them with the higher priced product.

I'm going to sound old at the ripe old age of 31 with this, but since when was £15 (the price of the trukk) pocket money?

Average pocket money UK 2011 survery results.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/aug/17/pocket-money-up-data

TLR, about £6.25 a week. Obviously would take under three weeks to save up to buy the Trukk.

It was 50p a week in my day.

£9.99 for 30 RTB01 marines wasn't easily obtainable in those days.

I don't remember to cost a an Airfix kit in those days but I would guess it was £2.50-3.50.

I remember getting 20p a week, if I did my piano practice, and the price of a series one Airfix kit went up from 20p to 21p. That was over 40 years ago.

Ouch. Did you ask your parents for a 1p raise?

It would not have been any use. I wasn't getting the full 20p anyway, because I never did my piano practice.