George Spiggott wrote:Normally I'd agree but when 'your own products' (40k and WHFB) have been declining year on year for the past decade then anything that makes the numbers look good is a good thing.

Eventually GW won't be a miniature manufacturer, just like it isn't a mail order D&D importer any more. They're going to have to become something, why not an IP for hire.

NELS1031 wrote:Not to be argumentative, but where do these assertions that GW has been "declining year after year" come from? I'm not saying you are wrong or anything, its just that I don't see it.

Mr Mystery wrote:Sadly revenue isn't revenue when you produce your own products.

But to not have them available in any way shape or form in the Store (even the aforementioned web site on the terminals) is a little 'huh' to say the least.

Ascalam wrote:What i'd do if I was GW (i appreciate that it's highly unlikely that they would..) to massively boost sales and customer loyalty.

Drop Model prices by 50% (it doesn't cost all that much to make and package them, per unit)

Customers will buy by the ton assuming that GW will raise the price again later.

Wavering players will reconsider leaving to other systems (as they have been doing more and more as GW prices go up and up)

New players will have a far better time justifying to their spouse, parent or wallet that its worth it.

Also hire a compentent codex team to rapidly produce codexes/rulebooks etc. My office at work preps 20,000 page legal files and 300 + page court briefs that have to be utterly legally suffiicent, or be thrown out and the offending person fired. We do about 5 a week. It cannot be seriously that much harder to create a 100 page codex in a couple of months that works with the rules and has been properly playtested, with unambiguous rules checked for loopholes by a WAAC 14 year old.

H.B.M.C. wrote:I guess their share price is reaping the benefits of their inaction.

filbert wrote:

Howard A Treesong wrote:HMV look to be in a bad way, but when your business is selling CDs and people are increasingly buying downloads you're in a ever shrinking market.

My concern is that Waterstones will take a hit to prop up HMV and they are the only highstreet book chain still going.

As for GW, they raise prices come rain or shine. It's all they know.

I think even Waterstones will start feeling the pinch (If they haven't already). As an example, the wife and I were browsing in there the other day and were looking at a couple of paperbacks each priced at £7.99

I can buy those same paperbacks, new, from Amazon, for £4 delivered, the only caveat being I have to wait a few days extra. I just don't see how Waterstones can continue to compete effectively while having to factor in bricks and mortar stores in a way that Amazon doesn't. Even Watersones' best sale prices can't match Amazon.

NELS1031 wrote:

Kirasu wrote:Sales are down??? Wow there is a surprise considering GW decided to wait 7 months between 40k releases and never produced a single book for the new edition of fantasy to take advantage of the momentum

Yeah, this annoys me to no end. I believe we really should've had at least 2 army books for fantasy by now. They really need to up their release tempo. The rumors of something big for everyone in WHFB this summer really do nothing for the leagues and clubs who have a fizzling fantasy fan base right now. Someone dropped the ball, and it started with the Beastmen releases. I look at the Skaven army book and its models/rules then to my beloved Beastmen models/rules, and its just depressing.

I am an Amazon Prime customer, so in most cases I can order a book by mid afternoon and have it delivered free, the next morning.

I only buy books at Waterstones if I need something to read the same day.

GW shops don't really seem to be retailers primarily, anymore.

It's astonishing what you can go in to buy and not find in stock. Before Christmas I went in to buy two cubes of dice and a large oval base. They didn't have any in stock, and suggested I should order them on the in-store citizen's terminal. I could have done it quicker by staying in my office.

Basically GW shops are marketing outlets. That's why the staff sell (or pester) so strongly when you go in for a look around.

leroy233 wrote:I think a big problem with GW online is that if you do order online there are many retailers selling for less, so it would be cheaper to go with a different store for value.

Mr Mystery wrote:Wonder if this drop will be enough to prevent a profit being made? From what I've read, they're currently predicting reduced profits, rather than an outright loss.

While margins and costs are “under control”, sales were weak during December at the table-top games firm, which makes the Warhammer models series.

In the half year to the end of November, they were down 4%, a trend that continued over Christmas which means profits are unlikely to meet City forecasts.

Stockbroker Peel Hunt reacted to the news by slashing its profit expectations for next year from £17 million to £12 million.

In a note, Peel Hunt said: “It is obviously disappointing to see a profit reversal after the good recent improvement. However, the business has never been in better shape operationally.”

Games Workshop's shares fell 72.5p, 17%, to 380p.

“Difficult trading conditions since that time mean that this shortfall is unlikely to be recovered by the year end,” the group said.

endtransmission wrote:It's just been on the news in our office that HMV saw a 15% drop and Next saw a 12% drop... so GW were actually running well ahead of some of the major high street chains in terms of profit.

NELS1031 wrote:
Not to be argumentative, but where do these assertions that GW has been "declining year after year" come from? I'm not saying you are wrong or anything, its just that I don't see it.

Ouze wrote:I don't think that expression has an American equivalent - a company so large they have a presence in nearly every town.

reds8n wrote:

Ouze wrote:I don't think that expression has an American equivalent - a company so large they have a presence in nearly every town.

err... K mart, Wal Mart, MacDonalds, Burger King, Gap etc etc all of these would be chain stores.

George Spiggott wrote:

deejaybainbridge wrote:With HMV, next etc that shows the real extent of the decline in sales in the uk. in comparrison a niche like GW only dropping 4% is pretty good.

Is that a comparison of like for like? Are HMV and Next UK only and GW international results?

yabbadabba wrote:Sorry but I think may of the posts here are looking at things in a far too narrow perspective.

All the issues mentioned so far - prices, range, sales, gateway products etc - all actually tied up and a much broader and, for me, failing strategic direction. GW have chosen to pursue the 11-18 year old bracket as a prime, and almost sole, primary market. The target within that bracket has been middle class boys. Comments about increasing competition from Mantic etc are, in part, entirely accurate and entirely unimportant. We have been complaining about GWs prices since the early 1990's when they were charging 2-3 times what others were charging, the real issue here is the price ceiling and the perceived value, both of which GW have got wrong.

Instead of creating a holistic and broad approach to wargaming - which is the market we are in - they have tried to shift that bracket to "teenage boys toys" and it is failing. It is failing because of the cost, the perception; back when GW games were for adults, what teenage kid didn't want to be a part of it? now they are for teenagers, more and more adults are falling out, and the teenagers are falling out quicker because it is perceived as childish. Its failing because GWs retail approach doesn't work for customers like us. Its failing because of an obsession with the US which the company has shown no understanding of or ability to adapt to.

Despite the perceived whining on here there is in essence nothig wrong with the products, and not much that cannot be addressed very simply. Its still one of the most unique brands around and one of the most accessible products of its type. The key area for me where GW have fallen down on is how to deal with the more fanatical parts of the community, exemplified by some of the tournament fanatics we have seen on here. Incorrectly GW have decided to abandon vets as a whole, instead of learning to grow a thicker skin and sideline those fanatics (pro and anti GW). This is where the overall product has been affected most of all for me.

Quite simply, the majority of the posters on here are exactly the sort of customers GW should be courting right now. GW sales are not made up of mad £400+ orders nice as they are, or by kids blowing their parents loose change as profitable as it can be, but by those 20+year old customers, in regular jobs, taking it easy and popping into their local supplier every week to spend £20. If a GW store can't look to around 100 of those types of customers (a smallish percentage of its overall customer base) then it has lost a significant income stream. Attempting to force that expenditure up without reason was a major error, and they have all but lost that regular income.

Its not the prices as such, or the products, but the overall goals and strategy. For that there is only one place to lay the blame, and that is at the very top. 3-6 years ago this would have been easy to solve, even with an upcoming sales drop due to LotR sales falling. Unfortunately a succession of no doubt qualified and experienced business people have wandered into the top areas of the business, with little or no understanding of what the base of GWs market is, what has supplied it with a form of financial stability for 20 odd years, and have chosen to interpret stores and schools full of kids playing with toy soldiers as a dependable and exploitable income stream.

The saddest thing for me is the few acquaintances I have left in the company could know be looking at joining the vast majority of the Games Workshop staff I have known over the decades, on the outside wondering what went wrong. Too many staff in important, non-systems positions have been lost to GW, people who understood the market even if it was just in terms of little soldiers on a board.

Oh well.

Chaos and Evil wrote:A rough bit of history:

GW was created in the 1980's, and it did quite well, steadily expanding.

Eventually, in 1994 it was floated on the stock market, which raised lots of cash, allowing the company to expand even faster. It continued to do well.

In the early 2000's, sales of its main games (Warhammer & Warhammer 40,000) were starting to lessen, and the company really should have paid attention to this and done something about it.

However, at about that time, GW got the license to produce a Lord of the Rings game, which, for 4 years, was a huge success. GW raked in the cash from LOTR sales, and, in the words of GW's own chief executive, grew "fat and lazy", ignoring the problems with their main games' falling popularity as LOTR was compensating for the fall in sales.

By 2005, the LOTR movies were over, and the sales of LOTR had tanked, dropping to a fraction of their previous level of sales. This was the end of the so called "Lord of the Rings bubble".

The company lost half its value on the stock market, as it was realised by the city that GW was in trouble.

Two years of losses followed. Not just profit warnings, but actual losses.

In response, GW fired half their staff, to cut costs.
They also shut quite a few of their retail stores.

As a consequence, GW has returned to making a profit in the last couple of years, even paying off the debts they took on when they were making losses.

But this was purely down to cutting costs, and getting lucky with international currency fluctuations... the core problem of the business (Falling sales, every year selling slightly less than the year before) had not been fixed.

And that leads us to where we are now, where sales have continued to fall, leading GW to warn that it is not going to make a lot of money this year.

If the trend of falling sales is not changed, GW will not just be making profit warnings, but will dip once again into making losses. If that happens, it will be forced to find more areas to cut costs (Fire more staff, close more retail stores), or increase sales.

In the last week, GW has lost 14% of its value on the stock market.

reds8n wrote:... I'm sure you'll just steal our phrase, murder the spelling and then claim the credit for "inventing" it anyway

BrookM wrote:They opened one in the east late last year and at least five more will be opened sooner or later around here.

Kroothawk wrote:The "no advertising" policy is killing profits and customer base