The ideal answer to that would be to split 40k in half. Same scale in terms of miniatures but 1 detailed skirmish ruleset that is perfectly balanced (in so far as that is possible), basically Infinity with Space Marines and the ma(e?)ss battle game that is 7th. GW would still gets its miniatures sales, the players would be able to choose which type of game they want without having to play other games and it would considerably broaden the appeal of 40k. You will always get mixed opinions from customers but that is where statistics and metadata come to the rescue.
What I think we will see over the coming year is a scattershot approach as GW flails around and tries to find something that will save them without doing anything so terrifying as actually doing something that will work.
I think they need games like Mordheim and Necromunda (maybe redone using 40k armies instead of gangs for less risk) to provide a cheaper entry point. The costs of starting a new army and getting it up to 1500 points and beyond are very high.
Kill Team and the Regiments of Renown games were close, but barely supported.
I'd like to see GW try to mix up the IGOUGO turn sequence with a skirmish game. They have lots of potential customers that enjoy their background, enjoy their models, but don't buy them because they don't want to spend $400+ worth. Get a game that costs like $100 to get into and they will have people interested again.
Or... sell Space Hulk as a normal board game. Man. I don't know how GW can be happy that they sold out of Space Hulk.... why don't they uh... keep making it?
Don't forget, LotR is going away, period. They have already discontinued huge amounts of the range - almost all metals, and even some Finecast, and sales of The Hobbit are not that great.
Tannhauser42 wrote: So, what could they release this year to help them out? New edition of 40K? New edition of Fantasy? Resurrect one or more of the Specialist Games? Or release an all new game? And would it be enough?
I guess they don't have a clue:
They do no demographic research and they don't know what the customers think.
If they'd done such research I doubt Dreadfleet would have happened for a start.
Oh, so you think people would say they didn't want a spin-off game if GW came asking?
Oh, so you think people would say they didn't want a spin-off game if GW came asking?
They need a relatively simple and affordable gateway game, one that uses same scale than their main games. When there were rumours about that 28mm Inquisitor game people were massively exited.
But of course the main purpose of such a game would be to attract new players. My first GW game was Heroquest and it started my love affair with the tiny plastic soldiers. (And yes, such a game should absolutely be sold in Walmart and other such stores.)
There was a lot of excitement for an Inquisitor based 28mm skirmish a me hike back that fizzled to nothing. People want spin-off games, but not rubbish like Dreadfleet. GW seem to think that specialist games take profits out of the big three. They clearly think that if people aren't offered things like Nevromunda, they are guaranteed to spend big to get an army on 40k. It's interesting that their period of biggest growth was during the period they were making all these games.
Space Hilk was released with figures sculpted to have limited compatibility with 40k, Dreadfleet totally incompatible. They refuse to make things compatible with fantasy or 40k in case buying a gang stops someone buying a whole army. I'd say that if someone only wants to buy a gang or two, you offer that or nothing. You can't make people buy an army by limiting their purchasing choices to 40k and fantasy. But that seems to be GWs strategy. Instead, these people are buying into other systems. GW don't believe in gateway games now, either you heavy invest as a newcomer or ignore their hobby.
Goresaw wrote: Although the more I think about it, I will argue market research actually would be kinda useless. Look at the user base. Its so insanely fractured and at odds with itself. We, as the consumer don't even know what we want. Some want lords of war. Some want a balanced tourney game. Others want the game to remain unbalanced. Everything is subjective, and no one out there that plays the game anymore can agree on anything about the game.
It is not subjective and GW could provide all of that by doing some work to split things up into well designed modules but they have insisted on spooging it all into a colossal expensive unbalanced mess because they thought everyone would buy it anyway.
Howard A Treesong wrote: GW seem to think that specialist games take profits out of the big three.
Well, of course. What are those people going to do, play other games? Pfft, GW has no competition, and if they're not going to play 40K or WHFB, then they weren't GW's target market anyway!
We also need a constant flow of great managers for our stores. In the end that is still the most important thing of all.
No Tom, you need a working environment where you don't burn up and spit out the ones you have every twelve months and you need a culture where the talented ones who are perhaps a little more unorthodox aren't muttered about in darkened corners and squeezed out at the earliest opportunity.
Then you won't need a "constant flow" just enough to populate your new stores as you open them.
Of course now there is no middle management there is no realistic possibility of career advancement for lower ranking staff except by leaving GW to go somewhere better.
Thus the need for a constant flow of new recruits.
Hopefully the ditching of the Hobbit/LotR will open up space for the specialist games again. IIRC (and it’s been a while) before GW did LotR, they rotated the spotlight over the specialist games. So it was always the big two (40k, WHFB) with the third game of the moment. So there would be Man o War, BFG, Epic, Gorkamorka, Necromunda, etc. but only one getting real support at a time. It seemed like the specialist games truly started to wither when GW had to support 3 major games at once.
It's pretty sad to see how slowed they are. This is the game that got me into gaming.
First thing, lower prices and more people will buy in. I cannot count how many $20 boxes of Space Marines I bought. But $40 for the same thing and a few more bits? Go lick a toilet seat. Also, hoard armies - sell boxes of 20 and keep it cheap. Plastic isn't expensive! And don't ditch the old good models. The new Stormtroopers (or whatever Latin-based word that would drive my old professor to suicide they call them now) look ok, but not at $35 for 5. Sell them reasonably and keep the old Stormtroopers and Kasrkin around too. Vairety, yo! Log in to Peter Pig or Khurasan in 15mm and take a while clicking through the links.
Next, don't make enemies of Chapter House or other companies (not going to name any names reminiscent of late 1800's British monarchs lest GW gets any ideas). These are people that obviously love the game and are selling things people want. Your increasingly limited range of kits aren't for everybody, but they might be with a few bits from another company. You both can profit. Suing someone just makes you look like a bunch of punks.
Also, enough with the minis that have the facial expressions of people dropping bricks. It isn't grim dark. There is nothing grim dark about pinching a loaf. We all do it.
I am going to reiterate what some of you are saying about spin-off games. See, GW, these games were fun. When I play a game I want to have fun. I go to work for 8 hours a day, five days a week, and if I wanted to come in for a few extra hours without pay my boss wouldn't gripe. If I am going to pay you money, let me have fun with it. Get BFG back up there. Get Necromunda and Mordheim up there. Want something new? Look how much fun people are having with X-Wing. Make a similar game with Lightings, Thunderbolts, Thunderhawks, Fighta-Bombas, and Thundercats (it's in one of the Inquisitor books I think). The X-Wings ship sell for something like $15 a ship and you play with an army of 3-6ish. And be honest, how may of you play this and only have six ships? More like 30 if the game group I play with is anything to go by. Oh, and if you take this idea, I don't want any royalties, just feel free to keep supporting it instead of trashing everything that someone loves.
Oh, and GW, if you don't want to take my advice, I would be more than happy to take a picture of myself in the bathroom sometime and you can make a SM scout out of it or something.
Blacksails wrote: So, I know very little about business. How bad is this report really? What similarities does this have to other companies that have gone under or managed to recover? Are there parallels to be drawn? And could GW recover if they keep doing largely what they're currently doing?
To me, it looks unhealthy, but I don't know how bad it really is.
One thing to remember is that they're still cash flow positive with quite a bit of margin on that end. Yes, cash from operations declined, but GW still increased their cash position. The balance sheet is also strong, so GW doesn't have to meet interest / debt levels. A problem will be the cost of renting for stores.
This gives GW enough cash to move into other lines in the upcoming year. GW still has flexibility to try to turn things around.
Strategically, I see three components of GW's business:
1. The WH40K, WH, and LoTR IP.
2. Model production business.
3. Gaming Store network in UK and other countries.
If I was going to be aggressive in 'turning around' GW, I would attack the second and third components:
For the model production business, GW should produce models under contract licenses. If GW's quality and production costs are competitive, this can offset the fixed costs of the machines. GW could leverage their large plastic production capability to lock in competitors into long term contracts. Medium term, I think that GW should investigate rapid production of 'good quality' figures to allow for rapid production turnaround.
For the Game Store network, look at each geographical segment. Where GW is not the dominant form of game stores, leave that market entirely. Shift GW stores to 'Battle Bunkers' or roaming sales teams which arrange events at local stores. Eliminate fixed costs and underproductive sales force. Where GW is the dominant segment, diversify the games held at the stores. Treat the stores as a general model store with a range of games from different producers. This cements the GW store network and gives it a wider range of income. It also would strangle any potentially hostile FLGS movement in those markets.
Both approaches diversify GW revenue away from WH40K and they would cement GW's current position in model production and sales. They also mean that GW can profit from other people's IP development without taking that risk.
As for WH40k, that game line needs to be better exploited with a range of products. If GW could produce high quality models cheaper, GW could push into Epic/BFG/ even Aeronautica Imperialis with a speed and scale no competitor could match. Ideally, GW should BFG / Aeronautica Imperialis for sale at any store.
Outsourcing the model production would be a possibilty to lower costs.
But I don't know how realistic this would be in terms of the necessary machinery.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Bought a pot of liquid green stuff this morning from a GW store (my first purchase from a GW store in 3 years) so the GW fightback starts now!
Rumours of Kirby's demise have been greatly exaggerated!
And yet much like your pot of green stuff, GWs profits will be all dried up in about six months!
(Serious, though, LGS dries up super fast. Keep the pot sealed in another container or buy Vallejo plastic putty. Its cheaper and better.)
Been buying Vallejo paints for a while now. Didn't know they did their own version of LGS. Thanks for the heads up
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kronk wrote: From the Telegraph Article on Page 16: "We run a tight ship, and do our damnedest to get more sales. Everything else is just whistling Dixie. "
Do you guys in the UK actually say whistling Dixie?
Like hell we do!
It's a tower of London offence for anybody heard saying that awful phrase.
Their costs of production are not the problem. The problem is they are making stuff people don't want to buy because they don't like it and/or it is too expensive.
Tannhauser42 wrote: One of the things even some basic market research would tell them is that dropping the Specialist Games was a bad idea. Just look at all the companies doing quite well for themselves by filling that void.
But, then again, GW thinks their market is only people who already want to buy their stuff.
GW ditching specialist games was one of the best things that ever happened to me, and I'm not saying that because I sold my dozen copies of dreadfleet and old copies of bloodbowl for vastly inflated prices. No, no, no
Who would have thought that Kirby's bad business decisions would see me get some extra brass in the bank. Tom Kirby is a genius in my book
GW should produce other companies products for them. GW uses its production capacity as a contract producer for smaller game companies.
I don't know if there is enough WH40K / WH demand to use all of GW's production capability.
On specialist games: GW apparently doesn't think that people's gaming budget can lie between 0 and several hundred dollars. With WH40K, it appears to be All In or Nothing.
Tannhauser42 wrote: One of the things even some basic market research would tell them is that dropping the Specialist Games was a bad idea. Just look at all the companies doing quite well for themselves by filling that void.
But, then again, GW thinks their market is only people who already want to buy their stuff.
GW ditching specialist games was one of the best things that ever happened to me, and I'm not saying that because I sold my dozen copies of dreadfleet and old copies of bloodbowl for vastly inflated prices. No, no, no
Who would have thought that Kirby's bad business decisions would see me get some extra brass in the bank. Tom Kirby is a genius in my book
Now I know you're lying because Dreadfleet couldn't have sold more than 10 copies, worldwide...
Auswin wrote: It's almost like a company that does no advertising isn't growing. *gasp*
Honestly, it's stunning that they're still profitable at all on the back of word of mouth and brick and mortar alone.
And who was at San Diego comic con? FFG, Catalys (Battletech. BATTLETECH is still going), Hawk Wargames (Dropzone Commander) and a few others I forget.
Tannhauser42 wrote: One of the things even some basic market research would tell them is that dropping the Specialist Games was a bad idea. Just look at all the companies doing quite well for themselves by filling that void.
But, then again, GW thinks their market is only people who already want to buy their stuff.
GW ditching specialist games was one of the best things that ever happened to me, and I'm not saying that because I sold my dozen copies of dreadfleet and old copies of bloodbowl for vastly inflated prices. No, no, no
Who would have thought that Kirby's bad business decisions would see me get some extra brass in the bank. Tom Kirby is a genius in my book
Now I know you're lying because Dreadfleet couldn't have sold more than 10 copies, worldwide...
You're just jealous your GW shares aren't making you vast profits
I said this in another thread but it bears repeating.
I do not understand why they act from a position of arrogance instead of one of aggressiveness. They should be undercutting all of their competitors, offering deals and bundles (REAL bundles) and discounts, to make 40k ubiquitous AND affordable and corner the market again. Right now, they price stuff ridiculously high seemingly because "We can get away with it" and open the gates to competitors taking their market share.
There are still places where 40k is the main game; I can attest to one game store in my area (the largest store in Tampa, too) that has virtually nothing but 40k going on still (to the point where I don't think they even stock Malifaux or Warmachine anymore and never bothered to stock Infinity, because nobody wanted it), and has new people (like brand new) starting to play 40k, for reasons I cannot fathom due to the combination of pricing and rules. Still, if they priced things well they would make up for what they lose per model in volume alone.
For another example look at their paints. They have almost dominance as far as paint racks; every game store I have ever been to over a 20 year period has had a Citadel paint rack as the only paint rack there (except for maybe one time when a model shop, not a game store, had Ral Partha paints back when those were a thing, before I even got into Warhammer). Yet what do they do? Charge the most and offer the least amount of paint in those gak flip top containers, making it a gakky deal despite the paint actually being pretty good quality. Imagine if they actually made them 17ml dropper bottles like most everyone else? Even at $4 a bottle, they'd make a killing - you would have great quality paint, with a good amount at a decent price, that's basically universally available. They'd kill the Vallejo Game Color line completely, and likely Army Painter as well besides the Quickshade. But do they do that? No, and as a result their competitors offer better value for the money, to where I'll order Game Color rather than spend a dime on Citadel paints. If they were priced decently and offered the same value, I'd *only* buy Citadel paints.
On specialist games: GW apparently doesn't think that people's gaming budget can lie between 0 and several hundred dollars. With WH40K, it appears to be All In or Nothing.
Well said, got a chuckle from me. Sadly, I think it's true also.
Didn't James from Mantic end up working for GW? I really hope he is able to bring some skirmish games to GW.
Yep, I bought in around 200 something and auto-sold when they started plummiting. God I love stock software safety features.
Well done. People often have a plan to get into a stock, but very rarely a plan on when to get out. An automatic stop if the price plummets is a great plan to have.
Yep, I bought in around 200 something and auto-sold when they started plummiting. God I love stock software safety features.
Well done. People often have a plan to get into a stock, but very rarely a plan on when to get out. An automatic stop if the price plummets is a great plan to have.
I actually learned that the hard way after losing a few grand on a bio-tech stock when I decided play the penny-stock game. I bought a couple hundred shares of GW after the fall and sold it this morning; I don't have any other plans to buy back in at this point but you never know.
I don't post on here often these days, but I follow the state of GW fairly closely (mostly because I want to see them suffer the consequences of doing their damndest to alienate players like me) and I've got a decent accounting and business background:
First of all, I'll link the common size financial statements with automatically year-over-year change calculations built in:
For those unfamiliar with common size statements, these take each line item and divide them by sales revenue to measure them as a percentage of revenue (typically the primary driver of the scale of all items on an income statement and the operating section of the cash flow statement). This lets you compare what percentage of that year's revenue each item makes up.
Finally, I've also calculated year-over-year changes for each line item in all three of these statements to allow a more fine-grained analysis of what's going on.
Let's start with revenue:
It's down, obviously, but the headline 8.24% decline in revenue conceals a darker picture further down.
Darker still is that given what we know about the front-loaded nature of sales of their releases (i.e. most of the sales come when the releases are new) and how GW has continued to increase the prices of new releases, this dollar decline in sales conceals a much larger unit-volume drop in sales. We can't get at exactly how large the unit-volume decline is, unfortunately, but do keep in mind it is significantly worse than the dollar decline.
Cost of sales:
One major problem is that GW's cost of sales (what it costs to manufacture and distribute the things it sells) has increased as a percentage of sales. For this to occur in the midst of a sustained company-wide cost cutting initiative strongly suggests that their cost of sales contain a fairly high proportion of fixed costs (i.e. costs that don't vary by how many units they make). This should be worrying as it indicates their gross margin is likely to continue shrinking as sales decline because the cost of sales will tend to shrink by less than the drop in sales.
This is a major roadblock to GW's attempt to make chicken salad out of chicken turd by raising prices and cost-cutting to try and compensate for declining unit-volume sales.
Gross Profit:
And here we see the consequence of sales falling faster than cost of sales. The decline in gross profit is significantly larger than the decline in sales.
Operating expenses (before exceptional items):
This item should be even more worrying to GW. Despite their much vaunted cost-cutting efforts, operating expenses (this includes the GW stores themselves as well as all the various other expenses necessary for their business to operate *except* the cost to make and distribute the stuff they sell) have (fractionally) gone UP as a percentage of sales compared to 2013. This indicates, that even before the exceptional items, they have failed to cut operating expenses as a percentage of revenue.
This also suggests that their store restructuring policy to small, cheap (bad-location), short-hours one-man stores is costing them a dollar in revenue for every dollar in operating expenses it saves. That's bad juju because it points to them not being able to cost-cut away the problem of declining sales. Who knows, maybe the costs they incurred to shutter all the national middle-management will actually save them more in expenses than it costs them in revenue? For now though, these numbers are pretty bad.
Cash flows from operations:
Here we get one surprising piece of information. That the 21.66% decline in cash generated from operations is very close to the 20.97% decline in operating profit before exceptional items suggests against the rumors that GW was shoving inventory onto indys and distributors before year end to pump up sales. If that had been the case to the extent rumored, we would expect the decline in cash from operations to be significantly larger (because indys and distributors typically pay after they receive the merchandise, unlike GW consumers who pay at purchase).
Segment sales:
Here we get some very interesting information, and one very confusing thing.
In their management discussion and analysis, GW report that:
Reported sales fell by 8.2% to £123.5 million for the year. On a constant currency basis, sales were down by 6.5% from £134.6 million to £125.9 million; progress was achieved in Other sales businesses (+20.9%) and Export (+2.7%) while sales in UK (-7.1%), Continental Europe (-10.6%), North America (-7.5%), Australia (-9.4%) and Asia (-3.3%) were in decline.
Those regional segment percentage change numbers do not jibe with the segment revenues as reported in detail in the financials. I think, but cannot confirm, that the segment percentage change numbers reported above by GW are on a constant currency basis, and I will proceed based on that assumption in my analysis. This means that, for looking at regional GW store + indy sales declines, look at the above from GW, for my next point, however, look to my linked numbers.
One key thing that I've highlighted in my analysis on this numbers is the segment performance net of what GW calls "Other sales businesses" (Direct online sales, Black Library, Forgeworld, and Warhammer World). This shows that revenue from GW stores + independent retailers has fallen by 10.34% rather than the overall 8.24% decline headline number everyone is focusing on, and that direct sales are not coming close to making up the revenue lost in their retail channels.
This does not bode well when they just spent quite a bit of money revamping their website and have been on a concerted effort to drive sales to the direct only online channel. It also pretty strongly suggests that the avalanche of digital DLC releases that GW has embarked upon amount to a drop in the bucket compared to the retail revenue they're losing. A bad sign for those that thought digital DLC would be a panacea to stem the retail bloodletting.
Overall analysis:
These financial results paint a pretty grim picture, much darker than the headline numbers would suggest.
GW's approach to try and overcome unit-volume declines with price increases, cost-cutting, digital DLC and driving people to the GW site and away from indys is failing miserably.
GW face a fairly high proportion of fixed costs in their manufacturing and distribution chain, and most likely their operating expenses as well, not to mention that cost-cutting in their retail operations seems to be costing them as much revenue as it saves them in expenses. This tends to foreclose cost-cutting further as a viable strategy to combat their decline unit-volume sales.
That revenue continued its decline from mid-year during a year in which GW released a new SM codex, Imperial Knights, and stuffed the first two weeks of a new edition of 40k (and remember what I said, and the Chapterhouse lawsuit filings indicated, that GW product sales are heavily front-loaded) into this fiscal year, continued to hike prices on new releases, and still managed this scale of a decline in revenue is very bad sign.
While still profitable, for the time being, the utter failure of GW's current strategy both suggests that they're only hope to reverse this negative trend to find a way to increase unit volumes, and that the strategy they've embarked upon and failed to obtain positive results from makes reversing course into a unit-volume boosting strategy exceedingly difficult. The exceedingly high buy-in required for GW's games, combined with the shrinking playerbase and continued undermining of GW and indy store GW gaming communities form serious roadblocks to that.
Looming on the horizon is the specter of network effects. It is well known with products like this that a big component to maintaining unit-sales volume is the absolute necessity of a large playerbase to increase the appeal of the products to the consumer, as a tabletop game where you cannot get games against other players is essentially worthless.
While GW would like to believe that the majority of its consumers want for nothing more than to purchase models from GW and paint them, without a thought as to whether they'll actually ever be able to get a game, the reality is likely quite different. It's well known that when the playerbase for a game in any given area declines past a certain critical threshold, it has a strong tendency to collapse. Persistent rumors from many sources indicate this threshold has already been crossed with Warhammer Fantasy. If this happens to 40k, the impact on GW will be rapid and vicious. 17 million pounds in cash does form a bulwark against rapid collapse, but it won't last long if sales plummet in light of the large fixed costs GW appears to bear.
Someone who's knowledgeable fill me in: is it bad? Is it as bad as we thought?
It's a little better than what I expected. They are done cost cutting. The report outlined their new structure and it's literally cut to the bone. Local store manager reports to regional manager reports to board member. So if there's more revenue drops, there's no more cost savings through restructuring.
Their single employee stores are still rolling out and pretty much everywhere stores are closing faster than they are opening, but especially so in North America.
Revenue down, sales through every channel other than Forgeworld and Black Library are down. They spent 4 million on their new website but then reported it hasn't resulted in any higher sales numbers (still about 13% of GW's sales are through their webstore).
WayneTheGame wrote: They should be undercutting all of their competitors, offering deals and bundles (REAL bundles) and discounts, to make 40k ubiquitous AND affordable and corner the market again. Right now, they price stuff ridiculously high seemingly because "We can get away with it" and open the gates to competitors taking their market share.
The only purchases from me in the last year have been 30% bundle discount + 25% online store discount + US RRP so yeah I heartily agree here. $50 for a land raider in SMSF Ultra is reasonable value... $6 per termie in the same bundle far less so however so still a ways to go. The one click bundles with no discounts are just /facepalm
WayneTheGame wrote: They should be undercutting all of their competitors, offering deals and bundles (REAL bundles) and discounts, to make 40k ubiquitous AND affordable and corner the market again. Right now, they price stuff ridiculously high seemingly because "We can get away with it" and open the gates to competitors taking their market share.
The only purchases from me in the last year have been 30% bundle discount + 25% online store discount + US RRP so yeah I heartily agree here. $50 for a land raider in SMSF Ultra is reasonable value... $6 per termie in the same bundle far less so however so still a ways to go. The one click bundles with no discounts are just /facepalm
To this I wonder if GW actually believed that the one-click bundles would trick people in to thinking that they were saving money.
Given their current money woes, I'm hoping that they realize their customers are not as stupid as they had hoped...
Amplified wrote: I don't post on here often these days, but I follow the state of GW fairly closely (mostly because I want to see them suffer the consequences of doing their damndest to alienate players like me) and I've got a decent accounting and business background:
First of all, I'll link the common size financial statements with automatically year-over-year change calculations built in:
For those unfamiliar with common size statements, these take each line item and divide them by sales revenue to measure them as a percentage of revenue (typically the primary driver of the scale of all items on an income statement and the operating section of the cash flow statement). This lets you compare what percentage of that year's revenue each item makes up....
...
...
.
Wow! In-depth analysis -- Thank you!!
It honestly makes the situation look worse than I thought.
Reading Kirby's statements feels like I'm listening to a third rate criminal explaining some convoluted alcohol store heist plan to his cronies in a dark alley. His flowery, for lack of a better word, style has that crooked tone of someone who might have a little cunning, but not a lot of smarts and certainly not a lot of familiarity with 10th grade English.
Amplified wrote: I don't post on here often these days, but I follow the state of GW fairly closely (mostly because I want to see them suffer the consequences of doing their damndest to alienate players like me) and I've got a decent accounting and business background:
First of all, I'll link the common size financial statements with automatically year-over-year change calculations built in:
For those unfamiliar with common size statements, these take each line item and divide them by sales revenue to measure them as a percentage of revenue (typically the primary driver of the scale of all items on an income statement and the operating section of the cash flow statement). This lets you compare what percentage of that year's revenue each item makes up....
...
...
.
Wow! In-depth analysis -- Thank you!!
It honestly makes the situation look worse than I thought.
Yes, thanks for those Amplified--excellent!
That looks like a pretty grim year. I see their Australia plan seems to be...failing. -21% growth in Australia + -11% growth in North America (of which, part is likely export loss to Australian customers). Between these numbers and my gut feel based off the growing popularity of Warmahordes in that area---I take it the Warhammer brand is in its death throes down under.
Tannhauser42 wrote: So, what could they release this year to help them out? New edition of 40K? New edition of Fantasy? Resurrect one or more of the Specialist Games? Or release an all new game? And would it be enough?
I guess they don't have a clue:
They do no demographic research and they don't know what the customers think.
If they'd done such research I doubt Dreadfleet would have happened for a start.
Oh, so you think people would say they didn't want a spin-off game if GW came asking?
They probably would, if you asked it in that non-specific and irrelevant way without a smidgen of context. Sure, they would say yes. Now if you had asked them if they would want to purchase dread fleet and described it to them, then they would have said, no.
WayneTheGame wrote: They should be undercutting all of their competitors, offering deals and bundles (REAL bundles) and discounts, to make 40k ubiquitous AND affordable and corner the market again. Right now, they price stuff ridiculously high seemingly because "We can get away with it" and open the gates to competitors taking their market share.
The only purchases from me in the last year have been 30% bundle discount + 25% online store discount + US RRP so yeah I heartily agree here. $50 for a land raider in SMSF Ultra is reasonable value... $6 per termie in the same bundle far less so however so still a ways to go. The one click bundles with no discounts are just /facepalm
To this I wonder if GW actually believed that the one-click bundles would trick people in to thinking that they were saving money.
Given their current money woes, I'm hoping that they realize their customers are not as stupid as they had hoped...
Could have a similar purpose as supersizing supposedly does. By having a supersize option, people are more likely to order a large than without a supersize option so even if it doesn't sell itself, it still stimulates sales merely by existing. People might think "hey, I should slowly work towards owning an entire chapter!" and increase normal purchases merely by seeing the existence of a whole chapter bundle.
Ta everyone for making me read every page of this fascinating and hilarious topic and not getting any work done.
A Town Called Malus wrote:Coming soon, Dreadfleet 2: Dread Harder.
I loled.
Palindrome wrote:The ideal answer to that would be to split 40k in half. Same scale in terms of miniatures but 1 detailed skirmish ruleset that is perfectly balanced (in so far as that is possible), basically Infinity with Space Marines and the ma(e?)ss battle game that is 7th. GW would still gets its miniatures sales, the players would be able to choose which type of game they want without having to play other games and it would considerably broaden the appeal of 40k. You will always get mixed opinions from customers but that is where statistics and metadata come to the rescue.
I'd do it the other way. Make 40K the skirmish game. (Or rather keep it as a skirmish game, 'cos that's what it's basic mechanics still is, just with too many minis) Just strip out all the bloat of the last few editions, including apoc nonsense, and bring it back to 2nd/3rd levels of minis. Use that to satisfy punters' desires for 'cinematics' and 'narrative' and big chunky action figures clamouring to be driven closer so they can hit the enemy with their sword. Then bring back epic as the tactical, proper mass battle game, that actually has enough space between the minis for at least a little pretense at maneuvre.
Though I'd like to say to all those saying "I wish GW would bring specialist games back": they're still there. They need just a little more effort to find, and you need to choose some good proxy or alternate miniatures. Regarding the latter, the recent stuff coming out of Onslaught Miniatures and Troublemaker Games has relit the epic fire under my seat. And having a look at some Shapeways sellers has almost done the same for the BFG fire beside it.
dethork wrote:Also, enough with the minis that have the facial expressions of people dropping bricks. It isn't grim dark. There is nothing grim dark about pinching a loaf. We all do it.
I loled again.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
GW ditching specialist games was one of the best things that ever happened to me, and I'm not saying that because I sold my dozen copies of dreadfleet and old copies of bloodbowl for vastly inflated prices. No, no, no
It's causing me some cognitive dissonance to see Dreadfleet lumped in with a set that I've synonymised with 'GW's good games'.
WayneTheGame wrote:Imagine if they actually made them 17ml dropper bottles like most everyone else?
Two of my favourite paint ranges are Coat d'arms and Ral Partha, and I'm glad they don't have droppers. I also use VMC, but my single abiding memory of those is a bottle of cork brown clogged so bad it exploded over my face and half the room.
Idolator wrote:They probably would, if you asked it in that non-specific and irrelevant way without a smidgen of context. Sure, they would say yes.
Despite my love of SG, I'd say most probably wouldn't, for reasons I've already gone over.
I do not understand why they act from a position of arrogance instead of one of aggressiveness. They should be undercutting all of their competitors, offering deals and bundles (REAL bundles) and discounts, to make 40k ubiquitous AND affordable and corner the market again. Right now, they price stuff ridiculously high seemingly because "We can get away with it" and open the gates to competitors taking their market share.
GW doesn't think it has competitors, so that is why they don't have to do it. Nothing to undercut. I said this in another thread, I went to my FGS, and I picked up a few GW stuff put them down right away and bought some other stuff where for me, I got better value. X-wing and Attack Wing. Minis I don't have to paint, or put together and it's cheaper. Being painted or pre assembled doesn't even come into it. I would have loved to put together my own Enterprise or Romulan ships. Thing is, If GW made a mini that was already made and painted, I am sure they would try and sell if to close to $100. So my money is going where I get better value.
You are so correct Wayne, that is what GW should be doing instead of trying to use lawyers to "undercut" them.
WayneTheGame wrote: They should be undercutting all of their competitors, offering deals and bundles (REAL bundles) and discounts, to make 40k ubiquitous AND affordable and corner the market again. Right now, they price stuff ridiculously high seemingly because "We can get away with it" and open the gates to competitors taking their market share.
The only purchases from me in the last year have been 30% bundle discount + 25% online store discount + US RRP so yeah I heartily agree here. $50 for a land raider in SMSF Ultra is reasonable value... $6 per termie in the same bundle far less so however so still a ways to go. The one click bundles with no discounts are just /facepalm
To this I wonder if GW actually believed that the one-click bundles would trick people in to thinking that they were saving money.
Given their current money woes, I'm hoping that they realize their customers are not as stupid as they had hoped...
Yeah they are absolutely clueless, I've no interest in quitting 40k, but I've bought feth all the last few years. Selling tens of thousands of kits for 50 bucks is better than selling a few hundred for 81. They have hit a platue lately and massively pissed everyone off, the quicker then learn that people actually want some value, the faster they will get back on the horse.
Davor wrote: Yeah they are absolutely clueless, I've no interest in quitting 40k, but I've bought feth all the last few years. Selling tens of thousands of kits for 50 bucks is better than selling a few hundred for 81. They have hit a platue lately and massively pissed everyone off, the quicker then learn that people actually want some value, the faster they will get back on the horse.
If ever.
Exactly. I mean that seems like business 101 to me; obviously you don't go for strictly quantity > quality because without quality nobody will buy, but you also don't charge a premium for a commodity and make less money versus selling more at a price people will buy.
I do not understand why they act from a position of arrogance instead of one of aggressiveness. They should be undercutting all of their competitors, offering deals and bundles (REAL bundles) and discounts, to make 40k ubiquitous AND affordable and corner the market again. Right now, they price stuff ridiculously high seemingly because "We can get away with it" and open the gates to competitors taking their market share.
GW doesn't think it has competitors, so that is why they don't have to do it. Nothing to undercut. I said this in another thread, I went to my FGS, and I picked up a few GW stuff put them down right away and bought some other stuff where for me, I got better value. X-wing and Attack Wing. Minis I don't have to paint, or put together and it's cheaper. Being painted or pre assembled doesn't even come into it. I would have loved to put together my own Enterprise or Romulan ships. Thing is, If GW made a mini that was already made and painted, I am sure they would try and sell if to close to $100. So my money is going where I get better value.
You are so correct Wayne, that is what GW should be doing instead of trying to use lawyers to "undercut" them.
It just boggles the mind; I mean I get that a lot of it is likely wishful thinking, it's just that the paints in particular stick out in my mind because they actually are very good quality paints, but not worth paying more than everybody else to get less of it (thereby needing to buy more later). That stinks of unethical practices to me (akin to selling a machine part and making it wear out faster so you'll have to buy another; best analogy I can think of ).
Their entire thinking they are a monopoly is what's ruining and will ruin them. If they woke up, realized what their competition is doing and take the appropriate steps to compete with them, GW could be a company that I would support again. But not at their current prices, and certainly not with their current attitude.
Does anyone else think that if the CEO is "stepping down" as he put it, that it could mean good things if someone with a lick of sense takes his place?
That makes assumptions on how much pull the CEO has, WeaponPrime. There is a lot of culture and entrenched ideals at GW, a change in CEO is going to be done by those people. Just changing the CEO is not going to be a magic pill.
Crimson wrote: I'm a bit surprised that the share price hasn't taken a bigger hit, or is -2.15% a lot?
Thing with the share price is that January will have shaken a lot of small scale investors loose.
They've paid a dividend, which will have encouraged purchases before the qualification date, and has seen a steady, but undramatic, fall since it was paid, as those who bought stock just for a quick payout have been divesting themselves.
Almost 50% of GW's shares are owned by institutional investors, and a further ~15% owned by Kirby and other senior management. They've all had dividends, and are in it for the long haul in all likelihood, and in most cases have probably seen a decent return on the purchase price, regardless of the roller coaster in between times.
All this means is that, in reality, there probably aren't enough equity holders of the sort who would likely panic and try and offload their stock in a hurry, causing a run on the price. Remember anyone who bought at the start of the year has made money in the stock and been paid a divided, they're unlikely to be too dissatisfied.
Someone who's knowledgeable fill me in: is it bad? Is it as bad as we thought?\
Christ, profit down 42%? Is that real, seriously?
It could have been worse, but not that much worse. Second half-year was not quite as disastrously bad as the first, but still I gather it must have been a slight disappointment, given that they promoted crap out of everything during the Spring (Imperial Knights everywhere, promotional miniature campaign with website opening etc). Profit is down partly because of 'exceptional items' (mostly severance pay to laid off employees).
As noted, they have plenty of fixed costs, which are in control atm and they still did a good profit given low sales: however if the sales dip further, the only thing left to be cut is closing down stores. Big time. Good news is that if they return to growth path (Kirby cautiously promised "single digits growth"), their profits will be excellent, but that's a big if.
Regarding their store model, which is essentially a replacement for conventional marketing they don't do: it would work better if the stores had more stuff to sell. They only sell 40k, WHFB and LOTR/Hobbit, and by what Kirby said, soon it's only 40k/WHFB. And one-man stores are too small to maintain active playing community by themselves (after all, you need tables to play on). If a random person walks into GW store, odds that he/she sees something which interests her is quite low since in essence there is only two products on sale.
GW catalogue is just way too thin. They don't have a gateway game, they don't have any other types of games than tactical scale ground war game, they don't have board games. Compare to FFG, which has a huge catalogue. Sure, many of the titles are not that popular (some not necessarily all that great either). But there is almost certainly something for everyone. GW needs to broaden their appeal, instead of cutting the "useless" branches.
xXWeaponPrimeXx wrote: Does anyone else think that if the CEO is "stepping down" as he put it, that it could mean good things if someone with a lick of sense takes his place?
IF being the key word. But remember that Kirby is still the Chairman of the Board, so it's entirely possible that he'll just appoint a Krony as a successor who will do the same thing that he would.
Crimson wrote: I'm a bit surprised that the share price hasn't taken a bigger hit, or is -2.15% a lot?
Expectations were already loaded to negative by January report. This report was more or less what markets expected based on the past information, thus no pressure for big shares drop.
Backfire wrote: And one-man stores are too small to maintain active playing community by themselves (after all, you need tables to play on).
Which is why the one-man stores are massively stupid idea. The big benefit of having their own chain of stores is providing gaming space and building the player community focused exclusively on GW's games. And of course people walking in the store and seeing the games actually being played is great advertisement. But if you cannot do that, then there's little reason to have this expensive retail empire.
Backfire wrote: And one-man stores are too small to maintain active playing community by themselves (after all, you need tables to play on).
Which is why the one-man stores are massively stupid idea. The big benefit of having their own chain of stores is providing gaming space and building the player community focused exclusively on GW's games. And of course people walking in the store and seeing the games actually being played is great advertisement. But if you cannot do that, then there's little reason to have this expensive retail empire.
This is EXACTLY how I got hooked on 40k. Though it wasn't in a GW store.
Backfire wrote: And one-man stores are too small to maintain active playing community by themselves (after all, you need tables to play on).
Which is why the one-man stores are massively stupid idea. The big benefit of having their own chain of stores is providing gaming space and building the player community focused exclusively on GW's games. And of course people walking in the store and seeing the games actually being played is great advertisement. But if you cannot do that, then there's little reason to have this expensive retail empire.
That's what makes it so funny. Their retail stores existed to provide a place to buy GW products, play games and interact with the community, but going to one-man stores essentially killed that, thereby killing the reason for the GW store to exist in the first place beyond legacy reasons.
Maybe they could franchise them? So you basically have a GW-only FLGS but without that one man shop nonsense?
Kilkrazy wrote: The sky isn't falling, but there are some ominous creaking noises from the vaults of heaven.
GW currently have £17.55 million cash in the bank to spend against actual losses, so they could survive for several years.
Off by £6.3 million or so unless I am missing something on their balance sheet. The 20 pence dividend was paid out following the close of FY2014. The cash was still on hand at the close so it still is counted...granted as soon as the accounts were run, they had to cut the checks for the shareholders.
Might just be me...but that does seem to be going in the wrong direction. Granted, I haven't had a chance to actually look over the report...so they might have declared it as dividends owed to investors further up the balance sheet, but I would suspect that in order to keep things looking rosy...they didn't.
Otherwise, that would be an interesting trick to have a drop in profits but an increase in cash reserves (with the noted one time restructuring expenses and website launch...and a dividend which, while lower is not that much lower than the previous year...).
Franchising could be an option although chances are they'd need some change around at the head of the company to actually get it to work. It's certainly a viable option and cuts out a lot of costs for GW whilst at the same time plays very well with their market dominance.
The problem for them though would be that many stores would actually want to drop the franchise after a while - the market has grown; but its still a niche. Franchise stores would have to do VERY well on their own otherwise owners would be feeling the pinch not being able to sell MTG - Board games and other miniature lines to add to their income.
I think pre-recession franchising would have worked better for GW; the market was a bit smaller and the retail sector was more healthy. Would have worked well at least for pushing into new market areas.
Yep, GW-only has to go the way of the dodo. They've lost substantial market share in the last few years and that's only going to increase given the burnt bridges. GW could reinvent themselves as the hobby portal if they start selling everyone elses stuff - they'd keep their margin and drive traffic to their stores but it would be a complete reversal of their current policy of cutting down store costs rather than increasing. That would be the only way to save their retail arm imo. Lacking that, drop it completely and rebuild bridges with distributors and FLGS or go direct only and share the margin with the customers would be other options.
Franchising would only serve them well if they gave franchise owners free reign to figure out how to make the stores profitable, and then built a franchise model on that. The problem is, people who buy franchises buy them so that they can use a tried and proven cookie cutter approach to a profitable location, which GW does not have.
You'd be 10x as well off opening your own independent store and carrying GW product than you would buying a GW franchise.
I'm not saying this to offend anybody, but only a complete sucker would buy a franchise from GW.
Backfire wrote: GW catalogue is just way too thin. They don't have a gateway game, they don't have any other types of games than tactical scale ground war game, they don't have board games. Compare to FFG, which has a huge catalogue. Sure, many of the titles are not that popular (some not necessarily all that great either). But there is almost certainly something for everyone. GW needs to broaden their appeal, instead of cutting the "useless" branches.
Which is interesting, because their catalog is simultaneously extremely bloated. GW has been shoehorning more and more models into the game with each new release. Look at the new Space Wolves release: a new flyer kit added, when they could have easily given them the stormtalon or stormraven. Flyers in general have been forced into 40k when the scale of the game is much too small for aircraft. Top it all off with a slew of unnecessary, sloppy rules, and you have a game that may need rewritten from the ground up to be fixed.
re. gateway game - it was mentioned they're bringing back a couple of these recently. Also yeah, Mantic is right on the ball with the importance of gateway games. I've used Dreadball to spark interest in tabletop games in non-tt players, who I plan to rope into Deadzone who might then get interested in Warpath. Shared universe, 3 different games at 3 levels of play, a great system. They just need an FFGRPG and some PC games now!
The franchisee option will never work, until Hasbro gets involved.
A franchisee would want to eventually sell MtG. Its a well known product for the same target audience with 1/10th of the cost in shelf space. Only GW would never allow it. It would be like McDonald's and Taco Bell under the same roof.
But is Hasbro buys GW, then its just Yum! Foods.
Then you can have your TacoBell/PizzaHut/KFC all under one roof and everyone gets what they want. Hasbro would be able to do MtG/GW and franchise it out, possibly even cut out the middle distributors and in essence go direct market.
More likely, they'd simply keep using their existing distribution and retail and just offer GW through that along with a program to support independent stores like magic's massive organized play support and not do what GW does and try to compete with their own trade partners and lock them out with draconian trade terms.
It would be terrible for stores if they only way they could get magic would be if they also had to carry GW stuff.
Shotgun - yeah I think 10 years or so ago being a GW only store would have worked- in todays market independants need every income source they can get so they are going to branch out into other supporting product lines.
As for market bloat I very much agree - I can't understand why GW hasn't made a skirmish game using Warhammer and/or Warhammer 40K models and theme. It's cleraly the market segment they are losing and its the segment that is allowing games to grow - Warmachine grew into that market - Infinity - Mantic and others are also expanding.
Heck look at all the Blitz Ball games doing well - GW could have shut down a significant number of its competition if they'd just focused on lines that they've already done and just polished htem up for release. Heck a stand alone Bloodbowl game - no expansions or such would have done well
Shotgun wrote: Then you can have your TacoBell/PizzaHut/KFC all under one roof and everyone gets what they want.
Ah yes, the combined creature that my friends and I dubbed "KenTaco Hut." Still bizarre to see them around.
Hasbro would never do a GW "franchise" that carries 40K, WHFB, MTG, and their other products. They already had the chance to have their own store chain, and decisively nixed the idea. When they bought Wizards of the Coast, there was a chain of WotC stores already in existence. One of Hasbro's first moves as new owner was to shutter them all.
FWIW I don't really think a franchise would work, but GW seems adamant about the concept of the GW store instead of fostering independents. So it was an idea
I really don't see anything changing though. They aren't smart enough to realize the problem. It's much more than just decreased sales, but I get the impression that all they are going to take away is that they need to sell more aggressively.
It would be nice if they'd just release awesome stuff I want to buy at the price they are selling it for.
Unfortunately, few releases from GW make me enthusiastic any more.
I think it's a real shame they're dropping LOTR/the Hobbit from the sounds of things too. I hope they give some warning, because I definitely want to pick up some of the plastic kits before it's too late- the plastic Nazgul has been on my list for a long while.
Let's hope they can turn it around eh? I've not much hope but they probably have a few years to do it in.
WayneTheGame wrote: I do not understand why they act from a position of arrogance instead of one of aggressiveness. They should be undercutting all of their competitors, offering deals and bundles (REAL bundles) and discounts, to make 40k ubiquitous AND affordable and corner the market again. Right now, they price stuff ridiculously high seemingly because "We can get away with it" and open the gates to competitors taking their market share.
Because they don't see themselves as having any competition. In their eyes they are the miniature wargaming hobby, and not simply part of it.
Yonan wrote: Yep, GW-only has to go the way of the dodo. They've lost substantial market share in the last few years and that's only going to increase given the burnt bridges. GW could reinvent themselves as the hobby portal if they start selling everyone elses stuff - they'd keep their margin and drive traffic to their stores but it would be a complete reversal of their current policy of cutting down store costs rather than increasing. That would be the only way to save their retail arm imo. Lacking that, drop it completely and rebuild bridges with distributors and FLGS or go direct only and share the margin with the customers would be other options.
I had this exact idea about the stores a few pages back.
Where GW stores are dominant, GW stores should be made into local hobby stores with a fuller range of products, GW and non-GW, and aimed towards maximum profit.
Where GW stores are not-dominant, they should be sold off entirely and replaced with regional 'hobby centers' aka Battle Bunkers. These would be responsible for selling and maintaining an active WH40k network in that region.
WayneTheGame wrote: I do not understand why they act from a position of arrogance instead of one of aggressiveness. They should be undercutting all of their competitors, offering deals and bundles (REAL bundles) and discounts, to make 40k ubiquitous AND affordable and corner the market again. Right now, they price stuff ridiculously high seemingly because "We can get away with it" and open the gates to competitors taking their market share.
Because they don't see themselves as having any competition. In their eyes they are the miniature wargaming hobby, and not simply part of it.
And this is probably the saddest part; that the past two reports should have been the wakeup call.
Yep. If the store is good enough it doesn't need to be in a high throughput area, you'd get better results by having a larger store with more shelf space, hobby space and gaming space that makes it worth a little detour to get there which will still probably be less rent than a high traffic area.
edit: Thought: GW vending machines, seriously. Virtually no costs involved, just the ability to buy common or new release kits in high traffic locations.
Da Boss wrote: It would be nice if they'd just release awesome stuff I want to buy at the price they are selling it for.
Unfortunately, few releases from GW make me enthusiastic any more.
I think it's a real shame they're dropping LOTR/the Hobbit from the sounds of things too. I hope they give some warning, because I definitely want to pick up some of the plastic kits before it's too late- the plastic Nazgul has been on my list for a long while.
Let's hope they can turn it around eh? I've not much hope but they probably have a few years to do it in.
GW does not give warning, period.
GW does not communicate with its customers, period.
Yonan wrote: Yep. If the store is good enough it doesn't need to be in a high throughput area, you'd get better results by having a larger store with more shelf space, hobby space and gaming space that makes it worth a little detour to get there which will still probably be less rent than a high traffic area.
edit: Thought: GW vending machines, seriously. Virtually no costs involved, just the ability to buy common or new release kits in high traffic locations.
What is clear is that the ownership has no concept of GW's network / incumbency effect, even as they benefit from it. If they did understand that effect, they would be attempting to defend it.
If this management continues, there's no reason to expect GW to survive. They are acting in the most bone-headed manner possible.
You and I found it relevant before these numbers and the hilarious letter though tbh ; p Hopefully the last few digging their heels in thinking everything was fine will come to their senses now though.
DrRansom wrote: What is clear is that the ownership has no concept of GW's network / incumbency effect, even as they benefit from it. If they did understand that effect, they would be attempting to defend it.
I haven't seen him post here yet, but over on Warseer Wayshuba (who seems to know what he's talking about, being a CEO himself although no idea of his company size) posted his predictions based on the report, and it's not good:
Wayshuba (posted on Warseer) wrote: Next year's (2H14-1H15) gross revenue coming in at about £92m-£104m and GW experiencing their first net profit loss in quite a while. The following year (2H15-1H16), you will see the aggressive cost cutting measures to try and fix things, but we are already into the bone. You will outright see the foundation of the company plummet in this second year with GW being close to out of business or sold. I do not, at this point, really think GW has legs enough to make it past the end of 2016, early 2017 at most.
I wouldn't be surprised. They tried their big guns (Space Marine Codex, 7th edition, Imperial Knight) and it couldn't stem the profit loss; what do they have left? Fantasy is considered even by GW to be inferior to 40k, so 9th edition Fantasy isn't likely to do much, if anything. The remaining codexes are fringe armies, and the remaining WHFB army books are even more so, so what's left? Bring out a Warlord Titan for $800? 8th edition 40k with a totally different style of play to invalidate everything? They have nothing left.
Wayshuba does seem pretty knowledgeable on the matter, though with those predictions, I'd be interested in seeing a more in depth analysis and reasoning to the conclusion.
What really worries me about all this is that the company cannot see where they have gone wrong even though the evidence is already there. Australias' loss of revenue should point to the fact that they have gone above the acceptable price for GW miniatures but GW thinks that an acceptable policy is to bring the rest of the world in line with these prices. If they don't do market research surely they should look at their own financial figures.
Kilkrazy wrote: The sky isn't falling, but there are some ominous creaking noises from the vaults of heaven.
GW currently have £17.55 million cash in the bank to spend against actual losses, so they could survive for several years.
Off by £6.3 million or so unless I am missing something on their balance sheet. The 20 pence dividend was paid out following the close of FY2014. The cash was still on hand at the close so it still is counted...granted as soon as the accounts were run, they had to cut the checks for the shareholders.
Might just be me...but that does seem to be going in the wrong direction. Granted, I haven't had a chance to actually look over the report...so they might have declared it as dividends owed to investors further up the balance sheet, but I would suspect that in order to keep things looking rosy...they didn't.
Otherwise, that would be an interesting trick to have a drop in profits but an increase in cash reserves (with the noted one time restructuring expenses and website launch...and a dividend which, while lower is not that much lower than the previous year...).
Where are you seeing that? Note 9 and the balance sheet show £17,550,000. Per their income statement, they didn't declare dividends in FY14 either. They match their dividends to the period they were declared they were paid in FY14 but declared as part of FY13. If you're having trouble following their cash outflows, look at the statement of cash flow and note 8 (operating activities for the statement of cash flows).
I find the cash flow statement to be the second most important statement next to the P&L. When you watch a company with a net loss it's very important to see this statement. In GW's case they are still seeing both positive cash flow and positive earnings. Might not be meeting expectations, but its still not losing money.
xXWeaponPrimeXx wrote: Does anyone else think that if the CEO is "stepping down" as he put it, that it could mean good things if someone with a lick of sense takes his place?
Well look at GW before Kirby stepped in as CEO. Yearly price hikes. He left, and now we have New Release price hikes. Who knows what the next person. Maybe it could be the Devil you know than the devil you don't know. Most likely the new CEO will not know anything about Minis and what GW is and just treat it as a business and most likely we will have more price hikes. So more people will be buying less. CEO will have no clue as to why since they are so high up and separated from what they are actually selling.
Achaylus72 wrote: does my eyes and my calculator deceive me or has Games Workshop recorded a sales loss of 4.036 million pounds in the 12 months to the 1st June 2014.
But a operating profit of 557,000 pounds meaning that GW had to gut over 4.6 million pounds from the Australian Operations just to post profit.
Also I noticed that GW has had another disaster year of 9.4% the 10th straight year of negative sales.
Where do you see that? I don't see those numbers on the P&L? I see the additional expense of shutting down operations of £4.5 million but that is an additional cost not a savings. Where do you see the operating profit of £0.557 million? Which statement, footnote, or is it in the MD&A?
Where are you seeing that? Note 9 and the balance sheet show £17,550,000. Per their income statement, they didn't declare dividends in FY14 either. They match their dividends to the period they were declared they were paid in FY14 but declared as part of FY13. If you're having trouble following their cash outflows, look at the statement of cash flow and note 8 (operating activities for the statement of cash flows).
The cash accounts are based off prior years.
Page 2 says no dividend declared in FY2014.
The chart on page 6 shows a dividend.
Page 8 confirms the dividend paid of 16 pence per share (several months back it was stated as well on the investors site...forget the month).
Page 11 gives the information on the 20 pence dividend being paid out after the balance sheet date.
Page 36 enumerates the dividends paid in FY 2014 - only the 16 pence dividend shows up.
Page 39 notes what you have said (in terms of dividends being counted in the year they are declared...).
Page 47 Further confirms page 36 and 11.
Just saying...it looks a bit off to me. Things don't add up, when you add them up.
So much of this Kirby-speak makes sense...from the perspective of someone who doesn't understand (or doesn't care to understand) what happens at a game company.
"Attitude is more important than skills." I'm fairly sure that if you take two people in the industry (game designers, model makers, etc), if both of them are skilled, and one has a better, more co-operative attitude, then the guy who is easier to work with will work out better. If you don't understand or appreciate the importance of a skilled designer, then you will think that the attitude is what is making him successful, and just look for people with the 'get along' attitude. So you end up with game designers who either have little skill, but can smile and nod, or people who do have skill, but need the job, so smile and nod.
"Our niche is people who want to collect our miniatures." True enough. That's largely because your prices have alienated the people who want to play with your miniatures, sending them to companies with more affordable toys. Your game design has alienated people who want to play your game, sending them to more accessible, better designed systems. You've eliminated all your customers except the few of us who still want to play and own Warhammer models. That's not a feather in your cap, but you clearly think it is.
"We don't do market research. We don't try to find out what the market wants." Companies who can innovate can accomplish the second, even though they do the first. You can produce things the market didn't even know it wanted. That's a high bar, but it's possible. It's not possible for a company who doesn't do market research. There's no way for you to discover untapped demand, or unmet needs, when you don't even do market research.
It's also possible to dilute a brand identity by catering entirely to market research, and becoming a bland non-entity. GW is not doing this. They are doing the exact opposite. They are killing their own sales by insisting on branding everything 'Warhammer'. They have in house modeling and casting, but they make scenery and terrain that is exclusively designed for Warhammer. WHY? When you can (arguably) undercut the opposition in every facet of production, why insist on exclusivity? What would be wrong with selling fantasy buildings for any fantasy game, or tables for any tabletop game, or sci-fi scenery for any sci-fi game? If you couldn't compete with other manufacturers, then it would make sense to focus intensely on your niche. But when you invest your money and time to be competitive, why handicap yourself?
Hopefully all this bad news might finally encourage someone to speak truth to those in power at GW. I still think that they have a lot of people who have huge amounts of skill, talent, and love for the company and the 'Warhammer' identity working there (I imagine them persevering, hoping for a ray of sunshine). Maybe at some point this terrible management will relent and more of those people with a love for the company can work more freely.
Dreadfleet 9: Dreadlock Paradise (we own that we never heard of 10cc)
All that talk about what GW should do is nice and all but they said themselves that they do no market research, so i wonder what "solution" they will come up with to fix it.
Jehan-reznor wrote: Dreadfleet 9: Dreadlock Paradise (we own that we never heard of 10cc)
All that talk about what GW should do is nice and all but they said themselves that they do no market research, so i wonder what "solution" they will come up with to fix it.
Even more releases?
They can very much pull out of this spiral. But the fact that they are proudly ignorant of their own customer base shows that they won't because they can't be bothered to find out how. They probably have no idea how sick the community is or how people perceive the company and their product. They're less like Microsoft and more like EA.
Where are you seeing that? Note 9 and the balance sheet show £17,550,000. Per their income statement, they didn't declare dividends in FY14 either. They match their dividends to the period they were declared they were paid in FY14 but declared as part of FY13. If you're having trouble following their cash outflows, look at the statement of cash flow and note 8 (operating activities for the statement of cash flows).
The cash accounts are based off prior years.
Page 2 says no dividend declared in FY2014.
The chart on page 6 shows a dividend.
Page 8 confirms the dividend paid of 16 pence per share (several months back it was stated as well on the investors site...forget the month).
Page 11 gives the information on the 20 pence dividend being paid out after the balance sheet date.
Page 36 enumerates the dividends paid in FY 2014 - only the 16 pence dividend shows up.
Page 39 notes what you have said (in terms of dividends being counted in the year they are declared...).
Page 47 Further confirms page 36 and 11.
Just saying...it looks a bit off to me. Things don't add up, when you add them up.
the latest dividend wasn't issued until after the end of the fiscal year and wouldn't appear on the annual report. It will appear on the next one.
Da Butcha - More than just making scenery, why doesn't GW try to sell its manufacturing capability via the Citadel moniker? Let some Kickstarter take the development risk, GW just profits from manufacturing the models. This diversifies revenue stream and, more importantly, prevents competitor manufacturing from appearing.
Re Turning GW around: the current leadership shows no sign of knowing about GW's position in the market. Any turn-around will be an expensive multi-year deal and requires some capital margin to keep on operating during that period. GW may already be at a point where it can't cut the costs of its goods, as the potential volume gained is too little.
For example, wouldn't it have made sense for GW to try to cross market Dawn of War and a WH40K starter set? Each DoW game comes with a 10% coupon for the 40K starter set? (Enough of a discount that it is attractive, but still allows GW to sell the starter set at a solid margin.)
The 40K IP is incredibly strong, it takes a company of quite staggering incompetence to blow away its advantage. Yet, the inability to get massive sales on Space Marines and 7th Edition indicates that GW is in deep trouble.
DrRansom wrote: Da Butcha - More than just making scenery, why doesn't GW try to sell its manufacturing capability via the Citadel moniker? Let some Kickstarter take the development risk, GW just profits from manufacturing the models. This diversifies revenue stream and, more importantly, prevents competitor manufacturing from appearing.
I would assume this is because they're at capacity with their own stuff. I recall reading a comment that they don't put everything in plastic mostly because they just don't have the manufacturing time. This is why we still get the odd finecast unit - there was no capacity to even do a plastic kit.
If they don't have capacity for the stuff even they want to do, they're not going to have capacity to to production for others.
Alpharius wrote: Dreadfleet - the next one to make that lame joke again gets a warning?
Seriously - on topic!
Aww! Knee Deep in the Dread was the next joke, but ok.
Bigger badder Dreader.
It just seams to me that the more money they put in the less return they are seeing, as they just add more and more stuff to one system. You know in the old days they would update 40K a bit, then move on to fantasy, then move on to epic all the while bringing other new projects and games to market.
It kept you from getting burnt out on one system, now it just seams they release stuff to release it. The game is constantly being updated, well added on to might be the better term.
There is just entirely too much focus on 40k, I can't even wrap my head around all the new products and add ons. I don't really feel like I know the game anymore.
You used to see it in the club, we had a 40k season, then a fantasy season, an epic season and a bloodbowl season.
I really think they need to let 40k settledown a bit and diversify.
Where are you seeing that? Note 9 and the balance sheet show £17,550,000. Per their income statement, they didn't declare dividends in FY14 either. They match their dividends to the period they were declared they were paid in FY14 but declared as part of FY13. If you're having trouble following their cash outflows, look at the statement of cash flow and note 8 (operating activities for the statement of cash flows).
The cash accounts are based off prior years.
Page 2 says no dividend declared in FY2014.
The chart on page 6 shows a dividend.
Page 8 confirms the dividend paid of 16 pence per share (several months back it was stated as well on the investors site...forget the month).
Page 11 gives the information on the 20 pence dividend being paid out after the balance sheet date.
Page 36 enumerates the dividends paid in FY 2014 - only the 16 pence dividend shows up.
Page 39 notes what you have said (in terms of dividends being counted in the year they are declared...).
Page 47 Further confirms page 36 and 11.
Just saying...it looks a bit off to me. Things don't add up, when you add them up.
the latest dividend wasn't issued until after the end of the fiscal year and wouldn't appear on the annual report. It will appear on the next one.
Which is what I said (more or less). The cash on hand of 17 million got reduced by 6 million right after they closed the books for FY2014. It is a bit odd though that they say none was paid though (when one was paid) and later say one was paid. Prior years have actually recorded the dividend owing on the balance sheet when one gets declared but is not paid before the time of the report. This year they did not. Goes to make the books look a bit better.
Next year, they might restate the numbers to move the dividend back into FY2014 and lower the cash on hand in order to make the FY2015 cash on hand look better (all legal - if a bit creative book keeping practices as far as I know).
Alpharius wrote: Dreadfleet - the next one to make that lame joke again gets a warning?
Seriously - on topic!
Aww! Knee Deep in the Dread was the next joke, but ok.
Bigger badder Dreader.
It just seams to me that the more money they put in the less return they are seeing, as they just add more and more stuff to one system. You know in the old days they would update 40K a bit, then move on to fantasy, then move on to epic all the while bringing other new projects and games to market.
There is just entirely too much focus on 40k, I can't even wrap my head around all the new products and add ons. I don't really feel like I know the game anymore.
You used to see it in the club, we had a 40k season, then a fantasy season, an epic season and a bloodbowl season.
I really think they need to let 40k settledown a bit and diversify.
They're all into one concept and one desgin and one facet of their business to drive this gravy train into the ground.
A company with no tricks left up their sleeve other than to speed out production of material, cut costs across the board, and raise prices pretty much as done all it can to maximize profits. Once they decline again in sales, they'll have to start making cuts too close to home, such as nuking their storefronts, or shaving cost in manufacturing.
At some point GW will not be able to justify cuts as any more cuts will undermine their entire business model and their one sole focus area in 40k will not save them one iota.
DrRansom wrote: Da Butcha - More than just making scenery, why doesn't GW try to sell its manufacturing capability via the Citadel moniker? Let some Kickstarter take the development risk, GW just profits from manufacturing the models. This diversifies revenue stream and, more importantly, prevents competitor manufacturing from appearing.
I would assume this is because they're at capacity with their own stuff. I recall reading a comment that they don't put everything in plastic mostly because they just don't have the manufacturing time. This is why we still get the odd finecast unit - there was no capacity to even do a plastic kit.
If they don't have capacity for the stuff even they want to do, they're not going to have capacity to to production for others.
Even more likely to be true since they removed the limited capacity they once had in Memphis...
GW's supply chain is still FUBAR, and although they can talk it up to being great news to have everything centralized in England - it is the source of so very many of the issues they have been having in the past 6 months with keeping stock available overseas (and to some extent even in Europe). With the drop in...well everything...it should be quite clear now that the supply issues were not the result of things selling out so fast because of high demand rather as a result of a supply chain that is broken.
PrehistoricUFO wrote: I guess this explains why Fantasy has been . . . neglected lately.
I play 40K, just as a disclaimer.
Fantasy is like the red headed step child. It was their first success, but has been put on the back shelf. Yes, they update it and create new rules and minis (some very nice actually) for it, but it never feels like they are really focusing on it. Its an "Also ran" at this point.
PrehistoricUFO wrote: I guess this explains why Fantasy has been . . . neglected lately.
I play 40K, just as a disclaimer.
Fantasy is like the red headed step child. It was their first success, but has been put on the back shelf. Yes, they update it and create new rules and minis (some very nice actually) for it, but it never feels like they are really focusing on it. Its an "Also ran" at this point.
Red headed step children get more love than Fantasy. Fantasy is the evil twin, mutated leper pod person of war games.
They've gone and fethed it up so much not even Matt Ward can resuscitate it will his over the top fluff.
The last non codex release for Fantasy was Triumph and Treachery, wasn't it? I think there was a single campaign book too (Battle in the Badlands or something?) - and that was just in the vein of Crusade of Fire.
In the meantime, 40k has had a something like 8 codex Supplements released, Stronghold Assault, Escalation, Sanctus Reach Part 1 and 2, 3 Apocalypse supplements and more dataslates than you could shake a USB stick at.
And that's just the things I could remember.
It's weird though, as Fantasy and Triumph and Treachery are IMMENSELY popular at my gaming club.
DrRansom wrote: For example, wouldn't it have made sense for GW to try to cross market Dawn of War and a WH40K starter set? Each DoW game comes with a 10% coupon for the 40K starter set? (Enough of a discount that it is attractive, but still allows GW to sell the starter set at a solid margin.)
Cross-promotion and leveraging their IP appear to be two things that GW not only doesn't do but actively avoids. Yeah, the might've put a page into WD every now and again - and I remember one terrain building article where they scratch built some of the Marine buildings from DoW 1 (something that'd never happen in the era of Official™ Citadel™ Terrain™ Kits™) - but that's as far as it went.
I mean think of all the things they could have done:
1. Dawn of War: Release a campaign book to go along-side the game. Make some Ltd. Ed. metal minis (as this is when they had metal minis) to represent the main players from the campaign. Or a box containing one of each of the main characters (Gorgutz, Thule, the Necron Lord, Farseer Taldeer, Lukas Alexander, Eliphas the Inheritor, Shas'O Kais).
2. Ultramarines Movie: Release a limited edition direct only boxed set of the 10 Marines from the movie, and give them their own unique set of special rules included in the box (FFG managed to release free rules for a couple of the relics from Ultramarine - so someone licensing GW's IP leveraged more out of that IP than the IP holders did!!!).
3. Dawn of War 2: Again, more limited edition characters. That female Witch Hunter would have made an excellent miniature.
And so on and so on.
The closest they came was that Orc Warboss in the WAR limited edition.
It's weird though, as Fantasy and Triumph and Treachery are IMMENSELY popular at my gaming club.
It's the craziest thing.
The one time GW does something good, they run away from it like the plague. See the new Space Wolves/Ork set they released? Great price kit, good starter for an army, already sold out with no mention of it being restocked.
One cross promotion they did was put a Grumlok and Gazbag Ork metal mini in with the WAR collectors edition. I'm still glad I forked out for that, the artbook and visual novel are both great and one day I'll paint the mini, even if the game fizzled due to EA pushing it out too early as they don't understand MMOs. Some Blood Ravens ltd ed characters and SM mini discount coupons with Dawn of War would have been a good sales stimulus imo.
They definitely need more stuff like that. The lack of good 40k and WHFBPC and console games is bordering on criminal due to how much opportunity there is for good stuff there, how easy it is for GW to make money on licensing fees and how much free advertising it gives due to cross promotion.
edit: how did I miss that last line, you mentioned Grumlok -_-
It's weird though, as Fantasy and Triumph and Treachery are IMMENSELY popular at my gaming club.
It's the craziest thing.
The one time GW does something good, they run away from it like the plague. See the new Space Wolves/Ork set they released? Great price kit, good starter for an army, already sold out with no mention of it being restocked.
GW's business model in a nutshell.
But that's the whole point isn't it? They have no idea that people liked Triumph or Stormclaw, because as they so proudly declared, they don't know or care what their customers want...
Yonan wrote: One cross promotion they did was put a Grumlok and Gazbag Ork metal mini in with the WAR collectors edition. I'm still glad I forked out for that, the artbook and visual novel are both great and one day I'll paint the mini, even if the game fizzled due to EA pushing it out too early as they don't understand MMOs. Some Blood Ravens ltd ed characters and SM mini discount coupons with Dawn of War would have been a good sales stimulus imo.
They definitely need more stuff like that. The lack of good 40k and WHFBPC and console games is bordering on criminal due to how much opportunity there is for good stuff there, how easy it is for GW to make money on licensing fees and how much free advertising it gives due to cross promotion.
edit: how did I miss that last line, you mentioned Grumlok -_-
Still have that mini, still will paint it, after Ar-ulric, who i have sitting in his blister, pristine and untouched.
It's weird though, as Fantasy and Triumph and Treachery are IMMENSELY popular at my gaming club.
It's the craziest thing.
The one time GW does something good, they run away from it like the plague. See the new Space Wolves/Ork set they released? Great price kit, good starter for an army, already sold out with no mention of it being restocked.
GW's business model in a nutshell.
But that's the whole point isn't it? They have no idea that people liked Triumph of Stormclaw, because as they so proudly declared, they don't know or care what their customers want...
Sometimes I like to think GW is no better than a precocious three year old.
Someone should tell GW that money grows on trees.
The next annual report will include a 15 million pound write off on a failed tree growing subsidiary they tried launching.
DrRansom wrote: For example, wouldn't it have made sense for GW to try to cross market Dawn of War and a WH40K starter set? Each DoW game comes with a 10% coupon for the 40K starter set? (Enough of a discount that it is attractive, but still allows GW to sell the starter set at a solid margin.)
Cross-promotion and leveraging their IP appear to be two things that GW not only doesn't do but actively avoids. Yeah, the might've put a page into WD every now and again - and I remember one terrain building article where they scratch built some of the Marine buildings from DoW 1 (something that'd never happen in the era of Official™ Citadel™ Terrain™ Kits™) - but that's as far as it went.
I mean think of all the things they could have done:
1. Dawn of War: Release a campaign book to go along-side the game. Make some Ltd. Ed. metal minis (as this is when they had metal minis) to represent the main players from the campaign. Or a box containing one of each of the main characters (Gorgutz, Thule, the Necron Lord, Farseer Taldeer, Lukas Alexander, Eliphas the Inheritor, Shas'O Kais).
2. Ultramarines Movie: Release a limited edition direct only boxed set of the 10 Marines from the movie, and give them their own unique set of special rules included in the box (FFG managed to release free rules for a couple of the relics from Ultramarine - so someone licensing GW's IP leveraged more out of that IP than the IP holders did!!!).
3. Dawn of War 2: Again, more limited edition characters. That female Witch Hunter would have made an excellent miniature.
And so on and so on.
The closest they came was that Orc Warboss in the WAR limited edition.
From GW's point of view, the video games should be an opportunity to get people into the miniature's game. Make a Blood Raven's starter kit, complete with paint, miniatures, painting guide, and some orks and sell that with a discount to owners of the video game.
Or: make a Battlefleet Gothic video game and re-release the miniature game.
Or (my personal favorite): release a Epic 40k game using the Wargame: Airland Battle/Red Dragon engine and re-release that miniature game.
The IP is almost designed to be mined and exploited to the fullest on all levels. GW should be seeking cases where it can have a video game with a tie into a miniatures game, especially a profitable starter set. Who cares if 90% of the video game players only buy the starter set and nothing else? At least you got their sales for that in addition to the license revenue.
I didn't know GW was at max production capability. Though I find that a bit surprising, without customer research, how do they know how much to produce?
I'm a great case for the effectivness. I'm a PC gamer - I picked up tabletop when I went on disability and so had the time for the hobby. I chose 40k because of Dawn of War which stimulated purchases of IG, Necrons and most recently, a feth ton of SMs to make into Blood Ravens. The more good video games they make, the more minis I'll buy and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this. Without the PC games I would have started with Mantic Kings of War and Warpath because they were much better priced but I was already keen on the 40k setting.
DrRansom wrote: From GW's point of view, the video games should be an opportunity to get people into the miniature's game.
That's it right there. The key word: Opportunity. Every licensed product is an opportunity to bring in new players. Right now it's mostly wasted opportunity, and GW's incredibly hands-off attitude when it comes to leveraging their IP (they want the licensing fee but beyond that see no reason to do any more work) means that they will continue to miss these opportunities even when they walk up and bite them in the face.
EDIT: Just to clarify, I also acknowledge that in pretty much all these cases GW was never the producer/publisher of the licensed works. GW wasn't the publisher on Dawn of War; THQ was. GW wasn't the publisher on Warhammer Online; EA was. So from the marketing/promotional aspect of those licensed products GW shouldn't need to nor should they be expected to promote those games. That's not their job or their responsibility as they were not the publishers. What I'm more talking about is cross-market stuff. It wasn't GW's job to publish Dawn of War, but it only hurts them when they fail to capitalise on the game and make companion products/gateway products/introductory bundles that go with the release of the game.
Remember that GW has squandered many, many opportunities to grow their business (Starcraft being a big, big one) and they only have themselves to blame with regard to letting other IPs get ahead of them in terms of popularity and stable cash flow.
I'm convinced GW as it is cannot properly manage their IP and must find someone who can.
Do any of the execs at GW even have a MBA (or whatever the equivalent is in the UK)? Cross promotions with video games and the SM movie sound like such a no brainier that even I wouldn't think twice about doing them, and I've never taken a business class or an Econ class since high school FFS.
DrRansom wrote: For example, wouldn't it have made sense for GW to try to cross market Dawn of War and a WH40K starter set? Each DoW game comes with a 10% coupon for the 40K starter set? (Enough of a discount that it is attractive, but still allows GW to sell the starter set at a solid margin.)
Cross-promotion and leveraging their IP appear to be two things that GW not only doesn't do but actively avoids. Yeah, the might've put a page into WD every now and again - and I remember one terrain building article where they scratch built some of the Marine buildings from DoW 1 (something that'd never happen in the era of Official™ Citadel™ Terrain™ Kits™) - but that's as far as it went.
I mean think of all the things they could have done:
1. Dawn of War: Release a campaign book to go along-side the game. Make some Ltd. Ed. metal minis (as this is when they had metal minis) to represent the main players from the campaign. Or a box containing one of each of the main characters (Gorgutz, Thule, the Necron Lord, Farseer Taldeer, Lukas Alexander, Eliphas the Inheritor, Shas'O Kais).
2. Ultramarines Movie: Release a limited edition direct only boxed set of the 10 Marines from the movie, and give them their own unique set of special rules included in the box (FFG managed to release free rules for a couple of the relics from Ultramarine - so someone licensing GW's IP leveraged more out of that IP than the IP holders did!!!).
3. Dawn of War 2: Again, more limited edition characters. That female Witch Hunter would have made an excellent miniature.
And so on and so on.
The closest they came was that Orc Warboss in the WAR limited edition.
I vaguely remember something related to Fire Warrior, something like a scenario with special rules for Kais. Of course, no models or anything for it.
DrRansom wrote: I didn't know GW was at max production capability. Though I find that a bit surprising, without customer research, how do they know how much to produce?
Don't forget - they closed their production facilities in Tennessee, and, I believe, destroyed those molds.
DrRansom wrote: I didn't know GW was at max production capability. Though I find that a bit surprising, without customer research, how do they know how much to produce?
Don't forget - they closed their production facilities in Florida, and, I believe, destroyed those molds.
Jehan-reznor wrote: Dreadfleet 9: Dreadlock Paradise (we own that we never heard of 10cc)
All that talk about what GW should do is nice and all but they said themselves that they do no market research, so i wonder what "solution" they will come up with to fix it.
Even more releases?
They can very much pull out of this spiral. But the fact that they are proudly ignorant of their own customer base shows that they won't because they can't be bothered to find out how. They probably have no idea how sick the community is or how people perceive the company and their product. They're less like Microsoft and more like EA.
Actually, when you really analyze the numbers, and read the ridiculous preamble, I would bet dollars to donuts that they will not pull out of this spiral and, instead, we are going to see it accelerate very fast from here. Much faster than most realize. I've seen quite a few of these over the course of my career and they are rarely gradual - especially for companies as arrogant as GW has become in management.
Despite declining sales their fixed costs remain high. Most of these are probably tied directly to their capability to make revenue. As the revenue continues to decline, GW will be forced to cut costs to keep from going in the red, but those costs will then impede their ability to generate revenue and so the revenue will decline further (and costs will be cut further and revenue will fall further as a result). This is exactly why it is called a death spiral.
Just stop for a moment and think, "Where do they go from here?" They pulled all the stops out over the last year and still had a dismal year (at a time when their competitors are having a great year). Net effect is they turned the cusp this year. They have crested the hill, so to speak, and like any mass rolling downhill, it accelerates faster going down the further it travels.
My bet: 24-30 months tops before GW has gone critical. Kirby may be a lousy manager, but he is smart politically and he can see the writing on the wall as well. Time to put another CEO in charge to take the fall for him.
DrRansom wrote: For example, wouldn't it have made sense for GW to try to cross market Dawn of War and a WH40K starter set? Each DoW game comes with a 10% coupon for the 40K starter set? (Enough of a discount that it is attractive, but still allows GW to sell the starter set at a solid margin.)
Cross-promotion and leveraging their IP appear to be two things that GW not only doesn't do but actively avoids. Yeah, the might've put a page into WD every now and again - and I remember one terrain building article where they scratch built some of the Marine buildings from DoW 1 (something that'd never happen in the era of Official™ Citadel™ Terrain™ Kits™) - but that's as far as it went.
I mean think of all the things they could have done:
1. Dawn of War: Release a campaign book to go along-side the game. Make some Ltd. Ed. metal minis (as this is when they had metal minis) to represent the main players from the campaign. Or a box containing one of each of the main characters (Gorgutz, Thule, the Necron Lord, Farseer Taldeer, Lukas Alexander, Eliphas the Inheritor, Shas'O Kais).
2. Ultramarines Movie: Release a limited edition direct only boxed set of the 10 Marines from the movie, and give them their own unique set of special rules included in the box (FFG managed to release free rules for a couple of the relics from Ultramarine - so someone licensing GW's IP leveraged more out of that IP than the IP holders did!!!).
3. Dawn of War 2: Again, more limited edition characters. That female Witch Hunter would have made an excellent miniature.
And so on and so on.
The closest they came was that Orc Warboss in the WAR limited edition.
I vaguely remember something related to Fire Warrior, something like a scenario with special rules for Kais. Of course, no models or anything for it.
I remember that clearly, because when they released my Tau playing friend went ballistic because he finally had some form of unit upgrade.
3rd edition was a fun time to play 40k. The base rules might have had issues, but GW were constantly experimenting, releasing revisions through white dwarf, and clearly having fun with the setting, releasing things like the vehicle design rules.
I miss those times. I miss GW enjoying writing their rules.
Sean_OBrien wrote:GW's supply chain is still FUBAR, and although they can talk it up to being great news to have everything centralized in England - it is the source of so very many of the issues they have been having in the past 6 months with keeping stock available overseas (and to some extent even in Europe). With the drop in...well everything...it should be quite clear now that the supply issues were not the result of things selling out so fast because of high demand rather as a result of a supply chain that is broken.
When the CHS lawsuit documents were made public and I got to see just how much stuff was being produced in their Memphis site, I was shocked at how low the numbers were. I was expecting things to be selling 10,000 of this and 20,000 of that but they weren't. It was like 2500 of this and 1200 of that. And that was on the good selling products like new releases and space marines.
They opened the Memphis centre to take advantage of exchange rates. To be able to manufacture at a lower cost and then take the cash back to the UK and benefit off the exchange rate. But then they went on a price hike binge and totally killed the volume savings side of the business and then closed down Memphis.
When I heard how fast the latest campaign box with the wolves and orks and rules was "selling out" I was thinking that GW's relaunch of the edition had worked. That people really were willing to buy the same game over again after only two years (or less because I'm guessing many of their existing customers only got in during the last couple years and just bought 6th edition a year or six months or less before the release of 7th). Now I think they just low balled production because they can't produce in high numbers. That they've cut their production staff to the point that every hour of production is allocated with such miserliness and such a fear of over producing and losing money on another dreadfleet like product that they're missing out on sales of a product that people actually want.
I got an email from an online store talking about how despite taking all sorts of pre orders for the box, they only got a fraction and will be refunding people. So stupid of GW to shun sales channels they can't control and set artificial limits for their so called trade partners.
frozenwastes wrote: That they've cut their production staff to the point that every hour of production is allocated with such miserliness and such a fear of over producing and losing money on another dreadfleet like product that they're missing out on sales of a product that people actually want.
I believe we have seen evidence of this for a number of releases this year. Can't remember all of them but definitely Knights were in short supply initially. I have a "collector's item" Knight in a generic white box. Possibly some Tau stuff and Orks as well?
I'm sure people thought TSR were to big to fall but they did, despite being huge. There's similar behaviour, the company being taken over by someone who didn't actually like gamers and set about during people. In the end a couple of product failures sunk them. Dragon Dice that just didn't take off and a pile of books that got returned unsold.
I'm sure GW are aware that a major product failure could sink them. So they are paralysed, unable to do anything brave. GW haven't done anything innovative in game design for years. They've lost so many older creative staff and replaced them with yes men. They also seem to restrict the creative team an awful lot instead of letting them try things, wasn't it Rick Priestly who commented that things were for the worse when sales got involved with the studio? GW can't create, only rehash. They've rereleased both core games recently and it's to limited success given many responses. But these aren't really new games, they don't do new games, they just rehash the rules to hit a new cycle of codecies.
They've barely made a new game in ten years. Space Hulk was a rerelease and Dreadfleet a mess. If they had a grip on game design and knew what their market was like, they could do it. But they don't know how and are rightfully scared of plunging into a new game in case it's a huge loss for them.
There's a lack of confidence in investing in game systems beyond fantasy and 40k, and Kirby wants to take no risk as he takes his yearly dividend as long as possible with the company in slow decline. It's ok for him, he leaves as a multimillionaire but the company will be broken.
GW still has a few years window to turn all this around. They have the facilities, the lack of debt, the in-house production expertise, and the brand. The question, is whether or not they are able to do so. With Kirby relegated to being Chairman, he will doubtless be attempting to to control whoever is appointed to replace him as CEO. This is not an uncommon thing to occur in the world of business. The question will be whether or not his replacement will wrest control away from Kirby, and if that replacement will have different ideas on how to run the company.
Was one bad selling product (Dreadfleet) really enough to scare GW into never overproducing an item again to the point of under-producing everything? Did they really lose that much money with Dreadfleet?
But hey, why would you want to investigate why one was a massive runaway success and the other wasn't? After all market research is useless in a niche market. /sarcasm
Howard A Treesong wrote: I'm sure GW are aware that a major product failure could sink them. So they are paralysed, unable to do anything brave. GW haven't done anything innovative in game design for years. They've lost so many older creative staff and replaced them with yes men. They also seem to restrict the creative team an awful lot instead of letting them try things, wasn't it Rick Priestly who commented that things were for the worse when sales got involved with the studio? GW can't create, only rehash. They've rereleased both core games recently and it's to limited success given many responses. But these aren't really new games, they don't do new games, they just rehash the rules to hit a new cycle of codecies.
And it totally failed for fantasy. I remember reading the reports about how 8th was going to revitalize fantasy as a product line. It didn't. And now what proportion of releases are for fantasy compared to 40k. Kirby also sounded relieved that the hobbit was going to be done soon.
In an effort to be safe with their resources, GW has bet everything on one product line continuing to sell at ever increasing prices through their single employee stores. But we've seen that the reduced hours and higher prices lead to reduced sales. We've seen the plan begin to fail. Do they have a backup? They've redone a new edition of 40k, they amped up releases. They've been vigilant about costs, they've restructured and got rid of tons of admin staff. They've simply exhausted their playbook at this point.
But they don't know how and are rightfully scared of plunging into a new game in case it's a huge loss for them.
And not only a loss, but allocating their limited tooling and production resources to a risky new game means they won't have that tooling and injection moulding time to allocate to another rehash at a higher price. So not only do they have the risk of another dreadfleet, they have the opportunity cost of another 40k army rehash being skipped or delayed.
In other threads I maintained that GW has enough true believer customers to keep going for a number of years, but this last report has shown that despite their cost cuttings, their cost of goods sold did not go down even though their volume and revenue both declined. And that's with the 4.5 million separated out as a separate item.
There are three ways forward from here:
1) Revenue shock. Something about their future products just doesn't appeal or is at too high a price and they just fail to sell enough and they can't cut costs any further and they make a big loss and borrow money to cover operating expenses.
2) Slow decline into irrelevancy. They keep jacking up prices and rehashing things and revenue keeps declining at a slow pace. They don't immediately plunge into losses, but they are ground down in terms of market share and sales volume as fewer and fewer customers are asked to pay more and more. Sort of like an compressed version of the last 10 years, but on a much faster scale.
3) Someone makes a plan for change. But that would take skills and recognition that things aren't right. And Kirby has spent the last decade culling anyone with independent thought. Someone would literally have to con their way past the CEO hiring process and then when they proposed an actual plan with vision, somehow, someway, convince the rest of the board to listen to them and not their chairman Kirby who's sitting there poo-pooing any departure from his approach.
But hey, why would you want to investigate why one was a massive runaway success and the other wasn't? After all market research is useless in a niche market. /sarcasm
Yeah, the success of space hulk and failure of dreadfleet pretty much proves that the "no market share, no focus groups, no asking the market what it wants" approach that Kirby advocated is madness.
If it really didn't matter what the market wants, then why did spacehulk fly off the shelves and dreadfleet sit there until they eventually recalled it and shred it? Why didn't the customer base realize how dreadfleet was full of "jewel like objects of magic and wonder"?
What do you mean playbook? There is no playbook, there is simply kirby handing off the ball to a wide receiver to run straight up the guts.That's a winning strategy, and let no one tell him otherwise.
Checked out GW's performance over the last two years over on the Bloomberg website. It has a really nice graphic for the last four reporting periods. Revenue and profit are represented with bar graphs. Profit margin is represented by a bright blue line. That bright blue line looks like the terminal arc of a ballistic trajectory. Others have mentioned it before, but when you see it represented it does seem to portend a swift decline. I can't put a link for some dumb reason, but if you can go to Bloomberg or google search Games workshop stock and click the Bloomberg link, you'll see it.
Warlord Games sums up the big thing that GW are missing.
I'm looking to buy a Fallschirmjager box set, it costs £76, a mixture of metal and plastic models, 40 figures, a vehicle and a heavy weapon and makes a 1000pt force. On top of this I got the rules in Kindle format, £1.89, same for the German codex. Further to this I can use the force with other 28mm WWII rules.
Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote: Was one bad selling product (Dreadfleet) really enough to scare GW into never overproducing an item again to the point of under-producing everything? Did they really lose that much money with Dreadfleet?
Given their typical cost of goods of 25% of the retail price they would have lost money if they sold under 25% of the production run of Dread Fleet. But obviously the point is to sell the maximum possible. I have no idea how many they did sell.
Seeing that Space Hulk sold out quickly and is still much sought after on eBay several years later, there is no doubt that GW left money on the table with that release and badly over-estimated the chances of Dread Fleet.
There are some suggestions by people earlier in this thread that GW's current "limited edition" production scheme is as much caused by a lack of manufacturing capacity as by lack of appetite for risk.
Howard A Treesong wrote: I'm sure people thought TSR were to big to fall but they did, despite being huge. ...
I'm sure GW are aware that a major product failure could sink them. So they are paralysed, unable to do anything brave. ...
They've barely made a new game in ten years. ...
There's a lack of confidence in investing in game systems beyond fantasy and 40k, ...
To me this is a huge part of the problem. GW have this massive expensive chain of shops and (ignoring Fantasy, which I am sorry to say has become a minority thing) they have basically one product to sell, 40K.
They don't want to or can't make something new, so they are trying to cram as much variation into 40K as possible, and recycle the customer base of basic game. That doesn't work and we are seeing the results now.
Ketara wrote: GW still has a few years window to turn all this around. They have the facilities, the lack of debt, the in-house production expertise, and the brand. The question, is whether or not they are able to do so. With Kirby relegated to being Chairman, he will doubtless be attempting to to control whoever is appointed to replace him as CEO. This is not an uncommon thing to occur in the world of business. The question will be whether or not his replacement will wrest control away from Kirby, and if that replacement will have different ideas on how to run the company.
Yes, I agree with this too. The big danger is that Kirby and his kronies will have a massive influence in appointing and "guiding" the new CEO, so I don't have a lot of hope that he will revolutionise the company quickly enough.
Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote: Was one bad selling product (Dreadfleet) really enough to scare GW into never overproducing an item again to the point of under-producing everything? Did they really lose that much money with Dreadfleet?
There's also The Hobbit "limited edition" starter set.
Ketara wrote: GW still has a few years window to turn all this around. They have the facilities, the lack of debt, the in-house production expertise, and the brand. The question, is whether or not they are able to do so. With Kirby relegated to being Chairman, he will doubtless be attempting to to control whoever is appointed to replace him as CEO. This is not an uncommon thing to occur in the world of business. The question will be whether or not his replacement will wrest control away from Kirby, and if that replacement will have different ideas on how to run the company.
Yes, I agree with this too. The big danger is that Kirby and his kronies will have a massive influence in appointing and "guiding" the new CEO, so I don't have a lot of hope that he will revolutionise the company quickly enough.
I don't know about kronies but Kirby is the Chairman and a major Shareholder. His influence will be great notwithstanding the fact that he will almost certainly select candidates, probably oversee/carry out meetings with candidates and present the proposed candidate to the board/shareholders.
VanHallan wrote: Yeah, but what kind of an idiot would purchase a GW franchise?? I wouldn't.
People who have previously run a successful GW shop, before the rot set in.
Why would they want to limit themselves to just GW though? It might make sense given enough perks, but the mono-brand store is less practical now than it used to be and I'd hope any business savvy manager would set up a generic FLGS and sell as broad a range of stuff as possible.
I think they could get away with a GW store-in-store setup; rent some space from a larger hobby chain (or dare I say it, Toys R Us) and set up a small GW counter. Apple do it in PC World for instance. It gets them some increased exposure, and presumably still allows them to run without any staff (as they can use the big stores sale points). What they desperately need now is cost reductions and exposure.
Ketara wrote: GW still has a few years window to turn all this around. They have the facilities, the lack of debt, the in-house production expertise, and the brand. The question, is whether or not they are able to do so. With Kirby relegated to being Chairman, he will doubtless be attempting to to control whoever is appointed to replace him as CEO. This is not an uncommon thing to occur in the world of business. The question will be whether or not his replacement will wrest control away from Kirby, and if that replacement will have different ideas on how to run the company.
Yes, I agree with this too. The big danger is that Kirby and his kronies will have a massive influence in appointing and "guiding" the new CEO, so I don't have a lot of hope that he will revolutionise the company quickly enough.
I don't know about kronies but Kirby is the Chairman and a major Shareholder. His influence will be great notwithstanding the fact that he will almost certainly select candidates, probably oversee/carry out meetings with candidates and present the proposed candidate to the board/shareholders.
I doubt this will be left to HR...
One of the complaints about GW's corporate governance that most of the board have been there for a long time, longer than recommended by UK guidelines, and probably have got institutionalised. Naturally Kirby says this is Great News! Hence the "kronies" fear.
On top of the gaming side of things which everyone has mentioned above, I always wondered why GW™ never did more on the hobby accessories side of things. They really dropped the ball on things like airbrushing and high quality gaming mats.
Instead of being able to get a quality airbrush (which can be exceedingly inexpensive as our friendly Chinese producers have confirmed) and compressor they gave us the Citadel™ Spray™ Gun™ for £20, which uses compressed air from Citadel™ Spray™ Gun™ Propellant™ for only £6. I really can't imagine they make that much money on those pieces of gak. Compare that with the airbrush and airbrush accessory market that is booming right now.
And don't even get me started on those ridiculous Citadel™ Realm™ of™ Battle™ boards. Available at the low low price of £175-£200. Why wouldn't they just come out with a bunch of £30-£50 gaming mats in a variety of styles? I imagine that gaming mats would have been marketable to much wider portion of their custys. Something that would have allowed people to play the game pretty much anywhere, and when finished gaming takes up virtually no space, so the kitchen table can become the kitchen table again.
As much as I enjoy their products, I have to say a troop of dim-witted monkeys could have done a better job managing the company these past years. What a fething fiasco.
There are still successful Independent stores that sell only GW products, least here in Sheffield UK.
I don't buy there though as they sell at full retail =P. Down t'other way there's one with less stock, but always 20% off retail.
As for money, I have friends spending 300-500 dollars on Zombicide KS's. So. Yeah. Maybe it's not so much of a issue for us. Maybe GW should do KS for new products - People be crazy when it comes to 'exclusives' and discount as not yet released with rules. KS is a pretty clear indicator that models sell well without rules tbh.
Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote: Was one bad selling product (Dreadfleet) really enough to scare GW into never overproducing an item again to the point of under-producing everything? Did they really lose that much money with Dreadfleet?
Well, I think GW is well aware what the customers want.
For this, they only need to statistically evaluate the amounts of products sold.
I cannot imagine that they don't do this.
Backfire wrote: And one-man stores are too small to maintain active playing community by themselves (after all, you need tables to play on).
Which is why the one-man stores are massively stupid idea. The big benefit of having their own chain of stores is providing gaming space and building the player community focused exclusively on GW's games. And of course people walking in the store and seeing the games actually being played is great advertisement. But if you cannot do that, then there's little reason to have this expensive retail empire.
I agree in principle, however in fairness to GW, the larger stores and battle bunkers must have often been running at considerable loss. Basically, they have been like FLGS's without much of the FLGS revenue sources (comics, trading cards etc). Advantage of one-man stores is that they can be located on much more visible places, a large store with large gaming space cannot, lest its rent becomes astronomical. Whether maintaining a small store around essentially as an oversized billboard is worth it, is another question. Personally I'm bit iffy on that. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
As for the other things...
-Dreadfleet. Sad thing in it was that people had been bemoaning why GW puts so much attention on Space marines. As soon as Dreadfleet came out, people complained why GW had wasted resources in designing something that wasn't Space Marines. Now, the game itself had some obvious and not-so-obvious failures (most notable perhaps was that the game's visual design was meant to please everyone, resulting to visual mish-mash that pleased no-one), without which it surely would have been better received. Unfortunately, it's failure probably convinced GW that releasing anything outside main ranges was not worth it. It was mentioned, by the way, that last edition of Blood Bowl was bit of similar story. It was much wished about, but when it came out, it sold poorly: existing 40k and WHFB players weren't interested and Blood Bowl veterans already had the teams.
-Kirby casually dismissing Tolkien license. I say good that at least there he is honest. Why lie about how "valuable" and "prestigious" the license is when it obviously has been tanking for years? It's time to put down that good old dog. The material is exhausted, there isn't going to be new movies around for new licensing possibilities. Well there is Silmarillion, but nobody wants to see Peter Jackson's take on Silmarillion.
(Silmarillion would actually provide tons of material for a tabletop game, however).
-Gateway games. I don't recall from my last GW store visit, but I understand that FFG Warhammer licensed games are not carried there? If not, it is criminally stupid. Such an arrangement could only benefit everyone involved.
-Computer games. I think many people are overestimating the licensing opportunies. It's not like computer gaming firms are lining up in Nottingham to beg for Warhammer licenses. The main reason why there aren't more Warhammer themed video games is likely very simple: the companies don't have interest.
-Expenses. This years' financial report had two signifant expenses - the website and severance payouts - which totalled over £8 million. Now, likely every financial year has also some "exceptional" items (more severances, legal costs etc), however probably not as big as this year. It won't help sales, but the profit margin should remain healthy for some time if they run a tight ship otherwise.
-'Messias' titles. As I pointed in other thread, the GW is not about to run out of potential releases which could be big sellers. Most notably, sales of Stormclaw and new Dark Vengeance come to next financial report, then there's potentially Sisters of Battle, new WHFB edition and so on. Of course, they could mess things up royally, but the idea that they're exhausted the potential is silly.
-Release schedule. Whereas it could be seen as cynical cash grab (probably because it is), it must be pointed out that in the days of yore, slow codex update schedule was the biggest frequent complaint about GW. Imagine where we would be without it: Tau would be the newest codex, no Eldar, SM, IG, Orks on sight.
More big plastic kits could help prop up sales in the short term, if they'd only bite the bullet and do plastic Thunderhawks and Titans, FW be damned their parent needs the cash now.
I keep seeing a comparison between the £150 million refit of the Marks and Spencer website and the £4 million refit of the GW online store, the two are not directly comparable as they are completely different orders of magnitude of organisational change.
MS involved moving supplier for a website having nearly 15 million annual visitors, setting up internal teams of over 50 people, building new relationships with new suppliers, deploying custom hardware (like giant iPhones) and new processes to their thousands of stores, upgrading warehouse and backend systems, creation of new mobile and tablet apps, implementation of a "big data" CR system to offer custom discounts, etc. etc. over a 2 year period.
GW burnt through £4 million in six months implementing a simple, and frankly ugly webstore based on an off the shelf commerce solution (ATG) that has plugged into existing systems for a far smaller product range and a fraction of the user base.
Its like trying to compare Chapter House's costs to market for a model against GW's costs, interesting, but it doesn't really tell you a lot.
I am not sure that the big kits appeal to a large enough number of people.
After all the Knight Titan, though well received, obviously did not save the sales figures this year, even though they can ally with any Imperial army or be an army by themselves.
MS involved moving supplier for a website having nearly 15 million annual visitors, setting up internal teams of over 50 people, building new relationships with new suppliers, deploying custom hardware (like giant iPhones) and new processes to their thousands of stores, upgrading warehouse and backend systems, creation of new mobile and tablet apps, implementation of a "big data" CR system to offer custom discounts, etc. etc. over a 2 year period.
GW burnt through £4 million in six months implementing a simple, and frankly ugly webstore based on an off the shelf commerce solution (ATG) that has plugged into existing systems for a far smaller product range and a fraction of the user base.
Yes. That's why GW webstore costed 4 million instead of 150 million. The point is that corporate webstores do run in multi-million price tags. The price GW paid is not exceptional. Though, I hoped they had picked another visual: the present one is boring and sterile. I guess that the graphic designer sold it to them as "trendy, sleek and modern". Yawn.
Re: big plastic kits, I gather the problem is they're very expensive to design. I don't know if it's comparable, but here's quote from Forge World: "Warlord Titan? Big kits are a balance of cost in time vs how much they’ll sell realistically. For instance the Manta took one and a half years for Will Hayes to produce, during which time he wasn’t getting much else done. Could he have made fifteen other kits that would have sold more in that time? That’s the numbers they run and why big kits are rarer. They do want to make a Warlord though."
Ketara wrote: GW still has a few years window to turn all this around. They have the facilities, the lack of debt, the in-house production expertise, and the brand. The question, is whether or not they are able to do so. With Kirby relegated to being Chairman, he will doubtless be attempting to to control whoever is appointed to replace him as CEO. This is not an uncommon thing to occur in the world of business. The question will be whether or not his replacement will wrest control away from Kirby, and if that replacement will have different ideas on how to run the company.
Yes, I agree with this too. The big danger is that Kirby and his kronies will have a massive influence in appointing and "guiding" the new CEO, so I don't have a lot of hope that he will revolutionise the company quickly enough.
I don't know about kronies but Kirby is the Chairman and a major Shareholder. His influence will be great notwithstanding the fact that he will almost certainly select candidates, probably oversee/carry out meetings with candidates and present the proposed candidate to the board/shareholders.
I doubt this will be left to HR...
I don't have vastly high hopes in this regard either. But then again, it wouldn't be the first time a Chairman appointed a CEO they think they can control who says all the right things before landing the job, and then swiftly does a 180 degree turn once they're suitably ensconced. I think people who are of the CEO type/calibre often have a desire to do things 'their' way, as opposed to dancing like a puppet according to somebody else's intentions.
Yes. That's why GW webstore costed 4 million instead of 150 million. The point is that corporate webstores do run in multi-million price tags. The price GW paid is not exceptional. Though, I hoped they had picked another visual: the present one is boring and sterile. I guess that the graphic designer sold it to them as "trendy, sleek and modern". Yawn.
Re: big plastic kits, I gather the problem is they're very expensive to design. I don't know if it's comparable, but here's quote from Forge World:
"Warlord Titan? Big kits are a balance of cost in time vs how much they’ll sell realistically. For instance the Manta took one and a half years for Will Hayes to produce, during which time he wasn’t getting much else done. Could he have made fifteen other kits that would have sold more in that time? That’s the numbers they run and why big kits are rarer. They do want to make a Warlord though."
I'm in the field myself and have done nothing but large bluechip corp sites for the last twelve years, I have done far more with the same budget as GW. Current project is a bit more expensive, 12 month change window, rewrite of 10,000s of pages of content, many user facing apps all connecting to backend systems that need rewriting, a complete new style guide writing, etc. for a household name. I'd suggest my current project is several orders of magnitude more complex than GWs yet our burn rate per month is considerably less, GW spent over £600k a month on a website development that has no content outside the items for sale.
The actual design looks like they had a friend of a friend do it rather than employ an agency based on portfolio, this is still common even in big firms and would fit GW's MO when it comes to hiring people.
The Warlord and the Manta are many times bigger than the Thunderhawk or Warhound, plus both already have existing resin kits to base off if needed. I agree that the Knight can't have been a giant seller, but I know when it launched it sold very well. It is the ongoing sales of that kit that have let the side down, if GW or FW had produced upgrade kits then I think it might have been different, they have hamstrung themselves by not offering more options in the book. Chapterhouse fiasco strikes again.
Having been involved in a website installation at a £105m turnover UK multi-channel high street retailer with a HO in London, what GW paid is substantially more than it should have done for a company of it's size and complexity. And that was a website that has forums and articles and other social stuff on top of the transactional piece (and the transactional piece is more complicated than GW's because of sales and deals).
Something that seems interesting to me from the Chairman's gibbering is the Non Executive Director who came in last year. Everyone saw that she had a background in acquisitions and mergers, and Dakka went ballistic (Hasbro are coming! Hasbro will save us! They are The One True Way and will destroy Kirby and Save The Hobby! Hasbrohasbrohasbrohasbro).
Well, it turns out that it was nothing of the sort. They haven't even read her CV. This in itself is baffling, but does put paid to some of the "they're preparing for a takeover" rumours.
I take the "we don't read CVs" with a pinch of salt.
You don't run a £130 Million (well, a bit less now) international business by appointing senior managers whose CVs, experience and skills you know absolutely nothing about.
At the coal face level I think it is more likely to be true. Most people find it much easier to work on things they are enthusiastic about, and the amount of skills required is a lot less and can be taught relatively quickly.
Graphite wrote: Something that seems interesting to me from the Chairman's gibbering is the Non Executive Director who came in last year. Everyone saw that she had a background in acquisitions and mergers, and Dakka went ballistic (Hasbro are coming! Hasbro will save us! They are The One True Way and will destroy Kirby and Save The Hobby! Hasbrohasbrohasbrohasbro).
Well, it turns out that it was nothing of the sort. They haven't even read her CV. This in itself is baffling, but does put paid to some of the "they're preparing for a takeover" rumours.
Or they wanted to hide the fact that they're desperately hoping to be bought out before it all comes crashing down so saying "we didn't even look at the resume of the NXO we hired" seemed like a better option.
Kilkrazy wrote: I take the "we don't read CVs" with a pinch of salt.
You don't run a £130 Million (well, a bit less now) international business by appointing senior managers whose CVs, experience and skills you know absolutely nothing about.
At the coal face level I think it is more likely to be true. Most people find it much easier to work on things they are enthusiastic about, and the amount of skills required is a lot less and can be taught relatively quickly.
No. Attitute over skill. It may hold for the red shirts.
But I guess its not enough at the top management level.
Having been involved in a website installation at a £105m turnover UK multi-channel high street retailer with a HO in London, what GW paid is substantially more than it should have done for a company of it's size and complexity. And that was a website that has forums and articles and other social stuff on top of the transactional piece (and the transactional piece is more complicated than GW's because of sales and deals).
How does that fit with the timescales though? Shorter programme = more cost?
I know construction rather than computers but you can throw bodies at a job to reduce the time at a increased cost. I would assume that this could be the case if the original site had allot of data to process over to a new one?
Yes. That's why GW webstore costed 4 million instead of 150 million. The point is that corporate webstores do run in multi-million price tags. The price GW paid is not exceptional. Though, I hoped they had picked another visual: the present one is boring and sterile. I guess that the graphic designer sold it to them as "trendy, sleek and modern". Yawn.
Re: big plastic kits, I gather the problem is they're very expensive to design. I don't know if it's comparable, but here's quote from Forge World:
"Warlord Titan? Big kits are a balance of cost in time vs how much they’ll sell realistically. For instance the Manta took one and a half years for Will Hayes to produce, during which time he wasn’t getting much else done. Could he have made fifteen other kits that would have sold more in that time? That’s the numbers they run and why big kits are rarer. They do want to make a Warlord though."
I'm in the field myself and have done nothing but large bluechip corp sites for the last twelve years, I have done far more with the same budget as GW. Current project is a bit more expensive, 12 month change window, rewrite of 10,000s of pages of content, many user facing apps all connecting to backend systems that need rewriting, a complete new style guide writing, etc. for a household name. I'd suggest my current project is several orders of magnitude more complex than GWs yet our burn rate per month is considerably less, GW spent over £600k a month on a website development that has no content outside the items for sale.
The actual design looks like they had a friend of a friend do it rather than employ an agency based on portfolio, this is still common even in big firms and would fit GW's MO when it comes to hiring people.
The Warlord and the Manta are many times bigger than the Thunderhawk or Warhound, plus both already have existing resin kits to base off if needed. I agree that the Knight can't have been a giant seller, but I know when it launched it sold very well. It is the ongoing sales of that kit that have let the side down, if GW or FW had produced upgrade kits then I think it might have been different, they have hamstrung themselves by not offering more options in the book. Chapterhouse fiasco strikes again.
Already said this but it was an Oracle Professional Services job, using one of Oracle's high end platforms.
Backfire wrote: Advantage of one-man stores is that they can be located on much more visible places, a large store with large gaming space cannot, lest its rent becomes astronomical. Whether maintaining a small store around essentially as an oversized billboard is worth it, is another question. Personally I'm bit iffy on that. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Beyond clusters of shopping centre kiosks (mobile phone accessories, cupcakes and nail bars), I genuinely can't think of any stores that are single staff. Some newsagents appear to be single staffed but there's usually someone else floating around too. There must be reasons that the single staff store isn't more common. Yes it lets them set up more stores in smaller locations, but by the way the rest of the corporate world shuns it is must be completely impractical. Having a store closed 2 days a week for time off, or for annual leave, or having to close the store for lunch and bathroom breaks is madness.
My mrs works in a store smaller than most GW's, selling jewelry, and there are seven staff. Manager, assistant manager, supervisor, 3 full-time and 2 part-time, with at least 3 in at any point (2 on floor + another to cover breaks). They've probably got a higher turnover than a GW store, but sell items for less and spend at least as much time per-customer as a GW would. This store is maybe 200ft away from the GW store I used to visit all the time in the 90's, which had 3+ staff and was always packed (and shut down at least 10 years ago, I was past it multiple times a week).
-Dreadfleet. Sad thing in it was that people had been bemoaning why GW puts so much attention on Space marines. As soon as Dreadfleet came out, people complained why GW had wasted resources in designing something that wasn't Space Marines. Now, the game itself had some obvious and not-so-obvious failures (most notable perhaps was that the game's visual design was meant to please everyone, resulting to visual mish-mash that pleased no-one), without which it surely would have been better received. Unfortunately, it's failure probably convinced GW that releasing anything outside main ranges was not worth it. It was mentioned, by the way, that last edition of Blood Bowl was bit of similar story. It was much wished about, but when it came out, it sold poorly: existing 40k and WHFB players weren't interested and Blood Bowl veterans already had the teams.
Dreadfleet tanked because it had 2 critical flaws: As a game, it sucked. There was no strategic involvement, everything was too random, you felt you had no control over it and the games took hours. It was also completely unsupported; no expansions or blisters or anything. It held it's price until people started playing it, now I can buy it unopened for half or RRP. It could have been brilliant, but it seemed completely phoned in. Wasted opportunity.
-Kirby casually dismissing Tolkien license. I say good that at least there he is honest. Why lie about how "valuable" and "prestigious" the license is when it obviously has been tanking for years? It's time to put down that good old dog. The material is exhausted, there isn't going to be new movies around for new licensing possibilities. Well there is Silmarillion, but nobody wants to see Peter Jackson's take on Silmarillion.
(Silmarillion would actually provide tons of material for a tabletop game, however).
Do you mean GW's take on the license has been tanking? From what I can tell LOTR is as big as it ever was, and GW managed to turn it from a cheaper 3rd system to an unused relic by pricing the hell out of it .
-Gateway games. I don't recall from my last GW store visit, but I understand that FFG Warhammer licensed games are not carried there? If not, it is criminally stupid. Such an arrangement could only benefit everyone involved.
They don't. I've no idea why not but it really is stupid.
-Release schedule. Whereas it could be seen as cynical cash grab (probably because it is), it must be pointed out that in the days of yore, slow codex update schedule was the biggest frequent complaint about GW. Imagine where we would be without it: Tau would be the newest codex, no Eldar, SM, IG, Orks on sight.
I don't think I've seen anyone really complain about the release cycle. The cash grab was what seems to be releasing 7th Edition months early to drop it into the 2013-2014 annual report.
Having been involved in a website installation at a £105m turnover UK multi-channel high street retailer with a HO in London, what GW paid is substantially more than it should have done for a company of it's size and complexity. And that was a website that has forums and articles and other social stuff on top of the transactional piece (and the transactional piece is more complicated than GW's because of sales and deals).
How does that fit with the timescales though? Shorter programme = more cost?
I know construction rather than computers but you can throw bodies at a job to reduce the time at a increased cost. I would assume that this could be the case if the original site had allot of data to process over to a new one?
It'll take a similar number of man-months, just with more men, to a point. So if you can throw more people at it, the total cost remains more or less the same (with an increase in management). In this case, it was probably something that only took 6 months anyway, so they won't have paid to rush it along; they won't have been paying for double-shifts or overtime or fancier plant to speed up the work.
rich1231 wrote: Already said this but it was an Oracle Professional Services job, using one of Oracle's high end platforms.
Then they were robbed, Oracle's eCommerce platform was based on the ATG product GW were using before, not the most complex of upgrades, and if I remember correctly they didn't transfer across the old accounts or orders for either end customers or trade accounts, making it even simpler. A quick look on linkedin and the inhouse web dev team seems to be five people + team lead, thats some expensive contractors/supplier as the internal team isn't big or likely to be well paid based on GW's IT adverts I've looked at.
notprop wrote:How does that fit with the timescales though? Shorter programme = more cost?
I know construction rather than computers but you can throw bodies at a job to reduce the time at a increased cost. I would assume that this could be the case if the original site had allot of data to process over to a new one?
Depending on the scope you can reduce timescales by adding more teams although the integration phase at the end is more work as is the management. However throwing more bodies at simpler projects is often counter productive as only so many people can work at one piece of functionality at a time. Imagine if your customer said that your estimate to build a wall took too long and that you had say two people working on it. Doubling that to four might have a short term boost but wouldn't they get in each others way after a short period? Would they work to the same standard? Would all the bits of the wall match up?
As I've mentioned above if I remember correctly there was no data migration outside of loading the products, everybody needed new accounts. Loading the products is a simple (ish) job as you can freeze what changes so it can be done ahead of time. Migrating user accounts needs an outage (store would be down) and is often best done at the point of switch over, much harder.
Why do I always have to leap to the defence of Dreadfleet? Why
It was great to play, great to paint, and great to make huge profits from
I gave my nephew a spare copy, and he loved it. Ok, he's only ten years old, but that a pivotal moment in his life, and the gateway to the hobby we all know and love.
I'm getting OT here, but Australians only have themselves to blame regarding the GW situation down under.
Is it Kirby's fault that the Australian economy is booming, exports are up, and the average wage is high. GW changed their pricing policy to cash in on Australian wealth.
Oz, if you want to point the finger, blame your own successful economic policy these last 20 years. Think of the children
rich1231 wrote: Already said this but it was an Oracle Professional Services job, using one of Oracle's high end platforms.
Then they were robbed, Oracle's eCommerce platform was based on the ATG product GW were using before, not the most complex of upgrades, and if I remember correctly they didn't transfer across the old accounts or orders for either end customers or trade accounts, making it even simpler. A quick look on linkedin and the inhouse web dev team seems to be five people + team lead, thats some expensive contractors/supplier as the internal team isn't big or likely to be well paid based on GW's IT adverts I've looked at.
notprop wrote:How does that fit with the timescales though? Shorter programme = more cost?
I know construction rather than computers but you can throw bodies at a job to reduce the time at a increased cost. I would assume that this could be the case if the original site had allot of data to process over to a new one?
Depending on the scope you can reduce timescales by adding more teams although the integration phase at the end is more work as is the management. However throwing more bodies at simpler projects is often counter productive as only so many people can work at one piece of functionality at a time. Imagine if your customer said that your estimate to build a wall took too long and that you had say two people working on it. Doubling that to four might have a short term boost but wouldn't they get in each others way after a short period? Would they work to the same standard? Would all the bits of the wall match up?
As I've mentioned above if I remember correctly there was no data migration outside of loading the products, everybody needed new accounts. Loading the products is a simple (ish) job as you can freeze what changes so it can be done ahead of time. Migrating user accounts needs an outage (store would be down) and is often best done at the point of switch over, much harder.
You could do the migration by freezing account edits before the switch, and with everything scripted it could be done in a couple of hours, especially if you transfer everything over at one point and then just migrate any modifications made after the first transfer.
Though they still had 2 days of downtime during the switchover?
Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote: Was one bad selling product (Dreadfleet) really enough to scare GW into never overproducing an item again to the point of under-producing everything? Did they really lose that much money with Dreadfleet?
Well, I think GW is well aware what the customers want.
For this, they only need to statistically evaluate the amounts of products sold.
I cannot imagine that they don't do this.
No, those numbers show what your existing customers choose from your offering.
They do not tell you what those customers would also buy, given the chance, or what they would rather buy, or why they bought what they did, or what it would take for customers in your market who are other companies' customers to buy from you instead, etc., etc.
The sales numbers are just the tip of an iceberg, but Kirby thinks he can run GW like a company producing necessary goods - we make stuff people need, and people will buy it. What he fails to understand is that even if gamers were the freakish addicts he thinks they are, they could always get their fix from the dealer at the next street corner if they want.
To be honest, I think "by gamers for gamers" is a recipe for financial disaster, but not knowing your market AT ALL and glorying (I just had to borrow that) in your ignorance is incompetence of the highest order.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: I'm getting OT here, but Australians only have themselves to blame regarding the GW situation down under.
Is it Kirby's fault that the Australian economy is booming, exports are up, and the average wage is high. GW changed their pricing policy to cash in on Australian wealth.
Oz, if you want to point the finger, blame your own successful economic policy these last 20 years. Think of the children
Try again.
Australian prices are following the same pricing strategy they did in the early 90s, when Australia's economy sucked hard.
You know, at least try to know what you're trying to act knowledgeable about.
Backfire wrote: Advantage of one-man stores is that they can be located on much more visible places, a large store with large gaming space cannot, lest its rent becomes astronomical.
I don't know about overseas, but my understanding is that this is exactly the opposite of what has been happening here in Oz. The bigger stores were in the high profile shop spaces in the big malls, and they've been downsizing into smaller stores in more out-of-the-way locations.
So they lose on both fronts... No more gaming space to entice a regular clientele, and greatly reduced walk-ins.
-Dreadfleet. Sad thing in it was that people had been bemoaning why GW puts so much attention on Space marines. As soon as Dreadfleet came out, people complained why GW had wasted resources in designing something that wasn't Space Marines
I don't recall seeing anyone complain that Dreadfleet wasn't a Space Marine release. The 3 main complaints I saw about Dreadfleet when it was released were -
- While it was pretty, the game wasn't actually very good
- It was a new WHFB naval game that flew in the face of established fluff instead of being a re-release of Man'o'War
and
- It wasn't Blood Bowl, as the rumour-mill had been asserting strongly that it would be for more than 6 months by that point.
After the huge success of Space Hulk, people were clamouring for a similar treatment to be given to any of the other Specialist titles, although Blood Bowl's continuing success despite being out of print for a decade seemed to focus more attention on it specifically... And instead, GW gave us a new game that nobody wanted.
The silly thing is that without the Citadel Exclusive Veil of Secrecy shortening the time from big reveal to actual launch, people might have had fewer issues with it. For many, it was the lack of communication from GW despite the active rumour-mill that let them get so excited about the possibilities, and as a result were so let down by getting something different from what they expected.
-Release schedule. Whereas it could be seen as cynical cash grab (probably because it is), it must be pointed out that in the days of yore, slow codex update schedule was the biggest frequent complaint about GW.
Sure. Except that they decided to couple finally increasing the release schedule with doubling the price of the books, and throwing out an endless stream of (pay-to-access) DLC.
rich1231 wrote: Account information would have been a few hours work max.
Password migration on the other hand wont be and will likely be a massive pain.
Downtime was likely to have been a DNS contingency.
Password migration could have been avoided, set it to something random and sent everyone out an email with a link to reset it.
Yonan wrote: He didn't seem positive he'd remain chairman.
Sounded rather like fake humility to me. The 'Oh, if you'll have me!' that actually means 'Yeah, we all know that I'm the guy!'
Given that he owns a substantial number of shares and has been with the company for 20 years (?) in normal circumstances Kirby would be an excellent choice for a non-executive chairman of the board.
Wolfstan wrote: Ok I could be wrong here, but I think @Do_I_Not_Like_That was taking the rise out of GW not Oz... even if his economic understanding Oz maybe be off
You're not wrong. Just some harmless banter with the Australians and GW. On the other hand, I do sympathise with them and I'll say one thing about Australian customers (when I had my ebay shop) I never had a single problem with them.
Anyway, back OT. What we're witnessing is the slow, managed decline of GW. When, (and it is a question of when, not if) GW eventually keels over, there will be a short term shock, but as always, somebody else will fill the void, and we can all live happily ever after. It's been a couple of years since I switched from GW to FOW. I'm still here, still breathing, still living day-to-day no problem.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: I'm getting OT here, but Australians only have themselves to blame regarding the GW situation down under.
Is it Kirby's fault that the Australian economy is booming, exports are up, and the average wage is high. GW changed their pricing policy to cash in on Australian wealth.
Oz, if you want to point the finger, blame your own successful economic policy these last 20 years. Think of the children
Try again.
Australian prices are following the same pricing strategy they did in the early 90s, when Australia's economy sucked hard.
You know, at least try to know what you're trying to act knowledgeable about.
Backfire wrote: -Dreadfleet. Sad thing in it was that people had been bemoaning why GW puts so much attention on Space marines. As soon as Dreadfleet came out, people complained why GW had wasted resources in designing something that wasn't Space Marines.
Please don't conflate things that have nothing to do with one another. Dread Fleet failed on its own merits (or lack thereof), not because it wasn't Space Marines. A company that had any sense of what it's customers want (rather than assuming the customers will buy whatever the company makes) would have found out what people wanted rather than just blindly throwing a box at everyone and expecting us to lap it up.
insaniak wrote: I don't know about overseas, but my understanding is that this is exactly the opposite of what has been happening here in Oz. The bigger stores were in the high profile shop spaces in the big malls, and they've been downsizing into smaller stores in more out-of-the-way locations.
Yup. Hornsby store? In the main Westfield. Not in a premium location (that would be EB's location right at the entrance to the foodcourt), but it was in the main drag. It's now gone, they didn't open a new one. Chatswood, probably the most successful GW, had a prime position. Now it's a 1-man store in a part of Chatswood where all the other store signs are in Korean. NorSyd? Gone. Parra? We couldn't find it last time we were there, only the empty shell of where it used to be. I know the City store is still around, but the Good Games nearby is doing better.
Beyond clusters of shopping centre kiosks (mobile phone accessories, cupcakes and nail bars), I genuinely can't think of any stores that are single staff. Some newsagents appear to be single staffed but there's usually someone else floating around too. There must be reasons that the single staff store isn't more common.
About 10 years ago I did summer work at a chain off-licence, and that was one-man stores (though there was a regional relief staffer to cover the one day off per week). That chain was Unwins, who died off about a year later.
I think the core problem with Kirby is he's mired in the view that GW is a miniatures company. While this is no shocking revelation about GW's view of the market, I think it is the crux of the problem. I would wager that Kirby views the actual games as something that happens off to the side and of interest to only a few hardcore nerds, much like it would have seemed back in the late 80s when there weren't fully fleshed-out ranges for anything. The models are the only things that matter in this world view.
It's true to an extent that a cool model will move units regardless of rules, but a solid rule set with good models and a rich background is the actual Holy Trinity of doing well in this business. GW has the latter two, but seems to be on a sharp decline on the first. Dreadfleet, as much as it's been brought up, is a perfect example. The models in Dreadfleet are actually quite good (ignoring the problem that they can't be used for much else). The fluff is a bit ridiculous the more you think about it, but far from the dumbest thing in the history of the IP. The rules, however, have been oft-described as a train-wreck, and by actual games designers as well as Internet pundits. Ergo, the game goes on to become one of their biggest albatrosses. Had the game been actual fun, I doubt the silly premise would have been an issue. The lack of fun and disappointment that it wasn't Blood Bowl pretty much sank that ship as it left the slip.
I don't think Kirby gets that wargaming IS a market of its own, and that the games drive sales far more than anything else. To gloss over writing good rules in the hope that random strangers will be able to fix their omissions and oversights is, IMO, the rotten core of the GW empire. If the rules are crap, people won't play them. If people don't play them, they don't need the models. If they don't need the models, they won't buy them in the main. It's a pretty obvious circle, but it seems he has a willful blind spot that letting model sales drive rules development is a losing equation.
-Dreadfleet. Sad thing in it was that people had been bemoaning why GW puts so much attention on Space marines. As soon as Dreadfleet came out, people complained why GW had wasted resources in designing something that wasn't Space Marines
I don't recall seeing anyone complain that Dreadfleet wasn't a Space Marine release.
I do. Remember, it came out during an era when many 40k ranges were still missing key models (most notably Tyranids and Space Wolves). People were bitching that GW had "wasted design resources for pointless naval game" instead of providing missing kits for Thunderwolves etc.
On the other hand, finding people (particularly WHFB players) who complain about too much attention given to Space marines, is not hard.
- It was a new WHFB naval game that flew in the face of established fluff instead of being a re-release of Man'o'War and - It wasn't Blood Bowl, as the rumour-mill had been asserting strongly that it would be for more than 6 months by that point.
After the huge success of Space Hulk, people were clamouring for a similar treatment to be given to any of the other Specialist titles, although Blood Bowl's continuing success despite being out of print for a decade seemed to focus more attention on it specifically... And instead, GW gave us a new game that nobody wanted.
See, here it comes again. GW was criticized because they dared to bring out something new instead of rehashing the old. God forbid.
Now, the game itself might have had gameplay issues (I dunno as I never played it) but the enthusiasm was markedly low even before (mixed) reviews came out. Personally, I was not interested because the game was visual mess. If it had featured two even semi-coherent fleets, I might have.
Abandoning Blood Bowl seems quite silly given that it was perhaps their third most popular game, and likely in top 10 most popular tabletop miniatures games in the world! However, the ex-GW employee said a year or two ago that last Blood Bowl edition did not sell well: all the players were estabilished veterans who already had the teams, and the game was not bringing in much new players.
Krinsath wrote: I think the core problem with Kirby is he's mired in the view that GW is a miniatures company. While this is no shocking revelation about GW's view of the market, I think it is the crux of the problem. I would wager that Kirby views the actual games as something that happens off to the side and of interest to only a few hardcore nerds, much like it would have seemed back in the late 80s when there weren't fully fleshed-out ranges for anything. The models are the only things that matter in this world view.
It's true to an extent that a cool model will move units regardless of rules, but a solid rule set with good models and a rich background is the actual Holy Trinity of doing well in this business. GW has the latter two, but seems to be on a sharp decline on the first. Dreadfleet, as much as it's been brought up, is a perfect example. The models in Dreadfleet are actually quite good (ignoring the problem that they can't be used for much else). The fluff is a bit ridiculous the more you think about it, but far from the dumbest thing in the history of the IP. The rules, however, have been oft-described as a train-wreck, and by actual games designers as well as Internet pundits. Ergo, the game goes on to become one of their biggest albatrosses. Had the game been actual fun, I doubt the silly premise would have been an issue. The lack of fun and disappointment that it wasn't Blood Bowl pretty much sank that ship as it left the slip.
I don't think Kirby gets that wargaming IS a market of its own, and that the games drive sales far more than anything else. To gloss over writing good rules in the hope that random strangers will be able to fix their omissions and oversights is, IMO, the rotten core of the GW empire. If the rules are crap, people won't play them. If people don't play them, they don't need the models. If they don't need the models, they won't buy them in the main. It's a pretty obvious circle, but it seems he has a willful blind spot that letting model sales drive rules development is a losing equation.
I apologise for going OT, and I'm not having a go at you, but there seems to be two realities: the dakka reality and the real world reality. For as long as anybody has discussed Dreadfleet on dakka, the consensus has always been the same: rubbish game that didn't sell well.
Now, I can only offer anecdotal evidence and I'm not bragging or boasting, but every copy of Dreadfleet I put up for sale on ebay sold within 2-3 days. The demand was there, the public wanted it. I was able to shift 11 copies over a two month period. I remember at the time how hard it was to buy more copies to sell on and I was conscious not to have too many copies up for sale, which would have saturated the market.
Everybody's entitled to their view on game design and rules mechanics, but the dakka view that it didn't sell well does not tally up with my own experience.
RE: Dreadfleet, didn't they also destroy unsold copies rather than put them on sale, as not to give the impression that one could just wait a few months and buy a kit at a discount? If that rumor is true, then it means GW would rather sell 0 at full price rather than sell anything at a reduced price, even if they were to still get profit from that transaction. That seems insanely stupid; why not get some profit rather than nothing?
To me the most disturbing thing is still that line about not doing research; we all knew it but to actually read it from the CEO/Chairman of the company? I can't imagine how any shareholder, company or individual, would want to keep any decent amount of money in a company that admits to not knowing who they are targeting or what their customers actually want, and worse makes it sound like that's a good thing.
This is Business 101 stuff, how can you sell anything without knowing who you are selling to?
Backfire wrote: See, here it comes again. GW was criticized because they dared to bring out something new instead of rehashing the old. God forbid.
No, you completely missed the point.
GW wasn't criticised because they dared to bring out something new. They were criticised because they brought out something that wasn't very good, and because thanks to their insane policy of not talking about what they are working on they allowed expectations to build up over what people thought the release would be, to the extent that anything different that they released was going to annoy people.
A bit of interaction with their fanbase when the rumours started (it wouldn't have needed to be detailed - Hey, you've heard the rumours, well, yes, we're working on a boxed game. It's something new involving ships, and nothing to do with Blood Bowl, Man'o'War, Warhammer Quest, or any of our previous games - Stay tuned for some sneaky reveals over the coming months!) would have gone a long way towards controlling those expectations and building a more receptive atmosphere for the game's release.
However, the ex-GW employee said a year or two ago that last Blood Bowl edition did not sell well: all the players were estabilished veterans who already had the teams, and the game was not bringing in much new players.
When Blood Bowl was last released, the game had sunk into relative obscurity, and the re-release wasn't anything new, just a reprint. In the last 5 years or so, there has been a fairly massive resurgence, driven largely by the fact that a whole bunch of other companies have sprung up making compatible miniatures.
In that environment, a redone boxed set with new miniatures of a similar standard to 3rd Ed Space Hulk would have done well. Certainly better than Dreadfleet.
But that's something that GW could only be expected to know if they actually ever looked out the window of their sparkly tower. Instead, they're busy patting themselves on the back about not doing any market research, and as a result have absolutely no idea what is going on with their own games.
I think the pubic wanted it (assuming it was a Man O War game) until the word got out about how bad a game it was; I'm sure plenty sold for the RRP or more, but once the internet reviews started appearing it dropped off quickly. I'm tempted to buy it just for the mat, when it gets to about £20-25, because I'm under no illusions about how much I'd enjoy the game.
Now, I can only offer anecdotal evidence and I'm not bragging or boasting, but every copy of Dreadfleet I put up for sale on ebay sold within 2-3 days. The demand was there, the public wanted it. I was able to shift 11 copies over a two month period. I remember at the time how hard it was to buy more copies to sell on and I was conscious not to have too many copies up for sale, which would have saturated the market.
Everybody's entitled to their view on game design and rules mechanics, but the dakka view that it didn't sell well does not tally up with my own experience.
Out of curiosity, where were you selling them to? I'm assuming the box cost a lot more in Australia.
-Kirby casually dismissing Tolkien license. I say good that at least there he is honest. Why lie about how "valuable" and "prestigious" the license is when it obviously has been tanking for years? It's time to put down that good old dog. The material is exhausted, there isn't going to be new movies around for new licensing possibilities. Well there is Silmarillion, but nobody wants to see Peter Jackson's take on Silmarillion. (Silmarillion would actually provide tons of material for a tabletop game, however).
Do you mean GW's take on the license has been tanking? From what I can tell LOTR is as big as it ever was, and GW managed to turn it from a cheaper 3rd system to an unused relic by pricing the hell out of it .
Anyone can still buy old LOTR miniatures from GW (they're still cheaper than Hobbit minis, or most WHFB minis) and play the game. They just don't want to. The game went derelict long before Hobbit and it's prices (which may not have been entirely GW's fault anyway) so it can't be pinned on that.
In fact, LOTR seems to perfectly conform to wishes people often make from GW mainline games:
-reasonably priced -no silly cartoony models -no constant power creep -fresh ruleset with no legacy junk
Yet it no longer sells. I don't know anyone who has an army or plays the game. What gives?
The first expansion after the LotR films (Shadow and Flame?) had some terrible models with far more 'heroic' proportions that had gone before (Swan Knights and Elrond's sons). Essentially the Perrys had been taken off the game and replaced with inferior scupltors (I think Gary Morley was one).
Everyone I knew who played it ditched it around that time (there were also some questions raised over whether some of the new profiles broke the lore, with the orc & goblin shamans).
rich1231 wrote: Account information would have been a few hours work max.
Password migration on the other hand wont be and will likely be a massive pain.
Downtime was likely to have been a DNS contingency.
There was no password or account migration, everyone needed to make a completely new account. They did however keep peoples addresses for the newsletters. I got stuck in anloop when I tried to unsubscribe from their newsletter. I couldnt unsubscribe because I didn't have an account to unsubscribe with. So I had to make an account to unsubscribe, which wouldn't unsubscribe me because it had thought my new account wasn't subscribed to the newsletter.
I gave up eventually and just marked the newsletters as spam.
-Kirby casually dismissing Tolkien license. I say good that at least there he is honest. Why lie about how "valuable" and "prestigious" the license is when it obviously has been tanking for years? It's time to put down that good old dog. The material is exhausted, there isn't going to be new movies around for new licensing possibilities. Well there is Silmarillion, but nobody wants to see Peter Jackson's take on Silmarillion.
(Silmarillion would actually provide tons of material for a tabletop game, however).
Do you mean GW's take on the license has been tanking? From what I can tell LOTR is as big as it ever was, and GW managed to turn it from a cheaper 3rd system to an unused relic by pricing the hell out of it .
Anyone can still buy old LOTR miniatures from GW (they're still cheaper than Hobbit minis, or most WHFB minis) and play the game. They just don't want to. The game went derelict long before Hobbit and it's prices (which may not have been entirely GW's fault anyway) so it can't be pinned on that.
In fact, LOTR seems to perfectly conform to wishes people often make from GW mainline games:
-reasonably priced
-no silly cartoony models
-no constant power creep
-fresh ruleset with no legacy junk
Yet it no longer sells. I don't know anyone who has an army or plays the game. What gives?
I don't understand it either; it was hugely popular (as in GW struggled to keep up with customers) and is regarded as the best GW ruleset. Was it maybe the new source book every film, and the starters with incomplete stats so you needed both the starter and the £50 rule book in order to play?
It was when the Ronan Outriders were released that killed the game mostly for me.
It was an incredibly well balanced game up until that point, then everyone started having armies of outriders, as heroes don't count towards the 33% bow limit.
Everyone I knew who played it ditched it around that time (there were also some questions raised over whether some of the new profiles broke the lore, with the orc & goblin shamans).
OT but: IIRC Tolkien specified that only Ainur and Elves could do real magic. Younger races could produce magical items if they knew 'the craft'. Morgoth and Sauron could grant magical powers to their underlings (reducing their own powers in the process, so they were sparing with it). So Orc magicians seem like violation of the lore, so were human magicians in MERP etc.
Everyone I knew who played it ditched it around that time (there were also some questions raised over whether some of the new profiles broke the lore, with the orc & goblin shamans).
OT but: IIRC Tolkien specified that only Ainur and Elves could do real magic. Younger races could produce magical items if they knew 'the craft'. Morgoth and Sauron could grant magical powers to their underlings (reducing their own powers in the process, so they were sparing with it). So Orc magicians seem like violation of the lore, so were human magicians in MERP etc.
Didn't have a dog in the fight then, certainly don't care now, and as I recall both side of the debate had their own views and quotes on "what Tolkien specified".
The point is that, rather than keeping the post-film momentum going, Shadow and Flame immediately fractured the playerbase and was cause for concern over the future of the game rather than general positivity.
And yet copies sat on shelves in GW stores for months until being boxed up and sent back to be destroyed.
Yes, but you have no idea how many were sold and how many were sent back.
Stock runs out "GW are stupid! They don't make enough"
Stock is left "GW are stupid! No one wants the game"
Apart from the limited number things that sell out fast we have no idea what happens. Thats not to say it didn't sell well or it did, but we just don't know.
Ketara wrote: GW still has a few years window to turn all this around. They have the facilities, the lack of debt, the in-house production expertise, and the brand. The question, is whether or not they are able to do so. With Kirby relegated to being Chairman, he will doubtless be attempting to to control whoever is appointed to replace him as CEO. This is not an uncommon thing to occur in the world of business. The question will be whether or not his replacement will wrest control away from Kirby, and if that replacement will have different ideas on how to run the company.
Debt isn't the only thing that can sink a business. Fixed business costs are also as deadly as debt. They are a burden that needs to be covered and frequently can't be re-negotiated (like debt) or put off for a better time (like debt), and most likely will cost much more to shread (aka, exceptional costs), before the savings can be realized. Despite the decline in sales, the recent report has shown GW costs remain close to the same - meaning most of what is left is tied directly to revenue and producing from that revenue.
They are already cutting into the bone - something that became evident to me when we are seeing constant inventory shortages on new releases (wood elves, imperial guard, etc.), extremely limited runs of products (effort to control inventory on the books), and high double-digit prices increases. One has to remember that GW has been putting price increases through by as much as 70% (Scions) to 100% (White Dwarf) and STILL declined. All the price increases have done is mask the massive loss of customers on the gross revenues, but it is showing in the operating profits dropping by 42%.
At this point, any cost cutting is going to effect: 1.) the quality of the product (which is already showing), 2.) their ability to deliver product (which is also already showing), and 3.) their ability to sell the product (which is also beginning to show). Either way, GW has little room to invest in growth and pretty much, as Kirby stated, is focused on surviving.
My reasons for my predictions, cross posted earlier in this thread, are simple. I have seen this curve one too many times before and have noted the likely effects. GW showed a 14% decline in direct sales in H1 and only improved this to an 11% decline in H2 pulling out all the stops in the period.
When your entire company is pretty much betting on one product line and this type of stress is showing, we are most likely going to see an accelerated decline from here. For example, next year showing a 20%-30% decline in revenues (and tipping the company into a net profit loss) and the following year accelerating even faster to as much as a 60%-75% loss in sales. Taking this historical example forward, it put's GW at about the £92m-£104m gross revenue range next year and £23m-£41m range the following. That being said, here is where the big anchor comes from the financials - despite a 10% decline in direct channels (offset by 2% for the indirects), GW's cost of sales barely moved - meaning that their COS is probably tied to fixed costs. So GW needs almost £37m just to sell their product, regardless of the revenue outcome. See how a sudden drop to £40m in sales in 24-months means you are out of business - even without any debt? When you need 30-months to correct for cost reductions, you can see very quickly how this can put them out of business fast (and so can Kirby which is why now is a great time to step down and let some other poor soul CEO take the job and thus, take the blame).
What is absolutely clear from this report is that their strategy is failing miserably. What is clear in the time since the close of this period to now (with the Ork and Space Wolves new models pricing and the uptick in putting LEs out for almost everything) is GW is doubling down on that strategy moving forward - so that strategy will produce even greater results (which is driving customers away in droves) in the near future.
As I said before these financials, when I start seeing price increases of 44% (Stormwolf over Stormtalon), 70% (Scions over Kaskrins) and 100% (White Dwarf) becoming regular policy in any company, it is a sure sign of a company in a lot of trouble to put such desperate pricing measures through and frequently has the opposite effect intended because it drives more customers away to the point where the declining volume cannot be covered even with such massive price increases.
insaniak wrote: I don't know about overseas, but my understanding is that this is exactly the opposite of what has been happening here in Oz. The bigger stores were in the high profile shop spaces in the big malls, and they've been downsizing into smaller stores in more out-of-the-way locations.
Yup. Hornsby store? In the main Westfield. Not in a premium location (that would be EB's location right at the entrance to the foodcourt), but it was in the main drag. It's now gone, they didn't open a new one. Chatswood, probably the most successful GW, had a prime position. Now it's a 1-man store in a part of Chatswood where all the other store signs are in Korean. NorSyd? Gone. Parra? We couldn't find it last time we were there, only the empty shell of where it used to be. I know the City store is still around, but the Good Games nearby is doing better.
I overheard the other week that the Gold Coast store is one of the most profitable in Queensland, which I could believe given it's not in a bad spot. On a main road (not really viable from the road though), nestled between quite a few fast food places, just around the corner from a shopping center and down the road from another. Except I heard that on a Thursday night (gaming night pretty much everywhere in SE QLD) when there was me and 3 other people in the store (the FLGS an hour up the road had 15 or so people there playing Warmachine last time I was in on a Thursday night and they just moved to a bigger gaming hall).
I also recently visited the Battle bunker in Brisbane, it was fairly deserted and although it's a great size no one would ever be able to find it if they didn't already know where it was.
Funnily enough the last time I was in both stores I was picking things up and considering buying them but both times the employee was too busy to deal with me so I just walked out.
Suffice to say I was surprised the report was *that* bad, but I wasn't expecting another flat year.
And yet copies sat on shelves in GW stores for months until being boxed up and sent back to be destroyed.
Yes, but you have no idea how many were sold and how many were sent back.
Stock runs out "GW are stupid! They don't make enough"
Stock is left "GW are stupid! No one wants the game"
Apart from the limited number things that sell out fast we have no idea what happens. Thats not to say it didn't sell well or it did, but we just don't know.
Given that you can still buy them in FLGSs I think it is safe to say that no, there was simply no demand for that game. I'm not even sure how anyone can think otherwise... It was dead on arrival, that should have just been common knowledge for years now.
It's not that it's sitting on shelves and not shifting. It's sitting on shelves at a huge discount and not shifting (I've seen stalls with it at 50% off - so making a loss assuming GW does at best a 40% discount for trade customers), it really looks like it won't shift at any price, and literal stacks of them were sent for destruction.
rich1231 wrote: Account information would have been a few hours work max.
Password migration on the other hand wont be and will likely be a massive pain.
Downtime was likely to have been a DNS contingency.
Likely, based on the cost, they did last minute acceptance testing during the downtime.
Account information includes usernames, hopefully encrypted passwords not hashed, addresses (you could store multiple) and other contact details, old orders, and wish lists. You would have had a data transformation piece to match up the old schema to the new schema including changing any order numbering scheme, customer numbering scheme, etc. Biggest part would be the previous orders and wish lists per customer as you would have to transform the links to the items in the old orders to the new links, this is not trivial, potentially error prone and far easier just to not migrate it.
Once you decide that you aren't migrating passwords (as they are encrypted) or old orders, you might as well get the user to register again as you would only be migrating contact info, this is zero effort for GW. It has the added benefit of getting rid of the dead accounts that aren't being used.
Dead accounts aren't that bad an issue on a webstore - they take up essentially no space (say 1KB/user) whilst providing you some contact information and minimizing the barrier for sale. For instance, I no longer have an account there, so if I want to buy anything I need to re-register, but I'm incredibly lazy, so unless I really want it I just won't bother.
Kilkrazy wrote: I am not sure that the big kits appeal to a large enough number of people.
After all the Knight Titan, though well received, obviously did not save the sales figures this year, even though they can ally with any Imperial army or be an army by themselves.
Yeah. I really don't give 2 gaks for big kits. I prefer LandRaider and smaller models, except for big ass terrain pieces.
Automatically Appended Next Post: If dreadfleet had instead been a Battlefleet Gothic starter with, say Orks vs Imperium, my group would probably have been all in. We could have added it to our 40k campaigns and gak.
Looky Likey wrote: numbering scheme, etc. Biggest part would be the previous orders and wish lists per customer as you would have to transform the links to the items in the old orders to the new links, this is not trivial, potentially error prone and far easier just to not migrate it.
Once you decide that you aren't migrating passwords (as they are encrypted) or old orders, you might as well get the user to register again as you would only be migrating contact info, this is zero effort for GW. It has the added benefit of getting rid of the dead accounts that aren't being used.
Nope, order history didn't continue either, nor wish lists. You needed a completely new account.
Does anyone think this would be a good time to become involved in GW as a job? Would someone who understands the hobby side of things turn the company around?
DrRansom wrote: I didn't know GW was at max production capability. Though I find that a bit surprising, without customer research, how do they know how much to produce?
Don't forget - they closed their production facilities in Florida, and, I believe, destroyed those molds.
Sillycybin wrote: Does anyone think this would be a good time to become involved in GW as a job? Would someone who understands the hobby side of things turn the company around?
A good CEO could turn the company round, but only if the Chairman allows it.
I'm willing to bet that Kirby will remain in full control behind the scenes, he's only standing down from the position right now because UK law demands it. It will become clearer when the new CEO is actually appointed, my guess it will be someone known to Kirby, possibly an internal promotion.
Sillycybin wrote: Does anyone think this would be a good time to become involved in GW as a job? Would someone who understands the hobby side of things turn the company around?
A good CEO could turn the company round, but only if the Chairman allows it.
I'm willing to bet that Kirby will remain in full control behind the scenes, he's only standing down from the position right now because UK law demands it. It will become clearer when the new CEO is actually appointed, my guess it will be someone known to Kirby, possibly an internal promotion.
You don't need to know the hobby, just be able to trust and verify the people who do/would.
In GW's current incarnation as a viable long term profit generating business knowledge of the hobby isn't really needed. Nothing needs turning around.
Sillycybin wrote: Does anyone think this would be a good time to become involved in GW as a job? Would someone who understands the hobby side of things turn the company around?
A good CEO could turn the company round, but only if the Chairman allows it.
I'm willing to bet that Kirby will remain in full control behind the scenes, he's only standing down from the position right now because UK law demands it. It will become clearer when the new CEO is actually appointed, my guess it will be someone known to Kirby, possibly an internal promotion.
You don't need to know the hobby, just be able to trust and verify the people who do/would.
In GW's current incarnation as a viable long term profit generating business knowledge of the hobby isn't really needed. Nothing needs turning around.
Wait, did you just say that a business which is haemorrhaging sales has long-term viability?
Sillycybin wrote: Does anyone think this would be a good time to become involved in GW as a job? Would someone who understands the hobby side of things turn the company around?
A good CEO could turn the company round, but only if the Chairman allows it.
I'm willing to bet that Kirby will remain in full control behind the scenes, he's only standing down from the position right now because UK law demands it. It will become clearer when the new CEO is actually appointed, my guess it will be someone known to Kirby, possibly an internal promotion.
You don't need to know the hobby, just be able to trust and verify the people who do/would.
In GW's current incarnation as a viable long term profit generating business knowledge of the hobby isn't really needed. Nothing needs turning around.
Wait, did you just say that a business which is haemorrhaging sales has long-term viability?
I was paraphrasing Mr. Kirby.
This augurs well for our long term health and cash flow.
If your measure of 'good' is the current financial year's numbers, you may not agree. But if your measure is the long-term survivability of
a great cash generating business that still has a lot of potential growth, then you will agree.
Looky Likey wrote: numbering scheme, etc. Biggest part would be the previous orders and wish lists per customer as you would have to transform the links to the items in the old orders to the new links, this is not trivial, potentially error prone and far easier just to not migrate it.
Once you decide that you aren't migrating passwords (as they are encrypted) or old orders, you might as well get the user to register again as you would only be migrating contact info, this is zero effort for GW. It has the added benefit of getting rid of the dead accounts that aren't being used.
Nope, order history didn't continue either, nor wish lists. You needed a completely new account.
This was a major piece of marketing stupidity, because GW knew people's order history, delivery address, home address and so on, for all of their customers on the old web site.
GW knew I was into Tau and Tyranids. They could have inferred I was into converting and didn't like Finecast. They had this kind of info for all the customers they now want to sell to over the internet. And they have binned it all.
From GW's point of view, the video games should be an opportunity to get people into the miniature's game. Make a Blood Raven's starter kit, complete with paint, miniatures, painting guide, and some orks and sell that with a discount to owners of the video game.
PERFECT EXAMPLE here. My son was what, 8 or so. While we played a bit he really wanted to start up his own army of Blood Ravens. When I told him they had no book and had to make up the rules from another book, he lost interest. He wanted his own Blood Ravens Codex.
Talk about opportunity lost. Then again, my wallet thanks them.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote: Cross promotions... the SM movie sound like such a no brainier that even I wouldn't think twice about doing them, and I've never taken a business class or an Econ class since high school FFS.
Uh, The SM movie if you are talking about the Ultramarine movie, was so bad, do you think GW wants to be part of that? I mean that movie didn't inspire me at all with 40K. All it did was remind me how boring the movie was and how boring to play 40K is.
Looky Likey wrote: numbering scheme, etc. Biggest part would be the previous orders and wish lists per customer as you would have to transform the links to the items in the old orders to the new links, this is not trivial, potentially error prone and far easier just to not migrate it.
Once you decide that you aren't migrating passwords (as they are encrypted) or old orders, you might as well get the user to register again as you would only be migrating contact info, this is zero effort for GW. It has the added benefit of getting rid of the dead accounts that aren't being used.
Nope, order history didn't continue either, nor wish lists. You needed a completely new account.
This was a major piece of marketing stupidity, because GW knew people's order history, delivery address, home address and so on, for all of their customers on the old web site.
GW knew I was into Tau and Tyranids. They could have inferred I was into converting and didn't like Finecast. They had this kind of info for all the customers they now want to sell to over the internet. And they have binned it all.
Bah, that kind of information is otiose and you know it. If you were discerning you would buy everything GW have to offer - even during pestilence or intervention from Brussels!
Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote: Cross promotions... the SM movie sound like such a no brainier that even I wouldn't think twice about doing them, and I've never taken a business class or an Econ class since high school FFS.
Uh, The SM movie if you are talking about the Ultramarine movie, was so bad, do you think GW wants to be part of that? I mean that movie didn't inspire me at all with 40K. All it did was remind me how boring the movie was and how boring to play 40K is.
Again something done on the cheap.
They should have spent their own money on it, made a quality product, not let some independent struggle to make something meaningful for the price of a bag of chips, I'm guessing by the time they paid John Hurt there wasn't enough left for much else.
An actual space marine movie, one of high quality, could be a great marketing tool, sc-fi and super heroes are cool, I would be willing to guess that three quartersor more of people who see any hero film have never picked up a comic book in their lives, but the concept of these over the top and often ludicrous stories is now part of the cultural zeitgeist, and I do wonder why they are not going for it.
Space marine, the last computer game, was I thought very well done, sold in quite big numbers too I think.
Uh, The SM movie if you are talking about the Ultramarine movie, was so bad, do you think GW wants to be part of that? I mean that movie didn't inspire me at all with 40K. All it did was remind me how boring the movie was and how boring to play 40K is.
I think the lost opportunity was the chance to work with the studio to make a *good* 40k movie.
Instead of just whoring out your IP for short term cash bump.
They should have spent their own money on it, made a quality product, not let some independent struggle to make something meaningful for the price of a bag of chips, I'm guessing by the time they paid John Hurt there wasn't enough left for much else.
An actual space marine movie, one of high quality, could be a great marketing tool, sc-fi and super heroes are cool, I would be willing to guess that three quartersor more of people who see any hero film have never picked up a comic book in their lives, but the concept of these over the top and often ludicrous stories is now part of the cultural zeitgeist, and I do wonder why they are not going for it.
Space marine, the last computer game, was I thought very well done, sold in quite big numbers too I think.
Well if James Cameron can spend 100's of millions of dollars on a love story in Titanic and then Avatar and make billions, I am sure he or Peter Jackson (well maybe not PJ, King Kong didn't do to well) could make a live action 40K movie and make it sell.
Problem is, GW doesn't want to spend millions. GW doesn't want to ADVERTISE or PROMOTE. People are leaving. How do they expect to bring in new people if they don't advertise or promote? Word of mouth is already gone, or if not, tainting GW now, if anything. So how does GW expect to bring in fresh blood, just so they can ignore and make fun of them.
Sillycybin wrote: Does anyone think this would be a good time to become involved in GW as a job? Would someone who understands the hobby side of things turn the company around?
As advertised, they need employees with attitude. Skill is less important.
Please have a look into the corresponding thread here at Dakka Discussion.
Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote: Cross promotions... the SM movie sound like such a no brainier that even I wouldn't think twice about doing them, and I've never taken a business class or an Econ class since high school FFS.
Uh, The SM movie if you are talking about the Ultramarine movie, was so bad, do you think GW wants to be part of that? I mean that movie didn't inspire me at all with 40K. All it did was remind me how boring the movie was and how boring to play 40K is.
Again something done on the cheap.
They should have spent their own money on it, made a quality product, not let some independent struggle to make something meaningful for the price of a bag of chips, I'm guessing by the time they paid John Hurt there wasn't enough left for much else.
An actual space marine movie, one of high quality, could be a great marketing tool, sc-fi and super heroes are cool, I would be willing to guess that three quartersor more of people who see any hero film have never picked up a comic book in their lives, but the concept of these over the top and often ludicrous stories is now part of the cultural zeitgeist, and I do wonder why they are not going for it.
Space marine, the last computer game, was I thought very well done, sold in quite big numbers too I think.
The new sternguard box has heads that are good fits for the characters in the game. Not that GW advertised this fact, or had the models out anywhere near the peak of the computer game...
They should have spent their own money on it, made a quality product, not let some independent struggle to make something meaningful for the price of a bag of chips, I'm guessing by the time they paid John Hurt there wasn't enough left for much else.
An actual space marine movie, one of high quality, could be a great marketing tool, sc-fi and super heroes are cool, I would be willing to guess that three quartersor more of people who see any hero film have never picked up a comic book in their lives, but the concept of these over the top and often ludicrous stories is now part of the cultural zeitgeist, and I do wonder why they are not going for it.
Space marine, the last computer game, was I thought very well done, sold in quite big numbers too I think.
Well if James Cameron can spend 100's of millions of dollars on a love story in Titanic and then Avatar and make billions, I am sure he or Peter Jackson (well maybe not PJ, King Kong didn't do to well) could make a live action 40K movie and make it sell.
Problem is, GW doesn't want to spend millions. GW doesn't want to ADVERTISE or PROMOTE. People are leaving. How do they expect to bring in new people if they don't advertise or promote? Word of mouth is already gone, or if not, tainting GW now, if anything. So how does GW expect to bring in fresh blood, just so they can ignore and make fun of them.
Uh, you can forget about James Cameron or Peter Jackson. Those guys won't even get out of bed under a budget equalling GW's annual revenue A blockbuster movie is wildly expensive. GW could not afford such thing in their wildest dreams.
At best you could get maybe something like Iron Sky, which had handful of real actors and loads of decent CGI for relatively cheap, and lots of enthusiastic volunteers.
I think I just found the captain of the white knights. From BOLS (where else?). I really hope this dude isn't serious:
Lol, guess the investor's in the London Stock Exchange don't read Bell of Lost Souls. While people want to get on here and scream profits are down, the sky is falling, etc. No one on here commented about the balance sheet in the annual report. First equation you learn in accounting is Assets - Liabilities = Owner's Equity. Owner's Equity is what a business is worth in other words. The stock price is climbing after the annual report. The company has an excellent cash flow statement, has added property, plant, and equipment. Yes, sales are down but the company is making gains in so many areas.
They had huge expenses closing the HQ, removing personnel, the legal battles they got tangled up in, or restructuring the entire company. I was pretty impressed when I saw the expenditures on things like the severance packages people received. In other words they admitted they couldn't keep paying the salaries, but they didn't leave people out in the cold. Take a look at the trending stock prices. It doesn't look too bad. Gains after the annual report was released should tell you the company is doing well.
WayneTheGame wrote: I think I just found the captain of the white knights. From BOLS (where else?). I really hope this dude isn't serious:
Lol, guess the investor's in the London Stock Exchange don't read Bell of Lost Souls. While people want to get on here and scream profits are down, the sky is falling, etc. No one on here commented about the balance sheet in the annual report. First equation you learn in accounting is Assets - Liabilities = Owner's Equity. Owner's Equity is what a business is worth in other words. The stock price is climbing after the annual report. The company has an excellent cash flow statement, has added property, plant, and equipment. Yes, sales are down but the company is making gains in so many areas.
They had huge expenses closing the HQ, removing personnel, the legal battles they got tangled up in, or restructuring the entire company. I was pretty impressed when I saw the expenditures on things like the severance packages people received. In other words they admitted they couldn't keep paying the salaries, but they didn't leave people out in the cold. Take a look at the trending stock prices. It doesn't look too bad. Gains after the annual report was released should tell you the company is doing well.
WayneTheGame wrote: I think I just found the captain of the white knights. From BOLS (where else?). I really hope this dude isn't serious:
Lol, guess the investor's in the London Stock Exchange don't read Bell of Lost Souls. While people want to get on here and scream profits are down, the sky is falling, etc. No one on here commented about the balance sheet in the annual report. First equation you learn in accounting is Assets - Liabilities = Owner's Equity. Owner's Equity is what a business is worth in other words. The stock price is climbing after the annual report. The company has an excellent cash flow statement, has added property, plant, and equipment. Yes, sales are down but the company is making gains in so many areas.
They had huge expenses closing the HQ, removing personnel, the legal battles they got tangled up in, or restructuring the entire company. I was pretty impressed when I saw the expenditures on things like the severance packages people received. In other words they admitted they couldn't keep paying the salaries, but they didn't leave people out in the cold. Take a look at the trending stock prices. It doesn't look too bad. Gains after the annual report was released should tell you the company is doing well.
Sooo.... next year should bring $100 Land Raiders, which will further erode the customer base, which will cause sales to decline, which will drive kit prices up, which will continue driving customers away...
If there were alternative mini wargaming options out there, GW would be in a heap of trouble eh?
Thank goodness stock prices are stable - take that competitors!
WayneTheGame wrote: I think I just found the captain of the white knights. From BOLS (where else?). I really hope this dude isn't serious:
Lol, guess the investor's in the London Stock Exchange don't read Bell of Lost Souls. While people want to get on here and scream profits are down, the sky is falling, etc. No one on here commented about the balance sheet in the annual report. First equation you learn in accounting is Assets - Liabilities = Owner's Equity. Owner's Equity is what a business is worth in other words. The stock price is climbing after the annual report. The company has an excellent cash flow statement, has added property, plant, and equipment. Yes, sales are down but the company is making gains in so many areas.
They had huge expenses closing the HQ, removing personnel, the legal battles they got tangled up in, or restructuring the entire company. I was pretty impressed when I saw the expenditures on things like the severance packages people received. In other words they admitted they couldn't keep paying the salaries, but they didn't leave people out in the cold. Take a look at the trending stock prices. It doesn't look too bad. Gains after the annual report was released should tell you the company is doing well.
Sooo.... next year should bring $100 Land Raiders, which will further erode the customer base, which will cause sales to decline, which will drive kit prices up, which will continue driving customers away...
If there were alternative mini wargaming options out there, GW would be in a heap of trouble eh?
Thank goodness stock prices are stable - take that competitors!
Right, if only there were alternatives to 40k that people could play instead. Oh well, time to go order me a dozen Stormwolf flying boxes or whatever it's called. Not like I can spend my money on something else.
Compel wrote: It is odd that the share price has had a decent jump as a result of this, though.
I wouldn't expect a nosedive (even for the ignorant me, that would seem too sensible), but I would have thought mostly flat-ish would be ok.
The shares closed up 5%.
5.
Honestly, that's essentially zero reaction. As I said earlier, over 60% of the shares are owned by a combination of institutions and staff, not the sort of owners likely to dump stock at the drop of a hat, all the flighty types already got scared away in January.
Compel wrote: It is odd that the share price has had a decent jump as a result of this, though.
I wouldn't expect a nosedive (even for the ignorant me, that would seem too sensible), but I would have thought mostly flat-ish would be ok.
The shares closed up 5%.
5.
Honestly, that's essentially zero reaction. As I said earlier, over 60% of the shares are owned by a combination of institutions and staff, not the sort of owners likely to dump stock at the drop of a hat, all the flighty types already got scared away in January.
Agreed. It seems like most of the shares are basically like investment groups who just have some in there to diversify their portfolios, so barring a major drop it's not likely to see much issue as if it was an individual.
What I don't understand is their lack of realization that events such as golden demon, games day. Promotion through hobby related web articles and the great work of the studio did more to generate profits then anything that has come since the demise of these things. Infact you could probably produce charts that prove this.
Knowledge of the hobby is essential for good business. How is the company going to grow if it has no interest in it's product. This last point should have been clear when their stocks dropped because they released a tyranid codex that was utterly opposed to what people wanted.
WayneTheGame wrote: I think I just found the captain of the white knights. From BOLS (where else?). I really hope this dude isn't serious:
Lol, guess the investor's in the London Stock Exchange don't read Bell of Lost Souls. While people want to get on here and scream profits are down, the sky is falling, etc. No one on here commented about the balance sheet in the annual report. First equation you learn in accounting is Assets - Liabilities = Owner's Equity. Owner's Equity is what a business is worth in other words. The stock price is climbing after the annual report. The company has an excellent cash flow statement, has added property, plant, and equipment. Yes, sales are down but the company is making gains in so many areas.
They had huge expenses closing the HQ, removing personnel, the legal battles they got tangled up in, or restructuring the entire company. I was pretty impressed when I saw the expenditures on things like the severance packages people received. In other words they admitted they couldn't keep paying the salaries, but they didn't leave people out in the cold. Take a look at the trending stock prices. It doesn't look too bad. Gains after the annual report was released should tell you the company is doing well.
Actually that is all true, but the key point is falling sales.
If sales continue to fall everything else will become sackcloth and ashes.
The absolutely crucial thing the report failed to address was why sales are falling and what is the company going to do about it.
(The share price of a failing company with lots of cash can rise because investors expect a hostile takeover.)
Honestly, that's essentially zero reaction. As I said earlier, over 60% of the shares are owned by a combination of institutions and staff, not the sort of owners likely to dump stock at the drop of a hat, all the flighty types already got scared away in January.
I tend to agree. I find it very odd that an annual report comes out that is basically very negative and the CEO sounds like a raging alcoholic, yet no one dumps their stock. To me this seems like people who have bought into a pile, now realize they bought a pile, but don't want to be the first off the ship and loose money. I also think there is a chance that the people who are invested have no idea what is actually going on and are buying into Kirby speak and/or waiting on the new CEO.
Honestly, that's essentially zero reaction. As I said earlier, over 60% of the shares are owned by a combination of institutions and staff, not the sort of owners likely to dump stock at the drop of a hat, all the flighty types already got scared away in January.
Few percents here and there is not signifant reaction for a stock which is not traded much (for Microsoft, it would).
Basically, markets already had priced in the poor report, warned by January report. So a crappy financial report now (maybe slightly less crappy than expected) was no surprise to which market had need to react.
Sillycybin wrote: What I don't understand is their lack of realization that events such as golden demon, games day. Promotion through hobby related web articles and the great work of the studio did more to generate profits then anything that has come since the demise of these things. Infact you could probably produce charts that prove this.
Knowledge of the hobby is essential for good business. How is the company going to grow if it has no interest in it's product. This last point should have been clear when their stocks dropped because they released a tyranid codex that was utterly opposed to what people wanted.
I hate to keep banging on but this...
We do no demographic research, we have no focus groups, we do not ask the market what it wants. These things
are otiose in a niche.
..Should tell you everything you need to know. They use fairly dangerous language (IMO) when they talk about their customers as well.
The 'hobby' is selling the best quality miniatures in the world - made by GW. That's it.
If you had no knowledge of GW and were presented with the about us text of GW you would assume that they are in the same market as Hummel figurines, Sideshow WETA, and other collectible merchandise.
The 'hobby' is selling the best quality miniatures in the world - made by GW. That's it.
If you had no knowledge of GW and were presented with the about us text of GW you would assume that they are in the same market as Hummel figurines, Sideshow WETA, and other collectible merchandise.
The game is a distant after thought.
Little tribia fact, having the best cars in the world, did not save Ferrari from being bought by Fiat.
The 'hobby' is selling the best quality miniatures in the world - made by GW. That's it.
If you had no knowledge of GW and were presented with the about us text of GW you would assume that they are in the same market as Hummel figurines, Sideshow WETA, and other collectible merchandise.
The game is a distant after thought.
Little tribia fact, having the best cars in the world, did not save Ferrari from being bought by Fiat.
Sorry, don't mean to be constantly correcting you, but Ferrari weren't exactly making the best cars in the world when they were purchased, and being purchased isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially in the auto industry where the enormous R+D costs can be diffused over multiple marques and platforms, just like being purchased wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing for GW, depending on who the buyer was and what their intentions were.
"I don't know. Yes. No. I'm sorry. I don't know what -- I'm not sure what I'm thinking here at the moment. What I'm thinking is actually they're octopussy -- octopussy kind of tentacle heads, but it's not a literal copy."
There's your Alan Merrett. One. Job. To. Do. and that's the performance he gives.
Sillycybin wrote: What I don't understand is their lack of realization that events such as golden demon, games day. Promotion through hobby related web articles and the great work of the studio did more to generate profits then anything that has come since the demise of these things. Infact you could probably produce charts that prove this.
Knowledge of the hobby is essential for good business. How is the company going to grow if it has no interest in it's product.
I disagree - knowledge of the hobby really isn't required by top management. GW's products aren't truly special snowflakes. (In fact I think Kirby keeps up this pretense to make himself seem irreplaceable.) Looking at your examples, there are other companies selling to niche markets who understand the value of face-to-face customer interaction at shows, engage in community building and support, etc. IMO, a fresh, outside perspective is what's required at GW.
This last point should have been clear when their stocks dropped because they released a tyranid codex that was utterly opposed to what people wanted.
I do think GW is different enough, to be honest. Especially if you do want to keep the GW storefronts and do them properly.
You would probably need somone that has an understanding, for example, on how Gaming Stores that play pokemon / MTG / digimon etc work, to make a good run of it.
An understanding that it's not a case like it is right now in the one man stores of 'buy toy, then get the hell out' but there is a focus of 'buy toy, come back and spend time there, then buy more toys.'
I imagine someone with Leisure experience (like a Golf or Cricket equipment chain) might have a good idea too.
So yeah, not exactly a special snowflake business, but a different enough business that you would want someone running it that has experience off the beaten track.
gorgon wrote: Looking at your examples, there are other companies selling to niche markets who understand the value of face-to-face customer interaction at shows, engage in community building and support, etc.
This is knowledge of the hobby. These companies are successful. The hobby is the community. Thus knowledge of the hobby entails providing the community with what it wants. The only way you can provide this is if you understand what your selling.
To your last point, sure "coincidence" is abundant on earth.
"I don't know. Yes. No. I'm sorry. I don't know what -- I'm not sure what I'm thinking here at the moment. What I'm thinking is actually they're octopussy -- octopussy kind of tentacle heads, but it's not a literal copy."
There's your Alan Merrett. One. Job. To. Do. and that's the performance he gives.
Yes he's an idiot but his idiot attorneys are at fault in that fiasco as well for not bothering to coach him at all prior to the trial.
As for going down in flames. If GW can be headed by Kirby and not immediately implode, Merrett couldn't do much worse and would easily be controled by Kirby and the board.
Feth it, we should each buy some shares, go to the AGM, and shout loudly until they get the damn point: we would like to give you our money, we're just not sure you want to give us anything in exchange.
I would really like to introduce my friends to a grimdark universe of space battles, but there's no way that's happening right now.
Edit: also, is anyone else really concerned about the poor sods who run the stores? Because I read this whole report feeling very worried about the guy who runs my local GW, who is basically a nice guy trying to do a job.
Small, Far Away wrote: Feth it, we should each buy some shares, go to the AGM, and shout loudly until they get the damn point: we would like to give you our money, we're just not sure you want to give us anything in exchange.
I would really like to introduce my friends to a grimdark universe of space battles, but there's no way that's happening right now.
Edit: also, is anyone else really concerned about the poor sods who run the stores? Because I read this whole report feeling very worried about the guy who runs my local GW, who is basically a nice guy trying to do a job.
But, at the same time, that isn't the point anymore, not after this last report. Corporations are like cargo ships: they turn slowly. Even if Kirby had written a preamble that said something to the effect of "Feth, guys. We were totally wrong about everything. We're going to change course completely, starting now," there might not be enough time to turn things around. If this is as bad as Wayshuba and others have predicted, the fall will be rapid and dramatic.
Honestly, that's essentially zero reaction. As I said earlier, over 60% of the shares are owned by a combination of institutions and staff, not the sort of owners likely to dump stock at the drop of a hat, all the flighty types already got scared away in January.
I tend to agree. I find it very odd that an annual report comes out that is basically very negative and the CEO sounds like a raging alcoholic, yet no one dumps their stock. To me this seems like people who have bought into a pile, now realize they bought a pile, but don't want to be the first off the ship and loose money. I also think there is a chance that the people who are invested have no idea what is actually going on and are buying into Kirby speak and/or waiting on the new CEO.
Or they realize how bad it is and they are waiting patiently for the others to offload their stock cheap, snatch them up and take over with less effort, which could be what Kirby has planned for himself. Drive the ship down far enough where everyone hops off, take the money you have set aside for such time, and do a buyout when it's at it's lowest taking it private again. Then he/they can hope that they haven't ruined the IP so much that they can re-release all the old stuff like the specialist games, be done with the Hobbit anchor and get the business running again.
Honestly, that's essentially zero reaction. As I said earlier, over 60% of the shares are owned by a combination of institutions and staff, not the sort of owners likely to dump stock at the drop of a hat, all the flighty types already got scared away in January.
I tend to agree. I find it very odd that an annual report comes out that is basically very negative and the CEO sounds like a raging alcoholic, yet no one dumps their stock. To me this seems like people who have bought into a pile, now realize they bought a pile, but don't want to be the first off the ship and loose money. I also think there is a chance that the people who are invested have no idea what is actually going on and are buying into Kirby speak and/or waiting on the new CEO.
Or they realize how bad it is and they are waiting patiently for the others to offload their stock cheap, snatch them up and take over with less effort, which could be what Kirby has planned for himself. Drive the ship down far enough where everyone hops off, take the money you have set aside for such time, and do a buyout when it's at it's lowest taking it private again. Then he/they can hope that they haven't ruined the IP so much that they can re-release all the old stuff like the specialist games, be done with the Hobbit anchor and get the business running again.
This probably isnt too far from the truth - I have thought it for a while.
Send company under then buy out select parts (IP Head Office and Manufacturing) in either a pre pack admin or as head of an investment shell.
As it stands I don't think anyone would take on the company in its present active form.
agnosto wrote: Instead we get a preamble that doesn't recognize a problem even exists...the first step is realizing there is a problem..
You gotta admit that preamble did provide some wonderful signature material
Maybe I'm acting all white knight here, but GW is a tough old girl.
It survived the Thatcher years. It survived the Reagan years. It survived John Major's black Wednesday. It survived Graham Taylor's England regime!
Point is, it's a survivor and I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for it...please get me a violin
I confidently predict that this time next year that GW will still be around, Kilkrazy will be generously translating all that accounting/annual report stuff into something I can understand, Weeble will still be lamenting Alan M's courtroom performance , H.B.M.C et al will still be predicting the end of GW, and I'll be writing a post which is 99% similar to this one.
If it comes to pass and GW collapses, I'll be halfway to some banana republic that doesn't have an extradition treaty, before anybody on dakka can hold me to my promise!
Back OT. The more I think of it, the more likely it seems Alan Merrit will be the new CEO. From Kirby's view, it's the logical choice.
Honestly, that's essentially zero reaction. As I said earlier, over 60% of the shares are owned by a combination of institutions and staff, not the sort of owners likely to dump stock at the drop of a hat, all the flighty types already got scared away in January.
I tend to agree. I find it very odd that an annual report comes out that is basically very negative and the CEO sounds like a raging alcoholic, yet no one dumps their stock. To me this seems like people who have bought into a pile, now realize they bought a pile, but don't want to be the first off the ship and loose money. I also think there is a chance that the people who are invested have no idea what is actually going on and are buying into Kirby speak and/or waiting on the new CEO.
Or they realize how bad it is and they are waiting patiently for the others to offload their stock cheap, snatch them up and take over with less effort, which could be what Kirby has planned for himself. Drive the ship down far enough where everyone hops off, take the money you have set aside for such time, and do a buyout when it's at it's lowest taking it private again. Then he/they can hope that they haven't ruined the IP so much that they can re-release all the old stuff like the specialist games, be done with the Hobbit anchor and get the business running again.
This probably isnt too far from the truth - I have thought it for a while.
Send company under then buy out select parts (IP Head Office and Manufacturing) in either a pre pack admin or as head of an investment shell.
As it stands I don't think anyone would take on the company in its present active form.
If Kirby is behind that, I'm damn sure it's illegal, possibly even criminal, with a publicly traded company.
I confidently predict that this time next year that GW will still be around, Kilkrazy will be generously translating all that accounting/annual report stuff into something I can understand, Weeble will still be lamenting Alan M's courtroom performance , H.B.M.C et al will still be predicting the end of GW, and I'll be writing a post which is 99% similar to this one.
If not, I'll bare my backside in front of GWHQ
Next year you should be fine but the year after that you will probably be getting arrested for indecent exposure.
So if you take the previous preamble and CEO's statement at face value about the reduction in sales through stores being the result of being open less hours and figure out how a similar impact will occur when the remaining stores switch over to single employee operations, you find both a source of future revenue decline and a source of future cost savings.
The current 117 multi-employee stores might account for £24 million GBP of GW's revenue (if some things I've heard hold true and the multi-employee stores are hitting their sales targets). I've heard from two separate sources that when a store switched to being a single employee store, it loses about 40% of it's revenue.
So just by transitioning the last 117 stores over to single employee stores, they will reduce their revenue by another £9.9 million.
And that's assume the products they release at the prices they choose for them don't cause those stores to sell less.
In doing so though, they will save quite a bit in terms of salary and rent in exchange for giving up that revenue. 117 x full time staff + key time or part time staff.
So that's who they have left to cut to cut expenses. Those 117 stores worth of non-manager staffers.
North America is the problem region for them right now. It's the one where the single employee store model just isn't working and stores are closing faster than they are being opened. In the last year they went from 100 to 87 stores and 63 of those are single employee.
"Our ability to open new stores is still (and always will be) limited by our ability to find the right people to run them. Although we are getting better at it, it is still our number one priority. "
So they are going to be getting rid of a few hundred more employees and keeping a sub-section of them who are up for being single employee location operators who are into hard sales tactics and hitting sales goals or losing their jobs. All while knowing doing so will cause a "temporary" reduction in their revenue as even more stores are open less hours.
Honestly, that's essentially zero reaction. As I said earlier, over 60% of the shares are owned by a combination of institutions and staff, not the sort of owners likely to dump stock at the drop of a hat, all the flighty types already got scared away in January.
I tend to agree. I find it very odd that an annual report comes out that is basically very negative and the CEO sounds like a raging alcoholic, yet no one dumps their stock. To me this seems like people who have bought into a pile, now realize they bought a pile, but don't want to be the first off the ship and loose money. I also think there is a chance that the people who are invested have no idea what is actually going on and are buying into Kirby speak and/or waiting on the new CEO.
Or they realize how bad it is and they are waiting patiently for the others to offload their stock cheap, snatch them up and take over with less effort, which could be what Kirby has planned for himself. Drive the ship down far enough where everyone hops off, take the money you have set aside for such time, and do a buyout when it's at it's lowest taking it private again. Then he/they can hope that they haven't ruined the IP so much that they can re-release all the old stuff like the specialist games, be done with the Hobbit anchor and get the business running again.
This probably isnt too far from the truth - I have thought it for a while.
Send company under then buy out select parts (IP Head Office and Manufacturing) in either a pre pack admin or as head of an investment shell.
As it stands I don't think anyone would take on the company in its present active form.
If Kirby is behind that, I'm damn sure it's illegal, possibly even criminal, with a publicly traded company.
Not illegal to be a stubborn old mule. The business can go under and Kirby can still be in position to buy its carcass up.
frozenwastes wrote: North America is the problem region for them right now. It's the one where the single employee store model just isn't working and stores are closing faster than they are being opened. In the last year they went from 100 to 87 stores and 63 of those are single employee.
I understand at least one reason why GW doesn't want their business in NA to rely on FLGSs. For every good store, there's probably two bad ones who won't sell their products properly.
But man, the geography is what it is. It just seems they'd be much better served in NA by a transition back to stronger trade sales support supplemented by fewer but larger retail destination stores in key metro areas.
I really don't like to play armchair CEO, just because we lack access to the numbers and real information that GW uses in developing its business strategy. Undoubtedly a number of our assumptions would be proven wrong. But the history of the US store chain is full of stops and starts and expansions and retractions going back years and years. And that choppiness is a problem for a retail chain that tends to develop communities around its stores. I don't think we're fundamentally wrong by saying that there are some real problems with applying the UK model to NA.
Honestly, that's essentially zero reaction. As I said earlier, over 60% of the shares are owned by a combination of institutions and staff, not the sort of owners likely to dump stock at the drop of a hat, all the flighty types already got scared away in January.
I tend to agree. I find it very odd that an annual report comes out that is basically very negative and the CEO sounds like a raging alcoholic, yet no one dumps their stock. To me this seems like people who have bought into a pile, now realize they bought a pile, but don't want to be the first off the ship and loose money. I also think there is a chance that the people who are invested have no idea what is actually going on and are buying into Kirby speak and/or waiting on the new CEO.
Or they realize how bad it is and they are waiting patiently for the others to offload their stock cheap, snatch them up and take over with less effort, which could be what Kirby has planned for himself. Drive the ship down far enough where everyone hops off, take the money you have set aside for such time, and do a buyout when it's at it's lowest taking it private again. Then he/they can hope that they haven't ruined the IP so much that they can re-release all the old stuff like the specialist games, be done with the Hobbit anchor and get the business running again.
This probably isnt too far from the truth - I have thought it for a while.
Send company under then buy out select parts (IP Head Office and Manufacturing) in either a pre pack admin or as head of an investment shell.
As it stands I don't think anyone would take on the company in its present active form.
If Kirby is behind that, I'm damn sure it's illegal, possibly even criminal, with a publicly traded company.
Not illegal to be a stubborn old mule. The business can go under and Kirby can still be in position to buy its carcass up.
Running the business in a manner designed to harm it's performance and reduce it's share price for his own ends is very much illegal.
Proving intent over incompetence however, would be a very different, and difficult, thing.
gorgon wrote:the history of the US store chain is full of stops and starts and expansions and retractions going back years and years. And that choppiness is a problem for a retail chain that tends to develop communities around its stores. I don't think we're fundamentally wrong by saying that there are some real problems with applying the UK model to NA.
It just doesn't work. Period. North America has more stores closing than opening, while in the UK the plan is sort of working and they have more stores opening than closing.
And they keep blaming the staff and saying the real challenge is finding the right people.
The problem is that anyone who can do classic and proven hard sales techniques has an huge array of commission sales opportunities in America. You can work for GW for a low salary and a bit of a bonus here and there, or you can work for a sales company for full commissions and make way more. They're also not going to sales training seminars and networking meetings and the type of places these people congregate in order to recruit them. Instead we had posts here on dakka trying to get people to "be legendary" or whatever.
First two responses from The Bolter & Chainsword following the annual report being released
1. As you can see it's a pretty big decrease despite all the cost cutting they're doing. At least they are still profitable. Let's all support the hobby guys! GW are the reason behind our passion!
2. Tough year, but one focused on reorganization. I'd imagine once they smooth everything out, everything will flow easier.
Enjoy your "I told you so 20 years ago" circle jerk. I think it's great that Kirby is stepping down as he is clearly a clown, but GW is a long way away from folding. Worst case scenario this valuable and lucrative IP gets sold, but more likely a new CEO comes in and puts the company back on track.
What's really disappointing is the amount of people on this forum who seem to genuinely want GW to collapse, despite the fantastic worldwide gaming community that it has played a fundamental part in creating. You may have chosen a competitor, but they only exist because of GW. If you want to know what 40k is all about, check out some of the brilliantly painted and converted armies from the recent BAO. Those armies exist because 40K, and GW, exist.
I want GW to fail if they continue to alienate me as a consumer.
I want them to succeed if they change and provide a product worth its price and convince me to spend my money on them again.
Until that point, I'll sit back and watch their spiral downwards.
I don't owe GW a thing, nor does it deserve anything from me. Regardless of their history, they don't seem intent on moving forward with the times, and they'll be left in the past as a result.
But enjoy your "GW is amazing and we should love and support them" circle jerk.
tyrannosaurus wrote: First two responses from The Bolter & Chainsword following the annual report being released
1. As you can see it's a pretty big decrease despite all the cost cutting they're doing. At least they are still profitable. Let's all support the hobby guys! GW are the reason behind our passion!
2. Tough year, but one focused on reorganization. I'd imagine once they smooth everything out, everything will flow easier.
Enjoy your "I told you so 20 years ago" circle jerk. I think it's great that Kirby is stepping down as he is clearly a clown, but GW is a long way away from folding. Worst case scenario this valuable and lucrative IP gets sold, but more likely a new CEO comes in and puts the company back on track.
What's really disappointing is the amount of people on this forum who seem to genuinely want GW to collapse, despite the fantastic worldwide gaming community that it has played a fundamental part in creating. You may have chosen a competitor, but they only exist because of GW. If you want to know what 40k is all about, check out some of the brilliantly painted and converted armies from the recent BAO. Those armies exist because 40K, and GW, exist.
Just a note, because you're UK based and may not know this. In many countries GW is barely a blip in the gaming community. My state just got their first GW store 2 years ago, before that it was a 4 hour drive across state lines. GW can die a horrid death and I'll still be playing games, just not GW games. The tabletop wargaming hobby is both older and larger than GW ever dreamt of being and it's sad that people like you are incapable of realizing that you're missing out on some great fun.
Running the business in a manner designed to harm it's performance and reduce it's share price for his own ends is very much illegal.
Proving intent over incompetence however, would be a very different, and difficult, thing.
It isn't illegal in America. The trick is to inflate the company first, and leave before it comes down.
Tom Kirby doesn't look like that sort of CEO. Mark Wells, on the other hand, may be responsible for putting him in a terrible spot and bailing before it fell apart.
tyrannosaurus wrote: First two responses from The Bolter & Chainsword following the annual report being released
1. As you can see it's a pretty big decrease despite all the cost cutting they're doing. At least they are still profitable. Let's all support the hobby guys! GW are the reason behind our passion!
2. Tough year, but one focused on reorganization. I'd imagine once they smooth everything out, everything will flow easier.
Enjoy your "I told you so 20 years ago" circle jerk. I think it's great that Kirby is stepping down as he is clearly a clown, but GW is a long way away from folding. Worst case scenario this valuable and lucrative IP gets sold, but more likely a new CEO comes in and puts the company back on track.
What's really disappointing is the amount of people on this forum who seem to genuinely want GW to collapse, despite the fantastic worldwide gaming community that it has played a fundamental part in creating. You may have chosen a competitor, but they only exist because of GW. If you want to know what 40k is all about, check out some of the brilliantly painted and converted armies from the recent BAO. Those armies exist because 40K, and GW, exist.
I disagree, I think the worst case scenario could be far worse than that. That GW stays around longer than expected with more and more people leave the game for a variety of reasons, and the game begins to fall to obscurity. And when GW does eventually shutdown there will not be enough interest in the IP to justify the high price GW will undoubtedly put on it.
Just a note, because you're UK based and may not know this. In many countries GW is barely a blip in the gaming community. My state just got their first GW store 2 years ago, before that it was a 4 hour drive across state lines. GW can die a horrid death and I'll still be playing games, just not GW games. The tabletop wargaming hobby is both older and larger than GW ever dreamt of being and it's sad that people like you are incapable of realizing that you're missing out on some great fun.
Just a note, as you're US based and therefore often make sweeping generalisations text removed. We can find a better way to phrase this please. Reds8n , I play other games than 40k. However I would much rather prefer that GW and the amazing background that it has created stays with us for as long as possible. Despite the issues I have with the direction the company has taken at times, it has played a huge part in both my childhood and adult life. Please cite the extensive, worldwide tabletop wargaming community that existed before GW, as I would be very interested to know what I was missing out on.
Read the B&C thread and was amazed. Some people are saying the drop in profit was due to restructuring, and yet ignore the drop in revenue. They also go on to claim that 'X' sold well (Knights in particular), but if they truly sold well, wouldn't there have been an improvement in revenue, rather than a decline?
Either way, I'm amazed that people go out of their way to defend a corporation that very clearly doesn't care about its consumers.
Plus, people continue to ignore the details and claim that people will complain no matter what they do. They point to things like an accelerated release schedule, yet ignore the drop in quality and rise in prices that accompanied these changes.
Eh, I'm happy paying for 3rd party models for use in 40k and other games, as well playing other games entirely from companies that engage with their customers and produce rules that feel like effort was applied.
It's hard to put a company that doesn't do market research (and proud of that fact!) back on track. They're throwing things on the wall and see what sticks instead of, you know, asking their customers what they fething want.
It's a fething joke. I want them to succeed and all but it's getting difficult while they're making stupid decisions.
Just a note, because you're UK based and may not know this. In many countries GW is barely a blip in the gaming community. My state just got their first GW store 2 years ago, before that it was a 4 hour drive across state lines. GW can die a horrid death and I'll still be playing games, just not GW games. The tabletop wargaming hobby is both older and larger than GW ever dreamt of being and it's sad that people like you are incapable of realizing that you're missing out on some great fun.
Just a note, as you're US based and therefore often make sweeping generalisations , I play other games than 40k. However I would much rather prefer that GW and the amazing background that it has created stays with us for as long as possible. Despite the issues I have with the direction the company has taken at times, it has played a huge part in both my childhood and adult life. Please cite the extensive, worldwide tabletop wargaming community that existed before GW, as I would be very interested to know what I was missing out on.
Azreal13 wrote: I find it very odd that an annual report comes out that is basically very negative and the CEO sounds like a raging alcoholic, yet no one dumps their stock.
The zero dividend in January crashed the stock. Perhaps the announcement of the June dividend (even if it's only 1/3 of the previous dividend) has brought back some of the people that left in January.
Just a note, because you're UK based and may not know this. In many countries GW is barely a blip in the gaming community. My state just got their first GW store 2 years ago, before that it was a 4 hour drive across state lines. GW can die a horrid death and I'll still be playing games, just not GW games. The tabletop wargaming hobby is both older and larger than GW ever dreamt of being and it's sad that people like you are incapable of realizing that you're missing out on some great fun.
Just a note, as you're US based and therefore often make sweeping generalisations , I play other games than 40k. However I would much rather prefer that GW and the amazing background that it has created stays with us for as long as possible. Despite the issues I have with the direction the company has taken at times, it has played a huge part in both my childhood and adult life. Please cite the extensive, worldwide tabletop wargaming community that existed before GW, as I would be very interested to know what I was missing out on.
Ancients in general.
Historical in general.
There were definitely some sci-fi games out before GW was relevant, but I'm not sure if they were "worldwide".
Just a note, because you're UK based and may not know this. In many countries GW is barely a blip in the gaming community. My state just got their first GW store 2 years ago, before that it was a 4 hour drive across state lines. GW can die a horrid death and I'll still be playing games, just not GW games. The tabletop wargaming hobby is both older and larger than GW ever dreamt of being and it's sad that people like you are incapable of realizing that you're missing out on some great fun.
Just a note, as you're US based and therefore often make sweeping generalisations , I play other games than 40k. However I would much rather prefer that GW and the amazing background that it has created stays with us for as long as possible. Despite the issues I have with the direction the company has taken at times, it has played a huge part in both my childhood and adult life. Please cite the extensive, worldwide tabletop wargaming community that existed before GW, as I would be very interested to know what I was missing out on.
If GW collapses, none of the stuff they have already created will go anywhere. Lexicanum won't suddenly vanish from the Internet, your rulebooks and codices won't undergo spontaneous combustion.
The only thing that would happen is that the community would suddenly be able to exert it's own influence and control on that universe, without fears of GWs legal team coming to kick their websites metaphorical door in.
If you want to unlearn economics, business or accounting, the quickest solution is to read BoLS, B&C or the Warhammer Forum after a GW report is released. Sometimes I go to sleep cuddling my textbooks so I don't have bad dreams after reading a topic there.
If you want to unlearn economics, business or accounting, the quickest solution is to read BoLS, B&C or the Warhammer Forum after a GW report is released. Sometimes I go to sleep cuddling my textbooks so I don't have bad dreams after reading a topic there.
Or maybe we just have a 'toxic' community who seek to inflate any negativity? The last person in the B&C thread, who suggests that people shouldn't jump to conclusions, is an accountant specialising in "investment plans for large assets". Obviously he could just be saying that and works in the freezer section in Iceland, but, then again, so could you. I find it very interesting that a comparable thread on another 40k website has such a different spin on things.
If you want to unlearn economics, business or accounting, the quickest solution is to read BoLS, B&C or the Warhammer Forum after a GW report is released. Sometimes I go to sleep cuddling my textbooks so I don't have bad dreams after reading a topic there.
Indeed.
Just checked out BOLS (I think for the first time ever, hate the forum layout/colour/design) and was blown away by the level of defense for GW. Anything that isn't praise or stating in how good of a state they're in seems to be drowned out.
Then again, I guess apologists might claim Dakka is filled with a lot of so called haters, but hey, to each their own.
I just don't get how people can support GW after a constant string of price hikes (seriously, people are claiming how GW is doing the right thing by not raising prices), releasing increasingly more expensive kits, and pumping out shoddy rules with arguably worse and less fluff. All at an increased price premium.
But I'm just bitter they haven't gone after my wallet with a BFG reboot.
Or maybe we just have a 'toxic' community who seek to inflate any negativity? The last person in the B&C thread, who suggests that people shouldn't jump to conclusions, is an accountant specialising in "investment plans for large assets". Obviously he could just be saying that and works in the freezer section in Iceland, but, then again, so could you. I find it very interesting that a comparable thread on another 40k website has such a different spin on things.
And we have business experts here who have very succinctly pointed out the issues with GW.
Plus, if you're going to call a community toxic, I'd go back and check your own posts first.
If you want to unlearn economics, business or accounting, the quickest solution is to read BoLS, B&C or the Warhammer Forum after a GW report is released. Sometimes I go to sleep cuddling my textbooks so I don't have bad dreams after reading a topic there.
Or maybe we just have a 'toxic' community who seek to inflate any negativity? The last person in the B&C thread, who suggests that people shouldn't jump to conclusions, is an accountant specialising in "investment plans for large assets". Obviously he could just be saying that and works in the freezer section in Iceland, but, then again, so could you. I find it very interesting that a comparable thread on another 40k website has such a different spin on things.
That's ok, I'm an accountant specialising in UK high street retailers
(That's not sarcasm based on your Iceland comment, that's what I've spent most of the last 11 years doing).
People smarter than most of us have read the financials and predicted doom - I mean like Wayshuba, the dude from MasterMinis/Painting Buddha (the ex-CIO of Aldi) and others (Reinholt on Warseer springs to mind) who actually know business and can read between the lines; I'd trust these people's opinions more than random armchair executives spouting crap like that birdbrain on BOLS who keeps pitching the "Folks have been talking doom for 20 years, always saying it will be next year" gak.
But yes, the defense is amazing especially on BOLS and I'm surprised about BnC as those guys seem pretty smart and not at all GWombies.
Things are not good, not at all. There's way too much wrong.
If you want to unlearn economics, business or accounting, the quickest solution is to read BoLS, B&C or the Warhammer Forum after a GW report is released. Sometimes I go to sleep cuddling my textbooks so I don't have bad dreams after reading a topic there.
Or maybe we just have a 'toxic' community who seek to inflate any negativity? The last person in the B&C thread, who suggests that people shouldn't jump to conclusions, is an accountant specialising in "investment plans for large assets". Obviously he could just be saying that and works in the freezer section in Iceland, but, then again, so could you. I find it very interesting that a comparable thread on another 40k website has such a different spin on things.
I find it interesting too. Especially when the company in question out and out states that that what the customers and potential customers want is useless information and that they don't inquire or concern themselves with what those customers desire.
If you want to unlearn economics, business or accounting, the quickest solution is to read BoLS, B&C or the Warhammer Forum after a GW report is released. Sometimes I go to sleep cuddling my textbooks so I don't have bad dreams after reading a topic there.
Or maybe we just have a 'toxic' community who seek to inflate any negativity? The last person in the B&C thread, who suggests that people shouldn't jump to conclusions, is an accountant specialising in "investment plans for large assets". Obviously he could just be saying that and works in the freezer section in Iceland, but, then again, so could you. I find it very interesting that a comparable thread on another 40k website has such a different spin on things.
