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Guy went to the AGM as an investor rather than a gamer. It's quite interesting as it shows how dismissive and backward GW are regarding their products and customers. I would also like to know how they come up with the figures of people playing the game rather than just collecting figures as they apparently do no market research..

http://www.iii.co.uk/news-opinion/richard-beddard/games-workshop-agm%3A-relentless-profit-machine

I would be very interested in finding out where they get their numbers from. Given their apparent disdain from market research I suspect its from the faeries.

Also:

we make the best fantasy miniatures in the world and sell them globally at a profit and we intend to do this forever

Also:

we make the best fantasy miniatures in the world and sell them globally at a profit and we intend to do this forever

 thesearmsarerob wrote:

Sounds like a well thought out business plan to me....

If only it were true.

He and Kirby have spent the last five years returning the business to high levels of profitability by taking out cost. Now, if it’s to grow

The company’s attitude towards customers is as clinical as its attitude towards staff. If you don’t like what it’s selling. You’re not a customer. The company believes only a fraction of the population are potential hobbyists, and it’s not interested in the others. The move to one-man stores has reduced the number of customers, sometimes by 30%

.... Great attitude to have when trying to grow a business ey?

Also:

When another shareholder asks if the company would sell games with pre-painted easy to assemble miniatures like the popular Star Wars themed X-Wing game, there’s a collective growl from the Games Workshop people. It wouldn’t be a hobby business then, it would be a toy company.

Given how amazingly well X wing has been selling that seems like a very poor response.


Also also:

The game’s narrative will continuously unfold with associated product launches and in a trick borrowed from the Space Marines of Warhammer’s futuristic sister universe, Warhammer 40,000, gamers can employ heroes with superpowers (Stormcast Eternals). Purists think they unbalance the game, but Warhammer 40,000 grew to be a far more popular game than Warhammer Fantasy.

This seems like a strange couple of lines to me. Does anyone else read that as people at GW or investors thinking that the 'unbalanced' issues people have with AoS is because of the sigmarines, not because of the lack of a points system?

That was a really interesting read. Thank you for sharing!

Interesting article, with a neutral stance towards GW's long term viability.

The numbers that GW uses, with only 20% of their market being gamers... seems pretty danged silly to me.

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* I find it more worrying that the one man stores are more profitable, in spite of a 30% drop in the customer base.

Those stores really are a millstone, aren't they?

While it looks neutral, I like the under-stated criticism of the long-term health of the company that's in there. It's so very, very British.

I think this sums it up perfectly, talking about his son (who bought and discarded WHFB because he had no one to play with:

He just wants to play. He’s not an anointed one. He doesn’t have Warhammer DNA. I don’t think he’ll ever walk into a Warhammer store because he wants to paint a Stormcast Eternal.

Maybe we’ll get him X-Wing instead.

They STILL do not understand what they are selling and who they are selling it to.

With leadership that has business acumen and can put aside their ego - this could be a billion dollar company.

A collector buys one nightscythe - a gamer buys six.

there is a your market - right there.

davethepak wrote:
They STILL do not understand what they are selling and who they are selling it to.

With leadership that has business acumen and can put aside their ego - this could be a billion dollar company.

A collector buys one nightscythe - a gamer buys six.

there is a your market - right there.

No no, GW expects a collector to buy 8 because they do not collect models but armies.

I think?

davethepak wrote:
They STILL do not understand what they are selling and who they are selling it to.

With leadership that has business acumen and can put aside their ego - this could be a billion dollar company.

A collector buys one nightscythe - a gamer buys six.

there is a your market - right there.

Read it though, they are under the impression these painters are building whole armies, buying the six nightscythes, for the pure reason of having thousands of dollars of armies sit idle on a display shelf somewhere...


It's absolutely boggling.

Herzlos wrote:
I think this sums it up perfectly, talking about his son (who bought and discarded WHFB because he had no one to play with:

He just wants to play. He’s not an anointed one. He doesn’t have Warhammer DNA. I don’t think he’ll ever walk into a Warhammer store because he wants to paint a Stormcast Eternal.

Maybe we’ll get him X-Wing instead.

Forget that, the sum-up is right at the start:

When he saw Games Workshop written in bold on the papers he asked what I was doing. I told him I was visiting headquarters to find out more about the company. “Good,” he replied, “Can you take back my set?”

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

davethepak wrote:
They STILL do not understand what they are selling and who they are selling it to.

With leadership that has business acumen and can put aside their ego - this could be a billion dollar company.

A collector buys one nightscythe - a gamer buys six.

there is a your market - right there.

Read it though, they are under the impression these painters are building whole armies, buying the six nightscythes, for the pure reason of having thousands of dollars of armies sit idle on a display shelf somewhere...


It's absolutely boggling.

Agreed. I travel a lot (like...a lot) and I try to stop in at game stores in the various places I travel and talk to local folks - not just to check on GW mind you, but just to see what is going on in different markets (mostly in north america, but I have frequented many game and hobby stores in the EU).

When I ask about how many customers who buy gw products are gamers vs. just hobbyists, overwhelmingly the answer back is gamers.

Now, the percentages do change - for example the more the store is a "hobby shop" (which might also carry model rockets, RC cars, trains, etc.) the higher the percentage. The more the store is a traditional game store (wargames, rpgs, comics, board games, etc.) the lower the percentage (most game stores say the hobby only customers are less than 10%). They only places that had numbers approaching even 50% were GW stores (I feel this is them more towing the company line, or if the customer is buying the kit for a gift).

Very few of the stores did not know who was buying their products - many of them ask their customers - partly as having good customer service - but also to identify opportunities to sell other related products - for example, a gamer might want dice, gaming mats, codexes, etc. A dedicated hobbiest will spend more on tools, specialties adhesives, other high end model kits "have you seen the new fine molds falcon?" etc. Smart businesses try to know who their customers are (GW does not....).

Dont get me wrong - cool models sell. Heck, I owned a malentrhope long before the rules were good - but that was one model.
I also own 100 termagants.... also, now that the malentrhope DOES have good rules - many of my friends have one.

GW, that only thing standing between you and wild success - is you.

I get the impression that the author is very critical of GW's blinded tunnel vision and no regard for expanding its customer base. The present is good but the future is bleak.

So... anyone going to directly reply to Richard's points, in the blog comments? Tempted, but there are a lot more qualified than me.

I've never understood their insistance that most of their customes are collectors and hobbyists. I have only anecdotal evidence to go by but we see the bulk of our GW sales being the powerful in game miniatures and they are bought in multiples by the same customers. Perhaps if they would just ASK their retailers for that kind of information instead of coming up with their numbers?

 Kimchi Gamer wrote:
I've never understood their insistance that most of their customes are collectors and hobbyists. I have only anecdotal evidence to go by but we see the bulk of our GW sales being the powerful in game miniatures and they are bought in multiples by the same customers. Perhaps if they would just ASK their retailers for that kind of information instead of coming up with their numbers?

I imagine it's a pretty hard thing to quantify. I'd imagine very few people who buy products from a store actually play games at that store for the owner to know if they're gamers. And even if they are people who never game, they might still know the rules and might still build armies for gaming even though they never play games. I know several people like that, and indeed I myself have a couple of armies that have never seen the table (both from GW and from other companies).

Short of asking every customer how many games they play per month and doing that in a lot of different regions, it would be a very difficult thing to gauge.

I could totally believe that most purchases go to people who collect and don't game much or at all.... I could also believe most sales go to gamers. I know a bunch of people from both camps but I'd have no idea on a global scale which group is larger.

I think many people collect with the intention/hope of gaming and that if there wasn't a game behind it, they wouldn't collect.
(personal theory)

One thought came to mind through reading that. There isn't a Star Wars tabletop wargame other than X-Wing, is there? If GW could get the license for that, and produce a Star Wars equivalent of 40K / LOTR / AOS, they could pretty much make all the money. Who in the hobby wouldn't be interested in playing out, say, the battle of Hoth or Endor...?

FFG do make something similar for ground combat, odds are GW couldn't get the license if they wanted it.

 Kimchi Gamer wrote:
I've never understood their insistance that most of their customes are collectors and hobbyists.

Because they can use that as an excuse to justify poor rules and even poor sales at times to the shareholders ("these books didn't sell well, but that's ok, we're a model company first" or "this model didn't sell too well because it wasn't up to our usual premium standards"). At the end of the day, the only thing GW's board really cares about is the value of their stock and collecting their dividend checks (Kirby alone just got $700,000 in dividends). The actual longterm health of the company is irrelevant as long as they can keep on milking it until it's time to bail out. Who cares if you were on the board of a company you helped run into the ground if you made enough money off of it to retire and not work for the rest of your life, anyway?

 MWHistorian wrote:
I think many people collect with the intention/hope of gaming and that if there wasn't a game behind it, they wouldn't collect.
(personal theory)

I reckon there's a lot of people like that too, though I don't know how important the quality of the rules is to such people.

Personally, I don't mind that GW views its game as a profit machine. I mean, most companies are in business to make money. They can't raise prices infinitely, because at some point, it ceases to become profitable; I think they've largely reached the limits of the elasticity curve for their target market anyhow, and they recognize this.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:
I think many people collect with the intention/hope of gaming and that if there wasn't a game behind it, they wouldn't collect.
(personal theory)

I reckon there's a lot of people like that too, though I don't know how important the quality of the rules is to such people.

I'm sort of like that. I enjoy army building, but wouldn't do so without the context for building an army. For example, I wouldn't paint up 300 Cyrix models, because the game isn't made for that. But if the game did support it, and the models were at least posable if not truly multipart (to make them less repetitive), I probably would.

The quality of the rules is important insofar as the game must be enjoyable to play in whatever for we use them in. The balance of the rules coming out of the box is totally immaterial to our group, as we're totally happy with just changing anything that doesn't suit us. In other words, it's more important for the rules to provide a framework and context and generally enjoyable mechanics.

The quality and desirability of the models is paramount, because absent that, I will do something else, whether a boardgame with no miniatures, a computer game, some sport, etc. I have better things to do than to model and paint miniatures I don't love

I haven't been keeping up with all things related to GW lately, so it's interesting to read a rather unbiased article about them, especially as it's so consistent with what has been said of them over the last 5+ years.

Of course, I await hearing how this attitude at GW is the customer's faults.

I'm actually really curious as to how GW performs in its next half-year. Half of that period was spent exclusively on Age of Sigmar, so it will be amazing if sales don't take a nosedive, because even though I enjoy Sigmar, I don't see how its sales are anything comparable to 40k.

I was, for the second time, cheered up to read the CEO talking about more bang for your buck per boxed set. So if you don't want to lower the price of a box of imperial guardsmen GW, that's fine, if you are instead planning on putting more actual figures in there...


I do really pine for the apocalypse boxed sets some times, and the savings they represented for building full armies... the green tide and the leman russ box especially.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:
I think many people collect with the intention/hope of gaming and that if there wasn't a game behind it, they wouldn't collect.
(personal theory)

I reckon there's a lot of people like that too, though I don't know how important the quality of the rules is to such people.

Don't forget those folks that started their collections before the rules sucked, holding onto their collections, hoping for the day that the rules once again stop sucking.

Until a few years ago, I fell into that camp.

Now, I play Kings of War - and the rules don't suck. My collection for Fantasy sees use again.

The Auld Grump

I think it's strange that GW claims they are a model company, yet they always present their models in the context of a game, they sell the models in boxes with options and model amounts optimized for a game, the always make sure that all the models they release are usable in one of their games, they have heavily accelerated their game-related releases lately, the list goes on... If they were a model company, why go to all this trouble? They obviously consider their games to be extremely important to their success (otherwise they wouldn't go to all this trouble), yet they still make statements like this... It all seems contradictory. They used to be a model company, back in the 80s, before Warhamer and before Rogue Trader... The current GW is nothing like that.

 Mymearan wrote:
I think it's strange that GW claims they are a model company, yet they always present their models in the context of a game, they sell the models in boxes with options and model amounts optimized for a game, the always make sure that all the models they release are usable in one of their games, they have heavily accelerated their game-related releases lately, the list goes on... If they were a model company, why go to all this trouble? They obviously consider their games to be extremely important to their success (otherwise they wouldn't go to all this trouble), yet they still make statements like this... It all seems contradictory. They used to be a model company, back in the 80s, before Warhamer and before Rogue Trader... The current GW is nothing like that.

That's a rather good point, especially when you look at the other, real, model companies out there like Reaper, Scale 75, Nocturna, etc.

If GW were a true model company and not a game company I'd be able to buy a space marine bust in metal or resin at a 50 or 75 mm scale dammit!