Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

We’ve been past this point before. Luna means no harm and this thread is a discussion about demographics, not the boy. I suggest the white knights take a chill pill and lower their shields. Better yet, discretion is the better part of valour.

So you're okay with posts like this being posted on the kid's Youtube video by Dakka members? Cause I'm not.

And this is how Nazi Germany came about, believing the propaganda fed to you by someone. Your blind loyalty to the almighty GW is disheartening. You clearly don't know what you are talking about here. Finecast is stronger than metal? No. Just no. And it won't ever be cheaper. Reaper makes metal models for fractions of the cost of GW finecast or even GW metals for that matter. And Reaper gets on just fine doing it. Hell there are Forgeworld resin kits that are cheaper than GW resin kits.

Aerethan 3 days ago

Automatically Appended Next Post:
As a sidenote:
Yeah. I shouldn't have said "fanboy". I should have gone with "Mantic Fanatic", as that's what the poster in question's signature says.

Like most comments on Youtube it is entirely worthless, a waste of time to read and disturbing.

Would you rather I change my youtube user name so that I'm not associated as it here? I already admitted to being an ass to the kid, and he defended himself on the response video. I've let it go.

Dakka has rule #1, youtube does not.

And for the record, it's not like I called the kid names. I said his blind loyalty was disheartening and that he was uneducated on the topic at hand. Both of which are true.

Perhaps the nazi Germany reference was a bit far, but they were fed propaganda just the same.

Get back on topic kanluwen , every post have been your obsession with the boy in the video and not the topic of this thread.

If you want to talk about the boy, make your own thread about it.

If you don't respect me, respect dakka rules. Get on topic or dont post in this thread at all.

@Kanluwen
N0t_U is correct in that comments on youtube are entirely worthless and disturbing (much like posts on 4chan) and not the topic of discussion. You’re free to start a “separate” discussion in the off topic forum regarding the negative comments posted on the kids you tube page but don’t do it here.

This discussion is solely about demographics/marketing with the kid’s youtube video solely being used as a quick n dirty example.

Then maybe, just maybe, she should have gone with discussing the demographics and marketing rather than picking a random internet video to use as "an example"?

It probably would help a bit more if the video hadn't been posted before Finecast released, but that's another topic entirely.

As another note:
The idea that Games Workshop targets children has been done to death. We know it isn't really true, despite what people like to say.

Kanluwen wrote:Then maybe, just maybe, she should have gone with discussing the demographics and marketing rather than picking a random internet video to use as "an example"?

It probably would help a bit more if the video hadn't been posted before Finecast released, but that's another topic entirely.

There are only 2 people that has been obsessing over the boy and completely ignoring the point, one of them is you, and the other is one that claimed some mantic revenge conspiracy.

If you cannot politely bring yourself back on topic, and rather continue to be disrespectful and off topic, I will report you.

Call this the Divination of the Star if you want, but some how I have a feeling you will persist going off topic till mod locks this thread for you.

So when was Finecast released? Can you tell me kanluwen?

Some of this was off-topic. Some of it was evading the language filter. -Mannahnin

candy.man wrote:I’ll have to agree with Lunahound’s theory. From a business perspective, any business would want blindly faithful customers. The question is though whether this was 100% intentional (or was it initially unintentionally achieved). Even still, GW’s financials have been on a steady decline for quite a few years now so I’ll say that it’s yet to pay off for GW.

Have you seen their financial statements?

I'll give you a minute to read the 10fold increase in Net Profit over the last 10 years.

Glossing through their half-year ones to 2012, I see that they also charge roughly 5 times (sits around 22.9%) their CoGS for their products (not sure if it includes shipping costs), so what the yanks pay is actually a fifth of the manufacturing cost which isn't exactly bad compared to other industries like video games, but the fact that Australians pay almost 10 times it (not common for high turnover industries) grinds my gears.

Shaozun wrote:

candy.man wrote:I’ll have to agree with Lunahound’s theory. From a business perspective, any business would want blindly faithful customers. The question is though whether this was 100% intentional (or was it initially unintentionally achieved). Even still, GW’s financials have been on a steady decline for quite a few years now so I’ll say that it’s yet to pay off for GW.

Have you seen their financial statements?

I'll give you a minute to read the 10fold increase in Net Profit over the last 10 years.

Perhaps you need a minute to read over the definition of inflation.

its a good reason why corporations uses % rather then direct number comparison.

Embargo.
Release Date kept in secret.
Online discount store needs to be brick and mortar.

All 3 share the same characteristics of: Making it harder for a planned purchase, while making it more sound for a Impulse buy.

I don't see that much of a connection between the three, and the theory that it's tied into impulse buys/selling to kids.

By Embargo, you refer to not letting some mailorder companies ship to parts of the world, most notably Oz? I see that as GW seeing something they don't like (their company stores and FLGS in Oz not being able to compete with Wayland/Maelstrom) and coming up with a way to counter it. I think they just looked at how many other companies have structured their distribution, and used that scheme to get the effect they wanted. I'm not sure how much it will boost sales in the stores in Australia, but that seems to be the goal.

The restriction on information is a tough one. I don't think it was done to increase business in any way. My best guess is that it's part of what they had to do to get the rights to The Hobbit, and prove to the movie people that they can keep a secret. Many people in GW hate the new policy, and are frustrated by it. It's not increasing sales from what I've been told.

Online discounters needing a brick and mortar store is a bit of a backwards statement. In many parts of the world it's legal to make a decision on how a company distributes goods, and what restrictions they place on resellers. One of those is being able to say "You must have a brick and mortar store to have an account with us". This has been around in the US for a long time, not sure for the rest of the world.

I don't think any of these directly relate to selling GW games to kids. They've always stressed demoing games to kids, to get them into the hobby. After someone hits the 'girls and beer' stage of their life, they have a lot less free time, and a lot less people looking to buy them gifts for birthday and christmas. Many other companies do the same thing. For GW it goes back at least 15 years, maybe 20. I remember getting taught to do demo games and work with younger kids at a seminar pretty damn early after I started carrying GW in my stores.

I frankly find it a lot less work selling to adults. Selling to kids takes a lot of time. Demos, painting classes, babysitting, explaining rules. It's a never ending process. But needed, as a store loses customers over time, and needs to attract new ones.

LunaHound wrote:

Shaozun wrote:

candy.man wrote:I’ll have to agree with Lunahound’s theory. From a business perspective, any business would want blindly faithful customers. The question is though whether this was 100% intentional (or was it initially unintentionally achieved). Even still, GW’s financials have been on a steady decline for quite a few years now so I’ll say that it’s yet to pay off for GW.

Have you seen their financial statements?

I'll give you a minute to read the 10fold increase in Net Profit over the last 10 years.

Perhaps you need a minute to read over the definition of inflation.

its a good reason why corporations uses % rather then direct number comparison.

Inflation averages (depending what you use) at 3% every year, that's being very modest.

That's still more than 5 times their profit 10 years ago. Not even the banks who made record profits in 2009/2010 (at least here where we had a tiny recession) can boast that after the majority of their growth has been accomplished.

mikhaila wrote: I'm not sure how much it will boost sales in the stores in Australia, but that seems to be the goal.

They've been making a loss here for a few years now.

mikhaila wrote:I frankly find it a lot less work selling to adults. Selling to kids takes a lot of time. Demos, painting classes, babysitting, explaining rules. It's a never ending process. But needed, as a store loses customers over time, and needs to attract new ones.

That is because normally adults know what they want.

If you take 2 a child and an adult, both never pre exposed to GW, will your point still be the same?
However as I mentioned earlier, i do agree with the babysitting part.
However, I see that as a counter balance with the higher amount of $ parents are willing to spend on the children.

Shaozun wrote:

LunaHound wrote:

Shaozun wrote:

candy.man wrote:I’ll have to agree with Lunahound’s theory. From a business perspective, any business would want blindly faithful customers. The question is though whether this was 100% intentional (or was it initially unintentionally achieved). Even still, GW’s financials have been on a steady decline for quite a few years now so I’ll say that it’s yet to pay off for GW.

Have you seen their financial statements?

I'll give you a minute to read the 10fold increase in Net Profit over the last 10 years.

Perhaps you need a minute to read over the definition of inflation.

its a good reason why corporations uses % rather then direct number comparison.

Inflation averages (depending what you use) at 3% every year, that's being very modest.

That's still more than 5 times their profit 10 years ago. Not even the banks who made record profits in 2009/2010 (at least here where we had a tiny recession) can boast that after the majority of their growth has been accomplished.

mikhaila wrote: I'm not sure how much it will boost sales in the stores in Australia, but that seems to be the goal.

They've been making a loss here for a few years now.

Show me what you are looking at. I have a feeling you are doing it wrong, especially your number just dropped by half

LunaHound wrote:

Show me what you are looking at. I have a feeling you are doing it wrong, especially considering your number just dropped by half

I couldn't be stuffed calculating the inflation accruing over the years (it's not just 10 times less 30%), and would be modest again and give them a generous figure, it's actually slightly higher than that.

IIRC it was 2002 that I checked for the 'last 10 years', you can scour the rest of the reports yourself.

Edit: I don't remember exactly where I found it but there is a chart on page 7 which anyone can read correctly of their 2010-2011 annual report, you may think 'oh GFC for 2007-08' but the sales are slightly higher now after '09 (I wasn't around then to know what exactly they did, was the embargo placed beginning of 2010?), they've just been cutting costs to compensate.

So, basically, you come into the thread, tell us something that has been hotly debated and contested on Dakka, and when asked for evidence, you can't be bothered?

Page 5 of their '08-'09 report has a rough graph of their sales for the past 20 years.

Although 2005 was a high year, don't remember where I saw '02.

Shaozun wrote:

LunaHound wrote:

Show me what you are looking at. I have a feeling you are doing it wrong, especially considering your number just dropped by half

I couldn't be stuffed calculating the inflation accruing over the years (it's not just 10 times less 30%), and would be modest again and give them a generous figure, it's actually slightly higher than that.

IIRC it was 2002 that I checked for the 'last 10 years', you can scour the rest of the reports yourself.

Edit: I don't remember exactly where I found it but there is a chart on page 7 which anyone can read correctly of their 2010-2011 annual report, you may think 'oh GFC for 2007-08' but the sales are slightly higher now after '09 (I wasn't around then to know what exactly they did, was the embargo placed beginning of 2010?), they've just been cutting costs to compensate.

Net income is always dangerous to look at and extremely inaccurate.
When a company is still expanding, alot of the money are put into their expenditures. Their initial stages will always show a low yield of profit, if any.
As time goes on, it should even out, however that might not be accurate either, for we do know how far GW have expended their shops internationally.

Yet the recent years we also know GW have been cutting expenses, closing shops, hiring less staff ( 1 man shops ). Now on paper, of course that will show
a gain in net profit, this is what supposedly "pleases" stockist.

Yet did they take in account of what i said earlier? nope! this is why stock market is so hard to predict /wink

See now the next question is, with the shops been considerably less, GW's sphere of influence will lessen.
How much will it lessen, we wont see the impact right away.
Have you ever considered this is why GW kept increasing their price? They are trying to balance the net income by squeezing the maximum yield out of their current buyers.

This is why people keep saying, this strategy wont work on the long run.

Wasn't 2005 the year when the LotR 'bubble' burst?

LunaHound wrote:

Shaozun wrote:

LunaHound wrote:

Show me what you are looking at. I have a feeling you are doing it wrong, especially considering your number just dropped by half

I couldn't be stuffed calculating the inflation accruing over the years (it's not just 10 times less 30%), and would be modest again and give them a generous figure, it's actually slightly higher than that.

IIRC it was 2002 that I checked for the 'last 10 years', you can scour the rest of the reports yourself.

Edit: I don't remember exactly where I found it but there is a chart on page 7 which anyone can read correctly of their 2010-2011 annual report, you may think 'oh GFC for 2007-08' but the sales are slightly higher now after '09 (I wasn't around then to know what exactly they did, was the embargo placed beginning of 2010?), they've just been cutting costs to compensate.

Net income is always dangerous to look at and extremely inaccurate.
When a company is still expanding, alot of the money are put into their expenditures. Their initial stages will always show a low yield of profit, if any.
As time goes on, it should even out, however that might not be accurate either, for we do know how far GW have expended their shops internationally.

Yet the recent years we also know GW have been cutting expenses, closing shops, hiring less staff ( 1 man shops ). Now on paper, of course that will show
a gain in net profit, this is what supposedly "pleases" stockist.

Yet did they take in account of what i said earlier? nope! this is why stock market is so hard to predict /wink

They've been expanding for a very long time, going through leaps and spurts, and reading anyting about GW is, as you said, dangerous to look at considering it won't stabilise until GW stabilise what exactly they want to do (never?) so all we can do is best guess for the next few years as to whether it actually worked out.

Heck, I'm not even remotely familiar with UK reporting practices, and a few years ago in Australia ABC learning went bust after a massive growth spurt because their reports were deceptive. GW could've changed reporting practices completely, may or may not count freight as a part of CoGS, only a UK accountant would be able to right this issue.

Now is not a good time to guess, as they have been expanding, and suddenly decreased via closing stores.
And they havnt closed THIS MANY till the recent... 5 years ish....
So Im sure their net income will look decent.

But how many store can they afford to close till the effect catches up
or how many dawn of war can they hope to keep selling.

or how many more Hobbts etc etc.

The only thing completely outlandish was the indestructible thing. If he's some some models too it would be quite a bit better. I don't understand any of the "Finecast sucks" raging that goes on; My finecast are perfect, much better than the old clumsy metal ones that are too hard to put together

LunaHound wrote:Now is not a good time to guess, as they have been expanding, and suddenly decreased via closing stores.
And they havnt closed THIS MANY till the recent... 5 years ish....
So Im sure their net income will look decent.

But how many store can they afford to close till the effect catches up
or how many dawn of war can they hope to keep selling.

or how many more Hobbts etc etc.

In many ways, it doesn't matter. They'll sell hobbits until they run out of the little vermin, then move on to something else, and sell that. For video games, they don't have to sell any, never have. They let other people do that and rake in the cash. I expect they won't have a problem going forward having royalties coming in from on game or another. The franchise is started, and backed up by the games and black library.

I don't think anyone, including GW, knows where they are headed in the next 10 years. They will make the games they make now, and look for opportunities to make money in other ways. Continue to rake in profit from BL, FW, and liscensing. Their stores have always been elastic, stretching and contracting. They were in malls when malls were the place to be, and moving out of them now when they aren't. The game plan for their own retail stores is always changing, and I doubt it will ever fully stabilize.

GW has always evolved as a company. It's how they stay alive, and one of the few in the gaming industry to do so for a decade, let alone 3. (WotC being the other obvious company in that catagory.) Privateer knows they need to do the same thing, and not just sell Warmachine forever. Listen to what Matt said when they've released games like Monpoc, or the boardgames. They don't want to be a miniature company, or just a game company, and they'd love to be as diversified as GW is.

< Taken by the void dragon. >

Buy a Forge World one.

resin , and looks better

< Taken by the void dragon. >

mikhaila wrote:

LunaHound wrote:Now is not a good time to guess, as they have been expanding, and suddenly decreased via closing stores.
And they havnt closed THIS MANY till the recent... 5 years ish....
So Im sure their net income will look decent.

But how many store can they afford to close till the effect catches up

I don't think anyone, including GW, knows where they are headed in the next 10 years. They will make the games they make now, and look for opportunities to make money in other ways. Continue to rake in profit from BL, FW, and liscensing. Their stores have always been elastic, stretching and contracting. They were in malls when malls were the place to be, and moving out of them now when they aren't. The game plan for their own retail stores is always changing, and I doubt it will ever fully stabilize.

GW has always evolved as a company. It's how they stay alive, and one of the few in the gaming industry to do so for a decade, let alone 3. (WotC being the other obvious company in that catagory.) Privateer knows they need to do the same thing, and not just sell Warmachine forever. Listen to what Matt said when they've released games like Monpoc, or the boardgames. They don't want to be a miniature company, or just a game company, and they'd love to be as diversified as GW is.

When I went to Throne of Skulls in Vegas last summer, they were talking about opening forty or fifty new stores in the US in the next year, and made a bit of a pitch about how they were looking for more managers. I agree that they're moving locations, really. Closing some and opening others.

I think GW's greatest success was listening to their corporate ego and pricing thousands of dedicated long term fans out of the hobby.

It has been a new genesis for Non GW miniatures in all sorts of scales and genres.

Let them have the children.

It will be interesting to see how they treat this competition. Probably just keep throwing customers away to justify the losses caused by these new companies.

Luna has hit the nail on the head. My comment regarding GW’s decline was indeed accurate although I don’t like to bring it up as more often than not, someone will misinterpret the financial statements (which happened just as I feared lol).

As Luna has correctly stated, Net income is indeed a misleading value as it doesn’t take into account the entire picture. Even still, tricky accounting is almost always used to make the financial statement look better (e.g. disposing unsold copies of Dreadfleet in order to pay less corporation tax, http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/90/426597.page ).

You really need to have some sort of financial background to properly interpret GW’s financial statements. I recommend doing a dakka search in the News forums as there has been some really good analysis of GW’s financials (so much so that someone made a joke that everyone on dakka must have an accounting degree).

mikhaila wrote:In many ways, it doesn't matter. They'll sell hobbits until they run out of the little vermin, then move on to something else, and sell that. For video games, they don't have to sell any, never have. They let other people do that and rake in the cash. I expect they won't have a problem going forward having royalties coming in from on game or another. The franchise is started, and backed up by the games and black library.

I realise I'm moving off on a tangent here, but say, for sake of argument, that you wanted to add some video games to your store. Say it was something small - a small section of your wall that only sold the latest AAA titles (ie. not a comprehensive stock of games, just the big games) for 360/PS3/Wii, maybe 10 titles for each platform. Would that cost you more to set up than it would be worth in profits, or would it be worthwhile?