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After reading about windswept313's recent experience at a GW store, I'm wondering about the whole GW retail concept and whether this really works at all.

In theory, everything was exactly as GW planned:
- GW had a retail destination event (most likely, he was going to a Battle Bunker of some sort)
- GW stood to reap hundreds of dollars in immediate sales
- customer willing to drive and pay retail on the spot

In practice, nothing worked
- nothing in stock, out of *several* items requested
- web-order system not effective
- customer driven out of frustration to on-line ordering

It seems like he tried his darnedest to give GW the business, working through quite a list of things that he would have bought, if only they were in stock. And while some might have been slower sellers, to not have any of more than a half-dozen items is a real problem.


This is tied to GW's recent concept of having a smaller range and less stock on site (because people can web order). But it flies in the face of GW having stores as a destination in the first place. The convenience factor and immediacy are supposed to be the key points of the retail store model. And now, GW is going to cut hours and staff?


I really have to wonder about the whole viability of GW's new retail concept, and whether this is doing anything right.


As an aside, I'm backing windswept313 for the most part. If he wanted to web-order, I'm sure he could have done so. But he went out of his way to try and do business locally. And he gave them every opportunity to sell him things. I don't blame him for getting fed up with the whole thing. In all likelihood, I doubt he cares in the least if he's banned from that store, or any GW store - he doesn't buy there or play there, and they didn't have anything that he wanted when he came there.

I agree, I was going to offer support for windswept in that post, but the thing was locked. (I'm guessing because the mods disagreed with him)

JohnHwangDD wrote:In theory, everything was exactly as GW planned:
- GW had a retail destination event (most likely, he was going to a Battle Bunker of some sort)
- GW stood to reap hundreds of dollars in immediate sales
- customer willing to drive and pay retail on the spot

In practice, nothing worked
- nothing in stock, out of *several* items requested
- web-order system not effective
- customer driven out of frustration to on-line ordering

Windswept's experience aside - The main thing here is that GW's hobby centers are not geared to provide good service to us grognards. Let us look at what GW hobby centers do well:

Provide an entry level into the hobby through demos and prominent display of product.
Sell basic stock in all the "popular" brands: i.e. Marines and other high profile armies.
Provide inspiration to new hobbyists by displaying armies, be they staffer's armies, store armies or sometimes, customer's armies.
Run events: Be they painting events, build-n-battle, bring-n-battle, tournaments etc.

This all points to the fact that GW is gearing up heavily towards attracting new blood and appealing to causal gamers. Why else would they continue to devote 1/4-1/3 of their wall space to LOTR. LOTR is by far the least selling product, yet they take away from product in other ranges (simmilarly non-moving) to carry LOTR (probably by terms of their lisence).

OTOH, things greybeards, grognards and other hardcore GW enthusiasts WANT but GW doesn't, or no longer provide are:

Parts for conversions! GW has killed the bitz service and drastically reduced the stock in the stores, with most special characters, non-high volume armies and archive models exiled to the depths of mail order, or disappearing into the warp for all time.
Upgrading existing armies. With many armies' non-stock models going to mail order, upgrading a squad to a full squad is a PITA. Examples include: any special/heavies from either Inquisition book, almost the entirety of the DE range, add-ons for any boxed squads - i.e. aspect warriors, storm troopers, raptors etc. etc. etc.
Stock to support a mass buy. Grognards usually moan and groan about GW, but they are the first ones to come in and buy a new army ALL AT ONCE. Most GW stores don't carry enough stock for this to happen.

So I wouldn't say that their model is a failure, but it certainly isn't geared towards veterans.

I had a lot of trouble trying to get a Commander Shadowsun at the local GW (central London) a few months ago.

The shop is still there, though, partly because I bought a lot of stuff they had in stock and ordered some other stuff on the internet and picked it up.

I suppose that GW, with computer analysis of their EPOS data and knowledge of the costs throughout their entire supply chain, have worked out that stocking rare items isn't profitable.

Of course GW probably made more profit from the internet sale off eBay than they would have from selling in their shop.

He had a list of carp that he wanted to buy. Did he bother to call to see if any of it was there, or in the quantities that he wanted?

Yep, he tried his darndest, and then he went right off the deep end and threw a hissy-fit.

So to answer your question DD, no, GW's retail stores are probably not "viable" for Windswept313.

For the 99.99% of the rest of us that accept that carp happens, its just damn fine. If Wal-Mart is out "regularly stocked Chinese plastic doodad #2" when I am there, it isn't the end of Wal-Mart.

Now, if GW wanted to improve this experience, particularly with Direct Order items, they could set up a dedicated order kiosk in each store, allowing the customer to submit an order to be delivered at that location for free, or shipped to a customer's address for a fee. Conversely, they could allow the website to have a "ship to store" option that immediately put a package togther called "Customer X's Order" that is added to the next regularly scheduled restock order for an store selected by the customer and an expected delivery date.

But yeah, its soooo much easier to take one blown out of proportion experience and label it the death of retail.

Kilkrazy wrote:I suppose that GW, with computer analysis of their EPOS data and knowledge of the costs throughout their entire supply chain, have worked out that stocking rare items isn't profitable.

I'll bet you a pint of lager that for your average store, sales of Shadowsun are probably aren't much worse than sales of Gandalf on a cart.

GW also doesn't seem to realize that sales of certain models are variable based on their effectiveness in the codex. A good example is the shining spear box. They were completely GAK in 3rd edition and the FLGS in my home town sold a grand total of 0 during the entirety of the edition... they still have some from their initial shipment. By this logic, GW would make them direct only. If they were suddenly made the new hotness... this strategy would cause their customers a lot of grief.

I really don't understand why they don't stock the whole range. Most managers say that it has to do with wall space, but there is no reason not to have some in storage - for those one off chances that somebody wants one. Stock != Display.

@ shotgun :

I think you are way off base if you think only 1 in 10000 people who drive an hour to a specialty store with a list of 8-10 things that are which are supposed to be sold by the specialty store finds out that NONE of them are there will be pissed. Especially when the alternative given is an internet ordering computer which is linked to a website that does not work. What's the reason he didn't stay at home again?

For many locations...stock does equal display though.

Stock sitting in the backroom is not being seen, and thus, not being sold. It is floor space not generating sales.

I thought he didn't stay home because he wanted to go bask in some kind of geek glory.

Fact is, he drove an hour to go to a specialty shop without calling ahead.

I don't know about you, but before I drive an hour out of my way to buy something, I call ahead to make sure they have what I want. Now, it sounds like this wasn't the only reason for the trip, but still, he could have saved himself some time and headache by picking up the phone and calling.

1. the thread was blocked because it was getting flamey-including from myself and could be considered trolling: especially by anyone who's actually worked in retail. This one will also if it gets flamey.

2. Stick to the subject which is valid, not windswept's LOCKED thread and this won't get locked.

Here is the issue as I see it.

GW's intent of creating stores:
- Increase profit margin from say 30% to 50%. They sell to the FLGS at 60% of list. I suspect it costs them 30% of list to produce the product and another 20% to pay for staff and stores. If they are not only the supplier, but the retailer, they should make an extra 20%.

- Put the stores in front of the people. Most FLGS aren't in high traffic retail areas because of the high overhead when compared to the profit margins. GW has the capitol to put stores in these locations.

- Emphasis on THE product. The FLGS has GW as a portion of their offerings, not the sole offering. It gets less attention as their are other items in the store that have to be pushed equally. With GW products being the sole focus and providing a place to play, they get free demos, create interest and concentrate on one product.

From the intent side, it all makes a lot of sense. Now let's introdcue reality.
- The internet came into it's prime about the same time GW rolled out their own stores. FLGS retailers who went online were content to take a smaller profit margin, but make up the delta in volume. Sales tax and shipping usually offset each other and some online merchents grant free shipping with high dollar orders. This ment full retail is not truely the standard price and thus the margin drops by 20%. High volume and thrifty shoppers will go online to buy their product.

- Having one product line means that you can saturate the market in a given area. You are also relient upon your HQ to come up with ways to spur the interest of older gamers and new ones. As GW puts armies on a cycle, their is little motivation for some people to stay engaged once their army is destroyed by a rules change or is no longer FOTM, because they have to wait YEARS to get another update. This causes people to burn out on the hobby or get easily annoyed. GW stuff also ain't cheap, so people become less likely to spend "spare" cash on the hobby.

- With the high volume of product GW produces, the space needed to having gaming in the store and the desire to be high traffic areas, the retail space cost is going to be huge. They also added LotCrap products which further reduced wall space. As they can't justify the cost of more space, they end up cutting back on certian stocked lines. I suspect this will only get worse as Apoc. ramps up more.

- GW also NEVER has sales from what I can tell. They used to have sales and they used to be huge events at the GW I used to attend. I haven't seen them have a sale in 5-6 years. People will buy crap at sale purely because they think they are getting a deal. I find it hard to believe that GW's marketing department hasn't figured this one out yet.

GW's golden egg flopped due to lack of foresight.

Shotgun wrote:For many locations...stock does equal display though. Stock sitting in the backroom is not being seen, and thus, not being sold. It is floor space not generating sales.

I conceede that point.

I just can't reconcile that GW's store doesn't carry the full range of GW stock... as I posted in the other thread, if I go into an Apple store to buy an iPod in some strange, unpopular colour, I'd expect them to have it, after all, it is an APPLE store - and it should carry all their CURRENT products. I can forgive the local Bestbuy for not having the full range of iPods because that is not their core business. I do not understand why GW gets a free pass for not carrying their whole current range. Also - if the items are not carried in the retail stores, THEY SHOULD INDICATE THIS AS SUCH ON THE WEB STORE. Most other retailers do this with a simple "not carried in retail stores" logo - usually accompanied by a link to order it and have it shipped to the store.

@ shotgun: I think what you are missing is that none of a list of things was there. It's not like he went there for a single obscure model, and I'm guessing if he got 50% of the stuff on his list he wouldn't be posting about it.

It seems to me it's a huge problem for a specialty store to be missing a large % of the specialty items it's supposed to be selling at a given time. Its an even bigger problem that he then couldn't even order the items from the store.

He drove an hour and had not one of his expectations met by the store. Sounds like a problem to me.

keezus wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:I suppose that GW, with computer analysis of their EPOS data and knowledge of the costs throughout their entire supply chain, have worked out that stocking rare items isn't profitable.

I'll bet you a pint of lager that for your average store, sales of Shadowsun are probably aren't much worse than sales of Gandalf on a cart.

GW also doesn't seem to realize that sales of certain models are variable based on their effectiveness in the codex. A good example is the shining spear box. They were completely GAK in 3rd edition and the FLGS in my home town sold a grand total of 0 during the entirety of the edition... they still have some from their initial shipment. By this logic, GW would make them direct only. If they were suddenly made the new hotness... this strategy would cause their customers a lot of grief.

I really don't understand why they don't stock the whole range. Most managers say that it has to do with wall space, but there is no reason not to have some in storage - for those one off chances that somebody wants one. Stock != Display.

The reason is because if there are 500 stores in the world (I have made up figures for the purpose of illustration) and GW want to stock a Shadowsun, a Space Pope and a Farsight in every store, they have to manufacture £25,000 worth of models just in case someone might walk into a shop and want to buy one. Meanwhile, £25,000 of their cash is locked up in cardboard boxes instead of in the bank earning interest. Multiply those kind of figures by the entire range and it soon becomes obvious that the cost is too high.

Clicks and Bricks was a big Internet/High Street retail buzzword a few years ago and in GW's case it does actually make sense.

UK shops do have in-store web ordering computers but in my experience the connection is very slow. When I want something unlikely to be in stock I order it from home.

Edit: I've been able to order items and bits from GW stores, at no shipping. I don't see the issue.

Respectfully, Apple doesn't have near the same number of SKUs as GW. Go to ask and ask for a product completely off the wall and not the latest thing.

Then ask them how many video games you can play...

Kilkrazy wrote:The reason is because if there are 500 stores in the world (I have made up figures for the purpose of illustration) and GW want to stock a Shadowsun, a Space Pope and a Farsight in every store, they have to manufacture £25,000 worth of models just in case someone might walk into a shop and want to buy one. Meanwhile, £25,000 of their cash is locked up in cardboard boxes instead of in the bank earning interest. Multiply those kind of figures by the entire range and it soon becomes obvious that the cost is too high.

Fair enough. I suppose their contract stipulations with New Line are the only things stopping them from shipping LOTR to the Valhalla of unsupported games where Necromunda and Space Hulk battle during the days and then retire to the feast halls for mead and meriment at night.

Frazzled wrote:Respectfully, Apple doesn't have near the same number of SKUs as GW. Go to ask and ask for a product completely off the wall and not the latest thing.

Oh, I'm aware of that, but it's all I could think of at short notice. Not many compaines have their own retail chains that only carry their own products. Apple and Sony are the only two I can think of at the moment.

@ killcrazy: I think you are vastly overestimating the cost for them to manfacture and and distribute those items to their own stores.

Personally, I have no interest in the value of GW retail stores. Because there are so few in the US, I have never lived in the same state as one, much less within an hours drive. From what I understand, a good sized hobby shop (local and chain) will have everything a GW store could provide, and more besides. Several places near where I live even offer sizable bitz bins for sifting through. Everything I can't find at a hobby store I probably wouldn't find at a GW store, and for the rest, theres the internets. I never use the GW site

You know, there is another destination retailer that I happen to like:

Lego!

These guys have their own little stores (in fact, in Glendale, there is both a GW and a Lego store), with play areas and display pieces and so on. It's great.

One thing Lego does is have Lego store exclusives, things that they don't distribute through regular channels (e.g. Castle village), and this is paralleled by retailer exclusives for TRU, Walmart and Target.

But one thing is for sure, Lego makes it easy to buy stuff.

I've gone in to buy stuff (Duplo Giant Zoo, highly recommended, BTW), and it's been out of stock. But Lego is quick and easy to do the order for you, and the stuff arrives in a couple days with FREE shipping. It's completely painless.

Why is it that Lego stores make the whole experience so easy and fun compared to GW's excesss of grimdark?

keezus wrote:

Shotgun wrote:For many locations...stock does equal display though. Stock sitting in the backroom is not being seen, and thus, not being sold. It is floor space not generating sales.

I conceede that point.

I just can't reconcile that GW's store doesn't carry the full range of GW stock... as I posted in the other thread, if I go into an Apple store to buy an iPod in some strange, unpopular colour, I'd expect them to have it, after all, it is an APPLE store - and it should carry all their CURRENT products. I can forgive the local Bestbuy for not having the full range of iPods because that is not their core business. I do not understand why GW gets a free pass for not carrying their whole current range. Also - if the items are not carried in the retail stores, THEY SHOULD INDICATE THIS AS SUCH ON THE WEB STORE. Most other retailers do this with a simple "not carried in retail stores" logo - usually accompanied by a link to order it and have it shipped to the store.

You can't really compare GW to Apple. It's downright silly, since Apple's products update every few years, and they pull the older stuff off the shelves.
Oh wait. GW does that too!

I saw his list of stuff. Grey Knight Terminator box, Death Cult Assassins, alot of Daemonhunters stuff. That's cool. But Daemonhunters isn't really a "core" army. The FLGS I used to go to(they closed down a few weeks ago, because of the overhead of having a huge store in a high traffic area ended up being too much for what they were), had alot of Daemonhunters stuff.
Do you know why?
Because DH never really got off the ground locally. Most of the boxes were from the first few months of the release, with blisters being the only things that ever got restocked regularly.

I've had the same experience at GW stores as you have at lego stores John.

Did you get Connie a Zoo?

Genghis Connie's Golden Horde of Little-ist Petshop will brook no Legos my friend.

asmith..

So maybe killcrazy is overestimating manufacture and distribution.

There is still floor space, overhead, inventory costs...etc.

Multiply that by every corporate store in the US/UK. What is the point of stocking 2 boxes of DE Warriors in all those places if they only sell 2 boxes across all stores in an entire year? It's wasted space and wasted inventory.

And yes, I get that he had a list and they didn't have -anything- he wanted. Life happens. Trucks get delayed. Assistant Managers forget to mark a box on the order sheet. Warehouse rats catch the flu or drank too much the night before and are packing slow. Nob Bikes place 1, 2, 3 the last three tourneys in a row and no one tells manufacturing to speed up production.

asmith wrote:@ killcrazy: I think you are vastly overestimating the cost for them to manfacture and and distribute those items to their own stores.

Well, I am, but I was just trying to illustrate the nature of problem. Maybe the cost of Space Pope is £8 manufactured and put into stock rather than £20. There are still, what, 20 armies with maybe 2.5 characters each, costing the same, so that's 20*2.5*8*500 = £200,000 of stock. If GW find they actually sell 10 of each character per week, they only need have a stock of 20 of them in their warehouse, costing £8,000. Just restock 10 every week.

Cost of stock and shipping etc is a well understood aspect of business so if GW don't stock their entire range at every single shop, you have to assume either (A) they are retail marmosets, making things up as they go along for the lulz, but somehow luckily muddling through, or (B) they know what they are doing. They have been in the retail business for about 30 years.

And GW make it hard to buy how? Instore order points (whether good old fashioned catalogue, form and a pen, or the more modern Web Terminal) for stuff they don't hold in stock (more stock requires more room, more room means higher rent. Higher rent is a higher overhead, driving prices up).

Also, so much faulty logic in this thread i dunno where to start.

LotR still sells extremely well. It's a popular little game, and has sales comparable to Fantasy.

As GW's range grows, they need to retire slower selling lines. This makes sense. OR do you perhaps demand of your local DVD Store they hold EVERY DVD ever released on the off chance someone might one day want it there and then, rather than wait for an order to come in.

Perhaps it's just me, but I get the distinct feeling that those people determined to pick a bone with GW hold them up to far higher standards than any other retailer. It's not as if just because it's out of stock, or no longer stocked, that it is unavailable. Put your order in, and get it sent to your house. In the UK at least, orders over £50 are free delivery anyways. Now, if you had travelled some distance purely to go to GW and only to pick up extremely specific items, and you didn't think to call ahead in advance to check stock, then more fool you. BUt if, as in this case, you dropped in as part of a wider trip to the shops, then it is mildly frustrating not to walk out with the models.

And yet....this seems to be the first time. Now if it had happened 2, 3, 4 or even 5 times, sure you have ever right to losing it through sheer frustration.

GW Stores are incredibly viable. They are the key to GW's dominance of the Hobby. If you stock purely through FLGS, you open yourself up to lots of variables. You are competing directly with other games companies, and if the owner isn't fussed for your game, but loves another, you are pretty much stuffed for sales there. Having your own network of stores means you can introduce consistency in customer service. GW replace any faulty model pretty much without question, as on the spot as possible (either new box in hand, or one ordered up and sent out asap) and will show newbs how to play without exposing them to TFG looking for a cheap win.

If you do have to order stuff in that is normally in stock, it's swiftness being delivered to the store depends on which day you order it. Order it the day before their stock order, and you'll get it in a couple of days. If not, or it's a particularly obscure order, and it might be a week. Have it sent to your house, and you're looking 3 days tops.

Seriously. Stop holding them up to standards you wouldn't hold any other store up to.

Concur with Mad Dok.

I wanted some large bases for modelling objective markers. They didn't stock them, so I ordered off the internet and got them shipped to the store free of charge. Admittedly, there was no 1 hour trip involved, but I would have ordered first if there was.

After 17 odd years of using GW stores, my only complaint is the occasional "check this out, you must buy it" attitude which soon goes away when they know you're collecting a specific army.

Well I guess I should wade in here with abit of insight based upon my knowledge and experience working in GW retail stores....

First of all... Windswept313's experience in store doesn't strike me as the staff member having done anything overly offensive- sure he could have explained the order system better, or not jumped straight to a battleforce- but from how it was set out the staff member didn't seem to deserve the treatment he recieved. The flame war that errupted over that is obviously the reason for the previous thread being locked..


Secondly.. Stock
GW stores stock a broad range of the products, but they cannot and will not keep in stock EVER item that is avalible... Marines for example have a grand total of 240 different products currently avalible that you as a customer can buy- The number of those in store is less, much less in fact- There are a number of reasons
1. Space (it'd take up too much space)
2. Cost (You'd have to produce at least 1 of each of those products for every one of the 300+ stores, and ship them there)
3. Popularity (When was the last time you know of anyone who NEEDED Spacemarine veteran with power axe and plasma pistol... compare that to the codex...)

Now all of those items, and thousands others for every other range, are all still avalible, you just have to direct order them. Now I don't know about the states, but here in the UK they have already rolled out the computer system in store- so you can order it then and there and it takes about 2 minutes. We've had very very few problems with the system, usually our net connection more than anything at our store- and in every situation we have the fallback of calling up mail order. All of that can either be delievered to the store free of charge, or sent to the persons house for £4 (unless its over £50... in which case free shipping)
So that explains and sorts the less popular items- you can still get 'em even if we don't have them in stock.

Another little aside, there is only so much stock we can keep in store, of even the most popular items- assault marines is an excellent example- they were soldout in windswept's example- the store I'm at has a stock level of 6 boxes of them... 3 on the shop floor, 3 in the back- and we have only ran out of them once.... and that was when someone bought all 6 boxes...while we were unpacking the replacement ones from the delievry.

Now something that we can do in store if someone has come in for something we should have in stock, but have run out of- is mail order it to their house free of charge, thats to try and make up for the fact that stuff happens- and occasionally the store will run out of things-its rare, and I've seen sections of the store empty- especially after a guy had a lottery win and a desire to have 2000pts of every 40k army... so instead of making you wait- the staff will get it to you as quickly as possible.

Thirdly... LOTR
It sells more than any combo of 2 armies from WFB or 40k (bar marines... GW sells alot of marines) its a nice wee game that now has a new way of playing in the form of war of the ring- some people don't like it and see it as a waste- thats their opinion- great- I find it a shame your missing out- but is there really need to poo-poo it so much- especially when it does seem to be out of ignorance?


Finally GW stores as a viable entity- they can have alot to offer vet players- it depends upon the size of store and the staff there-
but the ability to order anything and get it delievered there...
a place to play
a place to get painting advice
a place to meet people and chat about your hobby
a place to pick up the esentials

alot of GW stores are very viable and do a great job-
its a shame when you hear about when they don't (which you do alot because people love a good whine more than a good bit of praise- its makes better reading- don't believe me- turn on the news/ read a paper.... how much is good news?)
and even worse when they have passable service and then get accused of being the worst thing ever and possibly having their business damaged
(which it seems is what happened in the case of windswept's experience, ok service that wasn't the end of the world, but not as good as it could be- and in return a guy cracking out his laptop and basically giving them the finger....while advicing their customer base to go elsewhere...)