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Thing is metallifan is that profit margins rise and fall by a few percentage points quarter to quarter. It's normal law of economics. PP's profits rise and fall quarterly. So does M$, so does IBM, so does Coca-cola.

The only way to get GW to listen is to let them know a boycott is taking place and then people actually sticking it to them hard. I bet for every person that doesn't spend a dime someone new or has been in it for a while spend $100. If 10 people who normally spend $50/month stop spending for 6 months but 10 new people come into the fold and each spend $200/month for 6 months in a row GW sees a profit of $150/month during 2 quarters.

Assuming GW's quarterly profits average $500k (haven't read the latest financial report so not sure what their profit was for 2009) the only way the bean counters would rise and take notice is if for 2 quarters their average quarterly profit dropped to say $450k.
Assuming the average 40k vet (since the "vets" are the majority boycotters since they have the most to whine about) spend $40/month it would take 416 people boycotting GW for 3 months for them to take a $50k hit in profits.

Of course throw in the new people or recent people to the hobby spending every month and it would take a lot more people than that. Realistically it would take about 5x's that number or 10x's that number boycotting to get to that level and make the bean counters take notice.

Good luck finding 4k vets in the world that would all come together for 3 months, promise to not buy that new shiny squad or vehicle and actually stick with it.

Dakka sure as hell isn't going to do it, neither is Warseer or BoLS or B&C. That is why the boycott was a joke in the first place. If YOU don't want to buy than don't but thinking ridiculous things like "GW will lower prices if they see a 5% drop in proft" or "GW will start giving other armies some love if they see a 5% drop in profit" is just ridiculous.

Coca-cola on occasion sees a 5% drop in profits quarterly but I don't see the price of 24packs of Coca-cola or Dr. Pepper getting reduced in price. In fact in the past 5 years soft drinks, along with other groceries have gone up. Just like GW and every other consumer good on the market has.

I'm going to laugh all the way to my GW store when in 3-5 years PP starts following GW's business practices.

Fateweaver wrote:Thing is metallifan is that profit margins rise and fall by a few percentage points quarter to quarter. It's normal law of economics. PP's profits rise and fall quarterly. So does M$, so does IBM, so does Coca-cola.

The only way to get GW to listen is to let them know a boycott is taking place and then people actually sticking it to them hard. I bet for every person that doesn't spend a dime someone new or has been in it for a while spend $100. If 10 people who normally spend $50/month stop spending for 6 months but 10 new people come into the fold and each spend $200/month for 6 months in a row GW sees a profit of $150/month during 2 quarters.

Assuming GW's quarterly profits average $500k (haven't read the latest financial report so not sure what their profit was for 2009) the only way the bean counters would rise and take notice is if for 2 quarters their average quarterly profit dropped to say $450k.
Assuming the average 40k vet (since the "vets" are the majority boycotters since they have the most to whine about) spend $40/month it would take 416 people boycotting GW for 3 months for them to take a $50k hit in profits.

Of course throw in the new people or recent people to the hobby spending every month and it would take a lot more people than that. Realistically it would take about 5x's that number or 10x's that number boycotting to get to that level and make the bean counters take notice.

Good luck finding 4k vets in the world that would all come together for 3 months, promise to not buy that new shiny squad or vehicle and actually stick with it.

Dakka sure as hell isn't going to do it, neither is Warseer or BoLS or B&C. That is why the boycott was a joke in the first place. If YOU don't want to buy than don't but thinking ridiculous things like "GW will lower prices if they see a 5% drop in proft" or "GW will start giving other armies some love if they see a 5% drop in profit" is just ridiculous.

Coca-cola on occasion sees a 5% drop in profits quarterly but I don't see the price of 24packs of Coca-cola or Dr. Pepper getting reduced in price. In fact in the past 5 years soft drinks, along with other groceries have gone up. Just like GW and every other consumer good on the market has.

I'm going to laugh all the way to my GW store when in 3-5 years PP starts following GW's business practices.

That's pretty much what I've been saying the whole time, actually...

metallifan wrote:I didn't jump on the Boycott Boat myself unless "Responsible Purchasing" classifies as a boycott. I only bought what I needed and when I was almost or completely done painting existing greys.

I just don't see the point of Boycotting GW. They wouldn't notice, as there's a billions strong herd of chubby, Ice-cream splattered crying little hellspawn to make up the difference for a few months per flock until they get bored, but by the time that happens more of them will move in, and in increased numbers. Not to mention the influx of new players each year that don't know about the old editions or prices, and think GW does fine. It'll be a couple years and a few thousand dollars before they come to the same realizations.

Ahh well. I still enjoy the game and the painting. Not as much on the gaming aspect as I used to, mind you, but still enough for it to be a fun "Beer and pretzels" basement game.

metallifan wrote:

usernamesareannoying wrote:there was a GW boycott?
does GW know?

Exactly. In principle, it's a great idea. They really don't ask their customers what they'd like to see in future updates, so a Boycott would be a great way to get the point across...


...If they (GW) cared about said Boycott.

But they don't. And that's where things faulter. They haven't even asked "Hey, if we did an update to the Chaos and Nid Codi that we beat with the rapestick, what would you guys want to see?"

More likely it was "What's a Boycott? ...Oh, that's what it means? Hahahaha. Silly customers, thinking they can change something."

metallifan wrote:

Breotan wrote:I mentioned in an earlier post that even if a boycot had a measurable effect on GW's bottom line, they'd simply attribute it to the "bad economy" and carry on as normal.

QFT. Gotta love how they hide behind false realities.

metallifan wrote:

Bookwrack wrote:Who's hiding behind a false reality? If they have a small dip in sales that coincides with people cutting back on luxury purchases in general, that would be the reasonable explanation. Boycotts are a protest measure, and it's more than a little counter-productive to carry out a protest in secret.

I was making a referance to how they'd likely claim that the results of an effective, noticable Boycott were actually just due to the economy, and not to their own questionable logic angering their customers.

See? I've pretty much said exactly the same thing. By "False Realities", I mean that even a huge gap created by a Boycott, whether they knew about it or not, would be attributed to the state of the market.

If they knew, they would say it was the economy because they would want to keep thinking they're doing a spot-on job.

If they didn't know, they would say it was the economy because they wouldn't bother to investigate. It just annoys me that GW has started going completely downhill, because I really love their products in the 40K line. I just can't stand what the company behind the product has become within the last decade. It's almost saddening. Almost.

"So now that the Boycott against Gw is almost over."

Almost over? That was fast. Well, I will continue dodging GW stuff... I avoided nids and managed to save a ton, christmas leftovers went to other miniatures companies... so yes I holded my guns and spended elsewere. Will I never buy GW again? cant say that, I will probably buy, but I'm totally detoxed and clean now.

No one knew about it... sorry to be so blunt and crude...But, I dont care! As long as I feel good about it Im happy.
If GW cant buy a paperclip due to my decision even better... No one in their right minds would assume GW would change anything... but the issue here is diferent... I did change, and for the better.

Every company does though Metallifan.

I'm sure Coca-cola CEO's don't think "we had a 4% drop in profits last quarter. We had better send peons out to pound the pavement to see if people are happy with our product".

A 10% or 20% drop in profits would worry ANY corporation but single digit fluctuations are par for the course and so no, GW would not look at them because they won't care. If something is normal or par for the course nobody looks twice at it. It is normal for family restaurants to be busier on saturday and sunday than the rest of the week. If you decide to open a restaurant you can't think it's out of the ordinary that Mondays sales are a lot lower than Saturdays sales.

So yeah GW won't care about a 2-5% profit loss because they don't have to if it's normal (and fluctuation IS normal). Now if they were seeing a 5% increase in profit every quarter for 12 quarters and than saw an 8% profit loss they might wonder what happened that took them from GAINING 5% every quarter for 3 years to LOSING 8% the 13th quarter but a person would have to also wonder how badly they were cheating the books to make 5% profit for 12 quarters in a row?

Hawkins wrote:Around November some of us decided to jump on the Boycott bandwagon, over the C&D letters, pricing, and a whole slew of other problems we were having against GW. so how did you do? did you stick with it? what did you use the money for other than GW prducts? Also was it hard? did you start to get withdrawal? and did you save up and not buy, but are still going to use the money for GW products?

*a warning* last time i tried this a whole (but not all, there were some good posts) slew of fethers just trolled and flamed the thread. (no names but you know who you were) please refrain from posting if you didnt take part in the boycott, unless of couse you just want to be ignored from here on in.

I'll be the one to break it to you.

What you did was just nerd rage a little and post some tough guy stuff. It wasn't a boycott.



As for the rest of your drivel, You don't want opinions, don't start a thread when you start out of the gate by posting topics with a confrontational tone.
That ignoring is an easy two way street...

Just saying.

Fateweaver wrote:Every company does though Metallifan.

I'm sure Coca-cola CEO's don't think "we had a 4% drop in profits last quarter. We had better send peons out to pound the pavement to see if people are happy with our product".

A 10% or 20% drop in profits would worry ANY corporation but single digit fluctuations are par for the course and so no, GW would not look at them because they won't care. If something is normal or par for the course nobody looks twice at it. It is normal for family restaurants to be busier on saturday and sunday than the rest of the week. If you decide to open a restaurant you can't think it's out of the ordinary that Mondays sales are a lot lower than Saturdays sales.

So yeah GW won't care about a 2-5% profit loss because they don't have to if it's normal (and fluctuation IS normal). Now if they were seeing a 5% increase in profit every quarter for 12 quarters and than saw an 8% profit loss they might wonder what happened that took them from GAINING 5% every quarter for 3 years to LOSING 8% the 13th quarter but a person would have to also wonder how badly they were cheating the books to make 5% profit for 12 quarters in a row?

Who said anything about an old fashioned door-to-door consensus? We have this fancy gadget called the "Internet" that does that for us. It's as easy as putting up a survey on their website. Not exactly backbreaking labor, now is it? And it's not that they can't do that, they just won't. Because they know that so long as they can market their product to all age groups, they'll have plenty of income coming in, so that even a large Boycott won't do much, because the seasoned customers only make up how much of their market, compared to the new ones and the temps that come and go like bad gas?

Even if they suffered a larger loss they'd probably shrug their shoulders at it and bump up all their costs again because they know it'll compensate until it happens again.

Really Fateweaver, you're just trying to explain to me comething I already understand. I don't mean to sound rude when I say that, it can just be irritating when someone reposts to you what you've been saying in the form of an explaination.

Fateweaver wrote:
Assuming GW's quarterly profits average $500k (haven't read the latest financial report so not sure what their profit was for 2009) the only way the bean counters would rise and take notice is if for 2 quarters their average quarterly profit dropped to say $450k.
Assuming the average 40k vet (since the "vets" are the majority boycotters since they have the most to whine about) spend $40/month it would take 416 people boycotting GW for 3 months for them to take a $50k hit in profits.

More importantly, it would need to be 416 people who wouldn't have otherwise stopped buying GW product for some other reason (getting caught up in WoW, going off to college, getting fired, etc.) GW loses customers and gains customers each month. If someone stops buying stuff for three months and buys some stuff, nobody's going to notice.

Find 500 people who are going to buy new armies when the next release comes out and convince them to put that money elsewhere and you'll have a boycott that someone might actually notice.

Grot 6 wrote:

Hawkins wrote:Around November some of us decided to jump on the Boycott bandwagon, over the C&D letters, pricing, and a whole slew of other problems we were having against GW. so how did you do? did you stick with it? what did you use the money for other than GW prducts? Also was it hard? did you start to get withdrawal? and did you save up and not buy, but are still going to use the money for GW products?

*a warning* last time i tried this a whole (but not all, there were some good posts) slew of fethers just trolled and flamed the thread. (no names but you know who you were) please refrain from posting if you didnt take part in the boycott, unless of couse you just want to be ignored from here on in.

I'll be the one to break it to you.

What you did was just nerd rage a little and post some tough guy stuff. It wasn't a boycott.



As for the rest of your drivel, You don't want opinions, don't start a thread when you start out of the gate by posting topics with a confrontational tone.
That ignoring is an easy two way street...

Just saying.

thats 2,,,, next?

Fateweaver. metalfan, this isnt really the place to talk about the validity of the boycott, this isnt why i made this thread. could you please take your discussion to PM or start your own thread?
thanks in advance.

Hawkins wrote:

Fateweaver. metalfan this isnt really the place to talk about the validity of the boycott, this isnt why i made this thread. could you please take your discussion to PM or start your own thread?

Um... No. I don't think I would, even if it were not already a concluded issue. It's relevant enough to discuss here. Skip by the posts if you don't like it. If they're in the wrong place, Frazz or one of the other mods would've likely stepped in and let both Fateweaver and myself know, but that's their choice. Not yours.

Don't make me get the sad violin music out twice in one day

Hawkins wrote:

Grot 6 wrote:

Hawkins wrote:Around November some of us decided to jump on the Boycott bandwagon, over the C&D letters, pricing, and a whole slew of other problems we were having against GW. so how did you do? did you stick with it? what did you use the money for other than GW prducts? Also was it hard? did you start to get withdrawal? and did you save up and not buy, but are still going to use the money for GW products?

*a warning* last time i tried this a whole (but not all, there were some good posts) slew of fethers just trolled and flamed the thread. (no names but you know who you were) please refrain from posting if you didnt take part in the boycott, unless of couse you just want to be ignored from here on in.

I'll be the one to break it to you.

What you did was just nerd rage a little and post some tough guy stuff. It wasn't a boycott.



As for the rest of your drivel, You don't want opinions, don't start a thread when you start out of the gate by posting topics with a confrontational tone.
That ignoring is an easy two way street...

Just saying.

thats 2,,,, next?

Fateweaver. metalfan, this isnt really the place to talk about the validity of the boycott, this isnt why i made this thread. could you please take your discussion to PM or start your own thread?
thanks in advance.

Pfft.

Forget it.

Noobrage, at its best, isn't it?

Being ignored by you makes baby Jervis cry.

Grot 6 wrote:Pfft.

I'll be the one to break it to you.

What you did was just nerd rage a little and post some tough guy stuff. It wasn't a boycott.



As for the rest of your drivel, You don't want opinions, don't start a thread when you start out of the gate by posting topics with a confrontational tone.
That ignoring is an easy two way street...

Just saying.
If thats all you have for a comeback? Whatever. Being ignored by you makes baby Jervis Cry, nooblet.

Wait wait , to be perfectly honest how is the OP's post confrontational?

Hawkins wrote:Around November some of us decided to jump on the Boycott bandwagon, over the C&D letters, pricing, and a whole slew of other problems we were having against GW. so how did you do? did you stick with it? what did you use the money for other than GW prducts? Also was it hard? did you start to get withdrawal? and did you save up and not buy, but are still going to use the money for GW products?

He asked a valid question to the people that participated , its normal to want to know how things go?

Hawkins wrote:*a warning* last time i tried this a whole (but not all, there were some good posts) slew of fethers just trolled and flamed the thread. (no names but you know who you were) please refrain from posting if you didnt take part in the boycott, unless of couse you just want to be ignored from here on in.

Sounds like he had another post that was trolled and locked , why is it abnormal to ask for it to not end the same way o_o?

NAVARRO wrote:If GW cant buy a paperclip due to my decision even better... No one in their right minds would assume GW would change anything... but the issue here is different... I did change, and for the better.

Thats the true spirit , me like!

I want to use hyperbole to describe this thread, but it wouldn't end up being funny. So I'll just say that I'm locking it because it's going way off-topic and the politeness level has sunk below an acceptable level.

A few points:

1. There's no excuse for being rude (looking at you, Kanluwen; you just jumped in to be rude, with the added bonus of starting to go off-topic).

2. Just because you start a thread doesn't mean you can dictate who responds. You do have the right to expect the thread to stay on-topic, but we don't restrict who can respond to a post (outside of special cases).

Hawkins, if you'd like to start another thread on this, please be aware that you don't control it. If posters start going off-topic, please use the Mod Alert button (the exclamation point in the triangle) in the upper right-hand corner of each post.