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jbunny wrote:
Which pages are you getting these numbers from? The 10 Mil to pay down the debt is not an expense, so it does not show up on the income statement, that is a balance sheet item.

Where is the not that theif accounted for a 3 million lost? I am not seeing that one.

Its off of their Q3 or Q4 '09 presentation to their shareholders.They said in previous instances the amount of outstanding debt. How much they were paying off each year and that they were on schedule to pay it off this year. The 3 million was presented as a cost due to theft that GW believed they could mitigate over the next couple of years.

3 million, for a company of GW's size, while substantial is not as bad as many companies have it. I've also found from my experience that costs due to lost items that are simply misplace or thrown away are mislabeled as theft, so its a bit of a broader category than it initially appears. There was also the GW employ in the UK who was arrested for stealing 30K worth of products... that's 1% of it right there. Given GW has some 300+ stores globally and that was a small one it comes to less than $10,000 of unaccounted product per store.

Hi all.
I belive the more or less static turn over , in the light of yearly price rises way above inflation.Shows that the same nuber of people are buying less, or less people are buying the same amount.
As GW focus on recruiting new players ,(over £50 million on B&M stores.)And less than 2 million on customer retension.(Game development and support.)

I belive it more likely to be fewer customer buying similar amounts .(80%appx of new customers drop £200appx in the first 18months then leave,aparently according to GW sources.)

As GW is not interested in retaining retaining older customers after thier initial spend.Most either leave the TTMG hobby entirley or move to GW competitors in the TTMG market.

So GW appears to be providing thier competitors with a steady flow of long term customers, as GW doesnt appear to want long term customers anymore!

In my previous statment about GW charging 2 to 14 times the price for goods , this includes hobby supplies and tools too.(Have you seen how much green stuff is direct from the manufaturer, or the plastic fish tank plants... )

Ather companies in the wider TTMG market sell high quality multipart plastic minatures for 50p to 80p each.(Singleparts as low as 20p each.)High quality metal minatures, go for around £1.00 ro £1.50.

Asthetics like prefered minature stylings and background are subjective.
However most other companies have lower start up price point , and support thier customers long term.

GW apear to have painted thamselves into a corner with thier insular marketing .
The need to keep the B&M stores to keep the inflated prices isolated from the free market.
The cost of the B&M stores inflated the prices of the product sold in them.

To summerise GWs buisness plan.
Short term greed at the expence of long term growth.

TTFN
Lanrak.

Ailaros wrote:I think that the rise in prices is in part due to a rise in quality. I mean, GW provides a luxury wargaming product, so it makes sense that it's more expensive.

The problem with Games Workshop is they think they're an exclusive luxury product but aren't willing to commit to the exacting quality demands that true luxury products demand. Sometimes, their sculpts are solid gold. Sometimes, their sculpts are stinking . There is no consistency, and at times it's baffling to see what gets approved for production. Take our inbred porcine friend above. If Games Workshop truly sold a luxury product, there would have been someone involved in quality control to send that sculpt back to the drawing board. We would have never even been aware that thing existed. It would never have made it out the door. Neither would the minotaurs. Neither would Canis Wolfborn. Neither would the Eldar Support Platform. Etc. Etc.

I wouldn't have a problem with GW pricing if the price matched the model quality. Unfortunately though, GW doesn't price that way (otherwise Nagash would be going for about $3.50USD). The problem is GW prices based off of some arcane equation that rates the model's value in an army list, the likelihood of how many a collector will buy, and the number of blemishes to be found on a freshly-slaughtered goat's liver. And GW then charges these luxury prices on models that have clearly been rushed out the door to fill a gap in a release schedule, made by someone who put no feeling into what they were making.

The rules are equally inconsistent. If GW was truly a luxury product, people wouldn't fear that the latest iteration of their army book/codex/ruleset would invalidate their army. Every new edition would introduce exciting new possibilities for play without creeping up in power level or drastically nerfing an army build. You might say that this is very difficult or even impossible to do. I say you may be right, but if GW can't do it then they have no business claiming they are a luxury product.

Even GW's IP isn't particularly high-quality. It's fairly original and I like it, sure. But it borrows a LOT from other sources and doesn't really meet the standards of what I would term luxury.

The only thing GW really has going for it is its size. Go into just about any miniature gaming shop, and odds are good you can find GW minis and GW players. GW is ubiquitous. And while miniature gaming is still very niche, Games-Workshop is the main image most people have of the hobby (outside of people who focus on historicals). They aren't the best ones, they aren't the only ones, but they've made themselves look like the main ones.

Which is why GW's pricing scheme makes so little sense. If you want to keep everyone buying your product, the product you want to define a niche, then you have two options:
a) make your product consistently better than your competitions' products
b) make your product cheaper than your competitions' products.

GW isn't doing either of these. They're making products that are not significantly better than their rivals and cost more than all but the most expensive rivals and hoping that just because they're the biggest player now that means they'll always be the biggest player. I don't think that's smart business.

Well, remember people who knock the price rises, if one's prices go up by 25% then one has to drop sales by that 25% to come out of it worse off.

Yes. This is why smart companies trying to dominate gaming markets sell introductory/required products at a loss and then increase their player base over the long term.

But remember, this is GW, who don't consider anything 'long term' to be a profit.

If GW cant make a profit with THESE prices, they are doing something HORRIBLY wrong. Like tremendously bad.

SilverMK2 wrote:

Gamble wrote:2) Global price variations-
SM Tactical squad
37.25 USD on U.S. site
22.50 GBP on U.K site= $34
62 AUD on Australia GW= $52.85
42 CAD on Canadian GW= $39

Some of that is due to local taxes, import taxes, shipping costs, etc.

Not to mention local wages. I know here in Ontario, in the past 6 or so years, minimum wage has gone up from $7.15 to $10.25. Most retail stores, and warehouses usually pay minimum wage, or close to it. And as such wages increase, so will operational costs.

Side note, after looking at the "average"(differntprovinces/states have differnt wages) minimum wage for the respective nations, it appears that it costs an average of 4.5 hours of work for a SM Tactical squad box.

Hi ChrisCP.
I belive this is the situation GW find themselves in .Thier prices are too high to allow new customers to afford to start up, and replace those leaving GW behind.
An ever decreasing customer base is NOT solved with ever inflated pricing.

When incresing prices results in NO increase in turn over ,(as has been the case for GW for the past few years .)
Its time to try something else before increseing prices REDUCES turn over.

As people can get TTMG hobby product from a wide range of companies in the free market at competative prices.
The only positive thing GW offer is conveniece.
I pay up to 30% more for the convience of my local shop, as opposed to going out of my way to the supermarket.

GW charge 200% to 1400% more for the conveniece offered in thier B&M stores.
Quite a few people belive this to be too much to pay.

TTFN
Lanrak.

Having worked in retail for way too long, I can give some perspective here.

Head out to the local department store and price ..TVs. Those in the lower 1/3 price range are marked DOWN 10-15% of cost. The mid 1/3 are between -5% to +5% with the upper 1/3 being close to +10% of cost. So each "bargain TV is sold at a loss. The Retailer in this case doesn't matter, this is an industry thing, everyone has similar pricing.
So where does the "profit" come in?
Cables and accessories. Some of this stuff is sold at 2-3x cost.
This is nearly true for all "big ticket" items.... Appliances are good examples. They almost never come with all the parts you need to make them work. Cords, tubing, clamps... all add to the cost and thus to the profit.

GW it seems is selling the big ticket items for the profit and then trying to maintain by hiking the price of their smaller items as well.