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5 million pounds profit last year, Dread Fleet looks like it's gonna sell out within it's first week of sale... company has paid off all it's debts.
Just because we might not personally be happy with the company, doesn't mean it's not still making mountains of cash.
Because apparently all you're doing when you read their financial report is looking at profit and profit alone. Profit is okay, they're still making money, but sales continue on a downward trend and GW isn't handling the excess cash very well, almost none of it is being reinvested into the company, it's being used to pay dividends. Whatever money GW makes at the end of the day goes into shareholder pockets, and most of that is Kirby's.
Like it was said just before you posted, GW isn't "failing" in the sense that they aren't going bankrupt, but the company isn't in a very healthy position at the moment, either, and things could eventually end up going bad if they aren't careful.
Also, I'm not taking Dread Fleet sales all that seriously. Of course it's selling out, they only printed a small number of them. Any company could probably do something like this to artificially make themselves look better. You could only print 200 copies of a new rulebook, but selling out is still selling out, and if you never tell anyone that you only printed 200 copies then they won't know the difference. Right?
I'm more interested in exactly how many copies of Dread Fleet exist, how many were allocated to web orders and what went to stores, and how many of the people buying them now are doing it because they genuinely want the game or because they think they can take advantage of the limited/collectable nature of the product and make a profit on eBay by selling it after it's gone.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2011/09/26 02:22:06
Desubot wrote: Why isnt Slut Wars: The Sexpocalypse a real game dammit.
"It's easier to change the rules than to get good at the game."
I would also point out a chunk of that profit must come from closing multiple hobby centers and reducing many more to one man operations, thus reducing expenses.
I don't think anyone here thinks GW is going to implode overnight, but they don't reinvest much into the company, much of their profitability seems to come from slashing expenses which will not be sustainable indefinitely, and they've made quite a few questionable moves this year. We'll have to see what the next investor relations report looks like, but at this rate, they'll run out of fat to trim, they'll have reached a point where prices simply cannot be raised any more, and then what will happen?
Ideally they'll come up with a new plan for the future before then, but it seems unlikely.
Either they shape up, get their heads out of the sand and start acting like a business or they continue on their downward spiral, die a slow painful death, and watch their IP get farmed out to other companies.
How can so many people be so wrong? People are surprised that GW doesn't regard the voice of the 'internet', but can you actually hear yourselves?
Prices go up like the prices of everything else in the world goes up. Get a job if you can't afford stuff. Resin would have required a huge initial investment and would probably still be, at this point, more expensive to produce than metal minis. If you don't understand the difference between material use and production, you should probably do some research. White Dwarf didn't get worse, you got older and stopped being so excited about it. I do miss the random humourous columns by obscure British gamers, but we have the internet for that now. That was pretty much all that changed.
GW is a very tightly run business from my past experience in stocking their products. The retail models they shared worked brilliantly. The 'secrecy policy' is a ridiculous claim - it's not like we ever know what something is going to be before it is released and we see it in person.
Most major retailers are failing pretty hard at the moment. At least Finecast is actually awesome. No, seriously, most people who pay it out have never even worked with it.
In real life the future ain't so GRIMDARK. Don't worry about 'em closing down - the only thing that would kick that off is if this stupidity became a public opinion. This isn't global warming, folks.
candy.man wrote:
1. Confusion over target demographic. GW solely targets school kids with non disposable income yet core demographic are adults with a job (i.e. people who can actually afford the hobby outside of Christmas and birthdays). GW is also under the opinion that the core demographic will always be around to keep them afloat therefore enabling them to solely target potential future customers…at the expense of the core demographic.
I don't see this as confusion. It's a numbers game.
If you get 20 kids into the hobby and expect them to spend 500 dollars each,
you're getting more than the 1 or 2 veterans who spend 1000 to 2000 dollars in
the same timespan (let's say 2 or 3 years). I'm guessing they have some kind of
estimation as to what those numbers are based on starter box sales, sales off
store demos, and painting/hobby class/beginner event enrollments.
2. Underestimating price elasticity of product. GW has always been able to charge whatever price for their product and people will pay for it however soon it will reach the point where the price is not worth the product versus other entertainment.
I think this will be their problem when targeting the kids.
If they can keep their stores running, they're going to be fine.
If their retail front shuts down, they're going to have to re-imagine their
business model and try to re-build relationships with independent game
stores and distributors.
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"...he could never understand the sense of a contest in which the two adversaries agreed upon the rules." Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
Arctik_Firangi -How can so many people be so wrong? People are surprised that GW doesn't regard the voice of the 'internet', but can you actually hear yourselves?
Prices go up like the prices of everything else in the world goes up. Get a job if you can't afford stuff.
Resin would have required a huge initial investment and would probably still be, at this point, more expensive to produce than metal minis.
If you don't understand the difference between material use and production, you should probably do some research.
White Dwarf didn't get worse, you got older and stopped being so excited about it.
I do miss the random humourous columns by obscure British gamers, but we have the internet for that now.
That was pretty much all that changed.
GW is a very tightly run business from my past experience in stocking their products. The retail models they shared worked brilliantly. The 'secrecy policy' is a ridiculous claim - it's not like we ever know what something is going to be before it is released and we see it in person.
Most major retailers are failing pretty hard at the moment. At least Finecast is actually awesome. No, seriously, most people who pay it out have never even worked with it.
In real life the future ain't so GRIMDARK. Don't worry about 'em closing down - the only thing that would kick that off is if this stupidity became a public opinion. This isn't global warming, folks.
Dude, I had to Bold, Italic and underline the VERY erroneous statements there.
I been collecting WD since '86 - so yeah I can back up this opinion with Facts - The 'Magazine' (IE ADVERTISING BROCHURE) is about 10% of the original quality of work produced.
As for the rest .... just....wow...
"Dakkanaut" not "Dakkaite" Only with Minatures, does size matter...
"Only the living collect a pension"Johannes VII
"If the ork codex and 5th were developed near the same time, any possible nerf will be pre-planned."-malfred
"I'd do it but the GW Website makes my eyes hurt. "Gwar
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MeanGreenStompa - The only chatbot I ever tried talking to insisted I take a stress pill and kept referring to me as Dave, despite my protestations.
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Frazzled[Mod] On Rule #1- No it literally means: be polite. If we wanted less work there would be no OT section.
Chowderhead - God no. If I said Pirates Honor, I would have had to kill him whether he won or lost.
One must assume that he's attempting sarcasm on a grand scale. Only the whitest of White Knights at this place believe all that nonsense. Not even Kan could agree with all of that.
I'm more interested in exactly how many copies of Dread Fleet exist, how many were allocated to web orders and what went to stores, and how many of the people buying them now are doing it because they genuinely want the game or because they think they can take advantage of the limited/collectable nature of the product and make a profit on eBay by selling it after it's gone.
I think GW will be fine, for as long as I've been in the hobby GW's business model has been built on bad mistake after bad mistake. As long as they continue to get new kids into the hobby things will be fine. I also see GW slowly handing out its IP (video games, movies) as a major source of revenue in the future
Too many loyal fans and a treadmill of newbuy bye byes keeping the company afloat
All things being equal they will continue to stumble from weakness to weakness for a good while longer yet.
GWs release document puts the figure at 65000 (sixty five thousand) copies of dreadfleet made.
I would assume that two thirds would be sold online with the remainder going to GW shops and other retailers.
Also assuming that the ran at GWs average cost (27%) and that their retail cost are set aside then GW would be looking at £4.5M turnover with >£3M additional profit.
Final assumption it sells.
How do you promote your Hobby? - Legoburner "I run some crappy wargaming website "
I've always found discussions regarding GW's price increases interesting as it relates to customer satisfaction vs need and wants. Now to be fair, I've only been playing 40K for about 7 years but like just about everyone else I know who plays in the tournament circuits I have collected at least 5 armies during my career. Since I started playing A box of your basic troops has gone from about $20.00 to $37.25. in fact the cost of just about everything they make has doubled in price since I started buying figures for my first army. You might be asking why GW has so drastically raised prices but the answer is simple. Its always been about the money and nothing else. They don't care about me, you or anyone. They just want to sell us over priced little plastic army men and tanks so we can beat the crap out of each other on a 4x6 foot table littered with plastic pieces of terrain which we also purchased from them. The problem I see rapidly approaching for GW is the price ceiling of their products. Considering soft back codex's are now $33.00 how much more is anyone willing to pay? Want to add a Storm Raven to your army, well you can for $66.00 plus tax at your local battle bunker. At least until next May when the price of that S.R. will undoubtedly climb to $69.50 or something much higher and more ridicules. The underlining truth is that we all choose to play this game, a game that I myself enjoy. However I'm not so eager anymore to buy anything extra for one of my armies unless I see it as a near necessity. I would also add that none of my friends has quit the game, but none of them are willing to risk the financial commitment of investing into a completely new armies. I love my Necron's but the only thing I plan on buying to support my local store when the new army is released might just be the codex and nothing else if I can avoid it. Which honestly makes me kinda sad, but its the reality of a war-gamers life. We all choose where to spend our time, our money and our lives. If GW has given you a bad case of sticker shock then invest your time, energy and funds into something else. GW isn't going to miss you or your money because there is always someone out there to take your place in line at the cash register. Just my 2 cents.......
Although your post isn't overly long, am finding it hard to read mate.
Even though it would normally be acceptable, sometimes it is worth just breaking up the text for ease of reading on the screen.
Thanks
It's premature to have this discussion. Until they release their financials after all of these changers were made, it's impossible to say that these things were even detrimental to them. It seems safe to say that cutting off large swathes of the world from your customer base will hurt you in the pocketbook but who knows right now, really.
lord_blackfang wrote: Respect to the guy who subscribed just to post a massive ASCII dong in the chat and immediately get banned.
Flinty wrote: The benefit of slate is that its.actually a.rock with rock like properties. The downside is that it's a rock
ironicsilence wrote:I think GW will be fine, for as long as I've been in the hobby GW's business model has been built on bad mistake after bad mistake. As long as they continue to get new kids into the hobby things will be fine. I also see GW slowly handing out its IP (video games, movies) as a major source of revenue in the future
There was i thinking that profits not keeping inline with price increases means that they aren't getting the numbers of kiddies anymore.
Manchu - "But so what? The Bible also says the flood destroyed the world. You only need an allegorical boat to tackle an allegorical flood."
Shespits "Anything i see with YOLO has half naked eleventeen year olds Girls. And of course booze and drugs and more half naked elventeen yearolds Girls. O how i wish to YOLO again!"
Rubiksnoob "Next you'll say driving a stick with a Scandinavian supermodel on your lap while ripping a bong impairs your driving. And you know what, I'M NOT GOING TO STOP, YOU FILTHY COMMUNIST"
Thaylen wrote:When you can sell 5 cents worth of plastic for $40-80 it is kinda hard to go outta business, even with unprofitable stores and bad sales policies.
The material costs are the least of their problems though.
notprop wrote:GWs release document puts the figure at 65000 (sixty five thousand) copies of dreadfleet made.
I would assume that two thirds would be sold online with the remainder going to GW shops and other retailers.
Also assuming that the ran at GWs average cost (27%) and that their retail cost are set aside then GW would be looking at £4.5M turnover with >£3M additional profit.
Final assumption it sells.
Sounds about right. I think the print run on Space Hulk was 75000. Should be interesting to see how the sell through occurs. I'd expect that all things equal DF will go slower than SH, but we have an added factor of people knowing this time around that they really aren't reprinting, and SH prices going up quite a bit if you want the box now vs on release.
I was allowed to buy less copies of DF than SH, which only means my sales rep and trade sales were allocated less copies.
On topic: GW is in a stronger position than anyone else making miniatures games. I see no particular reason why they would suddenly go away. Long term it's pointless to speculate (not that it stops anyone). The economy has more effect on GW longterm than anything else.
Mike at Showcase
....and lo!.....The Age of Sigmar came to an end when Saint Veetock and his hamster legions smote the false Sigmar and destroyed the bubbleverse and lead the true believers back to the Old World.
GW will not fail over night and yet it will. What does it mean?
As others pointed out they are loosing sales and compensate this with lowering costs (thus loosing productivity!! and quality) and higher prices (which reduce sales to veterans).
VETERANS are the customer base in sucha business but they are severely put off by GWs attitude towards them (Finecast, price rise, fixation on "schoolkids")
A price rise of 15 % like 2009-2010 should, other things unchanged, gain 15% plus in sales. Now of course higher prices means less sales BUT if that price effect is slowed down to an increase in sales UNDER 1 % you have seriously overdone your pricing.
"Schoolkids" stop buying once the money from home runs dry and they realize how much work they need to put in building and painting. Look on ebay. Lots of halfstarted armies for sale from "my son prefers PC games lol". Concentrating on THAT age group looses them millions every year.
There will be a point not far away where sales will dramatically crash. GW will complain, as in 1992, about CCGs and computer games. Well PC Games ahve the advantage that I do not need to buy Addons every time another company releases another game (40k army..) to stay halfway competitive.
To those who are fixed on "they still make profit". Have you checked WHERE those profits are coming from? Analysing annual reports pays me a nice amount of money and what I see in the figures makes me tell everybody to keep their hands off. The stock bounced from unde 200 to 450. That is called a "technical" move - nothing to do with the company being well. On the contrary. In my opinion we will see how rotten GW is in their next annual reports as they can no longer hide the crap.
Now let us assume all goes to hell and GW is really closing, what will their IP be worth? Exactly the amount someone else is willing to pay. GW has seriously pi..ed off a lot of companies by bullying smaller competitors and sueing the crap out of half the civilised world. I do not think this will actually increase any bids for their IP. Kirby doesn´t care just like the rest of the management. they actually despise the "immatures" that play Warhammer / 40K. Not a healthy start into a business relationship...
There will be Space Marines and most likely cheaper for a while. But they will not be from GW shuld they continue their current course.
Their dominance of the market is certainly trembling, systems like Warmachine and Infinity are turning people away from GW, but I don't see it doing much. Their lifeblood for the past 15 years has been cash-ins on kids with disposable income that will buy up some SM battleforces and then quit, and finecast, price rises and the embargo aren't going to dent that at all.
sebigboss79 wrote:
There will be a point not far away where sales will dramatically crash. GW will complain, as in 1992, about CCGs and computer games. Well PC Games ahve the advantage that I do not need to buy Addons every time another company releases another game (40k army..) to stay halfway competitive.
The plural of anecdote is not data... but I go to two different wargames clubs, one of which is mostly full of ex-40K gamers who got annoyed with the prices and switched to Flames of War a couple of years ago, and the other of which is mostly full of ex-40K gamers who got annoyed with the prices and switched to Infinity a few months ago.
I'm not a GW-basher. I'd love to see them succeed. But they're like an old friend who has turned to self-harm or drug addiction. I can only take so many incidents where I go over for a quiet game and have to clean blood off the walls or call an ambulance. GW, stop shooting yourselves in the foot, and we can be friends again, but till then, we have very little in common any more other than memories.
DISCLAIMER- not sure if the following is relevant:
Spoiler:
I just looked at GW on the London stock exchange. Their stock was WAY below the norm, about 225, in mid-08. Since then, it's climbed steadily, up to 460 in march of this year, followed by a decline to about 430 until august, where it spiked to a bit over 470. Now it's down to 430 (at least if this graph was currently updated). I'm not a stock browser, but this WOULD indicate the company is doing okay, at least on the surface. What these numbers don't represent is satisfaction. As previously pointed out, GW aims for short-term profits from uneducated kids (when I say uneducated, I mean about the work the hobby takes). That is reflected by a good profit, but ONLY IN THE SHORT TERM. This doesn't bulid up a base of repeat customers. To those of us who know (and I probably don't), repeat customers are what can form the backbone of a company in hard times. When GW hits those hard times, and they WILL like every other company, they will most likely find a broken back. And when they do, something will change. We can only speculate on what that change will be.
Assuming you're still paying attention at this point, can anyone tell me what GW was marketing back in 08 that would cause such a low point?
Space Marines (Anything but BA or GK): 6k
Tau: 3k
Thought for the day 
