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.

Linkdead wrote:

You may be right in principle, but we are talking about a company, where the managers are hostile to designers AND customers AND produce sinking revenue, sinking customer numbers AND drain the company for millions of personal profit for years.

Yea exactly like every other company in the world. GW are not laying off waves and waves of employees, so I guess they are doing alright.

I believe you are mistaken Massive layoffs starting back in April 2010 in the US turning most of the GW stores into one shop stores. Reduction in hours in games stores since 2006. 55 hours then 35 hours now at my local GW store. I could go on but information similar to this has been posted many of times in this site.

With bean counters in control, Rackham might have survived. With a creative person like Jean that took charge, everything is now gone.

Adam LongWalker wrote:

Linkdead wrote:

You may be right in principle, but we are talking about a company, where the managers are hostile to designers AND customers AND produce sinking revenue, sinking customer numbers AND drain the company for millions of personal profit for years.

Yea exactly like every other company in the world. GW are not laying off waves and waves of employees, so I guess they are doing alright.

I believe you are mistaken Massive layoffs starting back in April 2010 in the US turning most of the GW stores into one shop stores. Reduction in hours in games stores since 2006. 55 hours then 35 hours now at my local GW store. I could go on but information similar to this has been posted many of times in this site.

Yes +1

Completely agree with the OP. I just wrote a quite large post in the 'what do you think of WD?' thread that's kicking around on the same part of the forum.

I think the changes started to happen when GW was made into a public company. For those of us who have followed its policies for years, perhaps have worked for the company and were therefore able to view the changes firsthand, it's definitely been a sorry site to see.

I do think however, as the OP says, GW is most certainly not alone in this regard. In fact the companies that aren't directed solely by bean counters, and the people who follow them mindlessly, are in a minority. However I think when you have a company, such as GW, where innovation and imagination are central to it's survival, then it is perhaps more visible than in other industries. No doubt some of the recent releases have been fabulous (the DE), and it was good to see them try something a bit different in Dreadfleet, but it's more a case of 'what could have been' - I think certainly they could have many more of us drooling over their releases if they were a bit more bold with their work rate and the kind of stuff they put out.

I do think that the evidence is in the dropping sales, and in the increasing popularity of other systems. GW's position in the industry has changed from sole leader in a monopoly, to a giant amongst other, younger, hungrier and more dynamic opponents, and some of her enemies are approaching the gates.

The OP postulated a theory for which he has no credible info to back up. For all we know, the changes that have been made have kept GW afloat, while going the same course might have made it crash. Unless you are in the top circles of the company and have intimate knowledge, you can't say for sure.

BrassScorpion wrote:

Worglock wrote:I kind of think that the past year or two has been the most creative that GW has been in quite awhile.

Agreed, but it's also been the most draconian regarding staffing cuts, changes to Games Day events that make them a travesty compared to their former selves, price increases, lack of communication with customers, undesirable changes to White Dwarf mailing, Finecast and the problems that persist with the quality of many of those models, and on and on.

Staffing cuts: as an IT guy that sees *exactly* how many people have gone out the door, I can assure you that the "draconian" cuts that GW made in the past 2-ish years were small. GW took a bunch of 2-3 man retail shops and turned them into 1 man retail shops. The company I work for turned 350 8+ man stores into 250 3 or 4 man stores. Borders just turned all of their stores into 0 man stores. The economy sucks.

Games Day stopped being good over 10 years ago.

Price Increases: That drum gets beaten every year. Nothing is going down in price except for the value of your house.

Communication: GW stopped talking to us years ago. Nothing new.

White Dwarf: We went from "White Dwarf is terrible" to "I can't get White Dwarf soon enough". I still get mine ahead of time.

Finecast: I haven't noticed a significant change in quality. I returned 2 Chaos Champions out of the very first batch, haven't had any flawed models since then.

Pains me to say it but Worgyboy does point out some things that i have noticed as well.

On the flip side, Kroot I think that you have been getting over excited on the GW criticism so much that you are starting to believe all of the things you list are facts.

True GW are taking measures (some a bit over the top) to rebalance some issues but he whole "they hate customers" line just seems a bit tired at this point.

Whatever my own hyperbole, I don't really think that GW out and out 'hates' the customers. I think they show disdain for them, and feel they can treat them in whatever manner they deem appropriate. At worst we're a necessary evil.

But 'hate'? I doubt that.

Worglock wrote:
Staffing cuts: as an IT guy that sees *exactly* how many people have gone out the door, I can assure you that the "draconian" cuts that GW made in the past 2-ish years were small. GW took a bunch of 2-3 man retail shops and turned them into 1 man retail shops. The company I work for turned 350 8+ man stores into 250 3 or 4 man stores. Borders just turned all of their stores into 0 man stores. The economy sucks.

You are compairing apples to oranges and as usual failing badly. How many emplyees did GW fired with this move and how many did they have in the first place? You can't compare raw numbers, you have to compare percentages.

A company that had 10 employees and fired 8 is in worse shape than one that had 10000 and fired 80!

Worglock wrote:
Games Day stopped being good over 10 years ago.

Curiously, around the same time that GW wen't public, other than that I agree with you on this.

Worglock wrote:
Price Increases: That drum gets beaten every year. Nothing is going down in price except for the value of your house.

PP dropped the prices of units and warjacks when they switched them to plastic... GW increased theirs when they made the same move AND did it again when they switched to resin!

Also, the price increases that GW has gone through either directly or indirectly through repackagings have been alot higher than the inflation, so yeah, you are wrong again...

Worglock wrote:
Communication: GW stopped talking to us years ago. Nothing new.

Again, curiously enough, they stopped the comunication at around the same time that they wen't public (closed down their forums, stopped with the model previews and release date announcements, etc).

Worglock wrote:
White Dwarf: We went from "White Dwarf is terrible" to "I can't get White Dwarf soon enough". I still get mine ahead of time.

Now, you are doing one of your funny, funny sweeping generalisations! I couldn't care less how soon WD arrives, since I stopped buying it regularly over 6 years ago (I bought 2 issues in the past 6 years), but for you to condone the atitude that makes people who have a subscription receive the magazine AFTER it is available in stores is particularly hilarious and really makes me think that you are beeing paid by GW to try and influence the publics views of the company in these forums.

Worglock wrote:
Finecast: I haven't noticed a significant change in quality. I returned 2 Chaos Champions out of the very first batch, haven't had any flawed models since then.

Take of your white helm, its impairing your eye sight...

Quality control on Failcast HAS improved significantly but it STILL isn't up to par for what you pay for the privilege, GW's recent release of hobby supplies where even the marketing blurb sais that they are to be used to fix Failcast models is just the icing on the cake.

I have heard the ' ...you can only rip off a customer once... ' several times as a warning to certain managers wanting to 'maximise profits' at the expence of long term growth.
As most buisnesses want to retain customers and grow thier buisness by positive word of mouth.

However, in GW plc case, they seem to see this as a challenge , how much can we rip them off by before they wise up and leave?

I think Lanrak and Kroothawk nailed it.

The minute a company goes PLC they become answerable to only one group of people, the shareholders.

All the shareholders care about is short-term cash gain, not long-term grow by investment (which may hopefully lead to larger gains in the long-term future). It's all about 'gimme! gimme! gimme!, now! now! now!'

Not that GW are the only ones, pretty much every PLC out there is doing the same (except perhaps Amazon, which apparently is getting the shareholders panties in a twist).

Leigen_Zero wrote:I think Lanrak and Kroothawk nailed it.

The minute a company goes PLC they become answerable to only one group of people, the shareholders.

All the shareholders care about is short-term cash gain, not long-term grow by investment (which may hopefully lead to larger gains in the long-term future). It's all about 'gimme! gimme! gimme!, now! now! now!'

Not that GW are the only ones, pretty much every PLC out there is doing the same (except perhaps Amazon, which apparently is getting the shareholders panties in a twist).

Not al PLCS or comapnies that have invstment made are like this. Institutiosn investing assume that their investment should grow. Rightly so.

Amazon is getting shareholders panties in twist is becasue Kindle development has taken a lot of cash. I read that margins may be as low as 4% (either across the board of just for kindle).

Leigen_Zero wrote:The minute a company goes PLC they become answerable to only one group of people, the shareholders.

Unfortunately a lot of people here think that that fact alone not only gives them the right to pull all the gak they do, but that it actually makes it acceptable.

£60 shipping for a pot of Skull White from the UK to Australia folks. £60. Yeah. That's 'acceptable'.

GW are not laying off waves and waves of employees, so I guess they are doing alright.

They already did and more than once. There were massive layoffs back around 2004 and then again just about 2 years ago when they decided that nearly all their smaller stores would have only a single employee. As a result, most GW stores in the US are now open only 5 days per week because they have no staff of which to speak, just a single store operator.

PhantomViper wrote:
PP dropped the prices of units and warjacks when they switched them to plastic... GW increased theirs when they made the same move

Nope. All the plastic 'jacks were more expensive than the metals. Some by 25%. Only the medium-based units got cheaper (5 plastic guys for the cost of 3 metal guys). I don't recall a single GW model getting more expensive when it was switched from metal to plastic.

There's plenty of real reasons to dislike GW, no need to make them up.

General Hobbs wrote:But this also doesn't tell you whether they are hobbyists. Or are "creative". Mark Wells may not be, but Tom Kirby is. The old US CEO Ernie Baker was both. John STallard was a gamer, and he started out working in the mail room of the company.

There's nothing in Kirby's bio that suggests he was professionally involved in any kind of creative work. At one point he was a tax inspector, fer cryin' out loud.

The anchor around GM's neck is actually its pension obligations and entitlement-esque policies. The American auto industry had to go through a period of hard knocks in the 70s-80s when Asian-origin autos revealed just how competitively they could be made, and American manufacturing had to become more competitive in general. I would say that that particular input has largely been flushed out

GW has no structural handicap like a giant block of entitlements. That's the big glaring difference between the two companies from the start.

lord_blackfang wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:
PP dropped the prices of units and warjacks when they switched them to plastic... GW increased theirs when they made the same move

Nope. All the plastic 'jacks were more expensive than the metals. Some by 25%. Only the medium-based units got cheaper (5 plastic guys for the cost of 3 metal guys). I don't recall a single GW model getting more expensive when it was switched from metal to plastic.

There's plenty of real reasons to dislike GW, no need to make them up.

Only because you are compairing the prices of the older metal warjacks that where made 5+ years ago and that PP never really increased their prices to match the current metal prices and was selling with almost no profit margin. Compare the cost of a more recently released metal jack (Thorn, Ol'Rowdy and Thunderhead are somewhat examples of this), with its plastic counterpart and the plastic model is cheaper.

As for GW, what was the price of the metal dreadnought and metal terminators again? Care to know how many plastic Catachans I could buy for the price of the current Cadians? Wan't to compare the price of the "new" failcast models also?

If you are going to throw "facts" around at least put them in context.

Those are all character 'jacks. I just checked the Cryx and Cygnar line and there isn't a single metal non-character 'jack that is more expensive than the generic plastic 'jack.

As for metal Dreadnoughts and Terminators, I remember what I paid for them back in '99 and it was more than what the plastics cost now. Even accounting for the beating the Pound took in the meantime, the current prices on those things look good to me.

IG infantry? You got me there. That is outrageous.

sourclams wrote:The anchor around GM's neck is actually its pension obligations and entitlement-esque policies. The American auto industry had to go through a period of hard knocks in the 70s-80s when Asian-origin autos revealed just how competitively they could be made, and American manufacturing had to become more competitive in general. I would say that that particular input has largely been flushed out

GW has no structural handicap like a giant block of entitlements. That's the big glaring difference between the two companies from the start.

GW doesn't necessarilly have to, due to the more robust social wellfare system in the UK and EU. In the U.S., it has moved its operations from a union-based state with potentially higher legacy costs to a "right-to-work" state (i.e., right to fire your ass for no reason state). Although, IIRC, GW UK did have lots of short term legacy costs for the redundancies (UK term for firings/lay offs) of its operations there; but those costs should have been resolved by now, which is also probably helping its current outlook somewhat.

GW's problems come/came from the massive amount of debt incurred in order to improve its plastic productions, as well as expand its BAM store operations, and its overseas production operations. An added idiocy was the borrowing of money in order to pay a dividend several years back. It then went several years with no dividend, but I believe it again issued a modest dividend for the first time recently. The critique that GW's accounts merely serve as a piggy bank for several of the larger stockholders is also a valid criticism as well. (There are probably 4-5 other major problems as well that I have merely forgotten about.) GW's more recent balance sheets have suggested that it has addressed at least some of these issues, and is making baby steps back to being in the black again. And as much as it is downplayed in its financials, the current state of the world economy hasn't helped either...

H.B.M.C. wrote:

Leigen_Zero wrote:The minute a company goes PLC they become answerable to only one group of people, the shareholders.

Unfortunately a lot of people here think that that fact alone not only gives them the right to pull all the gak they do, but that it actually makes it acceptable.

£60 shipping for a pot of Skull White from the UK to Australia folks. £60. Yeah. That's 'acceptable'.

Ok. You win. You're absolutely right. Everyone that feels that they are affected by GW terrible actions should immediately boycott them in all forms. Don't spend any money on GW products and don't give them any kind of word of mouth exposure anywhere.

That'll fix them.

wildger wrote:With bean counters in control, Rackham might have survived. With a creative person like Jean that took charge, everything is now gone.

Funny how that as with most things, the best route is usually the one that finds the happy medium between the two extremes.

Mr. Burning wrote:*le snip*

Not al PLCS or comapnies that have invstment made are like this. Institutiosn investing assume that their investment should grow. Rightly so.

Amazon is getting shareholders panties in twist is becasue Kindle development has taken a lot of cash. I read that margins may be as low as 4% (either across the board of just for kindle).

Exactly, Amazon's shareholders want to see (imaginary made-up figure) 30-40% margin RIGHT NOW, and couldn't give a crap about what happens in 2-3 years time. Amazon themselves, on the other hands, don't mind a 4% margin now, because they know when everyone owns a kindle in 2-3 years time they will have a substantially higher margin due to everyone buying books from the Amazon bookstore for their Amazon kindles...

Yeah some companies on the stock exchange are like Amazon, but lets face it, the vast majority have to pander to the every whim of fethers in flashy suits looking to make a lot of money quickly, and couldn't give a damn about the long-term future of the company, so long as they get their big fat cheque right now...

H.B.M.C. wrote:
Unfortunately a lot of people here think that that fact alone not only gives them the right to pull all the gak they do, but that it actually makes it acceptable.
£60 shipping for a pot of Skull White from the UK to Australia folks. £60. Yeah. That's 'acceptable'.

Ouch, just ouch (but then again, it's exactly what GW want, make the shipping nigh on unaffordable and you HAVE to buy the ridiculously priced local GW stuff...

Hi again.
GW plc behave like they have the ONLY product available, and so they can charge inflated prices, because people dont have a chioce.
However , as there are lots of alternative sources /products , GW plc ARE pricing themselves out of buisness.(As the sales volumes for the last 6 years show.)

gorgon wrote:

General Hobbs wrote:But this also doesn't tell you whether they are hobbyists. Or are "creative". Mark Wells may not be, but Tom Kirby is. The old US CEO Ernie Baker was both. John STallard was a gamer, and he started out working in the mail room of the company.

There's nothing in Kirby's bio that suggests he was professionally involved in any kind of creative work. At one point he was a tax inspector, fer cryin' out loud.

I've met the man. He plays wargames.

Which does not make him a creative professional. I know that's not exactly what you were saying in your original post...I was just pointing out that a tax inspector is basically the exact opposite of a creative professional.