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 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
I am hoping that GW has a major collapse, kinda like the crusty old man who has a heart attack and sees the errors of his ways. Being protective of your brand and product is one thing, but it seems more and more that GW is getting drunk on its own power.

Who are you and what have you done with SoloFalcon?

Took the words right out of my mouth there. That post was a bit of a head scratcher. Not Solo's usual spiel at all.


OT: very interesting read that was. Shows really how much gw need to just die and be bought out before its too late.

Question would be, Who could buy them out, or would its IPs just get chopped up and sold off.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
I am hoping that GW has a major collapse, kinda like the crusty old man who has a heart attack and sees the errors of his ways. Being protective of your brand and product is one thing, but it seems more and more that GW is getting drunk on its own power.

Who are you and what have you done with SoloFalcon?

Give it long enough, and even the most ardent supporters resolve will begin to crack.

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
Question would be, Who could buy them out, or would its IPs just get chopped up and sold off.

It's way too big to just disappear, which is why I am hoping it dies soon and is picked up by someone who realises the potential the game has if they don't do what GW did and interact with their customers and try to keep the vets coming back for more rather than try to push them out.

 M4cr0Dutch wrote:
Spacemarine paintball. Really

This thread literally makes me feel ill. I can remember when FASA went down and it was a very hurtful experience. I wouldn't wish that on any gaming community, but at the same time, GW needs to wake up to itself.

What exactly happened to FASA? not to hijack. but all I can find is they left production and held the licenses.

 -Loki- wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
I am hoping that GW has a major collapse, kinda like the crusty old man who has a heart attack and sees the errors of his ways. Being protective of your brand and product is one thing, but it seems more and more that GW is getting drunk on its own power.

Who are you and what have you done with SoloFalcon?

Give it long enough, and even the most ardent supporters resolve will begin to crack.

Don't get my words twisted. I like GW and their games, but to have made a showing like that at a distributors meeting is pretty shameful. They need to get their act straight before the collapse is permanent.

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
Question would be, Who could buy them out, or would its IPs just get chopped up and sold off.

It's way too big to just disappear, which is why I am hoping it dies soon and is picked up by someone who realises the potential the game has if they don't do what GW did and interact with their customers and try to keep the vets coming back for more rather than try to push them out.

Going by current trends, CMON will buy them, rerelease 5th edition and convert everything to even more overpriced resin.

Oh no! GW failed its professionalism save!

That is a really bad showing especially when you consider they are supposed to be #1 in the market and give the worst showing whilst skipping out on things. Then you look at all the other companies and they are engaging with the people and look like they give a (bleep). It is just another step down a slippery slope.

Can we please stop saying "Go the way of FASA".

FASA didn't go out of business they chose to shut down as the owners didn't see the miniature gaming industry going anywhere.

And FASA still exists...

 Goliath wrote:

 Old Man Ultramarine wrote:
Brandan had an assistant and venue worker on the computer. Never got the screen up.

Other 3 threads do not involve my personal observations. Anyone who was there can confirm what happened.

If there was both an assistant and a venue worker trying to get a single computer working then it makes me think that there might have been a technical issue.

Umm, no! They didn't even have the computer plugged in. It's like they walked in room 3 minutes before I did and held on for dear life. Both admitted to not being technically savy.

Please keep in mind that Brendan Bell is the North American director of sales. He was leading the seminar.

That's too bad. I rather like the Riptide.

 The Shadow wrote:
Oh no! GW failed its professionalism save!

I don't think they have one.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 The Shadow wrote:
Oh no! GW failed its professionalism save!

I don't think they have one.

Sure do! It's 2++ with a re-roll.

Still a shame about this show, but I've been in those shoes before and can sympathize.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
We already did KK. As puma said, it holds about the same content as the first reply, only it uses more words and amps up the derision.

Only I agreed that some of his points were valid and that it was pretty lame. I just disagreed with the premise that a company sales rep would provide answers from a corporate strategy standpoint.

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
The recent news and trends are starting to give me a uneasy feeling for GW, one I have never really experienced in the many years I have enjoyed this hobby.

I deleted the rest of the post in the interest of saving space.

*The following is purely opinion. It is based on nothing but a slight feeling and some personal experience. I have no internal knowledge, nor any axe to grind.*

I kind of wonder if GW is in negotiations with some company to be bought out, either through purchase of majority stock of a complete conversion back to private holding by an investment company like Blackstone or something similar.

The reason I wonder this is based upon some personal experience when I worked for a publicly traded financial institution which was working behind the scenes to sell off our division to a competitor. The company I worked for started mandating policies from headquarters that seemed to not make a lot of sense from the long term point of view, but did act to make the company appear much more proflitable on paper in the near term. We stopped focusing at all on any degree of growth and instead worked towards making the bottom line seem ever more impressive. When people left the company for one reason or another, approval to hire a replacement was not given. Offices locations were merged. Bonus structures were changed away from growth goals and towards percentage profitability goals. Regional meetings were cancelled. In a nutshell, anything that would result in short term profitability was favored over any activity that served as an investment towards future profitability.

Less than a year after these policies were put in place, my employer announced the sale of my division to Citibank.

The more I hear about the actions recently taken by GW, the more it reminds me of the policies that my former employer (Washington Mutual Bank) took leading up to the sale of our division to Citi. {FYI, the sale of our division took place in 2003, prior to WaMu's collapse in 2008-2009.}

ITT - people who think that GW is a wargaming company. They make toy models, not serious tabletop wargames.

Having said that, it makes you wonder what the point of showing up at all was. Either do something properly, or don't do it at all. Maybe the guy just wanted a day out of the office or something.

edit - having properly read the OP rather than glancing through the replies, it's actually not that bad. They failed at getting a computer set-up (boo evil corporate dickheads) and refused to give the journalists there a copy of the GW release schedule for the next couple of years. Hardly Enron.

 BryllCream wrote:
ITT - people who think that GW is a wargaming company. They make toy models, not serious tabletop wargames.

Having said that, it makes you wonder what the point of showing up at all was. Either do something properly, or don't do it at all. Maybe the guy just wanted a day out of the office or something.

Might simply be that someone higher up the food chain thought it necessary for GW to have a presence at the show.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Why hope that a company that hires thousands of people, ships products around the world, and makes games loved may thousands collapse?

Closure of stores in Australia, redundancy of staff, shops run by a single manager, increase in costs, loss of profits and worldwide reports of loss.

The beginnings of major problems and they went down the path of changing the trade agreement regarding online sales and further severing ways of selling their product outside of their own limited scope.

I'm no expert, but when so much negative PR surrounds something so expensive, and the icing on the cake begins to show signs of lacking customer service (to customers and businesses), I know that this is a problem for any business.

IMO, CEO will golden handshake in the next decade before the boat starts to sink showing the long-term damage of recent transpired events. I could be wrong, I probably am, I don't get paid half a million to decide the fate of a billion dollar business. But everyone agrees GW need a wake up call on their practices and treatment of consumers (friendly GW staff members not withstanding) but even with mounting pressures on them now with less staff, and less excuses, how long can it really last?

 Kanluwen wrote:

 BryllCream wrote:
ITT - people who think that GW is a wargaming company. They make toy models, not serious tabletop wargames.

Having said that, it makes you wonder what the point of showing up at all was. Either do something properly, or don't do it at all. Maybe the guy just wanted a day out of the office or something.

Might simply be that someone higher up the food chain thought it necessary for GW to have a presence at the show.

They Also had a presence at GAMA this year as well.

 BryllCream wrote:
ITT - people who think that GW is a wargaming company. They make toy models, not serious tabletop wargames.

Having said that, it makes you wonder what the point of showing up at all was. Either do something properly, or don't do it at all. Maybe the guy just wanted a day out of the office or something.

edit - having properly read the OP rather than glancing through the replies, it's actually not that bad. They failed at getting a computer set-up (boo evil corporate dickheads) and refused to give the journalists there a copy of the GW release schedule for the next couple of years. Hardly Enron.

You will excuse anything...

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 BryllCream wrote:
ITT - people who think that GW is a wargaming company. They make toy models, not serious tabletop wargames.

Having said that, it makes you wonder what the point of showing up at all was. Either do something properly, or don't do it at all. Maybe the guy just wanted a day out of the office or something.

edit - having properly read the OP rather than glancing through the replies, it's actually not that bad. They failed at getting a computer set-up (boo evil corporate dickheads) and refused to give the journalists there a copy of the GW release schedule for the next couple of years. Hardly Enron.

You will excuse anything...

Please enlighten me as to how:

a)a group of sales people struggling to set up IT or

b)a refusal to give out release schedules to journalists

is just cause to dislike GW?

And no, I won't excuse anything. If you want to go through my post history you can find posts complaining about many GW kits being discustingly over-priced, complaints about flyer rules, complaints about GW's refusal to diversify the formats of their rules, dickishly miss-leading sales practices, a refusal to reflect the actual effectiveness of their units in their literature (such as it is), etc.

But if something's bad in one area, it must be bad in another right? No. Try to look beyond a black and white view of things.

Where do you get journalists from? This was a presentation by GW sales reps to store owners....

If you see every public presentation of GW as part of a major anti-marketing campaign to artificially lower sales, all makes sense.

 -Loki- wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
Question would be, Who could buy them out, or would its IPs just get chopped up and sold off.

It's way too big to just disappear, which is why I am hoping it dies soon and is picked up by someone who realises the potential the game has if they don't do what GW did and interact with their customers and try to keep the vets coming back for more rather than try to push them out.

Going by current trends, CMON will buy them, rerelease 5th edition and convert everything to even more overpriced resin.

And then bitch and moan at how ungrateful customers are, how they don't realize that CMON is doing them a favor and that it is someone elses fault and out of their control.

 filbert wrote:
Where do you get journalists from? This was a presentation by GW sales reps to store owners....

Okay then. A bunch of store owners demanding that the GW staff there spontaniously put their own jobs on the line and release company secrets. Refusing to disclose the details of a release schedule that is specifically intended to be kept within the company, does not make make you a dick.

a release schedule that is specifically intended to be kept within the company

THAT makes you a dick - no, not a dick, but a stupid businessman. A policy like this (meaning believing you don't have to invest into marketing and advertising) nearly brought the famous Montblanc pen company down, if you don't believe this to be stupid.

 BryllCream wrote:

Okay then. A bunch of store owners demanding that the GW staff there spontaniously put their own jobs on the line....

I dont get that from the OP. What I do see is a bunch of store owners, one of which, the OP, is new to the business, being given a shoddy presentation by a high echelon GW sales manager who completely fails to allay some very valid concerns that they have over policy and direction. They aren't asking for trade secrets; they are asking for some info to help assuage doubt. That doesn't seem that unreasonable to me really.

 oni wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 The Shadow wrote:
Oh no! GW failed its professionalism save!

I don't think they have one.

Sure do! It's 2++ with a re-roll.

Still a shame about this show, but I've been in those shoes before and can sympathize.

They are very, very good at rolling ones, then.

The Chapter House case has helped to reveal just how shambolic GW's management actually, genuinely is.

I mean ultimately, it is this rep's job to sell GW to FLGS and the bottom line is he is doing a spectacularly bad job at it. Whether that is down to him or because of corporate failings, is open to interpretation but it is a very pertinent point that there seems to be a certain level of discontent amongst independent retailers and GW for whatever reason are failing to address that.