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Pipboy101 wrote:Boycott is not going to work. Financial estimates have GW making more money than every this year and even more next year.

DUH... they keep rasing prices on everything all the while lowering the point value of it in it's new dex.

of course they will make more money by selling more stuff, at a higher price.


my answer to this??

http://www.flamesofwar.com/
http://privateerpress.com/

but if im REALLY in the mood for some 40k, then i look no further then.

http://www.bartertown.com/trading/
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/forums/show/11.page


but when bartertown or the dakka swap shop cant give me the GW fix i need, then a break down and spend $13.25 to get ONE fething SOB W/ heavy bolter.... and then i feal like a tool.

This thread is actually designed to test that.

Interesting. So is this only the first step in a longer term plan then?

Well, I've held off on this one for some time, but I feel that now is the time for me to say this;



I'd like to preface this by saying I do not in any way object to GW protecting their Intellectual Property. It is their legal right and responsibility to do so, so I have no argument with them on that.

What I do disagree with is their heavy-handed tactics when dealing with supporters of their company and hobby. My objections stem from wayyyy back when they removed their products from online retailers as a method of better controlling the availability of discounted items. I've dealt with this a lot in the firearms industry, as many companies have "Minimum Advertised Prices" as a condition of their continued distribution to a specific store or chain. It's not hard to get around, but it does show us that certain companies (Sig Sauer for example) feel that their products must have a price-range attached to them that accurately reflects their image of quality. Whether the item sells for that is unimportant, but the illusion of quality that is created by the inflated advertised price is important. By removing their products from the various discount retailers, Games Workshop was only trying to protect their price-point and increase revenue from direct sales, but all they really achieved was to annoy the consumer by making purchases slightly more difficult. In the past 10 years, I have maybe purchased $100 worth of items directly from GW, whereas I've probably spent $6000-$8000 on products from independent retailers with at least 20% discounts.

This was the first in a number of decisions that would seem to make sense in most other retail markets. But in the wargames world, where some companies live and die on the strength of the community, I believe it has been a mistake. There has always been detractors and"haters" of everything Games Workshop, but I have noticed over the past few years, a growing backlash within the community. The utter lack of consistency in their treatment of customers, who their very existence depends upon, has been ridiculous. I know there will always be the 12 year-olds that force their weak parents to buy them whatever "toy-soldiers" they want, but the true backbone of GW's miniature business is the "hobbyist" or consistent purchaser.


Now, would the company notice a dip in their revenue as a result of a two month boycott? Probably not. In fact, at the end of those two months, they'd notice an up-swing in sales.

Would they notice a dip in revenue, coupled with hundreds of phone-calls, e-mails, and hand-written letters? Most certainly. As a publicly traded company, GW is responsible to their share-holders. If the board begins receiving reports of a boycott, especially one that appears to be far reaching and organized, they will have to pay attention. If they chose to ignore it, and there was some sort of fall-out, they can kiss their jobs good-bye.

I certainly believe, that with a level of organization, that this could be accomplished in a relatively short span of time. Considering the number of users here, on Warseer, The Miniatures Page, Tac Com, Port Maw, and B&C, you have over 200,000 people to draw from. Even a fraction of that number could have a massive impact if they showed a tiny bit of organized behavior.

Ketara or anyone else interested in taking this further can pm me or e-mail me at arklite@live.com

I'd be very interested in helping to organize whatever we can to "save" GW from itself. I enjoy this hobby, I enjoy the people, and I enjoy the miniatures and IP that GW has created. I'd hate to see all that suffer because the company makes a few bad business decisions and chooses to not listen to their customer base.


[/rant]

I'll join the boycott, to be honest I don't have much confidence in it, but I'll join for what it's worth anyway!

Games workshop's attitude has been ridiculous...

although as Arklite, so aptly said:

arklite wrote:
I'd be very interested in helping to organize whatever we can to "save" GW from itself. I enjoy this hobby, I enjoy the people, and I enjoy the miniatures and IP that GW has created. I'd hate to see all that suffer because the company makes a few bad business decisions and chooses to not listen to their customer base.

as he said, GW is ripping itself apart...

my space wolves battleforce will keep me going 4 a LONG time... even so, BOYCOTT!

Sorry Deadshane. I am needing my first gaming fix. I have an urge and i plan to feed the new addiction.

Cease

I'll bite: I join your pledge.
*I will not buy any new GW models/paints/supplies for 2 mos. All gift offers will be by Visa gift guard, paints/brushes will be privateer press. All purchase via Independent owner: Showcase comics for PA area.

My suggestion: tick your pledge on somewhere, signature etc. The starter of the pledge should request a sticky thread, keep a running of screen names. My other suggestion, to really influence you probably need to do it for more than 2 mos. Probably 3-4.

Count me in....I'm spending my cash at Corvus Belli!

I think I'll be looking to some Warmachine in the near future ^_-.

I'm in. I've never directly bought from them anyway i just go on ebay, its alot cheaper there!!

I'll continue not buying things form them :p I'm on a 3 month dry streak as it is.

Im in, and I will even throw a bone to a worthy company makeing awsome models and upgrades!

http://www.maxmini.eu/store/

Check em out!

I point out bits and conversion kits company :
http://www.chapterhousestudios.com/webshop

insaniak wrote:Here's the problem with this plan:

Deadshane1 wrote:This is Christmas, the time of year they count on to make some money off of us fools that dont drop them like a bad habit like they deserve.

Unless things have changed significantly in the last few years, GW's sales are predominantly stable year-round. Whilst Christmas sees a slight increase in sales, from what I've read in their financials in the past, it's nowhere near the sort of boost that you see in many other retail fields, and is not something that they rely on for anything.

I skimmed through their most recent annual summery and couldn't find anything about holiday specific sales. Do you have a source?

Pipboy and ketara really have the right idea here. Buying stocks in GW only increases the value of your opinion. Sending a bunch of letters while other people send wishlists is a good way to make that opinion heard. I'll write GW a letter and maybe an e-mail or two. As for the boycott, I buy off ebay on the rare occasion I have money and I think drowning GW in mail and phone calls will be more effective. Once again though, buying parts of the company is probably the most effective thing you can do.

I worked for an indy store selling GW stuff many many years ago and it always went mad in Christmas and just after when folks had their Christmas money to spend.

I would not ask people to hold off on buying GW stuff, I would ask that they by something else instead from their friendly local stockist or online.

Been considering Warmachine or Hordes? Try it out!
The AT-43 game? or perhaps the AT-43 minis as replacements for certain parts of a 40k army?

Take that Christmas money and treat yourself to something from a company that doesn't gak on it's own fanbase. Exercise your rights as a consumer. Deny GW your money.

Although I fully support this course of action, I severley doubt it will have the desired effect.

Personally, I thikn the best way forward is for the individuals who find issue with GW operating practice to simply support over up and coming companies.

I know this has been said a million times before, but trying to change GW to suit your ideal of how the company should run is pointless.

However, I wish this endeavour great success!

Kilkrazy wrote:GW have no legal right to stop Impact Miniatures making Special Player figures for Blood Bowl. GW do not own IP to protect in the Special Characters.

That would be for a court of law to decide.

GW can certainly, successfully challenge Impact for using their "Blood Bowl" trademark without license. They've shut down larger projects than that, and those projects didn't even say "Warhammer"...

*cough* DreamForge *cough*

I think a boycott, however well intended, is unlikely to communicate the message you want GW to hear. They may see a drop in revenue but are likely to attribute to many other things before "the great Christmas boycott of '09" enters their thinking. If you want them to understand what you are upset about by all means stop buying their product, but each of you write them a formal, respectfully worded letter explaining why you are doing it. No petitions, actually take the time to explain to them why you have specifically had enough and then back it up by spending your money elsewhere. That's a campaign that might actually get somewhere. While not interested in joining a boycott I am tempted to write them a letter just to let them know about some of their actions that do bug me, some of their long-term issues that while I'm not completely fed up with do detract from my enjoyment of their products.

Think about it, if their corporate offices received a few thousand letters over this wouldn't that give them a clearer view of what their customer base felt than some nebulous drop in sales that might easily be attributed to other factors that can affect sales?

RanTheCid wrote:A two month boycott will not do anything.

Sure it will. It will give GW the best January / February sales they've seen this decade!

Go boycott!

OK everyone that is saying that they will not be buying from GW but getting stuff from 3rd party retailers and ebay is not doing anything. You buy from the retailer for 15 to 20 percent off. OK it is not directly from GW, but it is like buying from your FLGS. They get it for 20% off, you buy their stock, they take that money and reorder more from GW to replace what you bought.

Boycott has to be of all sales, direct or indirect.

jabbakahut wrote:I skimmed through their most recent annual summery and couldn't find anything about holiday specific sales. Do you have a source?

I haven't bothered reading their financials for the last couple of years. But it was something mentioned in there a few years back. Kirby mentioning that the Christmas period wasn't huge, but that was to be expected as hobbies tend to be relatively unaffected by seasonal trends.

For what it's worth, the games store I worked at a few years back said more or less the same thing.

Deadshane1 wrote:If you condemn this idea, you are effectively telling GW "Everything you do, be it price hikes, lack of FAQ's or the Bloodbowl fiasco, is fine by me...keep it up. You need not worry about satisfying your fanbase."

Not at all. Anyone 'condemning' (I don't think anyone actually is, but I'll assume the hyperbole is aimed at those saying it won't work) this idea is simply saying that it's not the best way of getting the message across.

However, if enough people are pessimistic about even TRYING to stand up and demand more for our dollars...we will NEVER know if something like this boycott would be successful in the first place.

We can have a fair idea of how successful it will be, based on the fact that someone has tried to organise one of these about every 6 months for the last 10 years...


However, I'm not condemning the idea. If it's what you feel you need to do, go to town. All I'm saying is don't get your hopes up about it actually accomplishing anything, because past experience strongly suggests that it wont.

insaniak wrote:We can have a fair idea of how successful it will be, based on the fact that someone has tried to organise one of these about every 6 months for the last 10 years...

Well, back when I was tight on cash, I went a few years without buying any GW stuff. And before I got into 40k, I guess I went a couple decades before buying any GW stuff. GW didn't seem to suffer much.

But hey, maybe this time will be different?

After all, it's shifting a handful of (direct) sales from Nov/Dec to Jan/Feb, so that'll definitely get the point across to GW!

Assuming their bean counters even notice.

And that would be a very interesting question to ask a GW insider in March, whether they even noticed that the Intarwebz were afury and boycotting their product. If I were a GW shareholder, I'd definitely want to ask that question at their Q1 shareholder meeting.

After all, there's nothing worse than somebody not even knowing that you're boycotting them.

*writing this after reading page 1*

I'm in. I rarely spend money on any GW stuff these days with the exception of new rulebooks. I still have so much stuff lying around, it's not a problem for me.
I also agree on writing a letter.

One thing though: a friend of mine, who used to own the local non-GW store before it closed down, said he didn't feel much sales-improvement over christmas from GW articles anyway. It just starts in January, because a lot of players just go with money or gift-certificates for X-mas.

I hate to bring it to you all, but GW is not even going to notice a bunch of online people not buying anything for 2 months.

This is a completely useless effort.

Im not too sure howbadly you guys want to get your "message" to GW ,
but if you really really want to make an impact easily without making harrassing phone calls to mail order,
here is another method that will make GW cry.

When Dec Tyranids come out , everyone go buy $1000 worth of Tyranid items. By the time they restock after few weeks ,
do it again . If they run out of Tyranids in shop , go with... AOBR sets.

On Dec 26th, RETURN ALL the $1000 things you bought to the shop.

Deadshane1 wrote:21500+ registered users on dakka

Only half of those users spend 100 dollars less over two months because of this thread. (thats a drop in the bucket for many of us really, many of us spend MUCH more than this PER MONTH)

Cost to GW= 1,075,000

What if the Warseer community joins?
Librarium online?
40k online?
B&C?

If this plan went viral to fansites all over, the cost to GW could be significant. If we could cost them 2-3% of their yearly take because of this, do you honestly think that they "wouldnt notice or care". Yea, right.

You know, to take this idea in a slightly different direction...why do people come to sites like Dakka, Warseer, Librarium, 40k Online, B&C? I think a large part of it boils down to these sites providing inspiration to players to participate in the hobby. What if you were able to get the folks that run each of these boards to lock all of their GW-related sections down. Any threads related to GW get locked down. Draconian? Yes. Non-democratic? Yes. But if you can get the admins of these sites on board, and stop all GW-related discussion, I imagine that would make a big point to GW. Sure, people can bail and go to other forums. But if you lock down the biggest ones, it'll take awhile before the folks that don't want to take part can reconstitute a community elsewere. Will it be a hardship on the players who don't want to boycott? Yep, sure will. Does that translate into hardship for GW? It can.

Seems to me that the chokepoint for the online community is the forums themselves. If you can convince the admins of them to participate, I think you've found yourself the leverage to get done what you want.

I can take a boycott or leave it. I mean, I'm pissed about GW's decision to send a C&D to fumbbl.com - it was playing Java Bowl via fumbbl recently that got me inspired to buy new minis to make new Blood Bowl teams to give to a friend so that he could recruit others to play. And now GW does this? I was wondering the other day how it was that VASSAL could get a C&D, but not fumbbl. Now I know. I understand GW wanting to sell more copies of their new BB video game, but this just seems dicked. I've survived without GW before and I can do it again. It's not that hard.

Yeah, your FLGS will *love* you for duping $1k worth of stock back in their lap...

Do it!

Not.

I'm not joining in, because it's pointless. GW isn't going to notice a few whiny people online not buying their stuff. They still have plenty of customers, myself included.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

LunaHound wrote:Im not too sure howbadly you guys want to get your "message" to GW ,
but if you really really want to make an impact easily without making harrassing phone calls to mail order,
here is another method that will make GW cry.

When Dec Tyranids come out , everyone go buy $1000 worth of Tyranid items. By the time they restock after few weeks ,
do it again . If they run out of Tyranids in shop , go with... AOBR sets.

On Dec 26th, RETURN ALL the $1000 things you bought to the shop.

Luna, nobody is going to be stupid enough to blow that much money on GW products and get it refunded. That's a foolish idea, and if you do that you're just castrating yourself financially for a while.

And Tyranids aren't due until January, BTW.

JohnHwangDD wrote:Yeah, your FLGS will *love* you for duping $1k worth of stock back in their lap...

Do it!

Not.

They have no hassle no question return policy! ( aslong as you have receipt )
I never said it'll be playing nice lol ( i thought thats the point of this thread :x )

Can you imagine during Dec , their sales on magically sky rocket? and when they are happy celebrating + trying to figure out what made the boost in sales
+ frenziedly restocking etc etc ,

then on Christmas they have on average 20 box worth of tyranid Per Person , been returned into the store?.

Cheese Elemental wrote:
Luna, nobody is going to be stupid enough to blow that much money on GW products and get it refunded. That's a foolish idea, and if you do that you're just castrating yourself financially for a while.

Its not "blowing money" as you'll be 100% refunded . Castrating myself? if you have w/e amount of money sitting in your bank , let it out for a walk for a month. For a greater good cause!

Only half of those users spend 100 dollars less over two months because of this thread. (thats a drop in the bucket for many of us really, many of us spend MUCH more than this PER MONTH)

Im about to start a new army
Infact, an apoc daemon army lol, so i guess it can wait.

Count me in.