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.

Worglock wrote:

Paul wrote:
It says to me not that GW are money grabing, but that they have ethics about who they will supply to. It says to me that they don't want the small hobby shops pushed out of the market.

As Ugavine says, its not that expensive a hobby anyway. A set of tyres for my motorbike cost about £300...

I know. It's great that GW didn't spend upwards of ten years planting GW stores in the same neighborhood of successful local retailers.

Wait.

Last time I checked they have the same prices as the local retailers. Thats not bullying, thats fair competition. GW offer a better range of there own minis, the local stores can offer other things. You would be right if they came in, like supermarkets, and ran at a loss untill everyone else went bust.

Paul wrote:Last time I checked they have the same prices as the local retailers. Thats not bullying, thats fair competition. GW offer a better range of there own minis, the local stores can offer other things. You would be right if they came in, like supermarkets, and ran at a loss untill everyone else went bust.

QFT

It's fair competition, besides, GW can't compete with stores that offer TCGs, RPGs, and other Wargames like WM/H and Malifaux...

GW charges their prices because they can, and sure it's expensive, but it's nothing compared to what we already pay... Not to say that it's "right" in any sense of the word, but they can.

Paul wrote:Last time I checked they have the same prices as the local retailers. Thats not bullying, thats fair competition. GW offer a better range of there own minis, the local stores can offer other things. You would be right if they came in, like supermarkets, and ran at a loss untill everyone else went bust.

I disagree, GW stores have a much higher profit margin and therefore are able to maintain a storefront with fewer sales. A higher profit margin also means they can afford to run more events, drawing customers to their store. And, theoretically, they could afford to hire better people. But from what I read here, FLGS owners are a LOT better to work for than GW.

GW shouldn't be directly competing with a FLGS.

Unless GW stores either drop their prices (which won't happen) or sell something other than their current stock, they're not going to make any money.

And, with GW phasing out their metal blisters for direct only, it'll get worse.
Surely a shiny and expensive metal model will mean more people will drop back to the less costly plastic kits, promising themselves they'll pick it up next time.

GW storefronts need to do more to bring people in.

Skinnereal wrote:Unless GW stores either drop their prices (which won't happen) or sell something other than their current stock, they're not going to make any money.

I think you'll find that Games Workshop are making a very tidy profit at the moment.

Come on, there is no company in the world that keeps prices low, so that customers are happy. I mean look at any fast food chain, for example, the prices are getting higher and higher and the food is getting worse too.

Ugavine wrote:

Skinnereal wrote:Unless GW stores either drop their prices (which won't happen) or sell something other than their current stock, they're not going to make any money.

I think you'll find that Games Workshop are making a very tidy profit at the moment.

And almost all of it gets poured right into their shops, employee pay, and manufacturing.

Where's that tidy profit again?

Paul wrote:Last time I checked they have the same prices as the local retailers. Thats not bullying, thats fair competition. GW offer a better range of there own minis, the local stores can offer other things. You would be right if they came in, like supermarkets, and ran at a loss untill everyone else went bust.

The suspicion was when they made their expansion with stores sprouting up everywhere during the '90s they would use independent stores to effectively trial their products and build up customer bases in areas, and those that were doing well selling GW products would suddenly find a GW open up very close by in direct competition or even stop supplying the independent with GW stock. Don't forget that GW stores are selling their own product so the overheads on stock are lower whereas independents have to buy GW wholesale which isn't cheap and they can't afford to bail out their store if it's taking losses unlike the corporate might of GW. Independents have to shift a fair bit of GW to get their money back. GW might sell at the same price as an independent, but per unit GW have a much greater mark up because they make their own product, while independents have to pay whatever GW want to sell it to them for.

The reality is that GW is popular and a lot of independents have to partly rely upon GW stock as their bread and butter which is fine until they struggle to sell the required volume of GW stock because a dedicated GW shop has suddenly appeared near by. Which is allegedly why several GW stores opened where they did.

There's fair competition, and aggressive competition, and the competition that drives independent retailers under is not for the good for the hobby community. So many towns now only have a GW as their gaming shop, and seeing as GW only sell their own stuff they effectively have a monopoly on wargaming supplies in that area unless people shop online.

The prices for food are rising globally and were a major factor in the recent toppling of developing countries in africa and the middle east.

If I'm absolutely desperate for something on the day (i.e. I need Chaos Black that badly) I'll nip into my local GW and pick up a pot but model wise, eBay is my friend...I've had some amazing deals from there. I'd say my army cost at least half of what it's RRP should have been.

Havnig said that, I really really wish I'd bought some GW shares about 10 years ago ^^.

If you think its to expensive don't buy from them. It's expensive because it is a luxury product. No one is forcing you to buy from GW and bitching about it on Dakka won't make them lower their prices.

If you don't codex hop, wargaming is an exceedingly efficient time waster. My Tau army has been more or less built since 3e. Since then I've spent... oh.. maybe 100-200$ a year on a model or two to build and paint for the heck of it, or a few tweaks here and there to my army list.

If you play 3 new Xbox games a year.. you're already in over your wargaming hobby. (and who plays only 3?)

Skinnereal wrote:
And, with GW phasing out their metal blisters for direct only, it'll get worse.
Surely a shiny and expensive metal model will mean more people will drop back to the less costly plastic kits, promising themselves they'll pick it up next time.

GW storefronts need to do more to bring people in.

GW is phasing out the metal so they can likely sell it all for scrap and raise additional capital to support their new resin line which is less costly than the metal.

In any case, GW takes every opportunity it can to screw the independent LGS. Look at their ridiculous store "levels" system and the way they expect stores to carry tons of product that will never move.


How about their offering free shipping to every schmuck that surfs onto their site, thus screwing the LGS out of direct / bits orders.

These guys are clown shoes and an example of why a game company should never go public.

GW profits are up at the moment (@ 11.8% net), but this is certainly down to the in year cost reductions (store closures, reductions in staff etc) and lisencing agreements. They were significantly less than that in previous years.

Re competion in the last 20+ years that I have been into wargaming I have not seen GW move in on independent stores. Indeed where I live there is an abundance of GW store within 30mins of my house and the only independent games shop some 40 minutes away is still pootling alang the same as it was 20 years ago. Actually there is also Wayland Games, which is near the indie that has done more damage to it!

Anyhoo GW has always been middle of the High [main] Street, I have never seen a LGS there, maybe a couple of streets away, in the corner but not really prime retail.

Evil GW is just a fabrication made up by those that don't get their toys just the way they want them and for what they paid 10 years ago. A meme if you will.

True there are discrepancies in pricing and decisions I don't agree with but I don't let that ruin my fun. There are alternatives, GW are not a monopoly so certainly not worth all the griping.

Necanor wrote:Come on, there is no company in the world that keeps prices low, so that customers are happy. I mean look at any fast food chain, for example, the prices are getting higher and higher and the food is getting worse too.

Companies keep decent prices and provide good value while they are growing. Look at Netflix, by providing good value for money they basically eliminated all their competition (anybody remember video stores?) Once they get so big they decide the only way to keep growing is to try to milk their customers for more money. At this point competition usually steps in. GW though IMO still has plenty of untapped market they are not getting to. Unfortunately they started the milking their customers for more money phase too early, and have locked themselves out of most of it.

Loki_TBC wrote:In any case, GW takes every opportunity it can to screw the independent LGS. Look at their ridiculous store "levels" system and the way they expect stores to carry tons of product that will never move.

Having a basic buy in agreement seems pretty standard to me.

How about their offering free shipping to every schmuck that surfs onto their site, thus screwing the LGS out of direct / bits orders.

These guys are clown shoes and an example of why a game company should never go public.

Yes the offer of something that is pretty much commen practice throught the internet does seem awefully foolish to me. So I can buy at 100% + free p&P from GW or RRP-20% plus some p&P from FLG. Bandits!

The only complaint you can have about this is that they didn't do it years ago!

Asuron wrote:

agnosto wrote:If that's the only reason prices are high, then GW should close the stores. I would think that lower product prices will do just as much to increase sales as a red-shirt trying to hardsell a 12 year old on a box of marines...

You see there lies the issue
Its those stores that help them become successful, its what gave them the edge over competitors
Its now impossible to get rid of them because of how much theyre intergrated into how the company operates, regardless of whether or not its profitable

In fact does anyone know if even the more popular stores manage to break even on sales?

It is an interesting question. I don't know what would happen if they closed the stores. It might be a bad idea and it might be a good idea. In the UK it seems the problem would be that there really isn't an infrastructure of private stores to pick up the slack. I think in some ways GW has created this huge problem for themselves and they really dont know how to fix it other than to raise prices.

Price increases are a fact of life, like taxes!

Think about it this way, some video games were ~£29.99 on release about five years ago. Now it is common to see video games sell for £45+ on release.

So if you think about it, pretty much everything has become more expensive (including food for you non food shoppers!) so really, it's not only GW but pretty much how the economy is rolling these days.

My dad used to get me Atari games in the late 70's for about $40. Now they are still about $40. Unless you preorder the superdeluxe ultimate addition.

Snarky wrote:Price increases are a fact of life, like taxes!

Think about it this way, some video games were ~£29.99 on release about five years ago. Now it is common to see video games sell for £45+ on release.

I remember getting games like Doom and Space Hulk for £30-40 in the mid-90s. That's pretty much what games are today. In fact you look at the relative costs of things like computers and games and they are probably getting cheaper, my parent's first computers cost an insane amount of money by today's standards, we worked it out be be several thousands, yet you can get a good laptop for £500 today.

Snarky wrote:Price increases are a fact of life, like taxes!

Think about it this way, some video games were ~£29.99 on release about five years ago. Now it is common to see video games sell for £45+ on release.

So if you think about it, pretty much everything has become more expensive (including food for you non food shoppers!) so really, it's not only GW but pretty much how the economy is rolling these days.

I think the bone of contention is that GW doesn't pass its cost savings onto the consumers, quite the opposite, it raises prices at higher than material cost increase plus inflation.

Video game aren't necessarily a good comparison because the hardware has basically quintupled in power over those five years. Arguably, GW's miniature quality has increased over time as well but it's extremely hard to measure this because one man's razorgore is another man's, whatever. Miniature quality is by and large subjective whereas video game graphic quality and game machine power are measurable.

agnosto wrote:
GW games are now so ubiquitous in the tabletop community now that there's hardly a point for the corporate storefronts anymore, especially in areas that already have a FLGS presence. Why should the company do the hard work of attracting customers when the FLGSs will do that out of self-interest? I'm telling you that lower prices would really do more to benefit GWs bottom line than anything else.

Thing is, any hobby needs a steady flow of new customers to survive. Yes, lowering mini prices by closing stores would help the sales for a while, but it would make the marketing of the game to new potential customers much harder. You would have to start actually advertise, and that costs money, which is included to miniature prices...

Maybe things are a lot different in Europe. I have traveled a lot and have never seen a GW store my entire life. 99% of people here have never even heard of GW. There is not a GW store within 4 hours drive of me. I think if they closed all the stores and spent even 10% of that money on advertising they would grow by leaps and bounds here.

Edit: they would have to lower the price to match the reduced spending though.

Backfire wrote:Thing is, any hobby needs a steady flow of new customers to survive. Yes, lowering mini prices by closing stores would help the sales for a while, but it would make the marketing of the game to new potential customers much harder. You would have to start actually advertise, and that costs money, which is included to miniature prices...

As asmith mentioned below; I think there's a bit of a difference between Europe and the US in this respect (sorry, don't know a thing about you Aus. folks). I live in Oklahoma and the nearest GW to me is in Dallas Texas, that's about a 3 hour drive from my home. There are; however, a number of FLGSs that carry GW products, provide gaming space and hold local events. I believe that, at least here in the U.S, noone would miss GW corporate stores if they all closed shop overnight.

There is no way that GW could saturate the market here with stores without breaking the proverbial bank first; however, tabletop gamers are well familiar with the game and going by the distribution of corporate finance results, the hobby doesn't seem to be struggling here because of the dearth in corporate owned shops.

My point is that FLGSs are well able to take up the slack (at least in the U.S.) if GW decided to close the doors on all the shops here. The savings could be used to advertise and diversify recruitment methods.

It's fun being an armchair CEO. This is all my opinion based upon my limited knowledge and experience; I'll readily assume there's a reason the GW goes about their business they way they do.

The US has had a network of LGS since what, the 70's?

Lets not forget that GW started off as importer and distributor of D&D and other US games. There was comparatively little in the way of specialist games stores [sic] in the UK before GW started up.

So while the US Dakkanauts for the most part do not see the need for the retail network they are necessary for the larger whole of GW (i.e. not the US). GW simply can not withdraw retail shop presence on a large scale to reduce costs without detrementally effecting their sales and market placement. New games stores will not spring up in their place and new blood will not be brought in to either the GW HHHobby or the greater wargaming hobby.

GW are currently planning their next move on the US though so agnosto my get the GW shop he doen't crave.

I never would have guessed!


"So while the US Dakkanauts for the most part do not see the need for the retail network they are necessary for the larger whole of GW (i.e. not the US). GW simply can not withdraw retail shop presence on a large scale to reduce costs without detrementally effecting their sales and market placement. New games stores will not spring up in their place and new blood will not be brought in to either the GW HHHobby or the greater wargaming hobby."- Notprop


How did you come to this conclusion?

Those shops are the sucking chest wounds of the company, It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that this is also the very reason that they close down said shops in areas that's lose profit to tax marginal increases past the acceptable rate. Acceptable in the terms of a business model that these stores are templated off of.
( and yes, they are standard templated from a set one size fits all model)

Here in the states, a common practice is to open a GW store in a nearby or in direct competition to the local gaming store that has shown to turn a profit in selling said GW products. I've seen this happen in the Upper New York Area, the Virginia Area, and the North Carolina area, as well as have heard of the SAME issue happening in other parts of the states. If psed this same question, of course you get a "Oh, no, WE don't do things like that...." sort of a speal, but after the fact, and when the dust settles, either one or both of the shops, BOTH The GW shop and the LGS wind up memories.

I'll even pose the question to you all out there in Dakka Land- Do you find this issue similer or not in your areas in regards to the GW stores in question?

They are run in such a way as to slash and burn the market, not to increase interest, or promote anything other then Profits at the cost of the local areas gaming population.

They don't have a need, because they do not understand that the business model is incorrect for the way in which to sell thier product here in the states. It revolved to me in point, the fact that In Europe, theres a CLUB on every corner, and here in the states, We revolve our gaming around our buddies, or the local gaming shop.

The point of reference here is that our LGS's are a center around which most gaming takes place. GW's seen fit to run thier "Shops" like a stationary store.
-Get them in, sell them, get them out, and don't worry too much about the local gaming community outside the confines of the shop in question. You see it in thier revised shop plans, and in thier general attitude in regards to the way in which they treat thier "customers". They treat them, more often then not like shills, and try to push the hard sell, never thinking the long term age old addage, "develop a market."

GW shops generally just come into an area that already has an already established market, then they commence to turn it upside down and within a year or so, the shop is in shambles, and either "Relocating" or the LGS is out of business, or onto something else other then GW stuff.

I find it kind of either a misrepresentation and mistaken idea of the current market, or an outright Blatent underhanded cash grab, done with the intent of destroying the LGS's cut of GW product sales.

I post three different shops in three different areas, plus what others have discussed in the past- Begin with a large selection of GW in the LGS, then the GW shop comes to town, then the LGS either reduces thier invantory, or increases thier own profit margin, I?E the price of the GW stuff to compete with the newfound "pal" of the incoming GW store.

With the new and improved model of one and two man shops, I can see this as an interesting "Variation on a theme" where you can easily see two or three shops being startups, and at least one of them surviving for the same cost that one shop with a staff of five or six, that would have done the same amount of damage, bit in relation to todays economy.

Just my opinion.

( Insert clever picture here)

notprop wrote:The US has had a network of LGS since what, the 70's?

Lets not forget that GW started off as importer and distributor of D&D and other US games. There was comparatively little in the way of specialist games stores [sic] in the UK before GW started up.

So while the US Dakkanauts for the most part do not see the need for the retail network they are necessary for the larger whole of GW (i.e. not the US). GW simply can not withdraw retail shop presence on a large scale to reduce costs without detrementally effecting their sales and market placement. New games stores will not spring up in their place and new blood will not be brought in to either the GW HHHobby or the greater wargaming hobby.

GW are currently planning their next move on the US though so agnosto my get the GW shop he doen't crave.

Useful bit of information; I never knew how GW had its humble beginnings.

Still, if they even closed shop in the U.S. they'd save a good amount of $ and lose a little amount of volume, if any.

As for their next move; I'd be extremely surprised if they come to Oklahoma.

Grot 6 wrote:Here in the states, a common practice is to open a GW store in a nearby or in direct competition to the local gaming store that has shown to turn a profit in selling said GW products. I've seen this happen in the Upper New York Area, the Virginia Area, and the North Carolina area, as

I'm going to say this right now:
This has not happened in North Carolina. We've only ever had a single GW shop(down near Charlotte) that I've been aware of since I started in 1997, and it closed almost 4 or 5 years back.

If they'd wanted to do this, they could have opened a shop up when Raleigh had just one conveniently placed shop with regular gaming, a place called Hobby Masters.
They didn't.
In fact, when Hobby Masters closed down because the property managers didn't let them renew their lease--GW could have moved in and gotten a premium spot not far away from them for far cheaper and take over the customer base.

They didn't.

It took almost 3-4 years for a new shop to open up to replace Hobby Masters, and even then it's a 30-40 minute drive from Raleigh.

GW opened a shop down here in California just a few miles(like 5 I think) from a store that has been in the area for 20 years. So yes, it does happen.

Kanluwen wrote:

Grot 6 wrote:Here in the states, a common practice is to open a GW store in a nearby or in direct competition to the local gaming store that has shown to turn a profit in selling said GW products. I've seen this happen in the Upper New York Area, the Virginia Area, and the North Carolina area, as

I'm going to say this right now:
This has not happened in North Carolina. We've only ever had a single GW shop(down near Charlotte) that I've been aware of since I started in 1997, and it closed almost 4 or 5 years back.

If they'd wanted to do this, they could have opened a shop up when Raleigh had just one conveniently placed shop with regular gaming, a place called Hobby Masters.
They didn't.
In fact, when Hobby Masters closed down because the property managers didn't let them renew their lease--GW could have moved in and gotten a premium spot not far away from them for far cheaper and take over the customer base.

They didn't.

It took almost 3-4 years for a new shop to open up to replace Hobby Masters, and even then it's a 30-40 minute drive from Raleigh.

It did happen.

Concord Mills is way the !@#$ out there, though. Any wonder why they closed down? And by and by remember the stores that were out there? How are they doing today, by the way?

After they went belly up, there was an upsurge of stores to fill the void, but bet you a farm that the minute they come back with the one and two man operations the same things going to happen again.