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Speaking of independent stockists, I was surprised to notice that the local branch of Forbidden Planet International (Belfast) is gearing up to sell GW products. The shelf space isn't huge, but it's going to be there, in view of all the other roleplayers, boardgamers, and X-Wingers. Anyone know if it's just a local thing, or is FP as a whole stocking GW? I can't see any minis on their site barring the usual clix and X-Wing stuff.

 tekk_45 wrote:

This post hits home for me too. I really feel bad for the guys that are relatively new to the game. They enjoy it, but have the impression that GW is nothing but the corporate machine. Makes me feel like an old geezer when I describe the way things used to be:
People going to the store to paint and hang out just to be around other people that play the game.
Getting tips on how to paint and play from knowledgeable employees (note the plural).
Employees not shoving the newest product down your throat when you walk through the door.
Oh man, the old campaigns where you submitted results and affected the fluff, that was EPIC. Coolest idea ever...

I was lucky enough to "grow up" with 40k in a GW store during the good times. I do miss it. But I make due with a good FLGS now and am working on getting a tight knit group together with leagues and tournaments. Here's hoping the game doesn't tank and feth us all thanks to their poor business (not caring for existing customers) decisions.

I tip my glass to the old days...

Funny, you describe just exactly how my local GW is to me, currently. Excluding the employees part, but I don't really mind that. We've got a hobby table and people are painting and building there, we've got two play tables. The manager organises campaigns, kill team days, painting contests, apocalypse battles, gaming challenges. Are the other GW's as bad as you say and am I just lucky?

I've only been to one GW store in my life and it was open for only one year. FLGS are superior because they offer so much. (Cheaper hobby supplies as a cherry on top.)
I feel sorry for the people that only have one tiny GW with one table surrounded by twelve year olds.

Meanwhile in the US.

I've been to lots of GW shops all over the world, and with one notable exception (GW Shanghai Puxi) none of them are places where I'd want to spend any time beyond buying stuff and getting the hell out.

 tydrace wrote:

 tekk_45 wrote:

This post hits home for me too. I really feel bad for the guys that are relatively new to the game. They enjoy it, but have the impression that GW is nothing but the corporate machine. Makes me feel like an old geezer when I describe the way things used to be:
People going to the store to paint and hang out just to be around other people that play the game.
Getting tips on how to paint and play from knowledgeable employees (note the plural).
Employees not shoving the newest product down your throat when you walk through the door.
Oh man, the old campaigns where you submitted results and affected the fluff, that was EPIC. Coolest idea ever...

I was lucky enough to "grow up" with 40k in a GW store during the good times. I do miss it. But I make due with a good FLGS now and am working on getting a tight knit group together with leagues and tournaments. Here's hoping the game doesn't tank and feth us all thanks to their poor business (not caring for existing customers) decisions.

I tip my glass to the old days...

Funny, you describe just exactly how my local GW is to me, currently. Excluding the employees part, but I don't really mind that. We've got a hobby table and people are painting and building there, we've got two play tables. The manager organises campaigns, kill team days, painting contests, apocalypse battles, gaming challenges. Are the other GW's as bad as you say and am I just lucky?

More accurately, the stores are in the process of change - being moved to a one employee per store set up.

Not all of them have changed yet.

Perhaps not all of them will.

It is also barely possible that GW will realize that stores without gaming are a false economy, and start moving back to the larger stores. (Not likely - it cost them money to move to the one manager set up, and it will cost them a lot more money going back.)

The Auld Grump, there are times when Kirby reminds me of Mike Eisner....

I feel badly for all of the people here who have such fond memories of the past but haven't found anything to replace or rekindle those past feelings. I would probably move on entirely if Games Workshop gave me anywhere near the amount of (apparent) frustration and anger that is commonly expressed here.

Note: I am not suggesting that negative comments are bad or wrong; I am merely puzzled at the volume and negativity expressed about a non-compulsory hobby.

brendan wrote:
Note: I am not suggesting that negative comments are bad or wrong; I am merely puzzled at the volume and negativity expressed about a non-compulsory hobby.

Well, let's take away your non-compulsory minis and non-compulsory rulebooks and non-compulsory gaming venue and see how chipper you are about it.

 brendan wrote:
I feel badly for all of the people here who have such fond memories of the past but haven't found anything to replace or rekindle those past feelings. I would probably move on entirely if Games Workshop gave me anywhere near the amount of (apparent) frustration and anger that is commonly expressed here.

Note: I am not suggesting that negative comments are bad or wrong; I am merely puzzled at the volume and negativity expressed about a non-compulsory hobby.

the painful thing for me is that GW/FW customers (me included) are very happy to express what we want from a store and the only supplier of our hobby and the supplier willfully ignores us!

i accept that you cant please everyone and sometimes what people want isnt workable as a business model.

however, when GW and their stores first came to my attention was because they supplied the place to buy the stuff but also a place to meet others who played the games (it was quite hard to find other people into 40k when you didnt have the internet) and a place to play the games when having scenery which wasnt old model railway trees and styrofoam sheets made into step-hills was really impressive.
you see what i'm getting at here? they nurtured the scene because the company would die if they didnt make sales and the best way to do that was to have a chain of gaming-club style shops. it forced there to be a gaming community wherever one opened.

so when you read this thread, please dont think we're just whining; because we really care abvout our hobby, the owners of the franchise don't, we can see that, and they don't want to know.

GW's relationship with us customers is in the "paranoid, delusional and abusive spouse" territory

(thanks jadenim!)

I think one reason is that, for me for example, I live in a major UK city where the only FLGS is basically giving what little space he has to Magic, and 500m away a larger GW sits empty most days because they do t do I store gaming anymore unless they organise it, and even then have to turf people out through the day so the one guy can go to the bathroom, get change, eat etc GW should be cleaning up in the UK , instead it's life support and most of us have seen existing staff replaced with high pressure sales staff who often are just interested in talking 12 year olds parents into buying realms of battle.

That's where the anger comes from.

 TwilightSparkles wrote:
I think one reason is that, for me for example, I live in a major UK city where the only FLGS is basically giving what little space he has to Magic, and 500m away a larger GW sits empty most days because they do t do I store gaming anymore unless they organise it, and even then have to turf people out through the day so the one guy can go to the bathroom, get change, eat etc GW should be cleaning up in the UK , instead it's life support and most of us have seen existing staff replaced with high pressure sales staff who often are just interested in talking 12 year olds parents into buying realms of battle.

That's where the anger comes from.

Over the next 2-3 years we should have 10 stores open around the Uk all with gaming space. First opens any day, second and third have had offers made on sites.

rich1231 wrote:

Over the next 2-3 years we should have 10 stores open around the Uk all with gaming space. First opens any day, second and third have had offers made on sites.

Very ambitious plan. I like it.

rich1231 wrote:

 TwilightSparkles wrote:
I think one reason is that, for me for example, I live in a major UK city where the only FLGS is basically giving what little space he has to Magic, and 500m away a larger GW sits empty most days because they do t do I store gaming anymore unless they organise it, and even then have to turf people out through the day so the one guy can go to the bathroom, get change, eat etc GW should be cleaning up in the UK , instead it's life support and most of us have seen existing staff replaced with high pressure sales staff who often are just interested in talking 12 year olds parents into buying realms of battle.

That's where the anger comes from.

Over the next 2-3 years we should have 10 stores open around the Uk all with gaming space. First opens any day, second and third have had offers made on sites.

That is excellent news!

When will there likely be news about the locations/opening dates of the new stores (and most importantly, do you have anything planned for the South West?! )

Come to Luton! We're a major town with no GW presence. In fact no FLGS to compete with at all.

These plans obviously subject to change. The order in which they open totally dependent on how negotiations generally go.

I would guess that we possibly have the best view of where gamers are in the UK though nearly 7 years of sales data.

It has given us quite an insight. We wont just be going to locations where there is no hobby presence as to be blunt we like competition and it benefits everyone to be compelled all the time to try and improve.

We will have another store in Essex almost certainly, Almost certainly one in London. Nottingham of course for a large store. Then the others are still being identified. But Scotland is a must, South Coast (Brighton or Crawley), South West/West, Another in the Midlands and a few others that we are less sure of, Sheffield looks like a possibility as one of the stronger candidates.

We have a lot going on this year, new website is literally a few days away. New Warehouse and back office systems in March then focus on retail for rest of year.

 Kosake wrote:

The shops as they are seem to be less and less profitable. Yet, those are the places where Little Timmy comes into contact with GW in the first place (no, telling them that there's a tabletop-boardgame-thingie for Dawn of War won't do the trick). So once they close the shops, the ammount of little timmies will drop. And if people are going to buy online, they are bound to find out about other sites like waylandgames or freaking amazon (had space hulk 30$ cheaper than GW at some point, lol). Not to mention other sources overseas.

Umm, actually the first time I walked into a Games Workshop when I was a Little Timmy, I thought it was a videogame store, promptly turned on my heels and walked right out.

The second time I very nearly bought something when I was a little Timmy was when I was in a Hobbytown USA (now defunct) and I saw the cool looking art on the army books and an interesting looking game with unit stats inside. Then I looked at the blisters with chunky looking pewter pieces and rows upon rows of paint and made a wise decision not to.

Ironically the reason I ended up buying about $400 in GW models is because someone told me that there's a tabletop-boardgame-thingie for Dawn of War. Regretting that decision now.

Also, first Games Workshop model I ever owned came in this box:

rich1231 wrote:
These plans obviously subject to change. The order in which they open totally dependent on how negotiations generally go.

I would guess that we possibly have the best view of where gamers are in the UK though nearly 7 years of sales data.

It has given us quite an insight. We wont just be going to locations where there is no hobby presence as to be blunt we like competition and it benefits everyone to be compelled all the time to try and improve.

We will have another store in Essex almost certainly, Almost certainly one in London. Nottingham of course for a large store. Then the others are still being identified. But Scotland is a must, South Coast (Brighton or Crawley), South West/West, Another in the Midlands and a few others that we are less sure of, Sheffield looks like a possibility as one of the stronger candidates.

We have a lot going on this year, new website is literally a few days away. New Warehouse and back office systems in March then focus on retail for rest of year.

Would be cool if a store was going to be in Bristol or even the Gloucestershire area.

After Cut'n'Thrust closed down there isn't a store in Bristol either, which (pardon my French) is absolutely fething nuts for a city of that size!

Great to here that Wayland is doing well enough to expand, especially in this era of lots of different gaming stores closing down in the UK.

But, for the record, the Soth West doesn't finish at Bristol!!

Just sayin...

Does Privateer Press have any stores themselves? They seem to be doing quite ok,. Even IF GW closed every single store that would hardly be the end of GW

Count your blessings. Even a single one-man GW store with a table or two would be more than what's within 50-100 miles of me. I have one LGS over 20 miles away that stocks GW, PP, and some other mixed material like FFG and Spartan games, but has absolutely nowhere to play. It's not even a dedicated gamestore, but a Rider's hobby shop that just happens to have games.

Other than that its a comic store 20 miles the other way that carries boardgames but only has tables for card gaming.

I don't even have a GW store in 100 miles in any direction.

So try being a wargamer with nowhere to play but your own house.

No, PP doesn't, and nor will they if they wish to continue in the manner they currently do.

GW stores are a massive expense for GW, and i don't personally believe the represent good value, I'm not pre disposed to do the maths right now, but just from recollection, they conceivably cost as much, or almost, to run as they bring in.

rich1231 wrote:
These plans obviously subject to change. The order in which they open totally dependent on how negotiations generally go.

I would guess that we possibly have the best view of where gamers are in the UK though nearly 7 years of sales data.

It has given us quite an insight. We wont just be going to locations where there is no hobby presence as to be blunt we like competition and it benefits everyone to be compelled all the time to try and improve.

We will have another store in Essex almost certainly

Chelmsford Please!!!!!!!

 NAVARRO wrote:

rich1231 wrote:
These plans obviously subject to change. The order in which they open totally dependent on how negotiations generally go.

I would guess that we possibly have the best view of where gamers are in the UK though nearly 7 years of sales data.

It has given us quite an insight. We wont just be going to locations where there is no hobby presence as to be blunt we like competition and it benefits everyone to be compelled all the time to try and improve.

We will have another store in Essex almost certainly

Chelmsford Please!!!!!!!

Amen!

 Pacific wrote:

rich1231 wrote:

 TwilightSparkles wrote:
I think one reason is that, for me for example, I live in a major UK city where the only FLGS is basically giving what little space he has to Magic, and 500m away a larger GW sits empty most days because they do t do I store gaming anymore unless they organise it, and even then have to turf people out through the day so the one guy can go to the bathroom, get change, eat etc GW should be cleaning up in the UK , instead it's life support and most of us have seen existing staff replaced with high pressure sales staff who often are just interested in talking 12 year olds parents into buying realms of battle.

That's where the anger comes from.

Over the next 2-3 years we should have 10 stores open around the Uk all with gaming space. First opens any day, second and third have had offers made on sites.

That is excellent news!

When will there likely be news about the locations/opening dates of the new stores (and most importantly, do you have anything planned for the South West?! )

South West? You should be so lucky. it'll be London and the South East.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

rich1231 wrote:

 TwilightSparkles wrote:
I think one reason is that, for me for example, I live in a major UK city where the only FLGS is basically giving what little space he has to Magic, and 500m away a larger GW sits empty most days because they do t do I store gaming anymore unless they organise it, and even then have to turf people out through the day so the one guy can go to the bathroom, get change, eat etc GW should be cleaning up in the UK , instead it's life support and most of us have seen existing staff replaced with high pressure sales staff who often are just interested in talking 12 year olds parents into buying realms of battle.

That's where the anger comes from.

Over the next 2-3 years we should have 10 stores open around the Uk all with gaming space. First opens any day, second and third have had offers made on sites.

When you say UK, do you really mean UK or will you be stopping at Watford?

And the topic has jumped the rails, and is heading into the chip shop!

Agreed though - GW messing around is allowing the local stores a chance to penetrate the market in an effective manner.

The Auld Grump