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 SickSix wrote:


So because I don't like that GM is now owned by the US Gov. I should sell my 1987 Chevy Truck? NO. I bought it used. GM didn't get paid twice because I bought it from someone who bought it from them. (actually I'm like the 4th owner). I do my own maintenace, the dealer makes no money from me. Heck, I have to get most of the parts from 3rd party companies.

So you say, but unlike you, a lot of these people would be people who ARE buying new cars from GM while disliking how the company was run. They can't help themselves apparently.

" I am not buying anything! Except for this book I need, I can't play without that... and this 3rd party kit requires a Stormraven so I have to buy two of those... oh and they released this new unit so I have to buy that to future-proof my army which is an investment... But no! I am not not supporting GW!"

So when I buy a used 40k model on ebay, GW gets a cut of that? NO! When I buy a used rule book on Amazon, does GW get a cut of that? NO! When I buy vallejo paint from my FLGS to paint my used models, does GW get a cut of that? NO.

Thank you and have a nice day.

Depends. When you buy a used model on eBay often you are supporting GW and they are getting a cut because by buying one person's old model you are giving them cash to buy new models which they wouldn't necessarily have. Many people 'Flavor of the month' with the explicit goal of buying, playing and then selling them for a minor loss so when you boil it down they keep recycling armies with less and less out of pocket. So by you buying his army, he is buying a new army, effectively you are buying a new army through that seller even if it is second hand.

You may be able to kill the chain by buying from a wargamer consignment eBay store, because they won't be buying GW products, but sometimes people who want to turn around and buy new GW stuff will sell to consignment people. No matter how you slice it, there is a good chance that the money you spend on a second-hand GW products will be resulting in a GW product purchase with your money.

Maybe interview people and only buy second-hand from people who are getting out of the hobby and won't be using the sale money to purchase GW products.

Just visited the Spiky BIts and Warstore website and both are still selling GW products. Im confused....

 spacewolf407 wrote:
Just visited the Spiky BIts and Warstore website and both are still selling GW products. Im confused....

The terms do not go into effect until June 15th.

I see, I better take advantage of the discounts before it happens!

Myself, only buy from online sellers or retailers; won't ever again buy direct from GW. Also buying from other makers as Anvil, Kromlech or Puppetswar.

Eilif wrote:
Folks can say that they aren't supporting GW by buying used, but it isn't really true. Folks buying used are often freeing up a GW buyer to buy more GW, and the strong market for used GW is part of the cache of of GW products. That is to say, GW products are are so well regarded that they have a strong resale value. Those buying from retailers at a discount are likewise still supporting GW.

I don't entirely agree; yes some of the people selling of GW stuff are going to use the money to buy more GW stuff, but it seems at the moment most are selling GW stuff to buy from someone else, or are just getting out of the hobby.

Only if the buyer is in the first category are you supporting GW (and only if they weren't going to buy the new thing anyway, but you've deprived them of a new sale potentially worth more), but in the 2nd and 3rd categores you're actively hurting GW (because you're not buying new, and you're helping boost competition).

There's an indirect benefit though; in that since there is so much 2nd hand GW stuff floating about there are plenty of players who can keep playing, so there's more demand for GW. But that's tied into the critical mass and unless that encourages people to buy new stuff it won't help GW at all.

 Deathshead420 wrote:

Kind of makes me sad to think that Dakka Dakka, a site that I come to daily wont be on my bookmark bar any longer.I have been coming here for about 3 years nonstop and lurked for a year before that. As I am a DCM member it wont effect DD at all but still kind of blows.

To show that I am serious any mod that reads this feel free to delete my account as this will be my last post. Sucks.

If GW somehow comes to their senses I will be back.....
Good night, and good luck.

Deaths

You do know there are other wargames on the market, right? Some of them even have good rulesets, and are made by companies that actually like their fans and stuff.

Herzlos wrote:

Eilif wrote:
Folks can say that they aren't supporting GW by buying used, but it isn't really true. Folks buying used are often freeing up a GW buyer to buy more GW, and the strong market for used GW is part of the cache of of GW products. That is to say, GW products are are so well regarded that they have a strong resale value. Those buying from retailers at a discount are likewise still supporting GW.

I don't entirely agree; yes some of the people selling of GW stuff are going to use the money to buy more GW stuff, but it seems at the moment most are selling GW stuff to buy from someone else, or are just getting out of the hobby.

Only if the buyer is in the first category are you supporting GW (and only if they weren't going to buy the new thing anyway, but you've deprived them of a new sale potentially worth more), but in the 2nd and 3rd categores you're actively hurting GW (because you're not buying new, and you're helping boost competition).

There's an indirect benefit though; in that since there is so much 2nd hand GW stuff floating about there are plenty of players who can keep playing, so there's more demand for GW. But that's tied into the critical mass and unless that encourages people to buy new stuff it won't help GW at all.

I would like to see your statistics where you can say most secondhand sales result in a non-purchase or purchase of a different gaming system.

It is a nice narrative but unless you interview everyone you buy from and explicitly only buy from people who are promising not to never buy GW products again, you are still promoting GW sales. It is like buying organic, free range meat. You can just pretend all the meat you buy is organic and free range and give yourself warm fuzzies even if you are deceiving yourself, or you can be explicit and research deeply the source of meat for every store and restaurant you eat at and only buy from places who support your agenda.

nkelsch wrote:
]I would like to see your statistics where you can say most secondhand sales result in a non-purchase or purchase of a different gaming system.

It is a nice narrative but unless you interview everyone you buy from and explicitly only buy from people who are promising not to never buy GW products again, you are still promoting GW sales. It is like buying organic, free range meat. You can just pretend all the meat you buy is organic and free range and give yourself warm fuzzies even if you are deceiving yourself, or you can be explicit and research deeply the source of meat for every store and restaurant you eat at and only buy from places who support your agenda.

It is mostly anecdotal or educated guesses.

We already know GW has a serious churn rate, with most customers dropping the hobby completely after a couple of years. When they get out of the hobby those customers will either put the stuff in storage or try to get some money back from it by selling it on. Those people aren't going to be putting money back into GW and make up a large percentage of the fanbase. As they tend to be late teens/early 20's we can assume they are relatively technically competent and familiar with ebay and the likes.

Anecdotally; no-one I've seen mentioning selling GW stuff and mentioned an intention of what they are doing with the profits have expressed any interest in buying more GW stuff. They've exclusively used the GW stuff to raise the funds for other hobby products (or non-hobby stuff). This includes me, people in my local club and forum members.

We'll never know for sure, because it's impossible to track, but I reckon that at least half (easily) of the 2nd hand GW sales are from people who are not giving money back to GW. If not half then it's still a significant enough proportion to nullify this theory that buying GW stuff 2nd hand is putting money into GW's pockets.

Some will, but I reckon those that do are more than likely going to buy the new thing anyway, even if the old one doesn't sell, so not buying from them doesn't prevent a sale. Whereas buying from them does deny GW a sale (yours). Even at that you've only enabled a GW sale to the value of the sellers profit, so if you buy from a seller at 30% of RRP, you've enabled GW sales of 30% whilst denying them the other 70% and it's still a net loss to GW.

The only way GW makes a net gain on used sales is if you buy for more than the RRP and the seller spents it all in GW.

Herzlos wrote:

nkelsch wrote:

Some will, but I reckon those that do are more than likely going to buy the new thing anyway, even if the old one doesn't sell, so not buying from them doesn't prevent a sale. Whereas buying from them does deny GW a sale (yours). Even at that you've only enabled a GW sale to the value of the sellers profit, so if you buy from a seller at 30% of RRP, you've enabled GW sales of 30% whilst denying them the other 70% and it's still a net loss to GW.

The only way GW makes a net gain on used sales is if you buy for more than the RRP and the seller spents it all in GW.

Not really...

If I buy 200$ worth of merchandise from GW, play with it then sell it for 150$ to you, and then buy 150$ with of new merchandise, GW still got 350$ of sales even though you bought a second-hand army for less than retail. You didn't DENY GW anything because if I didn't sell my army to you for 150$, then I would have kept my 200$ army and bought nothing more. Without you entering your money into the market and buying a GW product, there wouldn't have been money to eventually make its way to GW. For many people, getting 6th months with a new army then selling it is worth a minor loss. And if you are a semi-decent painter you can often sell them for even or a profit if you are a deep discounter buyer.

You can say that you somehow denied GW a sale by buying second-hand, but if you are so angry at GW, then you really didn't deny them a sale at all as you were never a sale to have in the first place.

Recently I have been building Ork bikes. I have been collecting them second-hand for over a year and just putting them in a box. I wanted to see if I could do a whole army for 5$ a bike so whenever an ebay auction popped up for 5$ or less a bike, I would try to get it.

I ended up with about 50ish bikes in various conditions. I stripped them, fixed them, converted them, painted them. I only wanted around 40ish bikes, so I took 10 of them, made them all nice and clean with a neutral color so all someone has to do is match the base and colorscheme and sold them for around 15.00$ a bike which is around GW retail. I used that profit to buy the FW warboss and nobz which I was able to turn into 2 warboss bikes and 2 nob bikes.

How many of the second-hand bikes that I bought resulted in GW sales? I know me selling second-hand models resulted in GW sales. All of those are sales which would not have existed if I simply was not in the GW market at all even though they were mostly second-hand purchases. I can pretend that my actions were noble and intended to stick it to GW but it really didn't stick anything to GW as I would have never bought 40 bikes and 2 forgeworld kits at retail. GW directly benefited from the second-hand market, and they know it. They don't care how the heroin addicts get their cash as long as it gets to them eventually.

And don't get me started on playing 40k in public somehow not promoting the game system and helping drive new sales. That is the only reason FLGS allow us to game in their stores is to help promote street traffic to get interested in the games. I cannot put a fully painted army on the table at a game store without someone wanting to know more about the game we are playing. You can pretend that playing 40k at a game store doesn't promote sales or GW as a company, but most times, even if I am using all 3rd party models, if they want to look into the game, they will buy GW rulebooks and models FIRST, and what is available in the game store before even finding out about 3rd party models.

Unless you play 40k by yourself, in your basement with models made out of bellybutton lint and toenail clippings, it is pretty hard to say that continuing to play 40k will never result in promoting GW or getting GW a sale. If pretending it does keeps you from burning down your local GW, then tell yourself whatever makes you happy.

Time to grow up a little, people. These new terms will affect us as the consumers very little if at all. Oh, can't order conveniently from that website? They were required to use call-ins and mail-ins anyway. No bits services? Trust me, stores will find a way to maintain their bits stores.

Do I think GW is getting a bit drunk with their power? Yes. Their need to maintain a brand identity is starting to become unreasonably harsh, but in the end, they make a good product. Would I like to se them get their heads out of their asses and worry more about a good gaming experience? Yes.

The sky is not falling, cats and dogs don't live together, anarchy has not set in.

Cats and dogs due in fact live together quite well, every day, all across the world.

My GF has a dog and two cat. They get along fine.

I like playing, painting, and modeling 40k. I don't like the decisions that GW has been making lately. You can do both at the same time.

nkelsch wrote:

Herzlos wrote:

nkelsch wrote:

Some will, but I reckon those that do are more than likely going to buy the new thing anyway, even if the old one doesn't sell, so not buying from them doesn't prevent a sale. Whereas buying from them does deny GW a sale (yours). Even at that you've only enabled a GW sale to the value of the sellers profit, so if you buy from a seller at 30% of RRP, you've enabled GW sales of 30% whilst denying them the other 70% and it's still a net loss to GW.

The only way GW makes a net gain on used sales is if you buy for more than the RRP and the seller spents it all in GW.

Not really...

If I buy 200$ worth of merchandise from GW, play with it then sell it for 150$ to you, and then buy 150$ with of new merchandise, GW still got 350$ of sales even though you bought a second-hand army for less than retail. You didn't DENY GW anything because if I didn't sell my army to you for 150$, then I would have kept my 200$ army and bought nothing more. Without you entering your money into the market and buying a GW product, there wouldn't have been money to eventually make its way to GW. For many people, getting 6th months with a new army then selling it is worth a minor loss. And if you are a semi-decent painter you can often sell them for even or a profit if you are a deep discounter buyer.

But then you're missing the fact that if I bought 150$ of models from you and there was no 2nd hand market I've have bought them from GW for 200$, or a retailer for 160$, so assuming you wouldn't have bought more from GW without my money, and I've have bought them new, then GW is still down 10-50 $ in sales.

Of course, if I wasn't going to buy at the new price, GW would be up something, and if you weren't going to give it all back to GW, they'd have been down further. So a 2nd hand sale is no guarantee of supporting GW.

GW obviously benefits indirectly by having more people playing the game whatever they use for it and wherever they get it from. Their biggest selling point currently is that they are the most popular system, so offers the most gaming opportunities on buy-in (generally, local meta may differ).

Having just got my very first full time job, I'll now have more disposable income to spend on 40k. I like playing 40k, but I don't despise paying GW's prices. I can deal with paying prices less 10% from my local gaming store however, so I'll probably shell out for new releases that I like where possible, but otherwise I'll be eBay-ing or using 3rd party minis.

 DOGGED wrote:
Myself, only buy from online sellers or retailers; won't ever again buy direct from GW. Also buying from other makers as Anvil, Kromlech or Puppetswar.

Anvil and Puppetswar (once they get those Space Warrior models back out) will be seeing their fair share of my money. In the mean time, Paperhammer is free.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
Time to grow up a little, people. These new terms will affect us as the consumers very little if at all. Oh, can't order conveniently from that website? They were required to use call-ins and mail-ins anyway. No bits services? Trust me, stores will find a way to maintain their bits stores.

Do I think GW is getting a bit drunk with their power? Yes. Their need to maintain a brand identity is starting to become unreasonably harsh, but in the end, they make a good product. Would I like to se them get their heads out of their asses and worry more about a good gaming experience? Yes.

The sky is not falling, cats and dogs don't live together, anarchy has not set in.

Cats and dogs do live together, not all websites need to use mail-ins and call-ins, and GW does not make a good product. Not for the price they ask.

 Alpharius wrote:
Cats and dogs due in fact live together quite well, every day, all across the world.

Leave Solo alone!!!

Herzlos wrote:
But then you're missing the fact that if I bought 150$ of models from you and there was no 2nd hand market I've have bought them from GW for 200$, or a retailer for 160$, so assuming you wouldn't have bought more from GW without my money, and I've have bought them new, then GW is still down 10-50 $ in sales.

But if you buy $150 worth of second hand models and the guy you bought them from owns a small business and pays that $150 to an employee who then goes onto put that $150 into his rent, and the land lord uses that $150 to pay back a friend who lent him some money, and that friend gives his nephew a $150 GW gift voucher, you're still supporting GW. In fact, paying your taxes will eventually support GW in some way. When a butterfly flaps its wings in central park, GW somehow makes money from you. It's the truth.


tl;dr - You will never win this argument. As far as some of the people at this board are concerned, even talking about GW products is considered 'support'.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
Cats and dogs due in fact live together quite well, every day, all across the world.

Leave Solo alone!!!

The mods are so mean to that guy. Honestly.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
But if you buy $150 worth of second hand models and the guy you bought them from owns a small business and pays that $150 to an employee who then goes onto put that $150 into his rent, and the land lord uses that $150 to pay back a friend who lent him some money, and that friend gives his nephew a $150 GW gift voucher, you're still supporting GW. In fact, paying your taxes will eventually support GW in some way. When a butterfly flaps its wings in central park, GW somehow makes money from you. It's the truth.


tl;dr - You will never win this argument. As far as some of the people at this board are concerned, even talking about GW products is considered 'support'.

Way to support GW with your chaos theory example...

 Jehan-reznor wrote:

Samurai_Eduh wrote:
but they do what they have to do to please shareholders like me. That's business.

Other large companies also have shareholders, and mostly they are knowledgeable of their market, most shareholders are interested in long time investments, just not short time profits.

In what universe? The vast majority of "shareholders" these days don't have any clue at all where their money is even invested, the cash is coming from brokers, from investment schemes and pension funds all being run by a handful of people who're concerned only with maximising returns in order to up their own percentage, and these people are the ones who have the input into the direction of the company not the actual investors. Not to mention that often the board running a company will have massive percentages of the available shares in that company, and as a result are perfectly willing to enact short-termist destructive policies if they think that will make them more money than playing the long game. Once a company reaches a certain size and value, the upper management becomes/is replaced by an entirely different class of "businessperson", a distinct group who exist solely to enrich themselves at any cost, who move from company to company enacting one-size-fits-all business school nonsense with no regard for the needs and long-term health of the company or the particulars of the industry, and who can fail spectacularly to the point of causing a company to collapse and simply stroll into a new job within months because of the incestuous and nepotistic relationships they can exploit with others of their ilk.

Market capitalism is broken, and has been since the 80's, GW is simply the latest victim.

< Taken by the void dragon. >

Easy solution to this:

- Play Imperial Guard.

Lots and lots of 3rd party options here. Mantic, Dreamforge, take your pic. Add vehicles from a variety of places, enjoy.

You don't have to keep buying GW minis to play their games.

This is a bit harder with 40k, but for fantasy, you're spoilt for choice and there's zero reason to buy GW-anything with certain armies.

 Ravenous D wrote:
Too bad kirby said he wants to open up 800 new one man demo stores.

Yes, and a manager's salary being about $30,000 a year (2×minimum wage) before taxes of course, multiplied by that number of stores would be $24,000,000. Add that to the existing stores and their salaries then subtract that from the 300,000,000 that GW brings in each year, and you are looking at about a tenth of their money practically being wasted. I say wasted because those jobs don't have to be there, let the local stores handle it all.

Then on top of the wages figure out lease price, utilities, and insurance, not to mention maintenance of facilities. Let's say each store costs $1000 per month (lease only) = $12,000 year × 800 stores comes to $9,600,000 so now let's average for utilities $300/month × 12= 3600 × stores 800 = $2,880,000 so that is so far a total operating cost of $36,840,000. That is over 10% of their costs right there. Use this formula and add up for the other stores that they already have and you are probably coming close to $50,000,000 in the US alone. If Kirby opens that many stores, that 10% becomes a sixth of that $300,000,000 that GW gets per year. Now tell me why they don't want to support the FLGS who take on all those risks by themselves? Does GW just like throwing money away? GW should stick to producing, manufacturing, and distributing its products if they realky want to maximize profit!

Where is the "I have no intent on dropping 40k or GW" option?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

xraytango wrote:

 Ravenous D wrote:
Too bad kirby said he wants to open up 800 new one man demo stores.

Yes, and a manager's salary being about $30,000 a year (2×minimum wage) before taxes of course, multiplied by that number of stores would be $24,000,000. Add that to the existing stores and their salaries then subtract that from the 300,000,000 that GW brings in each year, and you are looking at about a tenth of their money practically being wasted. I say wasted because those jobs don't have to be there, let the local stores handle it all.

Then on top of the wages figure out lease price, utilities, and insurance, not to mention maintenance of facilities. Let's say each store costs $1000 per month (lease only) = $12,000 year × 800 stores comes to $9,600,000 so now let's average for utilities $300/month × 12= 3600 × stores 800 = $2,880,000 so that is so far a total operating cost of $36,840,000. That is over 10% of their costs right there. Use this formula and add up for the other stores that they already have and you are probably coming close to $50,000,000 in the US alone. If Kirby opens that many stores, that 10% becomes a sixth of that $300,000,000 that GW gets per year. Now tell me why they don't want to support the FLGS who take on all those risks by themselves? Does GW just like throwing money away? GW should stick to producing, manufacturing, and distributing its products if they realky want to maximize profit!

So I presume you have a business degree to go with all this groundbreaking insight?

Didn't realize I needed a business degree to do math. Next you'll be telling me that I need a biochemical degree to cook, or a degree in thermodynamics and applied sciences to set my HVAC system to a comfortable temperature.

I work for an electrical contractor and I do estimates for projects that need to be bid out. This entails figuring permits, labor-hours, and materials. I have been doing this for nearly twenty years. So unfortunately I have more experience behind my name than alphabet soup.

xraytango wrote:
Didn't realize I needed a business degree to do math. Next you'll be telling me that I need a biochemical degree to cook, or a degree in thermodynamics and applied sciences to set my HVAC system to a comfortable temperature.

I work for an electrical contractor and I do estimates for projects that need to be bid out. This entails figuring permits, labor-hours, and materials. I have been doing this for nearly twenty years. So unfortunately I have more experience behind my name than alphabet soup.

And you lowballed the rent. Certainly it will be higher, most likely much higher.

Expenses are the easy part - income is where the WAG kicks in. *EDIT* Not just your Wild Ass Guesses, either - GW is doing some pretty big guessing right now, too. How many of those 800 stores will likely close within two years?)

The Auld Grump

Sure, but across the board, rent can be higher in some locations, lower in others. I know of a comic shop that is in a 40'x60' (2400ft2) store and their rent is about $900/month, and it is on a main street. So I did lowball the rent, admittedly because of the variable areas and cheap strip malls with low square footage GW stores. Maybe plug in $2500/mo for rent there? That's more likely a closer guess.

And the manager's salary was actually on the GW site a while back in the careers section. So that one is right :-)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TheAuldGrump wrote:

xraytango wrote:
Didn't realize I needed a business degree to do math. Next you'll be telling me that I need a biochemical degree to cook, or a degree in thermodynamics and applied sciences to set my HVAC system to a comfortable temperature.

I work for an electrical contractor and I do estimates for projects that need to be bid out. This entails figuring permits, labor-hours, and materials. I have been doing this for nearly twenty years. So unfortunately I have more experience behind my name than alphabet soup.

And you lowballed the rent. Certainly it will be higher, most likely much higher.

Expenses are the easy part - income is where the WAG kicks in. *EDIT* Not just your Wild Ass Guesses, either - GW is doing some pretty big guessing right now, too. How many of those 800 stores will likely close within two years?)

The Auld Grump

So how many sales could they possibly turn over in two years time? I would suppose not enough to keep them open for another two years. Hence why those stores are a major financial millstone around GWs neck and why they should drop the stores entirely and focus on supplying product.

OR they could just open more manufacturing plants, objectively speaking to drive down shipping costs, thus effectively reducing overall price and increasing surplus of product, end result is more manufacturing = less price per/unit = more units produced = more money for investors = less abandonment issues = more happy gamers = GW being considered as a decent company as a whole = everyone happy.

also they could quit with being so secretive about new releases (i find out what's new from 3rd party rumour mongers which turn out to be 100% spot on 9 out of 10 times) effectively increasing potential towards "free advertising" to create the much needed public awareness of such a supposed sucessful company.


there are a number of things that could/should be changed/implemented to benefit both the consumer and the manufacturer as well as investors/ceo's and their ilk.

upper management needs new direction from an actual inspired wargaming fan (GW originally started as "by gamers for gamers", which has been eradicated from memory in large part) based CEO. that is my input on the subject (as this is already quite heated debate i'll end on that note)

FYI i have no further EDU than yr 11 (didn't finish highschool) but i have a basic understanding of economics in general per se for you time and patience

My next army is going to be entirely scratch-built and/or consisting of 3rd party miniatures. I haven't used GW paints in a decade (except for washes, but I'm working on weaning myself off of those now). If I can get off my ass and get some work done on Aetherverse again I'd like to just drop 40K's rules entirely, but realistically speaking having the game there as a structure for my modeling hobby is useful.

Basically, the only thing I'm buying from GW at this point are the rulebooks, and I only buy THOSE when I'm finally ready to play an army in a tournament. I'm pretty sure their books are loss leaders, so I'm not really doing them any favors.

 cincydooley wrote:
Where is the "I have no intent on dropping 40k or GW" option?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

xraytango wrote:

 Ravenous D wrote:
Too bad kirby said he wants to open up 800 new one man demo stores.

Yes, and a manager's salary being about $30,000 a year (2×minimum wage) before taxes of course, multiplied by that number of stores would be $24,000,000. Add that to the existing stores and their salaries then subtract that from the 300,000,000 that GW brings in each year, and you are looking at about a tenth of their money practically being wasted. I say wasted because those jobs don't have to be there, let the local stores handle it all.

Then on top of the wages figure out lease price, utilities, and insurance, not to mention maintenance of facilities. Let's say each store costs $1000 per month (lease only) = $12,000 year × 800 stores comes to $9,600,000 so now let's average for utilities $300/month × 12= 3600 × stores 800 = $2,880,000 so that is so far a total operating cost of $36,840,000. That is over 10% of their costs right there. Use this formula and add up for the other stores that they already have and you are probably coming close to $50,000,000 in the US alone. If Kirby opens that many stores, that 10% becomes a sixth of that $300,000,000 that GW gets per year. Now tell me why they don't want to support the FLGS who take on all those risks by themselves? Does GW just like throwing money away? GW should stick to producing, manufacturing, and distributing its products if they realky want to maximize profit!

So I presume you have a business degree to go with all this groundbreaking insight?

It is really simple math - really it is (though I would tend to agree with the other Auld Grumpy guy - some of the figures are a bit on the low side of things). The real kicker though is when you look at their stated goal of 700-800 stores and then you look at how many trade accounts they have with existing retailers...the last number which I found for the US was 823... Coincidence?

One of the nice things about having a trade account in an existing market is that they don't need to do any market research. If the store is selling over a specific dollar amount in GW products - they will drop a GW store the next block over. Customers will have to go there because of the various direct only, new release and other limitations that are being leveraged against independent suppliers.