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Ok,
Its getting hard to ignore all the latest posts about what is happening with the empire that is Gw. We've had insane restrictions on what the independents can do, stores being closed worldwide, Gamesdays being cancelled, totally inept sales presentations, 'major' shareholders selling their shares. Also add in all the other nonsense that they've done over the past few years.
So what does it add up to?
It is sounding more and more like the high ups are getting to sell the company, which in one sense may be a good thing. The problem is that when a company is bought out the first thing the new owners do is cost cutting, which usually means redundancies, and closures, and probably higher prices to boot.
Hell, we all may be barking up the wrong kneck of the woods, but you must agree that GW is currently staggering around like a punch drunk boxer at this moment in time, surely?
The internet has reached terminal bitching velocity.
Nothing is actually happening.
"'players must agree how they are going to select their armies, and if any restrictions apply to the number and type of models they can use."
This is an actual rule in the actual rulebook. Quit whining about how you can imagine someone's army touching you in a bad place and play by the actual rules.
Freelance Ontologist
When people ask, "What's the point in understanding everything?" they've just disqualified themselves from using questions and should disappear in a puff of paradox. But they don't understand and just continue existing, which are also their only two strategies for life.
I've been told GW is in talks to sell off the company. A lot of people have been discussing the possibilities, and I've been sitting on this info for a little while. In case it had been leaked to only my source, I didn't want to chance getting them in trouble, but with so many people discussing it, it's probably safe to discuss now. But I do have sources saying GW is looking to sell off. Pretre, feel free to add me as a 'monger on this-I don't have a timeframe for you, but I'd imagine the next year or two. I'm confident enough in my source to put my name on your thread.
Ugh, cut and paste on here puts all my user info too and requires a bunch of deletions.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/04/09 19:43:55
Reality is a nice place to visit, but I'd hate to live there.
Manchu wrote:I'm a Catholic. We eat our God.
Due to work, I can usually only ship any sales or trades out on Saturday morning. Please trade/purchase with this in mind.
Right. GW bans online retailers, bans bits, raises prices past where they could concievably be raised, hobbit is a bust, production facility in Memphis closes, Tau supply debacle, downsizes stores to one man operations with limited hours, discourages gaming in-store, finecrap all within the last 1.5 years and just today the 3 largest investors are pulling out of GW. And it's "just" the internet.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/04/09 19:50:35
Right. GW bans online retailers, bans bits, raises prices past where they could concievably be raised, hobbit is a bust, production facility in Memphis closes, Tau supply debacle, downsizes stores to one man operations with limited hours, discourages gaming in-store, finecrap all within the last 1.5 years and just today the 3 largest investors are pulling out of GW. And it's "just" the internet.
Gets me all giddy inside
"So, do please come along when we're promoting something new and need photos for the facebook page or to send to our regional manager, do please engage in our gaming when we're pushing something specific hard and need to get the little kiddies drifting past to want to come in an see what all the fuss is about. But otherwise, stay the feth out, you smelly, antisocial bastards, because we're scared you are going to say something that goes against our mantra of absolute devotion to the corporate motherland and we actually perceive any of you who've been gaming more than a year to be a hostile entity as you've been exposed to the internet and 'dangerous ideas'. " - MeanGreenStompa
"Then someone mentions Infinity and everyone ignores it because no one really plays it." - nkelsch
I've been told GW is in talks to sell off the company.
What exactly does this mean in the context of GW being a publicly traded company. Do you mean a group of shareholders acting in unison, a single shareholder with a large percentage of shares?
"GW" is not owned by a single person or wholly owned by a single group of shareholders, as I understand the current situation. Thus "GW" cannot be in talks to sell itself.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/04/09 20:00:39
Companies "takeover" publicly traded companies all the time. Sometimes just by buying shares in the open market, sometimes by making an offer that gets voted on by the shareholders at an annual or special meeting of the shareholders...it isnt anything exceptional.
Quite often, if a majority holder (like Kirby) is interested in selling his holdings, they will look to sell them as a whole chunk, either as part of the company sold to a larger company (or even a private company who takes it off the market) or selling all of his shares to one party as opposed to attempting to sell them off on the open market.
I've been told GW is in talks to sell off the company.
What exactly does this mean in the context of GW being a publicly traded company. Do you mean a group of shareholders acting in unison, a single shareholder with a large percentage of shares?
"GW" is not owned by a single person or wholly owned by a single group of shareholders, as I understand the current situation. Thus "GW" cannot be in talks to sell itself.
Typically it means approval by the board of directors to allow the companies stock to be frozen in price and then paid off. When Anheuser Busch was sold to InBev, they basically paid off all the shareholders at a predetermined price. Let's assume the share price is 650 pence per share. They have 31.73 million shares. That works out to 206 million pounds of value. Now as you sell shares off, the per share price will go down because the market is flooded. What typically happens in a buy out is that the stock price will be negotiated to prevent a market surge or plunge based on the announcement of an acquisition.
As the stock price has been going up recently with the revenues remaining basically flat, one could speculate that investors are trying to get in before a potential buy out or they know something we don't, like a major licensing deal. I would bet that if a company could come up with 150 million pounds by the end of the year, they may be able to purchase GW.
Right. GW bans online retailers, bans bits, raises prices past where they could concievably be raised, hobbit is a bust, production facility in Memphis closes, Tau supply debacle, downsizes stores to one man operations with limited hours, discourages gaming in-store, finecrap all within the last 1.5 years and just today the 3 largest investors are pulling out of GW. And it's "just" the internet.
OK im not defending GW, just commenting that the things you have strung together dont neccasarily add up to anything out of the ordinary.
The online retail ban is not new, GW are just tightening it up. From the GW perspective this could be a good/smart move.
According to GW the crackdown on bitz resellers is to protect the coherence of their marketing, packaging and product presentation. From the GW perspective this also makes sense and in reality it probably will account to exactly nothing in the big scheme of things other than make bitz prices slightly higher.
Downsizing stores, limiting hours and making the one man are the kind of steps all big retailers take to cut costs. If it ends up making the stores more profitable then that is a good thing for GW.
Discouraging veterans from gaming in the store and changing the focus of the store seems short sighted but if the stores are losing money then would you have them carry on as normal? It is certainly not the approach I would take but I dont run the company.
The fact that the Tau have sold out is in contradiction to your assertion that prices have been raised beyond what is conceivable.
Would you keep the Memphis facility open if it was excess capacity? We dont know the details of the GW supply chain so it is impossible to know what factors went into the decision to close the Memphis factory. Did Memphis make a lot of metal models? Those arent needed anymore. Did their plastic injection machines become outdated?
So from your list that leaves finecast, which by any serious standard was a disaster but people are still buying it, the hobbit which appears to be a flop and your vague statement about 3 investors pulling out.
I assume that those investors must have sold their stock to someone. There are many reasons why investors change their holdings and you cannot really make any kind of inference from the statement you provided. It could be because they think GW is heading for disaster or it could be that GW's future plans dont match their investment strategy.
I think it is just business as usual. GW does not cater to the internet crowd (foolish imo) so there is a lot of butthurt and consternation. Their products are expensive so many of us cant buy everything we want which is also aggravating and the internet is great at amplifying negativity whether it has real basis or not. I think there is more "hope" that GW will fail than "reason" for it to fail.
JWhex wrote: The fact that the Tau have sold out is in contradiction to your assertion that prices have been raised beyond what is conceivable.
To be fair, I don't think they sold out because of higher than normal demand, I think it was because they didn't supply the amount they normally do. If I normally ship 100 units for a new release and only ship 20 this time, just because I sold out doesn't mean anything. I would normally sell 50 of the 100 units, but only sold 20, thus loosing out on 30 units worth of sales even though I sold out. Selling out of an item means either the product was more popular than normal or you didn't provide as much. I'm betting the second.
I've been told GW is in talks to sell off the company.
What exactly does this mean in the context of GW being a publicly traded company. Do you mean a group of shareholders acting in unison, a single shareholder with a large percentage of shares?
"GW" is not owned by a single person or wholly owned by a single group of shareholders, as I understand the current situation. Thus "GW" cannot be in talks to sell itself.
Typically it means approval by the board of directors to allow the companies stock to be frozen in price and then paid off. When Anheuser Busch was sold to InBev, they basically paid off all the shareholders at a predetermined price. Let's assume the share price is 650 pence per share. They have 31.73 million shares. That works out to 206 million pounds of value. Now as you sell shares off, the per share price will go down because the market is flooded. What typically happens in a buy out is that the stock price will be negotiated to prevent a market surge or plunge based on the announcement of an acquisition.
As the stock price has been going up recently with the revenues remaining basically flat, one could speculate that investors are trying to get in before a potential buy out or they know something we don't, like a major licensing deal. I would bet that if a company could come up with 150 million pounds by the end of the year, they may be able to purchase GW.
Thanks for that example and good explanation. If the stock is presently going up it doesnt seem like right now is the best time freeze the price and sell it off, or am I missing something?
JWhex wrote: The fact that the Tau have sold out is in contradiction to your assertion that prices have been raised beyond what is conceivable.
To be fair, I don't think they sold out because of higher than normal demand, I think it was because they didn't supply the amount they normally do. If I normally ship 100 units for a new release and only ship 20 this time, just because I sold out doesn't mean anything. I would normally sell 50 of the 100 units, but only sold 20, thus loosing out on 30 units worth of sales even though I sold out. Selling out of an item means either the product was more popular than normal or you didn't provide as much. I'm betting the second.
Why would GW have provided less than normal for a release? My understanding is that they have very low costs associated with producing an additional unit, all the costs are incurred upfront in design and mold production. Why would they attempt to cut costs by producing an abnormally small amount of Tau boxes? Could you help me understand?
JWhex wrote: The fact that the Tau have sold out is in contradiction to your assertion that prices have been raised beyond what is conceivable.
To be fair, I don't think they sold out because of higher than normal demand, I think it was because they didn't supply the amount they normally do. If I normally ship 100 units for a new release and only ship 20 this time, just because I sold out doesn't mean anything. I would normally sell 50 of the 100 units, but only sold 20, thus loosing out on 30 units worth of sales even though I sold out. Selling out of an item means either the product was more popular than normal or you didn't provide as much. I'm betting the second.
Well if the price as you put it was "beyond conceivable" they would not have sold out in any event. I am not arguing the price is OK and in fact the current prices are beyond what I would conceivably pay myself. Clearly the demand for the Tau is higher than GW expected and I am not buying that the shortage is some conspiracy to make the models appear more popular than they really are.
Comparatively speaking, in recent months there has been a blitzkrieg of GW products. Perhaps they underestimated how much Tau people would buy because they expected that people would have spent a lot of money on recent releases (I acknowledge this to be PURE speculation on my part).
It is also possible that a lot of "big robot" fans are crossing over to buy the riptide and even other suits, and GW completely underestimated this factor.
Bolognesus wrote: ...Because you really fail to see how not having enough stock to take full advantage of impulse buys around release time is bad? hmmkay.
They don't have enough stock because people bought it all. What part of this don't people understand? "Our stuff is too popular" is generally speaking not a real problem.
Bolognesus wrote: ...Because you really fail to see how not having enough stock to take full advantage of impulse buys around release time is bad? hmmkay.
They don't have enough stock because people bought it all. What part of this don't people understand? "Our stuff is too popular" is generally speaking not a real problem.
Hey! I've got three of this thing that everyone wants, but I'm not going to say that, just announce I'm selling them.
*three sales later*
Wow, I, sold out, what an unprecedented success!!!!!!! !! !!!
Geddit?
We find comfort among those who agree with us - growth among those who don't. - Frank Howard Clark
The wise man doubts often, and changes his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubts not; he knows all things but his own ignorance.
The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense!” Professor Brian Cox
"We didn't make enough models" might be bad in some cases. "We didn't make enough models to meet the unexpectedly huge demand for our new product" doesn't seem like one of those cases.
It should be pointed out there isn't any sales data thus far to prove or disprove whether the shortage was due to high demand or not. The only oblique reference I have seen to sales data has been from Rich, the owner of Wayland, who said that the Tau sales thus far were similar in volume to Dark Eldar and Grey Knight releases.
Once again, we have no idea of the production figures, the sales figures or demand. Tau might have been super-popular or GW might not have made enough, or the rumoured supply chain issues might have caused a bottleneck.
Flashman wrote: Hmm... would new owners try to grow the company though or just carry on milking the cow?
The question is whether the cow will survive the rate of milking.
As I've said many times before, I think GW could do a lot better if they used their retail chain to sell more stuff than just WH/40K, like in the good old days when they enjoyed rapid year on year growth.
If I was going to take it over that is what I would do. I would also be a lot friendlier to FLGSs and veteran fans, on the basis that my GW shops can't be everywhere and I need people to help spread the word. Earned channels are much more effective than bought channels.
Reports from those retailers (some rather substantial ones amongst them) who claim to have seen good, but not all that exceptional interest for a 40K release seem to belie that, however.
Bolognesus wrote: Reports from those retailers (some rather substantial ones amongst them) who claim to have seen good, but not all that exceptional interest for a 40K release seem to belie that, however.
Which reports are those? In my area, the reports are "Tau are extremely popular." I would say this is at least the most popular release locally since Dark Eldar.
Right. GW bans online retailers, bans bits, raises prices past where they could concievably be raised, hobbit is a bust, production facility in Memphis closes, Tau supply debacle, downsizes stores to one man operations with limited hours, discourages gaming in-store, finecrap all within the last 1.5 years and just today the 3 largest investors are pulling out of GW. And it's "just" the internet.
All of the things you've listed are symptoms of a cause, not the other way around. GW is owned by hedge funds mostly (or so I'm told). GW is not in the gaming industry. GW's not in the model making industry. Hell, they don't even represent a hobby, ironically spelled or otherwise.
Their industry is increasing their stock price. This breeds the classically unsustainable do-more-with-less-every-year attitude that leeches into most publicly traded companies.
So yes, Darkness is correct: Nothing is happening.
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CSM Khorne 
