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Saldiven wrote:

 The Shadow wrote:

. Think back to when you started the hobby. Did you start buying of independent retailers/eBay straight away? Almost definetly, the answer is no. You went to a GW.

Actually, if you're in the USA, it is almost certain that your initial GW experience was not in a GW store.

I've been in a GW store exactly once in my life. That was when I was visiting my FLGS and the owner found out his GW delivery was shorted a new army book. He asked one of his employees to drive over to the GW store to pick on up, and I rode along. I was in the store probably about 30 seconds. My first experience, and 99.999% of my subsequent experiences, with GW have been through an independent retailer.

Ok, fair enough, I can't speak for countries outside of the UK, so maybe it is different elsewhere.

I stand by what I said with regards to the UK though.

See, our local gaming shop does this.

You get 10% off all GW stuff, which is good in it self.

But Canterbury has quite a strong gaming community, mostly due to the Canterbury Crusaders. So what this shop has done is give an additional 10% off if you are a member of the Canterbury Crusaders.

I wish more shops were like that.

 The Shadow wrote:

I stand by what I said with regards to the UK though.

 The Shadow wrote:

The purpose of GW stores is to bring people into the hobby and then get the money of new players, and ones who have yet to discover new ways of buying models. For the vast majority of the community members, GW stores, and the website, are the only way to get models. Think back to when you started the hobby. Did you start buying of independent retailers/eBay straight away? Almost definetly, the answer is no. You went to a GW.

When I started, the nearest GW was 90 mins away by car, and I was about 12, so, no, I didn't order online, because the Internet didn't exist, I used the local Indy, which was actually a train, static and RC models shop with a really grumpy old sod managing it who clearly didn't like wargames and so kept a tiny corner dedicated to it and probably only ordered new stock once a year, which was fine, as on my pocket money, I couldn't afford much.

Even some people who are "veterans" still buy from GW, since they're "blind" to other methods. Another question. Before you joined Dakka, or any other similar online wargaming forum, how aware were you of other ways of buying GW models? Probably not very. You might have clued on to eBay, but chances are you'll never have heard of The Warstore or Wayland Games or anything like that.

Disagree. Every single person in the Western world under the age of 50, perhaps even older, knows to look online when purchasing something that is any more than a moderate investment, especially something that will demand spending large sums over a long period like a hobby. Even if you aren't looking to buy, you will at least look for reassurance you aren't being ripped off, or to make an informed purchasing decision. When I started wargaming again in 2010, I'd discovered Maelstrom and Wayland, and ordered from them, long before I started using Dakka.

We people, here, who are very clued up about what's going on in the hobby, are a very small minority of the community. As long as it stays that way, GW stores will keep making profit.

The only people I know personally who still buy more than a bit of paint from our local GW are the handful who, for whatever reason, still play there. That numbers maybe 3 out of 30 or so regular attendees to my club. One of which could be considered to spend approaching substantial sums (he has impulse control issues and 40K is srs bsns for him)

I think its important to distinguish between GW being profitable and GW stores making a profit. While I wouldn't contend they lose money hand over fist, or that some stores don't even make good money, to assume that every shop is making money is probably inaccurate, almost every chain will have unprofitable locations that it maintains for a variety of reasons. In the case of GW, I think maintaining the shops is a large burden on the company, and an unnecessary one IMO, and a similar result could have been achieved by clever support of Independant traders for a lot less upkeep and investment. Alas, I suspect that ship has long since sailed, and GW is now somewhat stuck with the consequences of those choices.

Either way, in an economy where online shopping is fast outstripping high street shopping, to think that anyone who buys online is in "a very small minority" is, again, IMO flat out wrong.

The high streets dying, (at least in the traditional sense) but I don't think gw would survive very long without stores

ahzek wrote:
The high streets dying, (at least in the traditional sense) but I don't think gw would survive very long without stores

They would in the UK though, simply due to ubiquity. As already said by other people, GW is synonymous with wargaming in the UK; most people have never even heard that there are other games out there. To them, GW IS wargaming. I think GW would do fine if they closed every store in the UK (with the exception of Warhammer World), there is also the UK's network of gaming clubs to consider, many of them are located in what I like to call "GW towns" (My hometown, Lincoln is one of them IMO), even though they are independent clubs, GW still dominates the landscape and many other games don't even get a look in, even though many club members try, but to no avail (but this is tangential to the original point).

The USA or Oz OTOH.... Yeah, they'd be dead in the water.

But in terms of new customers, without stores there would be significantly fewer, I don't know many people in the hobby that didn't start with gw products

 Aerethan wrote:
I can tell you right now, at least here in the US, stores that operate at a loss will have quick manager turnaround and if they don't profit they get closed.

Oh god that's probably what happened here in Oslo, Norway. Well I don't know. Luckily they haven't closed down.

Prices in Norway are the same at GW as in other stores I've found that sell 40k products. Not that there's a whole lot of them that I know of.

ahzek wrote:
But in terms of new customers, without stores there would be significantly fewer, I don't know many people in the hobby that didn't start with gw products

Well, my first official mini was a Ral Partha model, bought from a Dillons book store when they still existed and had a role playing section, my first game was Space Crusade (heavy GW involvement, but MB were the big name on that) followed by a copy of Talisman purchased from aforementioned grumpy sod (who also sold me my softcover Rogue Trader a little ways down the line)

My first GW purchase, from a GW store, was a Rhino from GW Torquay. I may or may not have bought from mail order before then, and I certainly had White Dwarf on order at my local Newsagent, but that Rhino was probably some two years down the line from that Ral Partha Dwarf on a Pony.

I'm not just trying to disagree with you for the sake of it, but there was a time when even when GW's product was popular, their stores weren't necessarily anywhere like as prevalent as these days, but wargamers are a resourceful bunch with some sort of collective unconscious knowledge. We find a way.

I do wonder if more independents in the UK wouldn't be better for the hobby? I know the conventional wisdom is that, regardless of what else you think of them, GW provide a gateway into wargaming that brings a steady flow of new blood into the hobby, some of whom stick around and graduate onto other games. The price of entry to 40K or Fantasy is only going one way, and Specialist Games have largely gone the way of the Dodo. Certainly we know that new players get inducted via GW, but we can never know how many who would be interested, but aren't prepared to invest the time and money (or whose parents aren't prepared at least!)

An Indy store wouldn't have to rely on one of two choices (I think at this point it is fair to call LOTR a non-starter in most cases) to hook someone in. They could demo X Wing, with a much lower barrier to entry in pretty much all directions, Infinity, Batman or any other lower model count game. They would even be able to tailor the game they demo to the prospect's taste, rather than trying to shoehorn his preferences into a limited framework. Even a modest buy in for a GW game, with books, paints, glue etc, is approaching £150, X Wing can be bought as a standalone product for £25, Infinity could feasibly be started from scratch including paints for ~£60 or so.

While it might be fair to say GW brings new blood into the hobby, one has to wonder how many it discourages?

Frankly, it needs to be a hobby store. And there need to be more of them in the US, which means they need to probably carry other company's products as well, with just a VERY heavy focus on GW things.

 Grimtuff wrote:
The USA or Oz OTOH.... Yeah, they'd be dead in the water.

IMO it's the exact opposite. If every single GW store in the US closed overnight hardly anyone would notice. If the same thing happened in the UK then GW would probably go bankrupt.

I order some stuff from GW, but its the direct only things, the *****!
I know a few folk that always use them too, mainly because they like the speed in which it comes and its guaranteed good service, no messing about.
Not everyone always uses the cheapest option available, price is not always the key factor, in my experience some people dont mind to pay more.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
The USA or Oz OTOH.... Yeah, they'd be dead in the water.

IMO it's the exact opposite. If every single GW store in the US closed overnight hardly anyone would notice. If the same thing happened in the UK then GW would probably go bankrupt.

What I mean is those stores are pretty much GW's last tenuous grasp on those respective continents. You're correct in saying hardly anyone would notice on your end, but I firmly think GW would endure in the UK simply due to it being so ingrained.

MTG takes very little shelf space and causes a store to become packed on a Friday night. Asking how a GW store can compete with a FLGS is like asking how bar that doesn't serve beer can compete with bars that serve both shots and beer.

 Grimtuff wrote:
What I mean is those stores are pretty much GW's last tenuous grasp on those respective continents. You're correct in saying hardly anyone would notice on your end, but I firmly think GW would endure in the UK simply due to it being so ingrained.

No, what I mean is that independent stores dominate in the US, and those stores sell GW games. If every GW store disappeared overnight most of the existing players would just move to the nearest independent store (and continue to buy the same GW products), and those stores would do just as well at recruiting new players. GW would have to settle for selling to the stores at less than full retail, but they'd also be done with the expense of operating their own stores. So in the end it's probably not much of a difference to them.

On the other hand, in countries where GW stores dominate and there isn't a market full of independent stores already in place losing those GW stores would do serious damage to the hobby because there would be nothing left to cover their absence. The community would have nowhere to buy and play (at least without inconvenient travel requirements), and GW would have nowhere to sell their products.

azreal13 wrote:

We were told repeatedly, both in-store by area managers and at head office on training that stores were marketing, with a better return than any other form of advertising that GW could use.

Yeah, my line managers would tell me stuff that was blatant bull too, it's part of their job.

So all those retail chains with networks of stores that also spend a fortune on advertising for themselves and what they sell are just wasting time and money?

Given Primark, one of the largest fashion retailers in the UK doesn't advertise, period, yet are completely dominating the high streets and retail parks, you could argue that advertising is an expensive distraction that doesn't automatically lead to success.
Hell, some of the more effective retail chains make money by owning their online competitors and using their stores as nothing more than a showroom (and screwing their staff with commission based salaries that they have no way of earning 'cus the company's own website is 20% cheaper).
Furthermore, if they are the only seller in town, yes they are wasting money.

You don't seem to understand, GW aren't selling their product with their stores, they're selling child-free shopping for 3 hours each Saturday/Sunday, they're selling social contacts and new friends for 12-13-year-olds, they're selling a place where all xmas and birthday presents can be bought with no need to pay attention to what your child is doing (the man in the store knows what little Tarquin collects), they're selling bragging rights about how creative and artistic your little darling is.
GW stores exist to sell to parents of 12-year-olds, upper middle class parents to be exact since they're the ones with money.

It's a horrific business model, based on exploitation and massive customer turnover with the staff trained to appeal to parents through their children.
Hell, even the ages on the boxes are generous, so you can think "how clever little Johnny is, playing a game for children so much older than him".

Of course I understand how they justify the product to the parents, "you sell the sizzle, not the sausage" and it's pointless selling to Person A, when Person B is the one who has to put their hand in their pocket.

Being the only seller in town doesn't mean you shouldn't advertise either. I worked in one site that had been open and trading for 7 years when I took over, in a small market town, yet still, with fairly dependable regularity, we would get people looking for he shoe shop hat had previously occupied the building. Also, advertising returns to my earlier point, we know how many people start in GW and play GW games, we don't know how many who would start if they knew where the shop was located, or what product they offered. Conventional advertising would reach people that simply don't know they're interested enough to seek out a small shop in an out of the way location, and then find out for themselves. Granted, I suspect many people who are enthused about wargaming will find them out anyway, but GW financials suggest they need a new source of customers to keep growing, and they won't find them hiding in their shops.

Primark isn't a great example, given they are a discount retailer, who are pretty much all universally doing well at the moment, and GW have positioned themselves as a premium brand and long claimed to rely on word of mouth from their customers, yet these days I personally don't know anyone who has been involved with GW for a while with much good to say (certainly nobody whose opinion would carry enough weight with a parent to convince them to spend hundreds of pounds.)

I agree that it is a terrible business model, and just another example where I feel GW does just enough to keep things going, where a different approach could yield substantially better returns, both financially for GW and to the wider hobby in general

It's a business model that has made GW the biggest wargames manufacturer by a factor of about ten.

That's terrible?

 notprop wrote:
It's a business model that has made GW the biggest wargames manufacturer by a factor of about ten.

That's terrible?

Not really, the current method is a much more recent change, they've been the biggest for a lot longer.

It's the business model that seems to have brought growth grinding to a near halt while all those around them seem to be enjoying an unprecedented era of growth.

GW is afraid of competition from other games such as warmahordes, infinity, and mallifux. The others are far superior for small scale battles, and far inferior for large scale battles. Because GW has the largest market share they want GW stores to isolate their customers from competition, but they completely forgot the FLGS is what introduces new customers to GW products when they show up to play a different game and see people playing 40k. Purchasing and playing at a GW store instead of a FLGS hides 40k from potential new players and causes the growth of 40k to become anemic.

Didn't gw say before they didn't see their competitors as competition, something to do with 30 years experience and a retail chain

ahzek wrote:
Didn't gw say before they didn't see their competitors as competition, something to do with 30 years experience and a retail chain

They may have said that, and in the past it was true to a degree; when I started GW games almost no other games were played locally; maybe less than half a dozen BattleTech, CAV, and Confrontation players. However, this is no longer the case at all, and at the stores I frequent, Warmachine and Malifaux players show up in roughly equal numbers to 40K and WHFB players. Furthermore, Warmachine, Malifaux, and other games like Infinity seem to be growing by leaps and bounds.

GW may say they don't see their competition as competition, but if that's true, it's because they're not even looking, or at least, they're not looking at the North American markets. I don't know how it is in UK and continental Europe. I suspect, in reality, they are aware of their competition, hence the more aggressive release cycle and the seemingly more grandiose nature of said releases. I don't know if it's working or not.

Regardless, I simply can't imagine it's more cost effective to maintain a chain of tiny retail stores in the US than to allow Indies to carry the weight. As I've said before in other threads, I know very, very few people who started playing due to GW stores.

 Peregrine wrote:
The answer is no, it is not possible for GW stores to compete. It's like asking how to make water not be wet, or how to make 1+1=3. Imagine you have two stores:

Store A:
* Sells everything at 10% off full retail price.
* Sells a wide range of non-GW products, including some combination of other miniatures games, RPGs, card games, board games, RC cars/planes, comics, etc.
* Is open during regular business hours, seven days a week.
* Has plenty of gaming space for all of the various games they sell, including semi-organized game nights and/or ongoing leagues.
* Has no rules on using third-party components in your games, since they sell those as well.
* Has useful staff with the freedom to give you useful help instead of just reciting company policy.

Store B:
* Sells everything at full retail price.
* Only sells GW products.
* Is only open for limited hours, only five days a week, and is randomly closed in the middle of the day so the one employee can have a lunch break.
* Has limited gaming space, and only allows GW games.
* Does not allow anything other than official GW products in the store.
* Has useless staff that have to deal with strict company rules or risk being fired.


So why would you ever go to store B, unless you don't know that store A exists?

The answer is simple i would not. To be honest, i never thought that GW stores had to actually make a profit, i always thought (while certainly a few of them have to make profit, through simple statistic probability) most run at a loss and the managers job was to reduce that loss as much as possible, i always thought their point was to promote their product, not to actually sustain the company through sales. Which with their current pricing policy seems rather unfeasible.

Oh since somebody asked, Never set foot on a gw store, got started on the hobby with 2 armies made out of recasts (empire and chaos) same as my brother (lizard men) and friends did, i currently own 2 other full plastic armies. So i do not believe piracy is detrimental to their industry either, i would not have joined the hobby if i could not play full sized games, god knows i started into this for the game, not the hobby and there are far better and far cheaper models out there if you are only interested in making artistic pieces.

 RatBot wrote:

ahzek wrote:
Didn't gw say before they didn't see their competitors as competition, something to do with 30 years experience and a retail chain

They may have said that, and in the past it was true to a degree; when I started GW games almost no other games were played locally; maybe less than half a dozen BattleTech, CAV, and Confrontation players. However, this is no longer the case at all, and at the stores I frequent, Warmachine and Malifaux players show up in roughly equal numbers to 40K and WHFB players. Furthermore, Warmachine, Malifaux, and other games like Infinity seem to be growing by leaps and bounds.

GW may say they don't see their competition as competition, but if that's true, it's because they're not even looking, or at least, they're not looking at the North American markets. I don't know how it is in UK and continental Europe. I suspect, in reality, they are aware of their competition, hence the more aggressive release cycle and the seemingly more grandiose nature of said releases. I don't know if it's working or not.

Regardless, I simply can't imagine it's more cost effective to maintain a chain of tiny retail stores in the US than to allow Indies to carry the weight. As I've said before in other threads, I know very, very few people who started playing due to GW stores.

I guess bravado is key there

ahzek wrote:

 RatBot wrote:

ahzek wrote:
Didn't gw say before they didn't see their competitors as competition, something to do with 30 years experience and a retail chain

They may have said that, and in the past it was true to a degree; when I started GW games almost no other games were played locally; maybe less than half a dozen BattleTech, CAV, and Confrontation players. However, this is no longer the case at all, and at the stores I frequent, Warmachine and Malifaux players show up in roughly equal numbers to 40K and WHFB players. Furthermore, Warmachine, Malifaux, and other games like Infinity seem to be growing by leaps and bounds.

GW may say they don't see their competition as competition, but if that's true, it's because they're not even looking, or at least, they're not looking at the North American markets. I don't know how it is in UK and continental Europe. I suspect, in reality, they are aware of their competition, hence the more aggressive release cycle and the seemingly more grandiose nature of said releases. I don't know if it's working or not.

Regardless, I simply can't imagine it's more cost effective to maintain a chain of tiny retail stores in the US than to allow Indies to carry the weight. As I've said before in other threads, I know very, very few people who started playing due to GW stores.

I guess bravado is key there

Chutzpa - that quality that allows one to kill one's parents, then plead for leniency on the rounds that one is an orphan.

The Auld Grump

The Infinite wrote:

Given Primark, one of the largest fashion retailers in the UK doesn't advertise, period, yet are completely dominating the high streets and retail parks, you could argue that advertising is an expensive distraction that doesn't automatically lead to success.

I don't think that's a good example; Primarks are always huge stores in prominent positions; you can't really visit a shopping centre without seeing one here and target everyone at the lower end of the market (they do guys/girls clothes, and homeware stuff), and have pretty long opening hours. Almost everyone has some vague need that can be fulfilled by Primark (I get my shirts they, they don't last long but they are £2 each). Because they are so ubiquitous everyone knows about it.

GW on the other hand is at the high end of their niche market, on side streets with minimal opening hours. Very few people have any real need to visit them, assuming they even know it exists.

Primark probably wouldn't benefit from advertising, but GW probably would. I wonder how many people coming out of a Hobbit film are [a] aware of GW or [b] aware they GW have a Hobbit game out? If that figure for A/B isn't at least 75% GW needs to do some advertising.

I didn't say what you quoted dude, something got crossed over somewhere!

You're right, it was The Infinite quoting you, and I've messed the tags up. Sorry.

The stores are not only there to sell models. They are there to get new people into the hobby and to create a physical presence of the company and the hobby.

Most GW in the UK are in prominent positions, in areas of very high foot traffic, they do that for a reason.

my local GW is in the ideal place for its target group. Right next to the bus stop that the kids from the private school down the road have to wait at to go home. They even put objections in to the council when they tried to put a fully covered bus shelter in. I guess they wanted the kids in the store or outside getting rained on.

didn't GW start as the FLGS ( I used to order FASA stuff from them ) and decide they would rather keep there profits for themselves.