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The difference is that only GW actively goes against the independents. PP and Mantic (with their limited support right now) do not. PP embraces the independents, GW tried to kill them.

That is hardly "exactly the same".

nkelsch wrote:

Mantic has horrible customer service issues and a revolving door kickstarter model which leaves every new backer with a 'I will never back Mantic KS again' feelings. They also undercut FLGS by the KS model making mantic models trash for stores to sell. often people can get mantic KS models on clearance before the kickstarter even fulfills, many times for cheaper than the KS.

I'm not aware of Mantic business model so I won't comment on the veracity or not of this.

nkelsch wrote:

PP cannot keep products in stock for retailers so often stores are bare and there are frequent delays which make people go to internet or direct buy to get things faster. Which results in the exact same behavior of sucking sales from the FLGS.

Proof? This was true during a period more than 2 years ago when a spike in demand far outstripped PP's production capacity, but all these problems have since been solved.

nkelsch wrote:

I have never seen a model line which has more people unable to find a single part of the line 'acceptable' from an aesthetic point of view by a large number of people.

How many are these "large number of people"? Where are they? Where did you get your numbers?

For every single example of an unaesthetic model from PP, I'll show you another from GW... Especially those made in the past 4 years, damn the newer GW models are ugly as sin!

nkelsch wrote:

The lack of conversions and strict tourney rules are also a turn-off.

There are plenty of examples of conversions using PP miniatures, in fact NQ has conversion articles practically every issue and I'm not talking about kit bashing articles like some other magazines have...

Also the strict conversion rules for tournaments are only really enforced in PP official tournaments, of which there are 2 every year, every other tournament is at the TO's discretion and I've never heard of anyone having their conversion turned away because of those rules.

nkelsch wrote:

Their prices are exactly the same as GW in every capacity. For people who collect and paint models, who are a large portion of the consumer market, telling them 'the game needs less models to play' doesn't make a 50$ pile of metal cost less.

How do you know that a large portion of the consumer market only collect and paint models? How large is that portion?

Also, if someone only buys models to paint and collect, then they will vastly prefer the superior quality that metal and resin models offer over plastic ones, both in detail and in dynamism of the sculpt itself.

And I find it hilarious that you claim that PP models are just as expensive and GW ones when you are comparing two different materials... You do realize that metal is much more expensive than plastic, right?

nkelsch wrote:

And while finecast sucks, GW is making a good effort to not use that anymore. PP and Mantic seem to be addicted to PVC and continue to make crap PVC models which are unacceptable to many mini collectors as a material.

No they aren't making any effort to not use it, they just removed the "Failcrap" tag from it because the brand had become THAT toxic, and just kept using it the same material anyway. Also PP continuously keeps improving their plastic kits and most of the newest ones have shown a considerable improvement in the placement and amount of mold lines, which is what the "unacceptable" people always seem to point to.

If you have other examples of why PP PVC models are "unacceptable" to many mini collectors, please post pictures of all these flaws because there are plenty of pictures of Failcraps flaws and they go far, far beyond mold line placement.

nkelsch wrote:

So all 3 companies are EXACTLY THE SAME.

No, they really are not and it takes a special kind to even make that claim.

Sooo, it didn't take long for this thread to go from...

"Direct only... Why?"

to...

"THUNDERDOME!! 2 companies enter! 1 company leaves! (PP vs GW edition).

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Sooo, it didn't take long for this thread to go from...

"Direct only... Why?"

to...

"THUNDERDOME!! 2 companies enter! 1 company leaves! (PP vs GW edition).

Indeed, please take it to another thread(or PMs) before the Mods have to get involved.

I haven't played much GW in years (3 editions of 40K ago now) so I haven't been keeping up with what's gone to direct only before noticing this thread.

Obviously maximizing profits is likely the main factor in GW taking so many models and kits to direct only but does anyone else think it might also be a result of trying to emulate the competition? When I look at where I've been buying models recently it's pimarily kickstarter (Mierce, Mercs, Red Box Games) and direct from webstores of smaller companies(Victoria Miniatures, RBG) and it strikes me that GW has to have noticed the trend within the hobby. There's a lot of companies out there that stay in business making minis without needing a network of physical stores. Perhaps, a factor in expanding direct only is GW testing out the reaction from their customers and their sales to see if they could take a majority of their products to direct only. GW seems to be a bit hypocritical lately, lamenting the cost of their stores while opening more of them so I don't know if they'd really do away with their stores or not.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 chiefbigredman wrote:
That's it plain and simple. Lots of people here have good points and it all boils down to (I'm my opinion) money and the amount of profit games workshop makes from direct only.

I don't think anyone was arguing that it's done because of money... they were arguing whether it's actually a good idea. There's not much use making more money per unit if you lose so many sales that you can't make up the gap.

Ah okay, well I see how gw thinks its a good idea to go direct only to make themselves more money. The problem is for us is that we don't really know the exact numbers that gw has on sales, profits, cost etc etc to figure out exactly why they chose direct only.

I think they must know something that we don't...because it seems so obvious to us who buy the products that direct only is a bad business model but gw must have information on their buisness that we can't access as the general public.

 chiefbigredman wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 chiefbigredman wrote:
That's it plain and simple. Lots of people here have good points and it all boils down to (I'm my opinion) money and the amount of profit games workshop makes from direct only.

I don't think anyone was arguing that it's done because of money... they were arguing whether it's actually a good idea. There's not much use making more money per unit if you lose so many sales that you can't make up the gap.

Ah okay, well I see how gw thinks its a good idea to go direct only to make themselves more money. The problem is for us is that we don't really know the exact numbers that gw has on sales, profits, cost etc etc to figure out exactly why they chose direct only.

I think they must know something that we don't...because it seems so obvious to us who buy the products that direct only is a bad business model but gw must have information on their buisness that we can't access as the general public.

The discussion on whether GW knows best is certainly a long one and I think you'll find many people, many of those who are better educated in business than me, will say that they don't.

There's obviously no question whether or not you get more revenue per sale selling direct to customers instead of selling to 3rd parties. Obviously you do. The question is whether you lose enough sales to compensate (or miraculously gain sales despite cutting off avenues for people to buy product).

FLGS's are still important to GW and I think GW are pushing them too far.

It's not enough to say "well GW have the data so they must know what they're doing". Because we also know GW don't do market research, they hire based on personality rather than skills and qualifications and they make stupid comments (like their customers are price insensitive even though that's obviously not true of all customers, only a subset of them).

 chiefbigredman wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 chiefbigredman wrote:
That's it plain and simple. Lots of people here have good points and it all boils down to (I'm my opinion) money and the amount of profit games workshop makes from direct only.

I don't think anyone was arguing that it's done because of money... they were arguing whether it's actually a good idea. There's not much use making more money per unit if you lose so many sales that you can't make up the gap.

Ah okay, well I see how gw thinks its a good idea to go direct only to make themselves more money. The problem is for us is that we don't really know the exact numbers that gw has on sales, profits, cost etc etc to figure out exactly why they chose direct only.

I think they must know something that we don't...because it seems so obvious to us who buy the products that direct only is a bad business model but gw must have information on their buisness that we can't access as the general public.

I just wanted to address the bold part.

About 8 years ago, I worked for Citigroup as a lower-mid level manager. People at my level and our supervisor often wondered about some of the patently stupid policies that came down from headquarters about how we were supposed to be doing business. On the surface of things, a lot of those directives just didn't make sense and seemed completely unsustainable in the long term.

The relevance to your comment is that is exactly what we'd tell each other about why those decisions were being made. We assumed that the people higher up had a greater degree of information than we had that would justify those decisions and make them sensible. Obviously, as indicated by the economic slow down and Citigroups participation in that, we now know that they were, in fact, just really bad decisions.

Sometimes, those people making the decisions are just making bad decisions. They don't necessarily have any better information that makes their decisions make sense. They just as likely are simply making poor decisions based on whatever information they have. Those decisions make sense to them, but that doesn't mean that they will turn out to be correct in the long term.

Also, how can they have access to information if they don't do any research on their market?

PhantomViper wrote:

nkelsch wrote:

And while finecast sucks, GW is making a good effort to not use that anymore. PP and Mantic seem to be addicted to PVC and continue to make crap PVC models which are unacceptable to many mini collectors as a material.

No they aren't making any effort to not use it, they just removed the "Failcrap" tag from it because the brand had become THAT toxic, and just kept using it the same material anyway. Also PP continuously keeps improving their plastic kits and most of the newest ones have shown a considerable improvement in the placement and amount of mold lines, which is what the "unacceptable" people always seem to point to.

If you have other examples of why PP PVC models are "unacceptable" to many mini collectors, please post pictures of all these flaws because there are plenty of pictures of Failcraps flaws and they go far, far beyond mold line placement.

I present exhibit A- PP's most recent plastic release. Looks perfectly fine to me.

The most egregious example of PP's "bad" plastics were the initial CoC battleboxes, which PP were aware of and the later castings are a lot better.

To keep this on topic, there's a big difference between

-"We can't provide product X to retailers because we literally cannot produce it fast enough due to a very sudden and completely unexpected surge in popularity, but once we're able to, it'll be no problem." (two years later) "Hey, see? It's all regularly available in retail stores!"

and

-"We refuse to allow retailers to stock product X because we want people to buy it directly from us because we view retailers as a necessary evil."


If I was a FLGS owner/manager, I'd be pretty annoyed at both situations, but I'd at least take some tiny solace in the fact that in the first situation, the company isn't actively trying to screw me over.

 RatBot wrote:
To keep this on topic, there's a big difference between

-"We can't provide product X to retailers because we literally cannot produce it fast enough, but once we're able to, it'll be no problem." (two years later) "Hey, see? It's all available in retail stores!"

and

-"We refuse to allow retailers to stock product X because we want people to buy it directly from us because we view retailers as a necessary evil."

But, but, but. PP and GW are the same! They're both miniature companies, see? Purple monkey dishwasher!

 Grimtuff wrote:


I present exhibit A- PP's most recent plastic release. Looks perfectly fine to me.

The most egregious example of PP's "bad" plastics were the initial CoC battleboxes, which PP were aware of and the later castings are a lot better.

Is that supposed to be a good example? That doesn't look very good to me. Soft detail, mold lines. At least the 'sprue tear divots seem to be off detail and on the peg part of the model. And the material is still PVC. And only 2$ cheaper than the metal version? Give me metal.

nkelsch wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:


I present exhibit A- PP's most recent plastic release. Looks perfectly fine to me.

The most egregious example of PP's "bad" plastics were the initial CoC battleboxes, which PP were aware of and the later castings are a lot better.

Is that supposed to be a good example? That doesn't look very good to me. Soft detail, mold lines. At least the 'sprue tear divots seem to be off detail and on the peg part of the model. And the material is still PVC. And only 2$ cheaper than the metal version? Give me metal.

Mold lines are part of the process. This really should not need explaining to you.

And soft detail? Are you intentionally taking the piss? I don't even know how to answer that one...

More of PP's recent plastic releases.
More here
and here,
and here.

 Grimtuff wrote:

nkelsch wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:


I present exhibit A- PP's most recent plastic release. Looks perfectly fine to me.

The most egregious example of PP's "bad" plastics were the initial CoC battleboxes, which PP were aware of and the later castings are a lot better.

Is that supposed to be a good example? That doesn't look very good to me. Soft detail, mold lines. At least the 'sprue tear divots seem to be off detail and on the peg part of the model. And the material is still PVC. And only 2$ cheaper than the metal version? Give me metal.

Mold lines are part of the process. This really should not need explaining to you.

And soft detail? Are you intentionally taking the piss? I don't even know how to answer that one...

More of PP's recent plastic releases.
More here
and here,
and here.

Metal and HIPS seems to have nearly nowhere close to the issues with Mold lines... And I have seen other PVC manufacturers who have no issues with mold lines. Mold lines seem to be related to poor mold design and poor QC/machine functionality by how the machines are run.I feel those mold lines ont hat first model are borderline unacceptable but in general a huge pain in the ass which i don't have to deal with to that extent with other materials and other companies... IE: 2$ more for metal without anywhere close to that level of detail damage and cleanup is worth every penny.

PVC is gak. Finecast is gak. But you can potentially eventually get a decent version of both if you are willing to do cleanup, resculpt damage and play the exchange game with the manufacturer. My money goes to metals and HIPS. If they began designing sculpts to maximize PVC and handled the SC and mold design to fix the issues, maybe it would be better. Sorry. It makes the materials from those companies who lack the track record to handle production a non-starter to me. And every link shows how much better metal is in comparison and I would buy metal in every situation. Even the comments of the model reveals show skepticism and fright over mold lines being an issue.

"Look, the tusks come attached on this guy. And hey, the face is almost completely mold line free. More like this please!" - Shows that they want more well-designed mold-line free parts, which is not the norm if it is pointed out.
"Each fist comes individually. This is where you'll find the worst mold lines in the kit." - These fists look awful, and they are pretty bad.

There are acknowledged and documented issues in mold design, material and variable quality.

And while some of those other links show 'better' it shows how it is a crap shoot with those companies. Don't that somehow PVC is different and that it isn't a cheap solution to handle the transition from metal to funding new sculpts which work with HIPS.

I forgot, Nkelsch: Mantic kicked your puppy off a cliff.

Yeah...GW business strategy vs PP and Mantic both is a total joke. But keep on fighting the poor fight!!

Rule #2 of Dakka Dakka is "Stay On Topic".

The topic of this thread is why GW has moved items to direct-only. Some business comparisons to other companies may be on-topic, but this in-depth comparison of materials is certainly not.

We have lots of threads to discuss PVC versus Polystyrene versus Metal, but this isn't one of them! So, back on topic please... thanks.

sirlotsofpain wrote:
I was just trying to get at the economics of the set up. I don't see how it can ever work. I was just wondering if anyone had any idea what GW may be thinking economically.

As a store, I'm confused as hell. All the stores I talk to feel the same.

-Having special characters helps sell an army. Kharn + 2 berzerker boxes is a classic example. But we have no special characters.

-Spending time with a new player showing them the game and helping them with an army list is worthless if you can't sell them anything. Bretonnians? Just the Battleforce. Empire? No cav, steamtank, engineers/pistoliers, cannon, hellblaster. Dwarfs? No warmachines or missle troops, or slayers. List goes on and on. WFT is stupidly gutted to the point it's hard to sell someone an army.

-Limited and allocated product. Codices we don't have access to. It all loses us sales.

My sales rep asked me why I thought my sales were down 60% from 5 years ago. I pointed out I had 60% less stock on my shelves, and wasn't going to beat my head against a wall trying to sell WFB or LOTR when most of the models were gone.

What was your reps reaction to that?

 mikhaila wrote:

sirlotsofpain wrote:
I was just trying to get at the economics of the set up. I don't see how it can ever work. I was just wondering if anyone had any idea what GW may be thinking economically.

As a store, I'm confused as hell. All the stores I talk to feel the same.

-Having special characters helps sell an army. Kharn + 2 berzerker boxes is a classic example. But we have no special characters.

-Spending time with a new player showing them the game and helping them with an army list is worthless if you can't sell them anything. Bretonnians? Just the Battleforce. Empire? No cav, steamtank, engineers/pistoliers, cannon, hellblaster. Dwarfs? No warmachines or missle troops, or slayers. List goes on and on. WFT is stupidly gutted to the point it's hard to sell someone an army.

-Limited and allocated product. Codices we don't have access to. It all loses us sales.

My sales rep asked me why I thought my sales were down 60% from 5 years ago. I pointed out I had 60% less stock on my shelves, and wasn't going to beat my head against a wall trying to sell WFB or LOTR when most of the models were gone.

I'm sure it varies from location to location, but this has been my experience as a customer chatting to the owners of the few FLGS's around.

Even when they couldn't carry a full stock because of space constraints, having a selection of character models was helpful to initially selling an army and then being able to order anything they wanted meant when the customer returned they could order in specifically the rest of the army that they wanted all from the one place and the store was able to grow the customer AND make money off the customer. The most telling evidence to me is how GW stock has fallen to the back aisles of my FLGS's over the years. You literally have to walk past Flames of War, Infinity and Warmahordes to get to the GW stuff now, and right next to the codices/army books if you cast your eye a bit further you see X-wing and a range of FFG games. These are the same stores that when I started used to have GW posters up all over the place and had all the GW stock prominently displayed.

Herzlos wrote:
What was your reps reaction to that?

Mostly curiosity, and trying to understand the situation.

The reps in the US office are decent guys stuck in a tough spot. They don't get any information either. They have to deal with angry stores. They have to help those stores sell more GW, and try to get orders out of them. They keep trying to come up with events or ways to help out the stores they deal with. Some of them try pretty hard to understand how the changes GW has imposed are hurting business.

All this despite the fact that the biggest problems come from GW itself.

We used to have huge event days when a new army came out, showcasing that army, and showing off new models we had hurried to pain. Now we don't even know what's coming out 2 weeks before, and not supposed to talk about it until 1 week prior. Effectively killing any launch event, and making it nearly impossible to get pre-orders and judge how much to initially order.

The sad thing is, even if a sales rep disagrees with GW policy, they can't express that in so many words. They have to toe the company line.

The Direct Only approach to me is a double whammy for customers: Even if the customer has managed to convince themselves to look past the high price... GW has helpfully made their product inconvenient to buy. Its telling that GW would rather have 100% of 0 sales instead of 60-70% of 1 sale. Granted... with rounding error - that's pretty much the same right?

i thought the goal of sales is to move product. By not selling this models to games stores your shooting your self in the foot. If GW had any sense they would sell these models to independent stores and let them take the risk of selling the product. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush

 Chute82 wrote:
i thought the goal of sales is to move product. By not selling this models to games stores your shooting your self in the foot. If GW had any sense they would sell these models to independent stores and let them take the risk of selling the product. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush

Well, sure, but GW sees independents more as competition for their stores and webstore than as retail outlets that can provide their goods to customers.

 mikhaila wrote:

sirlotsofpain wrote:
I was just trying to get at the economics of the set up. I don't see how it can ever work. I was just wondering if anyone had any idea what GW may be thinking economically.

As a store, I'm confused as hell. All the stores I talk to feel the same.

-Having special characters helps sell an army. Kharn + 2 berzerker boxes is a classic example. But we have no special characters.

-Spending time with a new player showing them the game and helping them with an army list is worthless if you can't sell them anything. Bretonnians? Just the Battleforce. Empire? No cav, steamtank, engineers/pistoliers, cannon, hellblaster. Dwarfs? No warmachines or missle troops, or slayers. List goes on and on. WFT is stupidly gutted to the point it's hard to sell someone an army.

-Limited and allocated product. Codices we don't have access to. It all loses us sales.

My sales rep asked me why I thought my sales were down 60% from 5 years ago. I pointed out I had 60% less stock on my shelves, and wasn't going to beat my head against a wall trying to sell WFB or LOTR when most of the models were gone.

I thought that was the point. Less sales for you, more sales for GW. This way once you are on the GW website to buy that special character what else are you going to buy? The way I see it, is more sales for GW less sales for you, therefore GW gets the bigger slice of the pie.

This is another thing that looks like video games. Before the PS4 and Xbox One came out rumour was you couldn't buy games anymore at EB or video gaming stores anymore. If you wanted to buy a video game you had to buy it on PS4 or Xbox One site. Looks like GW wants to do that as well. This way if most people are buying on the web site then they could close down all their stores or most of them. Hence more profit for GW.

Davor wrote:
I thought that was the point. Less sales for you, more sales for GW. This way once you are on the GW website to buy that special character what else are you going to buy? The way I see it, is more sales for GW less sales for you, therefore GW gets the bigger slice of the pie.

Which is a great plan, until all of the independent stores start directing new customers to GW's competition and those customers never buy anything from GW. Getting 100% of the pie isn't very impressive when the pie is all gone. Even if the independent stores don't get frustrated and do it out of spite, which do you think sells better: "here's an Infinity starter box, it's a complete army and we have all of their stuff in stock if you want to expand it" or "here's a space marine starter box, it's 10% of an army and if you want to finish it you'll need to buy $100 worth of rules and a bunch of models that you can only get from GW's online store"?

This way if most people are buying on the web site then they could close down all their stores or most of them.

The sheer unbelievable stupidity of that idea* is almost impossible to put into words. Closing all of their stores would be financial suicide for GW. Video game companies might be able to get away with it because people don't spend more than the bare minimum amount of time in the store, so going digital-only just means that you get free "shipping" on all of your games and never have to waste time at a store. But GW stores aren't just a place to obtain products, they're a place to use those products and recruit new customers. If GW tried to move all of their sales online they'd instantly lose most of their customers, and many of them would start buying non-GW games from independent stores because that's what they can actually play.

The truth here is that GW's stores are one of their few advantages. They're an isolated island of GW-only sales where their customers can buy stuff, build a GW-only community, and never be exposed to any non-GW products that might tempt them away from the Hobby™. That's so much better for GW than having customers going to independent stores where they might be aware that non-GW products exist.

*For GW at least. For tabletop gaming in general it would be a huge win.

 Peregrine wrote:
But GW stores aren't just a place to obtain products, they're a place to use those products and recruit new customers.

GW have been trying to "fix" that for years - downsizing gaming space, kicking out veterans, reducing open play, reducing opening hours, pre-booked painting lessons or intro games only, and so on.

Even they don't stock direct-only stuff, so you have to use the website anyway. And if you google "Games workshop" you'll find a page of resellers with discounts, so even that's an own-goal unless you use the order-point in store.

Davor wrote:

 mikhaila wrote:

sirlotsofpain wrote:
I was just trying to get at the economics of the set up. I don't see how it can ever work. I was just wondering if anyone had any idea what GW may be thinking economically.

As a store, I'm confused as hell. All the stores I talk to feel the same.

-Having special characters helps sell an army. Kharn + 2 berzerker boxes is a classic example. But we have no special characters.

-Spending time with a new player showing them the game and helping them with an army list is worthless if you can't sell them anything. Bretonnians? Just the Battleforce. Empire? No cav, steamtank, engineers/pistoliers, cannon, hellblaster. Dwarfs? No warmachines or missle troops, or slayers. List goes on and on. WFT is stupidly gutted to the point it's hard to sell someone an army.

-Limited and allocated product. Codices we don't have access to. It all loses us sales.

My sales rep asked me why I thought my sales were down 60% from 5 years ago. I pointed out I had 60% less stock on my shelves, and wasn't going to beat my head against a wall trying to sell WFB or LOTR when most of the models were gone.

I thought that was the point. Less sales for you, more sales for GW. This way once you are on the GW website to buy that special character what else are you going to buy? The way I see it, is more sales for GW less sales for you, therefore GW gets the bigger slice of the pie.

Unfortunately, as demonstrated by their most recent annual report, it appears to be less sales for the FLGS and less sales for GW.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Herzlos wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
But GW stores aren't just a place to obtain products, they're a place to use those products and recruit new customers.

GW have been trying to "fix" that for years - downsizing gaming space, kicking out veterans, reducing open play, reducing opening hours, pre-booked painting lessons or intro games only, and so on.

Even they don't stock direct-only stuff, so you have to use the website anyway. And if you google "Games workshop" you'll find a page of resellers with discounts, so even that's an own-goal unless you use the order-point in store.

GW would be far better off ditching their retail chain in its entirety and re-embracing the independent retail network, at least outside of Great Britain and parts of Europe.

Herzlos wrote:
GW have been trying to "fix" that for years - downsizing gaming space, kicking out veterans, reducing open play, reducing opening hours, pre-booked painting lessons or intro games only, and so on.

Yes, but that just means they're obsessively focusing on recruiting new players and cutting costs. They don't want the bitter veteran who has been playing for 10 years and has already bought everything they're going to buy, they want new players meeting other excited new players. And they want to do it at the same time as they cut everything they can possibly cut. For example, why pay for a large store when you can play an intro game in a tiny closet and the once-per-week gaming night is more than enough to give a new customer the idea that they can have this awesome community waiting for them once they buy their $1000 worth of space marines.

And remember, GW's target market is people who have never seen an independent game store. GW stores suck if you're an experienced player who knows about all of the other independent stores in the area (and you live in the US, where GW is an irrelevant minority of stores), but if they're all you've ever known you won't realize how limited they are.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Herzlos wrote:
Even they don't stock direct-only stuff, so you have to use the website anyway. And if you google "Games workshop" you'll find a page of resellers with discounts, so even that's an own-goal unless you use the order-point in store.

But they'll tell you all about that awesome order point and how buying from it helps the community. For example, the local GW store's facebook page always has a note to come in and pre-order stuff from the order point because then the order counts for the store's sales, and you always want to support your local business. And GW loves customers that are too young to have a credit card and buy stuff online.

 Peregrine wrote:

Herzlos wrote:
GW have been trying to "fix" that for years - downsizing gaming space, kicking out veterans, reducing open play, reducing opening hours, pre-booked painting lessons or intro games only, and so on.

Yes, but that just means they're obsessively focusing on recruiting new players and cutting costs. They don't want the bitter veteran who has been playing for 10 years and has already bought everything they're going to buy, they want new players meeting other excited new players. And they want to do it at the same time as they cut everything they can possibly cut. For example, why pay for a large store when you can play an intro game in a tiny closet and the once-per-week gaming night is more than enough to give a new customer the idea that they can have this awesome community waiting for them once they buy their $1000 worth of space marines.

So, judging from their recent financial performance, how well would you say this strategy is working for them?