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 Looky Likey wrote:
Quality is a nebulous term though, and includes other nebulous terms such as competitiveness within the meta, if its fluffy, fun builds, reuse of existing model particularly if its models that didn't work in the previous codex, and new models. Everybody has differing preferences for those categories and the overall mix for them.

GW should operate a similar model to MtG for each new codex: release a counter to last high powered thing and new high powered thing in next release, repeat.

A world of NO. I quit MtG precisely because WotC started pulling this crap.

Isn't that what GW already does? Only they go even further and nerf previous releases whilst buffing new releases.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Isn't that what GW already does? Only they go even further and nerf previous releases whilst buffing new releases.

No, they're not anywhere so coherent. Sometimes new stuff is awesome, sometimes it sucks, etc.

 techsoldaten wrote:

 Looky Likey wrote:
Your argument has the second hand market as a disease infecting GW's profit , shutting down the second hand market (which would never be possible as the second hand market is more like the common cold) would be curing the disease, I would rather they immunise against the disease. This immunisation would be through improving retention, if they can keep vets enthused and preferably buying new product to use along side old product then that should reduce the volume on sale, which in turn would drive up second hand prices due to lower supply.

My point was that by releasing better quality product vets are more likely to expand their army with the latest release as it compliments and extends the army's current capabilities.

I see where you are going, but that's really overstating the point.

GW already does a lot to keep the secondhand market suppressed with a) their policies about usage of their images and b) their policies for independent retailers around sales volume, web marketing and availability of miniatures.

When you talk about "immunizing" vets, that would be through the release of new Codexes, right? Wouldn't it seem strange to you if vets were selling off their armies very cheap when new Codexes came out? It might make someone think there's a problem here...

I can't agree with you there.

I have sold and bought a feth ton of GW models on eBay.

How many people are there in the developed world who do not own and cannot borrow a digital camera or smartphone and shoot pics of the stuff they want to sell?

How many people go to shops for secondhand wargame stuff rather than eBay or the secondhand tables at big shows?

Actually, I think it would be more interesting if they did something like what was done with D&D Insider where you could access all the books digitally as long as you paid a monthly subscription. I think it's a better experience than having to buy a codex or pry details out of the internet to decide whether or not you want the rules inside.

Plus, I'm sure it's a steadier revenue stream.

FORCE NARRATIVE!!!! EPIC BATTLES!!!! A BIG STINKING FLY AND MAGGOT INFESTED MANURE OF A RULE SET THAT CAUSED THE FALL OF THE EVIL EMPIRE!!!!

Eh somewhat correct as this was one of several reasons for the decline of Games Workshop.

So now we have another bad report. Nothing new with the spin doctoring, apoligist praying fanbois, trying to make things so much betta than it is.

This is what I think is going to happen.

GW is not going anywhere anytime soon, HOWEVER the company is contracting in quality of services and global sphere of influence. IMPORTANT TO NOTE: Not so long ago they where the 800 pound gorilla dictating what their niche market will be.

Now,....

Metaphorically speaking they GOT their nuts cut off from the Chapter House debacle and their copyrighted TRUTHS and business tactics were exposed in court.


They will always have their stronghold in England and some hot spots globally but that is all. They are an abject failure to understand the their market as a whole, their customer base and most of all the ever changing flows of the global economy.

Moarrr or lessss GW will become a national corporation.

As far as the new CEO? Expect no big and wonderful changes. It will be business as before as Kirby will still hold power within the Board of Directors. I EXPECT ANOTHER YESSSSSEEERRRR MAN.
Just like Wells was.

I don't feel sorry for stupid people that shun the realities of GW has become so please continue pray to the God Emperor in his glass cathedral. Maybe he will DO a miracle give by creating a golden shower of awesomeness on to the masses.... and you will be pleased by it and continue to play that Tarded game system. Buy those incredibly high priced models, and go to GW stores which are becoming more and more of a online ordering station than an actual game store.

I feel sorry for those people who remember not so long ago what Games Workshop was... The place to go to paint and create models and terrain with like minded individuals.

And actually play a game with a set of decent rules.

GW is giving us a golden shower alright...

 Toofast wrote:
GW is giving us a golden shower alright...

HAHAH.. and the fanboys are loving it...

Cergorach wrote:

Have you even read the financial reports from the last decade?
No one knows for sure how ell gw was doing before the management buyout, that information isn't public.
The lotr deal was made when gw was still growing every year and making a profit. During the lotr period revenue and profit actually stopped growing, many attributed that to gws focus on lotr instead of their own properties. The lotr deal only started gaining ground after the deagostini release of the weekly magazine nad miniatures.

What? The first GW LoTR product was released in 2001 to accompany the release of the movies.

From 2001 to 2004 (the so called LoTR bubble period), GW's profits went from 22.8M GBP to 40.1M GBP. The first year alone that they sold LoTR, they grew 30% instead of the animic 10% of the year before. The year before that, they had a very scary drop of 30%, so no, they were not growing before LoTR came along.

Sorry but what you are saying has no basis on reality.

Also, while we're fact checking, that magazine was monthly.

 jonolikespie wrote:
Also, while we're fact checking, that magazine was monthly.

We're both wrong it was released every two weeks.

@phantomviper
Look at the revenue and the actual release date of the financial reports. Gw financial years aren't the same as calender years. I' ll look up the exact reports when i' m not stuck behind an ipad...

What?

GW's financial years are still years, they just run from June to May, approximately. It means there is a possibility of a 6 month disconnect I guess, but is barely relevant in this context.

Posted from my iPad, which I find not in the least bit restrictive when it comes to any of this.

http://www.financialdirector.co.uk/financial-director/news/2387506/games-workshop-company-secretary-takes-fd-role

LONG-SERVING Games Workshop manager Rachel Tongue is to serve as its finance director.
Tongue joined the gaming retail and production business in 1996 and is currently company secretary and compliance manager. The chartered accountant and tax adviser takes on the role from 1 January.
The company saw its share price recently dip following a cut in its predicted interim operating profits, by £1m, due to its exposure to sterling's strength against the dollar and euro.
Long-serving chairman and CEO Tom Kirby announced earlier in the year that he plans to step away from the executive role.

That's good for Rountree. He likely has an 80+ hour work week being CEO and COO without also being the CFO.

Things are not getting better.

One thing I always feel the need to remind people, when reading graphs of GW stock like Loki posted, is that the share price is in pence, not Pounds or Euros.

So, for my US compatriots, that share price of 512.75 pence is equivalent to $8.03.

True, but the trend of that graph sucks in any currency!

Doesn't seem like a lot in the long run

Well, yeah, if you bought some,time in 2009 and sat on them, you'd still have cause to feel good about things, any time in the last two years however, you'd probably be a bit annoyed.

Remember, the stock market always trends up when looked at over a sufficiently long time period, so if I'd bought any shares of a company that is still currently listed 5 years ago I'd probably still be looking at a return - irrespective of if that company is run like arse or no.

The great thing about GW is they almost always pay a dividend no matter how bad a year they have.

Which appears to clearly be the main reason why so many people are or were holding stock, hence the massive drop in January when they didn't.

 Toofast wrote:
To my last point, market research is not 'otiose' in a niche market when nearly 12,000 random people sign a petition complaining about how much they don't like your company.

FTFY.

What you define as a "customer" may not be what Games Workshop defines as a "customer". People complain online every year about the prices of some of my company's items. Guess what, if they're too much for you, then you're probably not in that brand's target customer segment. Similarly, Louis Vuitton destroys all of their unsold bags rather than donate them or sell them below retail at an outlet store because they believe that it cheapens the value of their brand. It isn't that either company doesn't want your money. It's just that it's easier to try to get a specific group of people's money, rather than try to cast a wide net.


It's entirely possible that Games Workshop's problems lie in the intricacies of their niche market more than anything else. With a product that doesn't expire (my project log uses parts from kits I bought in the nineties), at a certain point the second hand market will create serious competition for them. This isn't like selling console video games where the technology refreshes every 6-8 years. It isn't like cars where eventually they wear out and you need new ones. A certain amount of the product will leave circulation, either being destroyed, discarded or stored indefinitely. But a ton of it is still out there. Games Workshop may definitely well have made mistakes in their business model, but they exist in a unique space where they have to create new products to sell to a fanbase that doesn't actually need any new products. I don't think they've done the best they could have done, but it isn't an easy market they exist in. The market works against them naturally at this point.

It's like the endless string of fallacies you hear every time the topic of Sisters of Battle comes up. People think games Workshop is incompetent, that they're just leaving money on the table by not makingnew Sisters of Battle miniatures. That all they'd have to do is revamp them like they did with the Dark Eldar. Not for a second considering whether or not Games Workshop even wants to revamp them, or if that would be in the business's best interests.

Running a business is pretty hard. That's why most people here don't do it, lol. But just because you're not a customer anymore doesn't mean they're doing things wrong. Games Workshop's customer base is a largely transient group and it always has been. The real question is whether or not they've been doing the right things to secure new ones. I don't think they have. But that doesn't lend credence to the idea that if you specifcally are upset, they are doing something wrong.

All that brings in to question what their customer base should be. Plus, I see no reason why they can't equally try and fleece new players as much as veteran players. It just seems illogical and counter intuitive to ignore an existing portion of your customer base.

All I'm saying is that there's a measure of turnover that is inherent to their business.

I'm not a customer anymore. If I buy anything 40K, it's almost exlcusively second hand, and in small quantities. That's just the nature of the beast.

Like I said, more than once, I'm not saying they did things 100% correctly. It's obvious that their sales have fallen off and their new customer acquisition isn't covering that difference. I think their prices present a burdensome barrier to entry and a barrier to returning customers buying additional armies. But they also sold 125 million of those squiggly British monies worth of product last year. I've heard that's almost $200M. That's not small potatoes, so they're still doing something right.

Business equations have a lot of variables, ad you can't solve for all of them by simply looking at YoY sales data.

No, I get that, they still sell a lot of goods, that are still of solid quality. The models are nothing to sneeze at in many ways (there are exceptions, of course), and while the rules are mediocre, the books themselves are solid.

I just question their decision, and your assessment of that decision, of ignoring a part of their customer base and accepting a turnover rate that could easily be lessened, while sacrificing incredibly little from their efforts of getting new blood. I'd argue that catering to the existing or ex-customers directly helps in getting new blood, which just leaves me scratching my head.

I work for the government and have zero knowledge of business, which makes me about as unqualified as you can get on the matter, but I'm left puzzled at a lot of their decisions. It certainly doesn't seem to be improving their situation, which I imagine is important for business.

 Blacksails wrote:
All that brings in to question what their customer base should be. Plus, I see no reason why they can't equally try and fleece new players as much as veteran players. It just seems illogical and counter intuitive to ignore an existing portion of your customer base.

It seems like they have fictional expectations of what their customer base should be but less of a clue who their actual customer base is in reality. They think a specific type of person buys their stuff and they are focused on selling their product to this type of person but in the end it doesn't add up to what they want it to be.

I work in consumer research, so I'll offer a 100% unbiased answer and say every company should do consumer research

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
All I'm saying is that there's a measure of turnover that is inherent to their business.

Sure.

The thing is, the rate of that turnover is influenced in no small part by how the company chooses to treat their existing customer base.

And since in general it's easier to get money out of happy, current customers than it is to attract new customers (particularly when potential new customers are being warned off by an increasingly hostile 'veteran' crowd), it seems a little baffling that GW seem so set on focusing on the new trade and ignoring all those customers who are hanging around and wanting to give them money.

While it is quite correct to say that many aspects of running a business are complicated, especially across multiple territories with all the currency issues, cultural diffeerences (both broad and specific) and logistical challenges that presents, the nature of nearly all business can be reduced to the phrase:

"Find out what they want and give it to them."

Kirby has publicly stated they don't take any action with regard to the first half of that statement, and their falling revenue and profits suggests they aren't fulfilling the second

Couple that with that they appear to want word of mouth to be one of the primary drivers of new blood into buying their products, it would behoove GW to be seen to be doing good things by vets, whether they are still active customers or not, because having a positive attitude from your client base, whether they be active purchasers at this moment in time or not, has literally no downsides.

 insaniak wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
All I'm saying is that there's a measure of turnover that is inherent to their business.

Sure.

The thing is, the rate of that turnover is influenced in no small part by how the company chooses to treat their existing customer base.

I can personally attest to that.

Whenever people express interest in my models and want to get started in miniature wargaming themselves, I always advise them to stay well clear of GW and first consider the alternatives because GW is really crap value for money, unless they really really like the models/games. In which case I tell them how to save money by buying 2nd hand on ebay, or retailers that give discounts. Its not about bashing GW, its about giving my friends, and prospective hobbyists, good advice.

My uncle is interested so on boxing day I'm going to teach him how to paint Gripping Beast Anglo Saxons. I'll probably give him some issues of Wargames Illustrated too. I can't give him White Dwarf...because I haven't bought any in 3 years (well except for this weeks issue which I bought for the Hobbit supplement. The White Dwarf went in the bin).

With 5 kids, a wife who doesn't work (a newborn baby and two kids > 6) and a low paying job, the last thing I'm going to do is direct him to Gamesworkshop.

Gripping Beast sell metal character models for as little as £3. An equivalent model from GW (i.e. LOTR/Hobbit) costs as much as £15.