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 TheAuldGrump wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Snoopdeville3 wrote:

You should just shut your mouth before you are embarrass yourself more, read some books and cut down on your forum post time, you obviously have no business sense.

If you know ANYTHING regarding Az's posting history and his prior employment. Just back away. Seriously. There's putting your foot in it and there's this.

No, no, let the puppy continue to approach the big, growling dog. It's the only way they learn.

This post may be informed by the addition of a puppy to the household in recent weeks

A barking dog never bites,
This saying's very true.
For doggy cannot bark well,
When his mouth is full of you.

The math also bothered me - saying that having two employees means needing to more than double sales assumes that payroll is the primary expense with a two man shop....

Which does not hold true for any moderately central location of reasonable size.

The Auld Grump - we also have a recently acquired puppy... he is very well behaved, which worries me.... (Mastiff/retriever cross... he doesn't chew shoes, but he does pick them up and carry them around... we are trying to break him of the habit of using the catbox - the cats won't use it, after he is done....)

Well, it's certainly reasonably true to say that employee costs represent a significant proportion, even the majority, of overhead in most businesses, unless you're talking incredibly prominent sites in very high profile areas, at least.

However, trying to argue that you need to double turnover is blatantly wrong, as the fixed overheads of the store don't increase based on the number of people you employ in it (maybe a tiny % increase per head for having lights on in back room locations, flushing the toilet more often, but nothing really worth accounting for) so all a new employee needs to do to justify their existence is their salary + a little extra for increased admin (not a big deal when it's all centralized in a large company.)

In a GW store, there's even an argument that they don't even need to do that, at least not in every single location, as GW stores are their recruitment centers and their advertising, so an extra staff member making a site more effective at either justifies making a loss on what they cost to employ overall.

But what do I know? I need to go outside and read books or some gak, apparently.


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Oh, and we have our second Sprocker Spaniel. They're entirely too bright, entirely too curious and not nearly cautious enou for their own safety!

WE dont bother with the trip or playing at GW anymore primarily because the store is so small that having more than 4 or 5 people in it makes it a hot crowded mess. then you have 1 staffer who is not very knowledgeable and pushing product you don't want and not having what you do want ( but they will order it for you, which to me is useless as I can do that myself and have it delivered to my own door) then you add that they have 1 table for playing and even that blocks access to shelf space, it just is not worth doing.

 Azreal13 wrote:

Well, it's certainly reasonably true to say that employee costs represent a significant proportion, even the majority, of overhead in most businesses, unless you're talking incredibly prominent sites in very high profile areas, at least.

However, trying to argue that you need to double turnover is blatantly wrong, as the fixed overheads of the store don't increase based on the number of people you employ in it (maybe a tiny % increase per head for having lights on in back room locations, flushing the toilet more often, but nothing really worth accounting for) so all a new employee needs to do to justify their existence is their salary + a little extra for increased admin (not a big deal when it's all centralized in a large company.)

In a GW store, there's even an argument that they don't even need to do that, at least not in every single location, as GW stores are their recruitment centers and their advertising, so an extra staff member making a site more effective at either justifies making a loss on what they cost to employ overall.

But what do I know? I need to go outside and read books or some gak, apparently.

This is my takeaway as well. There's really no future to the "1-man store" model because the whole change was never about "the future" in the first place. It was always about cutting costs in the present (although not the most efficient way to do it, as Azreal and others have pointed out). I can think of nothing that a 1-man store does better than a store with 2+ employees. No matter how competent your one employee is, giving that person a partner (even if just to run the register) is a sure way to improve the efficiency and customer service level at that location. (I mean, unless you hire some horrific, ogre-like, pustule of a person... but in that case you can just replace them).

It's fairly silly to think that GW sat down and said, "You know what? I think closing down a bunch of locations and converting the rest to 1-man storefronts is a great way to improve our ability to reach customers and move product. Yes, this is a business model with a bright future that we would be daft to not integrate into our corporate plan."

It's much more likely that the conversation went something like this:
"Finance says we need to cut costs."
"Okay, what's the least important thing that we can cut?"
"Well, all of our stores are setup as 'hobby centers' to recruit customers... We could reduce them to basic storefronts with 1 employee and our customer interaction levels probably wouldn't drop significantly from where they are now."
"But how much would that save us really?"
"Well, we can close down a few stores..."

...and so on and so forth.

TL;DR: The move to 1-man stores was nothing but budget cuts, not some new innovation in the industry. It's a sure bet that if GW's financial situation returned to its very comfortable, early-LOTR-bubble levels tomorrow, they'd probably start re-hiring at their brick & mortar locations and call it 'the return of the hobby center' or something like that...

 Ketara wrote:

 Lorizael wrote:


GW are going to be aware there will be customers/opportunities that are missed; I guess it will be weighed against the cost to get those opportunities.
If you think that many stores in the UK went from 7 days to 5 days, the figures will show what gets lost (or doesn't). If a 5 day opening, one man store can make as much as it did when open 7 days with 3 staff then it's all good. And to be honest, it doesn't even need to make that much, it just needs to increase in % profit.
GW stores aren't designed to cater to 100% of the collecting community; that's why they have a webstore and a huge number of stockists.

Oh, I completely see where you're arguing from. But I think the evidence is against them. What evidence?

The fact that every other shop on the High Street has more than one staff member. I'm not sure you can wave away GW as being so unique a retail experience that somehow they can go against what every other shop does as a matter of basic operation and somehow be making more profit as a result. If it were really that easy, Game would only be open 5 days a week and Waterstone's would have one staff member on the till and close up for lunch. Yet somehow, those two businesses (which if anything, rely less on needing someone in store to sell the product, have no need to push a 'community', and suffer from equal online competition) always have two staff on. If the one man store concept was that great a money saving idea, I'm pretty sure businesses like them would be all over it.

Yet for some reason, they're not....

I'd say it's worse - Game doesn't need to spend 30 minutes running intro games to new customers. Waterstones don't need to spend more than a few moments pointing them to appropriate sections.

GW stores (assuming they have customers) should actually require more staff than pretty much anywhere else.


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 Azreal13 wrote:

The math also bothered me - saying that having two employees means needing to more than double sales assumes that payroll is the primary expense with a two man shop....

Which does not hold true for any moderately central location of reasonable size.

From what I can gather, unless you're looking at a hole in the wall store in a back street, the rent on any retail unit in the UK will be higher than the staffs salary. I haven't been able to find an equivalent price for our local GW as it's outside a shopping centre in a grubby alley, but a similarly sized internal one in a prominent location 200ft away comes in at about £100k/year in rent.

Herzlos wrote:
From what I can gather, unless you're looking at a hole in the wall store in a back street, the rent on any retail unit in the UK will be higher than the staffs salary. I haven't been able to find an equivalent price for our local GW as it's outside a shopping centre in a grubby alley, but a similarly sized internal one in a prominent location 200ft away comes in at about £100k/year in rent.

Well that does appear to be GW's new favourite location.

I was to a GW store in Edmonton about two weeks ago and they had 4 employees working. One may have been the manager. There was a 40k game going on with one player having only half his army painted. Lots of people going in and out. It was good to see. And it wasn't creepy like the 1-man storefront.

There seems to be a majority consensus that they don't work at all and GW are 'very silly' to be running one-man stores in the first place.
Is no one able to accept that they work perfectly well in some locations but not in others? There is a future for them in the right locations.
As I said in the first place, I've ran 2 very successful one-man stores myself, one of which had a higher turnover with one staff than it did with 3 (though of course there's the possibility turnover could have increased more with a second staff member).

GW isn't following blindly along with a blanket "one-man store everywhere!" approach- it gets assessed and looked at regularly (in my experience) and staffing levels will adjust if necessary.
There are 7 GW stores within 30 miles of me, 3 of them are one-man, the other 4 have between 2 and 4 staff.

There are lots of important factors that anyone outside of GW won't really know either, such as transaction count, footfall, overheads etc. These things are going to influence decisions behind the scenes. Yes, cutting staff is a cost cutter, not necessarily a short term one though- GW's aim is always to be successful long term, they're always playing the long game. Somewhere there is a balance between staff levels, turnover and profit. It's going to be different in a variety of locations and it's going to take a bit of fiddling to get right.
In regards to closing down stores, GW open more stores a year than they close, and most are just being moved rather than closed; unsuccessful stores are closed, that happens across high street retail.
I think store closures are more prominent in the USA, but here in the UK they're pretty damn rare- there's a whole host of stores that are 15+ years old.

The question remains - what locations do they work well in?

My guess, educated, but still a guess, is that they work in far fewer places than GW has one man stores.

GW has just opened a one man store within three minutes walk of where I work - open less than three months, and already they are talking about selling their lease. (I had not even realized that selling leases was an option until I heard them talking.)

As for a 'blanket "one-man store everywhere!" - have you bothered reading their (well, Kirby's) own statements in their financial reports?

One man stores was going to be their blanket policy - it is a matter of public record.

That they have started deviating from that plan indicates that it was a short sighted policy, and one that they recognized was not working. (Believe it or not - I view that as a positive development - recognizing a bad policy is much better than refusing to acknowledge a mistake.)

It may work in some locations - but that does not mean that it works in most locations, including many of the locations that they have switched to the one man stores.

I have visited the store twice - once opening week, the other yesterday. This time there was another representative of GW as well as the counter monkey.

That they were talking about selling the lease while there was a customer in the shop does not bode well for that location. (My first GW purchase in five years - a bottle of liquid green stuff.)

As far as I know, the store has been keeping to its posted hours - no mysterious closings while the manager has his gall bladder removed for the second time.

In spite of that, it is not doing well.

On the other hand, most of the customers lost by the older GW-dependent store have returned to their old haunts - there was nothing at the newer store to hold their attention.

A net loss for GW, but if they can sell their lease, not a huge one.

The Auld Grump

Lorizael wrote:There seems to be a majority consensus that they don't work at all and GW are 'very silly' to be running one-man stores in the first place.
Is no one able to accept that they work perfectly well in some locations but not in others? There is a future for them in the right locations.
As I said in the first place, I've ran 2 very successful one-man stores myself, one of which had a higher turnover with one staff than it did with 3 (though of course there's the possibility turnover could have increased more with a second staff member).

GW isn't following blindly along with a blanket "one-man store everywhere!" approach- it gets assessed and looked at regularly (in my experience) and staffing levels will adjust if necessary.
There are 7 GW stores within 30 miles of me, 3 of them are one-man, the other 4 have between 2 and 4 staff.

There are lots of important factors that anyone outside of GW won't really know either, such as transaction count, footfall, overheads etc. These things are going to influence decisions behind the scenes. Yes, cutting staff is a cost cutter, not necessarily a short term one though- GW's aim is always to be successful long term, they're always playing the long game. Somewhere there is a balance between staff levels, turnover and profit. It's going to be different in a variety of locations and it's going to take a bit of fiddling to get right.

In regards to closing down stores, GW open more stores a year than they close, and most are just being moved rather than closed; unsuccessful stores are closed, that happens across high street retail.
I think store closures are more prominent in the USA, but here in the UK they're pretty damn rare- there's a whole host of stores that are 15+ years old.

This. Yep. 100%. The success or otherwise is very circumstantial and the one-man-store isn't a blanket approach. They can work and their success really depends on the store and the staff member (and their casual who fills in sicks days and whatnot), but as a generic solution to falling profits or an attempt to increase profits, it's unlikely to work.

TheAuldGrump wrote:The question remains - what locations do they work well in?

That, IMO, is an effectively impossible question to answer without actually doing a 'field test'.

 IllumiNini wrote:

Lorizael wrote:There seems to be a majority consensus that they don't work at all and GW are 'very silly' to be running one-man stores in the first place.
Is no one able to accept that they work perfectly well in some locations but not in others? There is a future for them in the right locations.
As I said in the first place, I've ran 2 very successful one-man stores myself, one of which had a higher turnover with one staff than it did with 3 (though of course there's the possibility turnover could have increased more with a second staff member).

GW isn't following blindly along with a blanket "one-man store everywhere!" approach- it gets assessed and looked at regularly (in my experience) and staffing levels will adjust if necessary.
There are 7 GW stores within 30 miles of me, 3 of them are one-man, the other 4 have between 2 and 4 staff.

There are lots of important factors that anyone outside of GW won't really know either, such as transaction count, footfall, overheads etc. These things are going to influence decisions behind the scenes. Yes, cutting staff is a cost cutter, not necessarily a short term one though- GW's aim is always to be successful long term, they're always playing the long game. Somewhere there is a balance between staff levels, turnover and profit. It's going to be different in a variety of locations and it's going to take a bit of fiddling to get right.

In regards to closing down stores, GW open more stores a year than they close, and most are just being moved rather than closed; unsuccessful stores are closed, that happens across high street retail.
I think store closures are more prominent in the USA, but here in the UK they're pretty damn rare- there's a whole host of stores that are 15+ years old.

This. Yep. 100%. The success or otherwise is very circumstantial and the one-man-store isn't a blanket approach. They can work and their success really depends on the store and the staff member (and their casual who fills in sicks days and whatnot), but as a generic solution to falling profits or an attempt to increase profits, it's unlikely to work.

TheAuldGrump wrote:The question remains - what locations do they work well in?

That, IMO, is an effectively impossible question to answer without actually doing a 'field test'.

Or, you know, market research.

Otiose as that may be.

The Auld Grump

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
Or, you know, market research.

Otiose as that may be.

Glad to know I'm being looked down upon (or so the wording would suggest). Regardless, market research can't give you a definite answer as to whether or not a one-man store will actually work. I feel like it'd be on a short-list of "This might work here", but whether or not it actually works and/or is the best option? Market research isn't likely to definitively tell you that. But what do I know? I'm just some dude you're having an argument with on Dakka...

I believe he is referencing former CEO Tom Kirby's infamous preamble which proudly declared that Games Workshop does no market research as it is "Otiose in a niche hobby".

Which is stupid on so many levels.

 IllumiNini wrote:

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
Or, you know, market research.

Otiose as that may be.

Glad to know I'm being looked down upon (or so the wording would suggest). Regardless, market research can't give you a definite answer as to whether or not a one-man store will actually work. I feel like it'd be on a short-list of "This might work here", but whether or not it actually works and/or is the best option? Market research isn't likely to definitively tell you that. But what do I know? I'm just some dude you're having an argument with on Dakka...

The guys name is "grump" I wouldnt take his tone personal. Generally I can tell from here, GW used to be in Colorado Mills, now its in a part of town I would call "sketchy"and they are unreliable at best. the store is tiny to the point of genuinely unpleasant to be in.

TheCustomLime wrote:I believe he is referencing former CEO Tom Kirby's infamous preamble which proudly declared that Games Workshop does no market research as it is "Otiose in a niche hobby".

Which is stupid on so many levels.

I was previously unaware of this preamble from the CEO. A reference to that makes more sense haha.

thekingofkings wrote:The guys name is "grump" I wouldnt take his tone personal.

haha fair call. I would generalise that to being the internet

thekingofkings wrote:Generally I can tell from here, GW used to be in Colorado Mills, now its in a part of town I would call "sketchy"and they are unreliable at best. the store is tiny to the point of genuinely unpleasant to be in.

One-man stores need to find the balance of size. IMO if they cant (relatively) comfortably fit two 6'x4' tables, a single display table, and some semblance of a painting table, then the store is probably too small. A store I go to runs into this exact problem.

Having just come back from a 1 man store, I can say that the experience certainly needs some improvement.

Not the dude running the place fault, but I ordered some Wood Elf Glade Riders to the store for pick up seeing as GW had dropped them. He told me to come back and pick them up on Thursday.

So I made my way to the store today and they are not there.

Not a huge deal, but it is irritating. Given my experience there I'm not likely to patronize the place again unless I need to order from GW direct (postal delivery is unreliable where I live - since they deregulated delivery services here, the guys that do it just hand your package off to whoever will sign for it. To me it's not worth the hassle.).

When I consider that the local FLGS has a bigger selection of GW products (they also stock LOTR and have some older models still available) for cheaper (they did a money off deal on starter sets for easter) as well as having a selection of other interesting products (board games, RPGs, CCGs, figurines, comic books, lots of other wargames...) and manage to somehow employ five staff in a much bigger location and still make money - what reason is GW giving me to use their shop?

I've been to the one man stores in Columbus and Birmingham multiple times recently, neither one is ever busy enough to warrant more than one employee. The FLGS' near those GW stores are always far busier and do more revenue. I don't think the one man stores have a future considering even with all the cost cutting, they still lost more money than they made last year. GW seems to think they serve a vital purpose of getting people into the hobby. In my experience, most of the customers at the GW store in Birmingham already played GW games long before that store even existed. Sure, the store has gotten a few new people into 40k. However, if it were my business, a few new customers does not justify the cost of running that store. The rumors are that it will be closed at the end of the third year. They signed a 5 year lease on the space with an option to get out after the 3rd year if business wasn't there. They just can't compete with 3 other stores within a 15 minute drive that stock GW and also comics, MTG, WMH, x wing/armada, infinity, gundam kits, etc.

I'm sure there was a time that GW stores did a good job of enticing new customers in to their games. Back when they were situated in areas of heavier foot traffic and when they had enough staff to engage people who walked in and run an intro game for them. My local GW back in the 90's and early 2000's, if you hung around the store for a while (painting or whatever) you'd see a bunch of people wander in and have intro games run for them. These days you're unlikely to get walk ins because the store is situated a decent walk away from the rest of the shops and even if someone did wander in during a peak time (or often even not in peak times) the manager is far less likely to be able to engage them before they walk out.

Perhaps these days they wouldn't work as well because most people now know that they aren't a video game or general hobby shop, especially since they've rebranded to "Warhammer" now instead of "Games Workshop".

 TheCustomLime wrote:
I believe he is referencing former CEO Tom Kirby's infamous preamble which proudly declared that Games Workshop does no market research as it is "Otiose in a niche hobby".

Which is stupid on so many levels.

Exactly - and why I suspect that the one man store strategy is not as well planned out as IllumiNini believes - I think that it was more a product of panicked cost cutting than tactical thought.

Kirby's prerambles are also how we know that the one man stores were intended to become universal - and that they were considered a 'success' in spite of a 30% loss from the sales from their retail locations. (The depressing thing - the stores are 'now breaking even' - which implies that the GW/Warhammer stores were previously operating in the red.)

One man stores are not growing the hobby, and cannot be considered a success from that stance, but are no longer losing money.

Which calls back to the question 'Are the stores worth it?'

If we are considering only the one man stores, I very much expect that the answer would be 'no'. (In some locations the answer might well be 'Hell no![/i].)

My own preferred option would be for GW to make their stores more general purpose - bring in complimentary products from other companies, rather than GW attempting a monopoly.

The Auld Grump


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 thekingofkings wrote:

 IllumiNini wrote:

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
Or, you know, market research.

Otiose as that may be.

Glad to know I'm being looked down upon (or so the wording would suggest). Regardless, market research can't give you a definite answer as to whether or not a one-man store will actually work. I feel like it'd be on a short-list of "This might work here", but whether or not it actually works and/or is the best option? Market research isn't likely to definitively tell you that. But what do I know? I'm just some dude you're having an argument with on Dakka...

The guys name is "grump" I wouldnt take his tone personal. Generally I can tell from here, GW used to be in Colorado Mills, now its in a part of town I would call "sketchy"and they are unreliable at best. the store is tiny to the point of genuinely unpleasant to be in.

'Grump' literally translates to 'grey haired man', from Scots dialect. The Auld Grump = The Old Grey Haired Man. (But I have had the nickname since my twenties, my first grey hairs started showing up when I was sixteen....)

It was kind of strange, a few years ago my hair started growing in dark at the roots... it looked like I had been dying my hair grey and then stopped....

The Auld Grump

Let me summarise what I'm trying to say:

-- One-man stores aren't all knee-jerk reactions to poor store performance; some of them were planned (speaking only in the broadest sense of them having one staff member).
-- Especially given the testimonials in this thread, a vast majority of them haven't worked, but in my experience, they have. That might be because of where I live (meaning my location may be conducive of the success of one-man stores), but I can't say for sure.
-- With the above two points in mind, the one-man store model was not completely unplanned nor was it very well planned and only seems to work in a sort of Goldilocks Zone of both population levels and levels of interest.

@TheAuldGrump: I never really said they were well planned, I just said they're not all as bad as the experiences and opinions of people on this thread make them out to be.

 IllumiNini wrote:
Let me summarise what I'm trying to say:

-- One-man stores aren't all knee-jerk reactions to poor store performance; some of them were planned (speaking only in the broadest sense of them having one staff member).
-- Especially given the testimonials in this thread, a vast majority of them haven't worked, but in my experience, they have. That might be because of where I live (meaning my location may be conducive of the success of one-man stores), but I can't say for sure.
-- With the above two points in mind, the one-man store model was not completely unplanned nor was it very well planned and only seems to work in a sort of Goldilocks Zone of both population levels and levels of interest.

@TheAuldGrump: I never really said they were well planned, I just said they're not all as bad as the experiences and opinions of people on this thread make them out to be.

Please, read the financial reports - there is a reason that so many folks think that the one man stores are such a bad idea. The one man stores really are a 'knee jerk reaction to poor store performance'.

Really, GW's own words are much more damning than what people are saying on this thread - defending GW without reading them is like taking off your armor before battle, and cripples your arguments. Arm yourself with the information - there are ways that the one man stores could have been deployed to advantage, but going by Kirby's own words... that was not the case.

I am certain that there have been district and regional managers that had better and more detailed information than GW's main office, and that those district and regional managers were able to position at least some of those one man stores in strategic locations - but that is not from due diligence by the main office. It is being handed lemons and trying to make lemonade.

At this point I am actually more optimistic about GW's long term chances than I was even a single year ago - Rountree is making some much needed changes - and his actions seem much less to be knee jerk defensive reactions.

A lot of Kirby's actions have been about cost cutting and increasing profit - not growing the industry or even the business.

The result has been ever decreasing sales - wider margins on fewer sales.

In that time, other companies have been making inroads on GW's dominance.

Kirby did a lot of damage over the last decade - and it will take time to repair that damage.

The Auld Grump - you may even enjoy reading the reports, I certainly did. At the very least, you will understand more of the jokes that keep surfacing on Dakka, those objects of gem like magic and wonder....

I'm not necessarily defending GW so much as trying to say that one-man stores aren't as much of a colossally bad idea s it's generally thought of to be. It was still a colossal mistake.

And though I appreciate the suggestion to read the reports in order to become more familiar with the issue, I'm not pulling this out of thin are. All I'm saying is "This is my opinion based on my experience with my two local GW stores - bth of which are successful one-man stores."

When discussing a multi million pound, multi site, global retailer, designer and manufacturer and their performance, personal experience of two sites in one of their smaller territories is as close to thin air as to effectively be a meaningless distinction.

You're entitled to think what you will, of course, but it is important to realize the information you're basing your opinion on is such a small element of the whole as to be near irrelevant.

Well not that there's anything wrong about what you've said, but if my experience exists, then it stands to reason that other such stores exist around the world in other markets. I find it hard to believe that the stores I attend are an isolated occurence.

But if my experience is not enough of a basis for a valid arguement, then I guess that's my cue to back out of this discussion.

Or educate yourself?

I've always found getting better at or better informed about something preferable to just giving up and walking away.

But, no, anecdotal evidence has a place, but if it contradicts the general facts of a situation, then it's fair to assume it's aberrant and not terribly meaningful.

Well reading through financial reports isnt something I have an over-abundance of time to sink into for the sake of one forum discussion on Dakka. If it becomes relevant to me again, I will try to find the time.

And fair enough. I just figured my experiences would at least demonstrate that this one-man store policy isn't as much of a total blanket failure as people seem to think

 IllumiNini wrote:
Well reading through financial reports isnt something I have an over-abundance of time to sink into for the sake of one forum discussion on Dakka. If it becomes relevant to me again, I will try to find the time.

And fair enough. I just figured my experiences would at least demonstrate that this one-man store policy isn't as much of a total blanket failure as people seem to think

I think it truly matters what else is going on. In my instance, Denver is not a small fry city by any stretch of the imagination, and basically just about the only place you can still get GW products is GW, and with it being so small and unpleasant, it puts GW at a distinct disadvantage against other games. There are alot of FLGS (though not as many as I would like) in the area and most wont carry GW. This would normally mean that GW should do well since nearly noone else carries their products, but since you can barely breathe in the place and certainly dont want to be there after dark, It is more a failure. They will stay in buisiness, likely, but that they had to move to subprime area and into a tiny store makes it not good. I have only been to a few places in Australia (Great folks by the way, love you knuckleheads ) there were not as many game stores, so GW had that going for it.

 IllumiNini wrote:
Well not that there's anything wrong about what you've said, but if my experience exists, then it stands to reason that other such stores exist around the world in other markets. I find it hard to believe that the stores I attend are an isolated occurence.

But if my experience is not enough of a basis for a valid arguement, then I guess that's my cue to back out of this discussion.

I just realized you're flag says Australia, now I'm really curious where your locals are?

I know mine on the Gold Coast and the battle bunker up at Brisbane always seem to have people in them but outside of the official GW no one on the CG seems to have any interest in GW, so that store could well be considered successful even if GW's wider market share is a lot smaller than it was 5-10 years ago.

I've been into the one in Geelong, and it was HUGE for a one man store, but despite room for 8 or 10 tables they only had 2, plus a painting one and demo tables. It was also empty on the day I went in, Boxing day. I kinda assumed there would be a ton of other people like me who had been dragged to the sales going on in the stores all around it and hiding out there.

I've also heard horrible things about some of the Sydney stores, like the one that apparently opened up directly underneath a well established FLGS and failed miserably to take any of their customers with less gaming space, higher prices, and less product on the shelves.

I think it must be a hard job to be a single-man GW store operator.

You've got to meet really challenging targets, you can't offer any discounts. You've got to stick with the (sometimes completely insane) company line on all sorts of things.

You can't stock tie in games like FFG RPGs or board games. You've actually got a limited supply of your companies own models compared to most independent stores (like, my local non GW still has a pretty complete range of LOTR stuff, whereas the GW store has none. As a LOTR enthusiast, that makes my shopping choices pretty easy.).

You're hamstrung in so many ways if you just compare GW stores selling GW products to a FLGS that sells both GW products and tie in products. Then factor in that the FLGS may have 10 other fully developed wargames on it's shelves, plus other board games CCGs, CMGs, comics and all the rest. They probably have more staff meaning you spend less time waiting to get served and are open more days a week.

I can see GW stores surviving in places where there is no tradition of independent stores, where the independent is a smelly gak hole with unfriendly staff, or in the odd place where the customer base are all GW fanatics. But christ, it must be a tough job in any other area.

I think I know your local though I've forgotten it's name. Huge place over 3 floors with giant tin-tin stuff in the arcade outside and lots of classic comic figurines like Asterix and the likes? Ultra Comix?

I visited it twice on a recent business trip, when the local GW was closed (it was too out of the way to swing by the 2nd time).

Other than gaming tables (if the GW have any), I really can't see how they can compete with a store that can dedicate more floor space to LARP costumes than GW has in it's entirety.

That's the place alright. Pretty decent, though not much gaming space for wargames readily apparent - I think there's a room upstairs but it seems to mostly get used for card games.

Awesome shop though.

I see the local GW guy doing a lot to try and compete and he seems to have carved a niche of fairly dedicated players out, but I feel like he's seriously got his work cut out for him, poor guy. The problems I encountered in using his store were more to do with how GW have structured things than a reflection on him as an employee or worker.