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The Economist says so in this interesting article

Interesting that the UK Games Expo is being used as a measurement, given GW are the only TTG company to not be privately owned (other than FFG, but if memory serves, they're reported bundled in with the parent company, rather than separately? I'm quite possibly wrong on that count, feel free to correct with linkage and that)

Bad news for those who like to herald the imminent dissolution of GW.

Bought by Hasbro, I tell you. BOUGHT BY HASBRO! THEN YOU'LL ALL SEE!!!!!1111!!11!!

 ekwatts wrote:
Bad news for those who like to herald the imminent dissolution of GW.

Those that continue to do, yes,

But given many complaints appear to have been addressed and sorted by GW, not all the historical ones

GW have really righted the ship - good job, Roundtree

Honestly I think the best thing is that GW turned around and gave gamers what they've been asking for for years and the result is not just happy gamers but massive profits for GW.

It's much the same as how GOG turned around and gave PC gamers not just retro games patched for modern systems, but also DRM free distribution and its worked for them greatly.


We need these to be big stories because it shows the big businesses that there is more than one way to do business and that customer loyalty, customer respect and also listening to the customer base (not just the profit margins and share holders) can be not just a nice thing, but something that moves you forward and increases profits.

Why these mainstream GW articles are always illustrated with decades old, badly-painted models?

 Crimson wrote:
Why these mainstream GW articles are always illustrated with decades old, badly-painted models?

Photos without copy rights connected to them are hard to get.

 ekwatts wrote:
Bad news for those who like to herald the imminent dissolution of GW.

None of those people were wrong given the information available at the time. If GW had continued with whathisface in command they very well could be a dying or dead company right now. But they changed to stop that from happening.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 ekwatts wrote:
Bad news for those who like to herald the imminent dissolution of GW.

None of those people were wrong given the information available at the time. If GW had continued with whathisface in command they very well could be a dying or dead company right now. But they changed to stop that from happening.

This guy was in charge:



Sadly, this makes more sense than what actually happened.

Oh yeah, that was him.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
Why these mainstream GW articles are always illustrated with decades old, badly-painted models?

Photos without copy rights connected to them are hard to get.

Actually they are not that hard to get (which is a serious problem for many photographers today!). However its a couple of paragraphs on the internet, they likely just didn't feel any need to invest much and likely just recycled assets that they already had in-house from past articles. Their primary market doesn't really need to see up-to-date models, its just there to give flavour

 ekwatts wrote:
Bad news for those who like to herald the imminent dissolution of GW.

To be fair I've hardly seen that in the last year or so. Maybe one or two people that spout crazy conspiracy theories but that's it.

Journalists I know usually have an in-house database of pictures that they are supposed to use because the rights on them are cleared.

I assume there are not a whole lot of photos of nerd-hobbies in there.

 Mymearan wrote:

 ekwatts wrote:
Bad news for those who like to herald the imminent dissolution of GW.

To be fair I've hardly seen that in the last year or so. Maybe one or two people that spout crazy conspiracy theories but that's it.

Honestly even during the "worst" of the "darkest days" a lot of those spouting/crying for GW to die were just people who were often burned out on the hobby and were showing signs of needing to just move onto something else. Either a different army/company/hobby for a bit. I think the big revamp has given generally less things to complain about and some of the revamps might have pushed them over the edge to move on instead of hanging around griping.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 ekwatts wrote:
Bad news for those who like to herald the imminent dissolution of GW.

None of those people were wrong given the information available at the time. If GW had continued with whathisface in command they very well could be a dying or dead company right now. But they changed to stop that from happening.

That patently wasn't true even at the time, though. GWs profits were never anywhere near low enough for anyone to be predicting imminent collapse. It was a perverse form of wishful thinking. The financial threads that popped every period were amazing; on one side you had fairly objective observers saying "Their financials look OK. Nothing unrecoverable/extreme" while those on the other side of the fence would jump on even the most minor negative reading as evidence that they were correct in their pre-judged assessment.

Kirby was bad and he made bad decisions. Now he's gone. GW did what any business needs to do when they start registering a fall in profits: Change direction. They didn't call in the accountants and liquidate the company. It was never on the cards, even in their "worst" years. Anybody that thinks it was is a fantasist.

 ekwatts wrote:
That patently wasn't true even at the time, though. GWs profits were never anywhere near low enough for anyone to be predicting imminent collapse. It was a perverse form of wishful thinking. The financial threads that popped every period were amazing; on one side you had fairly objective observers saying "Their financials look OK. Nothing unrecoverable/extreme" while those on the other side of the fence would jump on even the most minor negative reading as evidence that they were correct in their pre-judged assessment.

Kirby was bad and he made bad decisions. Now he's gone. GW did what any business needs to do when they start registering a fall in profits: Change direction. They didn't call in the accountants and liquidate the company. It was never on the cards, even in their "worst" years. Anybody that thinks it was is a fantasist.

Didn't the company only remain marginally profitable over a period of 5+ years based on significant cost cutting measures (one man stores) and licensing?

decker_cky wrote:

 ekwatts wrote:
That patently wasn't true even at the time, though. GWs profits were never anywhere near low enough for anyone to be predicting imminent collapse. It was a perverse form of wishful thinking. The financial threads that popped every period were amazing; on one side you had fairly objective observers saying "Their financials look OK. Nothing unrecoverable/extreme" while those on the other side of the fence would jump on even the most minor negative reading as evidence that they were correct in their pre-judged assessment.

Kirby was bad and he made bad decisions. Now he's gone. GW did what any business needs to do when they start registering a fall in profits: Change direction. They didn't call in the accountants and liquidate the company. It was never on the cards, even in their "worst" years. Anybody that thinks it was is a fantasist.

Didn't the company only remain marginally profitable over a period of 5+ years based on significant cost cutting measures (one man stores) and licensing?

Store wise GW wasn't alone in having to cut costs on stores; the UK highstreet is a very brutal place right now. In fact GW are one of the few that have actually held on in a decent location; many highstreet stores that were once all over the place have either closed up or moved right out into the sticks or gone fully online. Even if they'd had the best of the best in charge I suspect we'd still have seen big cuts in how they run their stores. It's just too much overhead today to have 3 or 4 staffers in a top highstreet position.

Heck I would honestly be surprised if GW don't, at some point, twin with something like Starbucks or Subway or another chain food outlet and start sharing rents on sites. Food outlets appear to be able to hold onto highstreet sites far more so than many hobby stores (in fact I've seen a lot of hobby style stores just outright close up; plus those that have hung on are often tiny)

 ekwatts wrote:
GWs profits were never anywhere near low enough for anyone to be predicting imminent collapse.

However, profits only tell a small part of the story. The reasons for predicting collapse weren't the profit numbers, they were about how GW was getting those profit numbers: increased per-model prices compensating for failing market share in a hobby where market share is critical, and unsustainable cost cutting at the expense of quality. Both of these factors were giant red flags about the long-term future of the company, and the fact that GW managed to fix their problems does not mean that they were not major problems at the time.

 Overread wrote:

decker_cky wrote:

 ekwatts wrote:
That patently wasn't true even at the time, though. GWs profits were never anywhere near low enough for anyone to be predicting imminent collapse. It was a perverse form of wishful thinking. The financial threads that popped every period were amazing; on one side you had fairly objective observers saying "Their financials look OK. Nothing unrecoverable/extreme" while those on the other side of the fence would jump on even the most minor negative reading as evidence that they were correct in their pre-judged assessment.

Kirby was bad and he made bad decisions. Now he's gone. GW did what any business needs to do when they start registering a fall in profits: Change direction. They didn't call in the accountants and liquidate the company. It was never on the cards, even in their "worst" years. Anybody that thinks it was is a fantasist.

Didn't the company only remain marginally profitable over a period of 5+ years based on significant cost cutting measures (one man stores) and licensing?

Store wise GW wasn't alone in having to cut costs on stores; the UK highstreet is a very brutal place right now. In fact GW are one of the few that have actually held on in a decent location; many highstreet stores that were once all over the place have either closed up or moved right out into the sticks or gone fully online. Even if they'd had the best of the best in charge I suspect we'd still have seen big cuts in how they run their stores. It's just too much overhead today to have 3 or 4 staffers in a top highstreet position.

Heck I would honestly be surprised if GW don't, at some point, twin with something like Starbucks or Subway or another chain food outlet and start sharing rents on sites. Food outlets appear to be able to hold onto highstreet sites far more so than many hobby stores (in fact I've seen a lot of hobby style stores just outright close up; plus those that have hung on are often tiny)

GW survived where others didn’t because they’re not in debt to a high degree. And by the time of the crash, they were already restructuring to maximise profit.

I think we should be more sad that GW is thought of as the most successful listed firm in the UK. That's probably more a dire statement about the UK than anything.

Of course it's not hard to improve if you are at the bottom of the barrel and a few things can bring you back on track to where they should probably have been anyway with proper management. Of course the low hanging (e.g. the easy transitions to go back to what people wanted) have been done now. The hard part is trying to sustain that growth

 Whirlwind wrote:
I think we should be more sad that GW is thought of as the most successful listed firm in the UK. That's probably more a dire statement about the UK than anything.

Of course it's not hard to improve if you are at the bottom of the barrel and a few things can bring you back on track to where they should probably have been anyway with proper management. Of course the low hanging (e.g. the easy transitions to go back to what people wanted) have been done now. The hard part is trying to sustain that growth

They aren't trying to sustain the growth, they're trying to level out and keep a realistic level of it. They've said as much.

 Mymearan wrote:

 Whirlwind wrote:
I think we should be more sad that GW is thought of as the most successful listed firm in the UK. That's probably more a dire statement about the UK than anything.

Of course it's not hard to improve if you are at the bottom of the barrel and a few things can bring you back on track to where they should probably have been anyway with proper management. Of course the low hanging (e.g. the easy transitions to go back to what people wanted) have been done now. The hard part is trying to sustain that growth

They aren't trying to sustain the growth, they're trying to level out and keep a realistic level of it. They've said as much.

Erm isn't that 'sustaining the growth'?

Sustained growth would be matching the same advance year on year. Clearly, that looks somewhat unlikely for GW, given their growth has been significant.

What they’d aim for is aiming for continued growth. Now what success there would look like, I haven’t the foggiest. But one assumes it’d be pegged to the wider economy? If that’s going up (warning, numbers from my rectum) at say, 10%, matching or exceeding 10% is good. Only doing 5% growth, not so much. It’s better than a decline, but not by much.

As I touched on above, the best decision GW ever made was to self finance, and not rely on loans.

When Woolies went under, it’s because they could no longer service their debt, or at least concerns they couldn’t. Had they expanded using their cash, they may still have been around to this very day. Possibly not though, as nobody has really stepped into that niche. Which is a shame. If you couldn’t think where to buy a given item, Woolies was always a good first port of call!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Which is a shame. If you couldn’t think where to buy a given item, Woolies was always a good first port of call!

You mean like Wilkinson?

 Whirlwind wrote:
I think we should be more sad that GW is thought of as the most successful listed firm in the UK. That's probably more a dire statement about the UK than anything.

Of course it's not hard to improve if you are at the bottom of the barrel and a few things can bring you back on track to where they should probably have been anyway with proper management. Of course the low hanging (e.g. the easy transitions to go back to what people wanted) have been done now. The hard part is trying to sustain that growth

Dunno. If they’d been growing at 5% a year only, sure. But they’ve made frankly impressive growth well into double figures for at least a couple of years now. That’s pretty hatstand in the world of business. 53% in one six month period, with profits rising from £13,800,000 to £38,000,000. Again, all with no debt to be serviced. That money is theirs!

Here’s another slightly more recent article, in which it’s reported GW’s value (in shares, I presume? I’m not very business literate) topped £1,000,0000,000.

And all these articles say the same as GW themselves. They expect to see continued growth, but it ain’t gonna be at this rate.

Though one could argue that with Underworlds doing well, Conquest opening new doors and Kill Team proving popular, they may at least match it this year. None of the three I referred to there are expensive to get into, so they’re largely unlikely to cannabalise existing sales, but instead appeal to those without the money or interest to budget in a full 40k army. Seriously. Underworlds is dirt cheap. The warbands being set is interesting, and individual they’re not much more than a single X-Wing ship (going with the first ship here, they’re £18 a pop....), but don’t require anything else beyond the core set - and even that can potentially be split amongst friends.

Having just researched that, I’m actually surprised at X-Wing’s cost! Swear I used to get my ships for around £10 (oop, older ones just over £11). Good old economy, eh? But a collection of 8 or 9 ships is pretty common for X-Wing, especially if your opponents are cool and don’t demand paper copies of upgrade cards. At the time of typing, there’s 6 Warband expansions (£14 each from Darksphere) with 4 more going on pre-order this weekend. Now, I’ve already got Nightvault. If I decided to go all in, that’s a relatively piffling £140 to get one of each Warband, with a further £56 by the time the previewed ones are all out as well. After that, I need only buy the two sets of expansion boards (non compulsory) and the Shadespire Common Cards (really not very expensive at all), and I’ve got everything until Season 3 (Undead Boogaloo?).

Sure, doing that I’ll have eventually coughed up the thick end of £250. But because I can spread that out (couple of warbands a month won’t dent most finances I dare say), the sting it taken out of it. Cash by a thousand cuts, if you like.

Now, not every player is going to go the whole hog, and I’m not saying I’ll be one of them. But when a new experience and therefore challenge is available for £14? I reckon a fair proportion will expand their Warband collections. Spesh as to my mind at least (and without having seen the other 4 for Nightvault!), the models are nice enough pieces to buy just to paint, regardless of how often I use them. And that’s all money in the till.

Add in its design intent as a Competitive Game, it’s seemingly high acclaim (I’ve not played yet. Skipped Shadespire, was worried about the card based business model), and it’s fast play time, and it’s a system that will tickle the fancy of people not that keen on the scale and scope of 40k and AoS proper.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ValentineGames wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Which is a shame. If you couldn’t think where to buy a given item, Woolies was always a good first port of call!

You mean like Wilkinson?

Not sure, don’t think we’ve got one round my way?

 ekwatts wrote:

Kirby was bad and he made bad decisions. Now he's gone. GW did what any business needs to do when they start registering a fall in profits: Change direction. They didn't call in the accountants and liquidate the company. It was never on the cards, even in their "worst" years. Anybody that thinks it was is a fantasist.

That's correct. Which is why nobody credible ever predicted the imminent demise of GW. What people who understood the situation, and I count myself in this, were always saying was that GW's approach was unsustainable, and if they carried in then they'd be in trouble. And we were right.

We also said that things needed to change. We were also right.

Please stop conflating the odd attention seeking frother banging on about the death of GW with a solid number of people with relevant experience and/or qualifications making what were retrospectively correct predictions about what needed to happen.

About the only thing I've not seen happening (albeit there's something similar) that I suggested back along is the condensation into fewer, larger, destination stores with substantial space to game. Pretty much everything I remember arguing needed to change has, and often in the manner I suggested it need to.

I never predicted the imminent death of GW, and neither did many others, and I wish the "I told you so's" would stop making out like it was a big thing to score cheap points.

ValentineGames wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Which is a shame. If you couldn’t think where to buy a given item, Woolies was always a good first port of call!

You mean like Wilkinson?

or B&M. The bric-a-brac store has a place, Woolies wasn't it.

The OP seems to be suggesting that GW's current success is evidence that the concerns for their future during the Kirby years was unfounded.

The fact that their current success can be almost directly attributed to the removal of Kirby suggests otherwise.

I think the next big step for the Geedubs would be to actually grow the customer base, I suspect most of the success of the last few years has been pulling lapsed players back in

Conquest is interesting but its a very slow way to get into the game, when either Kill Team or Shadespire will get you started for a reasonable buy in

Also concur with Doc re the X-Wing prices, it has a faint wiff of trying it on a bit with newer players as they may well assume thats just what they have always cost, or maybe the Mouse has upped his cut

 Henry wrote:

ValentineGames wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Which is a shame. If you couldn’t think where to buy a given item, Woolies was always a good first port of call!

You mean like Wilkinson?

or B&M. The bric-a-brac store has a place, Woolies wasn't it.

The OP seems to be suggesting that GW's current success is evidence that the concerns for their future during the Kirby years was unfounded.

The fact that their current success can be almost directly attributed to the removal of Kirby suggests otherwise.

No I didn’t?