GW’s Financials and the Future

[Denzark]

Yer thats aboot right. The Granny molesting.

I think if people want interaction they should buy shares and go to the AGM. You can't expect GW to suffer the levels of chippy abuse they were getting on their facebook pages to be allowed in public - the level of benefit from having one was outweighed by the negatives having to be edited.

[Mr Mystery]

Indeedy.

If the lynch mob could wind their bloody necks in once in a while, you might get some kind of decent dialogue going. All their recent attempts have shown is that some of their 'claim to be' players are dicks, and nothing will ever be good enough for them.

Example? E-Codecies. Initially released for Apple Devices. Seemingly because although Android is a more widespread platform, it tends to require additional device specific coding (or so I'm told. I'm not terribly up on these things). iOS however is a single platform, with no device dependant doohickeys, and thus is easier to programme a launch for. But no. Clearly it was done because GW have a hidden agenda against a handful of very vocal, very whiney people in the world.

I once came across an interesting analogy on Dakka, describing GW customers as battered spouses, willing to put up with whatever because reasons.

Yet in my experience, there are apparent customers (who claim never to spend on or play GW products, hence the 'apparent' bit) who are closer to the abusive spouse. No matter what is done, how it is done, or for what reason, it's never good enough, and has clearly been done to wind that person up. And so like the big strong men they are, they take anonymously to the Interwebs to vomit their opinion from their keyboard. They also have an inability to comprehend that their opinion is not the only opinion, and certainly no more valid than anyone elses. They snark and they imply that someone with the temerity to actively enjoy a hobby they'll have spent hundreds if not thousands of (insert local currency here) on is somehow mentally deficient.

[tag8833]

The trouble is that the comparison with say Amazon is slightly off.

While Amazon can basically target either selling everything either directly or indirectly for all e-commerce models, they are still in a rapidly growing environment.

Whereas the wargames market isn't as large a market and the last indpened research put GW as king of the hill by quite a margin, 96% of market share (or some such) so the amount of money to spend to reach that 4% is quite high with a limited return.

Businesses don't have to be pigeon holed like that. Amazon is a "book" seller. The problem is the market for books is niche, and once you capture a certain share of the market it is not profitable to continue expanding in that market space. However Amazon has dominated the book selling market place for more than a decade now. Yet they still grow wildly. How? Well, DVDs are a lot like books, and so you expand into DVDs. E.Books are the wave of the future, so you expand into e.book readers. DVDs are fine, but streaming video will be big, so expand there. By this point they are a financial services company, and also a giant retailer that sell pretty much everything. The Sears catalog of the 2000's

GW currently strattles 3 marketplaces that are only marginally related. 1) They sell models. 2) They sell books. 3) They do retail sales. There is plenty of room for expansion in all 3 of those arenas even if the expansion doesn't relate all 3 together. For instance, I could image GW publishing books based on new IP that has nothing to do with wargaming. They could expand their retail sales into things besides their own products.

"They dominate the marketplace, and thus there is no way to grow" is a compelling argument to a miniatures war gamer, but not to a business executive. If they wanted to grow, they would. They chose not to do so.

[Wolfshade]

I do get the point that you are trying to make. I just think that Amazon isn't a cogent paradigm.

Black Library have increased massively their sales, I remember reading warhammer novels back 10+ years ago, but they were not BL published, now look at them they get new york times best seller spots.

Ironically, historically, they were quite diverse, they had games like fury of dracula and other board games, they had their "specialist" range as mainstream.

While they certainly could become the next "Hasbro", I think that they lack the will to do so. They are content with sticking to the niche of miniature wargaming and not really expanding on that. And certainly, a growing GW plc is ging to be good for every hobbyist.