Originally Posted by
Erik Setzer
So because they're choosing to make a bad decision, it's a good idea?
I can't see anything in the post commenting on the relative merit of the decision.
You aren't "successful according to your parameters for success" if you're freezing salaries and holding them ransom for a reversal of the current trend of downward sales. That's rather a sign that there's trouble.
If their parameter for success has been 'make profit in a recession' as opposed to 'increase sales' then yes, they have been successful. report which has given any indication that they want to focus on sales growth and yes, keeping pay frozen until performance improves may indicate something is up.
They also admit to lacking in attracting new customers (which the store name changes won't help). That's clearly a failure of marketing.
Is it not a bit early to judge the efficacy of store name change? I reckon it is. I didn't pick up the desire for new customers as a specific facet in the report (I skimmed it) but AoS is clearly one attempt to get new in the door. As a matter of semantics, it would be more accurate to say their marketing hasn't failed cos they don't do any. You could say not having marketing is a failure of business planning - but if their objective was to make profit in a recession, they succeeded without marketing.
Marketing's job is to attract new customers (and then convince those customers to buy more stuff, too). It's important for a business if it wants to grow.
I completely agree. Relevant to the point I was making only if I postulated they wanted growth as opposed to profit.
Roudtree said they'd assess the product line, not the game systems. They barely mention the word "games" outside of their company name in the report, as if their preference would be that people forget that GAMES Workshop makes games. Such an assessment would likely be to remove products that aren't selling well, in order to cut production and storage costs.
I think this is also semantics. I am not in anyway business minded. But by product lines, I mean 'big handfuls'. An individual line by line assessment of all products - I would call that going through the stock list, not necessarily product lines. In the same way Marks and Spencers may talk about 'food', 'lingerie' and 'menswear' as disparate product lines, I think GW probably thinks of 40K, AoS and LoTR - BL thinks of books, graphic novels and audio books, Forgeworld thinks of HH, 40K.
It's another cost-cutting measure. Like the salary freeze. Things that aren't immediate necessities if you're succeeding. Similarly, you don't chuck a game that's existed for 30 years and replace it with something completely different. Their failure - yes, FAILURE - to recognize issues with WFB and fix them, and then piling on the failure of launching AoS without even remotely trying to relay its coming to the customers, are not signs of them changing to succeed. They are signs that the company is out of touch and remains so.
Companies cost-cut for efficiency, not just as a last ditch measure. As to WFB, I genuinely think that they listened to people talking about the high cost of entry. And looked at the bottom line. And decided to cut off existing customers and chase an entirely new group. After all, some veterans will rage quit, some will feel so invested they keep playing end times, 8th ed and buy miniatures that match. I don't offer any comment as to the business sense of this either - its just me trying to empathise with what they are doing. A bit like a RAI interpretation - YMMV.
No respectable game company - and that's what GW is, because without their games their figures wouldn't sell enough to maintain them - would bring out a new game with two weeks' warning to retailers and even less to the customers. Especially when it's replacing a venerated old game system. That's where a lot of the hate for AoS comes from. GW kept pushing products for a game they were about to chuck aside, and those products weren't cheap. And then they chucked it all aside suddenly, no warning. The only reason anyone got any kind of warning is the rumor mongers (who they try to shut down, sometimes with threats of legal action, as they did with Atia), otherwise there's no warning of huge changes, some of which people refused to believe until the bitter end.
Don't forget the CHS effect. GW don't want to let leeches with low costs and cottage industry set ups, to hear what is coming in advance and start smashing out shonky copies/3rd party stuff. I sympathise with how drastic an effect this has had on WFB gamers - I dread it coming to 40K.
Marketing is always necessary, unless your "plan" is to make a few dollars - not millions - every year and call that "good enough." Ditto market research. If you think otherwise, either you have no idea how businesses work, or you're trolling way too hard from a GW-is-perfection stance.