A new strategy to replace B&M

[EmperorNorton]

I agree with your point about flgs. As an established gamer I prefer them too. But the point i am making is that they are usually pretty bad at getting new people into the game as they do not have a sales focus. The GW stores do. And it is vital for GW to get new people into the hobby to replace people that leave it ( a different conversation altogether, although no matter what GW do some people will always leave the hobby) and it is vital for the hobby as a whole that new people join it. And GW stores do this.

True, indy stores do not pull in new people in the same way. But the established players do.
I just can't imagine that GW stores introduce a lot of people to their games that would not have found out about it in another way anyway.
Frankly, I can't imagine anybody walking into a GW store and not be shocked by the price of their product. Because I'd think that's the first thing to stand out. If, on the other hand, you are brought to the game by a friend, the first impression you get is that of a fun, social activity, which softens the blow of the price point.

[GomezAddams]

I would suggest that most lgs are not good at expanding the hobby. They barely survive financially mostly. It was GW in the 80s and 90s that grew wargaming from basically nothing to a massive retail chain.

My nearest FLGs was actually set up to fund the owners love of vintage motocycles. Several years later the buisness moved to larger premises, and holds packed to the rafters meets every few months in the local council hall. Its regularly busy, and the staff are knowledgeable to some degree in everything they sell - whilst some generally see us miniatures collectors as a pain in the rear because we keep rearranging there blisters, there a good natured and helpful bunch and are quite happy to sit and have a natter with you.

Its called Spirit games. It was set up in 1984, and they still own the smaller premises opposite when I believe a member of the owners family runs as a curiosity shop.
Another success story is fanboy three, which is located right in the heart of Manchester with a very large shop and a dedicated gaming space. Given its sheer size, it must cost a fair amount and they've been around at least five years that I know of.

People are quite quick to point the finger at FLGS that go under, but rarely praise the success stories. You generally find these stores run by gamers for gamers, who generally accept that making a profit of any sort isn't going to happen without driving away your customers.

As for getting new people into the game, both stores have attentive staff (spirit games more so admittedly) who will help you out with whatever you want. Whilst there usually not too savvy with wargaming rules, they can usually point you in the right direction, show you the wares they have, offer you the best value for money option. They stock a lot of Malifaux and have regular gaming nights, but do it alongside Reaper and will suggest them as cheaper alternatives.

[The bearded one]

I just can't imagine that GW stores introduce a lot of people to their games that would not have found out about it in another way anyway.

How did you get introduced to this hobby?

[SunTzu]

Not sure what ftfy means.

"Fixed That For You". I was making the point that your claims about GW B&M stores were speculative and UK-centric, ignoring the fact the US is GW's biggest market and has far, far, far fewer GW stores than the UK. If your reasoning were right, that would not be possible.

[GomezAddams]

SunTzu, is the reason for GW being the bigger market down to it being a larger landmass in comparison to the UK? I always thought Warmachine was much bigger over there then GW.

[The bearded one]

I always figured the Uk + Europe market was larger than the US one, with a similar sized population but more concentrated and with more streetpresence.

[Miredorf]

Not even back then i dare to say. Here in Spain there have always been so few stores and ''0'' advertising, yet many indies which supported GW products. The only reference i had of GW stores were actually those that appeared in the white dwarf magazine. They were indeed those ''legendary places'' all warhammer player dreamt to visit someday, but nothing more.

[Trasvi]

Australia is another oddity again: a country the size of USA, a population of only 21M, but extremely urbanised around 5 major cities. Vast tracts of nothingness in between. Yet each of these capitals support multiple GW stores and a bundle of indies.
GW is by far the dominant game, and most of my friends know what GW is due to their store in the centre of the busiest shopping mall in the city. If I say that I play wargames, they know what I'm talking about. And it was many years before I got out of the GW scene and started looking at other games. The GW store there is amazing effective at gaining mind share....
... but their recent financials show that they are not able to turn that mind share into profit.

[EmperorNorton]

How did you get introduced to this hobby?

My earliest exposure was playing HeroQuest and Space Hulk at a friend's house.
Later on I found out about this thing called "Warhammer" while reading a magazine. The brother of the aforementioned friend got the 5th Edition starter set, so I got a look at that, too.
Bought my first minis in a store in my hometown that sold computer hardware and Warhammer minis (which, as it turned out, was not a fantastic mix, as the store closed shortly after).

All of this happened before there was a single GW store in my country.

[The bearded one]

My earliest exposure was playing HeroQuest and Space Hulk at a friend's house.
Later on I found out about this thing called "Warhammer" while reading a magazine. The brother of the aforementioned friend got the 5th Edition starter set, so I got a look at that, too.
Bought my first minis in a store in my hometown that sold computer hardware and Warhammer minis (which, as it turned out, was not a fantastic mix, as the store closed shortly after).

All of this happened before there was a single GW store in my country.

You learned about it from a friend, but how did he, or any person that he might have learned it from, find out about it? How did the first person in the chain of friends and acquaintances find out about warhammer? Did one just happen to google around a bit and stumble on it, pick up this obscure 'white dwarf' magazine somewhere thinking it looked funny, was he into wargaming already? Some of these routes to exposure to warhammer seem a whole lot harder and not as easy to rely on for a company, than putting down a store exclusively devoted to that company's products, showing off nicely painted armies and terrain, maybe with a cool display in front of the window (When I am at the local GW, in a day I probably note dozens to hundreds of people passing by and taking a look at the large display in the window, of a chaos horde assaulting a large empire castle)

So to return to the actual point, while many can find out via other means, I think GW stores do introduce many people that would not have found out any other way. I certainly had never heard of a company like privateer press untill after I started warhammer and began trawling forums. If anything they also provide a place to find meet other warhammer players and get to gaming fast and easy.

[EmperorNorton]

You learned about it from a friend, but how did he, or any person that he might have learned it from, find out about it? How did the first person in the chain of friends and acquaintances find out about warhammer? Did one just happen to google around a bit and stumble on it, pick up this obscure 'white dwarf' magazine somewhere thinking it looked funny, was he into wargaming already? Some of these routes to exposure to warhammer seem a whole lot harder and not as easy to rely on for a company, than putting down a store exclusively devoted to that company's products, showing off nicely painted armies and terrain, maybe with a cool display in front of the window (When I am at the local GW, in a day I probably note dozens to hundreds of people passing by and taking a look at the large display in the window, of a chaos horde assaulting a large empire castle)

So to return to the actual point, while many can find out via other means, I think GW stores do introduce many people that would not have found out any other way. I certainly had never heard of a company like privateer press untill after I started warhammer and began trawling forums. If anything they also provide a place to find meet other warhammer players and get to gaming fast and easy.

HeroQuest, Space Crusade and Space Hulk were available in just about every toy store at that time. They even had ads on TV for it.
These reached more people and introduced more players to the hobby than GW's stores ever did, I'm reasonably certain of that. Hence the suggestions in my first post in this thread.
(Short history lesson: This was a time when google did not exist yet. In fact the internet wasn't known to anybody but Al Gore.)

A little later a couple of friends of mine started tabletop wargaming...with VOID. I guess they saw it at our prefered indy store (where we used to buy RPG books) and just gave it a try.
I on the other hand ditched Warhammer in favour of HeroClix, which again I had learned about reading a magazine.
Years later when a new indy store opened in my hometown I went there to get my Clix on, only to get involved with a Blood Bowl league (due to two friends telling me independently from each other how awesome that game was; neither of them had been introduced to it in a GW store). This in turn led to me picking up Warhammer again.
In all that time I had been to a GW store once and played a demo game with a friend. The idiotic tactical advice the red shirt who explained the game gave to us turned us away from ever going there again.

[SunTzu]

HeroQuest, Space Crusade and Space Hulk were available in just about every toy store at that time. They even had ads on TV for it.

I started an unscientific, statistically invalid, probably implicitly biased poll in this forum about exactly this not long ago. More than half the people who responded, said they got started in the hobby with Heroquest. If we were to accept that poll as accurate (of course it's not), it would mean one boxed game for tweens with accompanying TV adverts did more for GW than 250+ dedicated stores across the world. Something to think about...

I do accept that there are a lot of people out there who discovered GW by passing trade (when I was a key-timer I helped people get started via exactly that route), and I do believe that back then, pre-internet, GW stores were what made GW the largest miniatures company in the world, while others at the time (without any way of getting their products into the hands or even minds of hobbyists) got left behind. I don't believe the stores are anything like as useful in the connected world.

FWIW, after Heroquest I saw a mate's copy of the Rogue Trader book and decided that looked cool. That's when I went from "a boy playing Heroquest" to "a GW customer, hobbyist, fan and future staffer", I guess. Neither he, nor I, nor any of my peers had been anywhere near a GW store - the nearest one was 40 miles away, one wouldn't open in my town for another three years. There was a hobby shop in our town that sold some of the rulebooks and a small selection of blisters, and that was it - but it was enough to trigger a lifelong hobby (dare I say obsession?).

[Cxt]

Location: USA. Since you asked someone, I found out about GW from a friend, who probably found out from a local hobby store, as that's where we went to buy the stuff. I don't think GW even had a store in my state back then, maybe not in the whole country (late 80s, early 90s). I also played HeroQuest, which was purchase by my parents at a local Kmart type store (a retail store that sells, well, everything). I didn't know about the location of any GW stores until I saw the back of a White Dwarf. I've got lots of friends into GW. Yet when traced back, I don't think the line leads to a GW store, ever. I'm guessing it started with a kid going into a hobby store, seeing a GW box, and buying it. Note, hobby store, not GW store.

[Bloodknight]

HeroQuest, Space Crusade and Space Hulk were available in just about every toy store at that time. They even had ads on TV for it.

Yeah, the ads were cheesy as hell, but after watching them I badgered my parents to buy me those and the expansion packs. I actually think they got them at a supermarket with a little toy and boardgame section.

Other than that, magazines. My first TT was Battletech via an ad in a C64 games magazine that had an ordering card (was 50 Mark at the time (I guess including inflation that would equal about 30-35 Euro today).

Got into Warhammer via a friend who knew it, but since we had about 4 or 6 GW stores in the country (i.e. one store per 15-20 million people) back at the time, I guess he learned of it in an indy store.

[iamfanboy]

OK, the numbers state that the UK, EU, and US are split evenly at about 30% of GW's gross income each year. It fluctuates up and down a few percent, but even when northern Europe (whatever THAT means) is included in the UK numbers they stay fairly steady at that level (which probably means it gets included in the UK numbers when the UK income drops and GW bigwigs need to make the report look good for investors).

Now, 40% of GW's stores are located in the UK, with another 15% in Northern Europe (I rechecked my numbers from earlier in the thread). If 30% of their income comes from the areas with 55% of their stores... does that make their stores good business?

Around 80m of their annual income goes to supporting their stores, out of around 120m gross income. If the UK/NE has 55% of their stores and only generates 30% of their income (around 40m on average), does that make them good business?

The last few times that GW published hard numbers as to what percentage of their business came from retail, direct, and independent, the stores only generated 50% of their total income, with direct sales accounting for another 12-15% - that just about covers the cost of running their stores. If indies are so bad, how is it the only segment of their business that supports their admin costs and generates free and clear profit?

Only about 10% of their stores are located in North America. Not only that, after axing a healthy amount of US stores their income did not drop, but their profits quadrupled from 700k to 2.9m pounds. If GW stores are so important to their future, how did Games Workshop manage to grow their presence in the US so rapidly over the 1996-1999 time period when fewer than 5% of their stores were located in the US? Why were those years the most profitable to GW in their entire history?

These questions are those that store supporters should be asking themselves whenever they hop into a thread that questions the value of the stores.


It's not that the stores are out-and-out a bad idea; but IMHO they should be played up as more of a 'pilgrimage' site for the best of the GW gamers. The best GW store I've been in (and yes, I've visited England and played in half a dozen stores) was the Memphis Battle Bunker. It most fulfilled what I thought of as a 'Games Workshop Hobby Center', with tons of room, tons of terrain, tons of product, and tons of other gamers from a large geographical area.

In areas such as England, where the population density and GW gamer density is higher, it only makes sense for there to be more stores, but a GW store doesn't need to be on every street corner.

[Dyrnwyn]

I mentioned this in another thread - GW's strategy in the past was to shut down indies by opening their stores close by. Before the internet and social media got huge this was a great idea because it shut out competition. Yes, they assumed the cost of maintaining physical storefronts for their players to congregate and play in, but the monopolization of their attention was worth it. That advantage no longer exists because of the internet. And now GW is in the unenviable position where they gain little advantage by controlling the storefronts, but cannot close their stores, at least in the UK, because their stores ARE the primary locations for their gamers to play, and closing them would implode their market.

In the States, the recommendation to reduce stores to large, battle-bunker Mecca-lite locations that people would want to visit is a viable strategy because there are still a plethora of indie LGS's that can maintain a population in smaller areas. There's no going back in the UK though. That's a done deal.

[iamfanboy]

Well, actually....

According to their UK-specific numbers (even back in 2008-9!) their UK/Direct/Indie sales were only 53/13/34%, so barely a nudge of difference in sales figures betwixt England (with its huge store presence) and the US (with minimal store presence).

And earlier in the thread I posted about the number of indies in jolly ol' England as compared to their official GW stores - it's on the rise.


The nice thing about GW going out with a whimper instead of a bang is that it means indies have a chance to pick up the slack as GW slowly retracts its tentacles.

[blongbling]

Most "f" lgs staff would not enthusiastically introduce a young kid, with his mum there too, to a game of 40k. They are far more likely to ignore him. By having all these stores that they run, and can control the attitudes of their staff and far more new players will be recruited.

Having visited hundreds of FLGS across the globe over my years with GW I can tell you that there are very few FLGS that introduce as many people to any aspects of wargaming as well as a GW store does. I could count on my own appendages the amount of great indies I have seen that introduce new people to the TTWG hobby.

These days more and more stores realise that they need to be improving on what they do but this is a reaction to seeing what happens in GW stores. Many of the concepts they use/used, gaming tables, tournies, painting areas etc are the exact tools that all TTWG manufacturers tell their best/better stores to ensure they have in order to maximise sales

[blongbling]

The best GW store I've been in (and yes, I've visited England and played in half a dozen stores) was the Memphis Battle Bunker. It most fulfilled what I thought of as a 'Games Workshop Hobby Center', with tons of room, tons of terrain, tons of product, and tons of other gamers from a large geographical area.

And that is about to reopen as an indie in the same location run by the former manager Tom.........

[iamfanboy]

Really? Damn, wish I was headed back there any time soon. Nice place.

Honestly, the reason most FLGS's I've seen don't run intro games is because they know the truth that friends are the main recruiters and trainers of potential customers. I can't say that I've bumped across many players who weren't recruited by friends.

The most common activities done by people running stores is notice what people buy when they come in and point out the tournament times, or recommend other products based on that ("If you like Inuyasha manga, have you ever tried the card game? Well, what about Super Dungeon Explore?")


EDIT: Hey, wait, I just realized that what I suggested is what GW is doing, at least in what you're talking about; opening up indie stores in one-time GW locales. Hrm, interesting...