Doctari wrote:
Matthew's guide for GW surviving into the electronic age:
1. Be transparent on Social Media.
2. They have to accept that this is the age of the online retailer.
3. Lower cost to play for the entry point of their game (which to be blunt with AoS and HH:BAC they are doing very nicely)
4. Your boxed sets have to be values. No one wants a web bundle with 0% discount.
5. Support a tournament set up.
And I'd add a sixth and seventh point. Though seven is a bit of an extension of your third point.
Six: actually do market research. It's 2015. It's not hard, at all, to get the perspective of your retailers and customers, and some unemployed guy with an MA in sociology could design a seven question survey that would give them at least the basic information about their base. How old are they? Where are they? Who spends the most? On what? Where do they spend it? What other forms of media do they consume? What would they like from the company? Some sampling, some check-boxes, and a stats program and BOOM.
Seven: Not just entry price point needs to be lowered. In the past six days I've bought what would add up to $160 retail of X-Wing and $250 retail on Infinity (I actually paid less between sales and trades and whatnot). For the same price that would get me one small army from GW I have 2 small armies and the start of another for Infinity, and two decent sized opposing X-Wing forces. And to have a viable third force will run me less than another $100 retail. Some excerpts from my last email to them:
"[L]et's talk about minis: if I bought every pre-painted miniature for all three factions of X-Wing at Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) - EVERY SINGLE ITEM THEY OFFER - I'd still spend less that $1,200 including sales tax. And I can play my first game with a friend for about $40. Every single model in a faction you sell would come to between $2,000 and $5,000! (Excluding the not really a faction Inquisition faction). Collecting the entirety of 40k at say 2,000 points each would run me over $30,000. My ******* Honda didn't cost that much, and it has voice recognition, GPS, and gets 35 MPG. And your starter kit, Dark Vengeance comes to over $100... more than twice the price of FFGs game. Infinity sells a starter set for about $100 - but theirs comes with a full set of scenery, and most of a field-able army. And an entire faction for them comes in at about $1,500. And their models are super good quality, just like yours ... [O]wning a ton of models isn't necessarily the point - otherwise every player would have Astra Militarum and Ork blob armies. But that isn't what people want, really - you sell Knights and Bloodthirsters because people love those gorgeous models - assembling and painting them. Doing a really good job on a few nice minis.
Your books are frequently priced at about $25-30 per hardcover, and $15-20 per eBook. An eBook I cannot legally resell. ... And your minis? I buy them or trade for them online with other players, occasionally buying them from a retailer or Amazon at a discount new. And I do mean occasionally. I think I've spent $120 on new GW minis in the past year... and over $200 in PayPal or trade for retail $400 worth of minis from people online ... And the Codexes? Who would buy them new? $50 for $25 worth of content. I buy them used.
And... look, guys, between the wife and I we do OK. We are not poor. We are solidly middle class, what's left of it in this country ... And I can't afford your books, much less your minis. ... [D]on't even get me started on 24 page long novellas by Mr. McNiell you sell for over $8 ... Or a squad of Sisters for what, like $80? I assumed, at first, your website had a bug when I saw that price ... Even if you have to pay your lawyers a bloody million pound retainer per year to sue the **** out of some poor sap that uses space marine in an unrelated title to your IP (and don't even get me started on your "Astra Militarum" renaming), you are still making a ton.
Oh, and Forge World? Who can realistically spend over $1,500 on a model? That market segment has got to be tiny... but you wouldn't know, because you don't even actually do market research!!! Are you still operating out of a van in the late '70s?
Economics 101 time here guys: there is two ways to make a reasonable amount of money - first, you charge a ton for an item you expect to sell only a few of; secondly, you charge less for items you plan to sell more of. Henry Ford had a good point - if you price your product where the average man can afford it, more people will buy it. And you can make money not by charging more, but by charging less and selling more. I mean, McDonald's didn't give millions of people colon cancer by marking up the price of their burgers 500%. They did it by selling reasonably good tasting food for dirt cheap.
Your market could be huge. [If prices were lower] - if you cut the price in half I'd have Tau, Knights, MT, AM, Chaos, and SM armies by now. And board games are going gangbusters right now. That guy who made Settlers and the guys who made Cards Against Humanity and whatnot? Those guys are getting rich. People are going to board game conventions. Your market and theirs share some similarities. Hipster douchebags and teenagers are buying stuff like that now, and your product appeals to some of that market. And yet I have to explain to my nerd friends what an Amazing game Space Hulk is. Then they play it. Then they ask how much it costs... and they just keep playing my game with me.
... I'm not going to play or collect a huge army unless you lower your prices. Just paint and wish I could afford an army to play with. ... I have no idea why you would try to open a GW store here. You can't swear at your stores, kids generally prefer video games, your prices are sky high, and everyone started playing X-Wing, Infinity, and/or Dark Heresy five years ago or so when you kept raising prices despite A GLOBAL ******* RECESSION. Wages here in the states, and I think there too, have stagnated ... Who could afford [a huge army] anymore? When they were a buck or two each it was doable with time. But now, at $3-6 dollars a mini and $35-55 per vehicle you'd have to take out a second mortgage. The only thing going up faster than your prices is college tuition.
Look, I know you are a publicly traded company and need to make some profits and have stock prices go up. But I also know you could sell the fact that a couple lean years are needed to avoid total collapse to your investors.
I wish I'd applied to be Games Workshop's CEO a year or two ago when that was open. Oh well."
Fact is that they could start charging less per mini and model and make up lost revenue through increased sales. How many of us wish we had the money to collect another army, or go through a Sisters or Necron or Tau phase?
These minis, this game, it's become a luxury good. You know how I know? No one in China puts up a website to get my money for a knockoff Target purse. It's always Michael Kors or some rich Italian designer's bag. Why? Because demand for those is way higher than the number of people who can afford them. So when guys on /tg start giving out clandestine information on how to contact a recaster in some third world country so Bob in Toronto or Phil in Sydney can have an army that tells you straight up that GW could lower prices and still be in business.
On r/miniswap under the same name. Please be polite & answer PMs, even if all you tell me is "No thanks," or "I need more time." I expect lower rating to ship first, even if that's me, unless we work something out in advance.
Owed feedback: evaunit117
