Weekender XLBS: Ebay Army Perils & Games Workshop’s Money Machine
September 27, 2015 by dignity
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Happy Sunday!
Happy Sunday. I’m at work so can’t watch until later 🙁
HAPPY SUNDAY x Oh the joys of grandchildren and early mornings 🙂
here the thing that you guy may want Sam to go look out for “Star wars model kit ” the one that made by the same company that made Gundams now all i know its they are of Good quality BUT becose of licence no japanese retailer can sell it out side of japan so if you like your star wars you need to get Sam to go hunt for it
I have already spotted them on sale.
Get yourself to a Dragon Gate show whilst you’re over there, @dracs
http://www.iheartdg.com/category/schedule/
How often have you been evacuated due to Kaiju attacks?
@warzan, regarding the seller on ebay, zero tolerance. i would say he/she knew they were being dishonest and hoped they would get away with it. You have given them the benefit of the doubt and tried to rectify the situation to no reasonable conclusion. Get your money back via eBay complaints.
Good show guys
Ps. Leave rating/feedback
I had a similar issue with recast counterfit terrain… to mean, who owned the original companies product, I knew right away… the seller “apparently” didn’t know.. said they picked up a “box” of the stuff at a game show years ago and were just selling off stuff that had been gathering dust… but they had multiple auctions up that all were probably counterfit… I told them if they didn’t change the description of their product to explain where they had obtained it and provide links to the original items, that I’d pursue action through ebay.. I still don’t know if… Read more »
Happy Sunday!!
Happy Sunday minus the Eng vs Wales pain!
The GW stuff isn’t really news. Except for that 20% number. We’ve known that they believe more in the collector’s market for years now.
And I don’t think their business model is to get young kids hooked on plastic crack. Other insider info tells us their target demographic is middle-aged nerds with lots of disposable income. Granted, it might be efficient to hook them young and let them grow into becoming big spenders, but I’m not sure GW execs are able to think that long-term.
They do target young males and see them as the core of their customer base. The reason they believe they are recession proof is because they think parents will always buy their kids what they want no matter how tough things are financially. Forge World is GW for adults, and that brand is targeted at the middle-aged nerd with lots of disposable income.
Also, the reason they put no effort into customer retention is they believe that the young male demographic will move on after 1-3 years no matter what they do.
I wonder if the 20% number is the percent of active players and they are not counting the vast number of people who don’t play much or at all any more but keep up with the new releases for their favorite armies. How many of the 80% of non gamers got into the hobby by gaming? If GW lets the gaming aspect of their business wither where will the 80% of non gaming customers come from in 5 or 10 years? Do they really think they can keep sales up long term with so little focus on gaming?
I think you are exactly right. I got into 40k as a kid with the intention of collecting an army to play with in a fictional universe that I adored as much as Star Wars. As I’ve grown-up (well, I got older anyway) I became more interested in the painting and collecting aspects of the hobby.
I don’t think the younger market loves the GW IP like I loved 40k in the 80’s.
I wonder if that 20% isn’t “people who play” but “percentage of models they play with”.. I started thinking about it.. and at any one time, I usually have 4-5x as much for a game as I use.. and I usually am playing 1 game regularly and have 4-5 games sitting on my shelf gathering dust… so.. as much as “20% are actual gamers” might not be true.. 20% of our sales go to active armies or 20% of your army actually sees the battlefield… how many times do you hear about people who have 3 or 4 armies of… Read more »
I wondered this as well. At one point in the 90s I had at least 2000pts for every WFB and 40K army, many more points in some cases. Some of those armies never even made it out of the blister packs. At the time I was told that this was a big part of GW’s business plan, that they knew that much of what they sold would never get used and they relied on impulse buys to drive sales. It seems from the article that GW class their consumers as ‘gamers’, ‘hobbyists’, and ‘collectors’. If the gamers game with the… Read more »
I have an idea. Maybe you guys could do a video guide or article about taking taking photos of miniatures. I would be very using, especially if it done for budget and pro levels.
Happy Sunday Folks, wonderful show loved it. The place looks awesome great job .
DONT MENTION TAYTO GUYS!
My stock that I picked up in the summer has run out.
Happy Sunday. I’m now thinking of a post to send to Sam
Hi Folks, Happy Sunday.
Were is the link to lets play beasts of war, as i cannot see it in the show notes.
Happy sunday!
Great show guys, good to have two packed episodes this weekend and a real nice mix of subjects which I always enjoy. As was said during this episode, that lovely custom army has me now looking to pick up models and do a bit of painting today.
@warzan a weekly couple of minutes of a lovely painted and or converted force may help community members to pick up that paintbrush or model they had put down and put in an extra hour or two. It certainly has for me.
Disappointed by reading that article on Games Workshop. I keep hoping that new blood will see the relationship with the customer as something important, not to exploit. They just come across as really mercenary – which we kind of knew anyway.
Games Workshop used to be a vibrant, exciting place. Many of the store staff still have that, but the company just doesn’t seem interested.
Very interesting point about addiction to collecting and the morality of business. For me its always been the hobby rather then just a games system. I’ve had so many life affirming experiences occur around the games table. I do think the GW percentage is a random generated percentage as Age of Sigmar has made the game very accessible for new players even if its upset the player community. AoS is still something I’m not on board with but I do like the new fluff etc does add interest so against the its too fast argument I do understand that they… Read more »
I agree with ogreblood. Zero tolerance. He will just rip off someone else.
The studio is looking great.
Looking forward to seeing the conversion vids with Mr. Mennes. The models you showed were very impressive.
Have a good week guys.
Warren. Following on from Ash Barkers experience with filming battle reports, make your table surface slightly higher than normal. Makes filming easier for all sorts of reasons.
@warzan Warren ddi you file a not as described complaint on eBay? If you paid with paypal which I assume you did, they will refund you pretty quickly. I was stung recently with some fake Death Korps of Kreig models and got a refund within about 10 days. They looked kosher on the photos but I knew as soon as I got them that they were wrong.
@warzan also file a complaint on paypal as well, if you file on both it gives a bigger flag.
Talking bout fake miniatures or recast, check GW LOTR. Some sellers have an insane amount of rare or OOP miniatures for sale each week. Some are very good replicas but they arent originals for sure
Seems straightforward to me, open up a complaint with ebay where you will get your money back, but before that, inform the manufacturer of originals and let them decide on whether to investigate or not. they may want the models as proof and reimburse you themselves.
Obtaining financial benefit from selling knowingly counterfeit goods is a criminal offence in UK. Zero tolerance. Report it to ebay and get a full refund. Although you’ve flagged an important issue and it takes little effort to message someone and ask ‘Can you confirm this army contains no counterfeit or unofficial proxy models?’
Counterfeit or unofficial proxies are 2 very different things.
The first need to be stamped out, with extreme prejudice – and the other is just a pain if you plan on playing in tournaments that do not allow it
So the 20 percent thing is total BS, I imagaine that they came to that conclusion by factoring sales and the amount of people who they see playing in store. without recognizing that most of us play in our own homes or at FLGS that actually support organized play. That said however, if they want to just be a model company then they should but in the process hand the tabletop game rules over to someone like fantasy flight, who have shown they can write balanced rules and actually listen to their players.
Yeah – the claim from GW doesn’t ring true at all. When a new set of models come out, they are almost all driven by changes to rule & codices. Remember 3 year ago when it was all fliers, and last year when it’s all super-heavy walkers? GW seem to use the rules to change to drive sales. Ironically, if GW were to go down the “miniatures company”, I’d really like to see them diversify from just Warhammer – you know do work on World War 2, and fantasy series. A bit like the old shop (remember you could buy… Read more »