Kirby Stepping Down As GW CEO With Interesting Preamble?
July 28, 2014 by warzan
Update: Today, Games Workshop announces the release of the 2014 annual report for the year ended 1 June 2014. The press release can be downloaded as a pdf here.
Tom Kirby, the current Chairman and Acting CEO of Games Workshop is stepping down from his position as announced in a Chairman's Preamble that was issued today. And it wouldn't be Tom Kirby if he didn't do it with his usual shoot from the hip style of 'no bullsh1t' corporate reporting. See what you think of it HERE...
The preamble seems to paint a rather bleak picture as the annual report is coming up soon. It does however go on to address some of the issues we know Games Workshop are having with protecting Intellectual Property from other businesses in this new age (a Golden Age?) and on top of that we get what their insight is on future technology such as 3D printers etc.
Above is a little snippet of the report and should give you a taster of what we should expect over the next few days. It will be interesting to see what the numbers are like come the full report and while I'm sure it will be reported that there is a sense of bitterness in the preamble, I'm not so sure...
Tom has worked very hard, and built quite an outstanding company at a time, but that takes a toll, and I think he's just ready to hang up his hat. He was never one for mincing his words so I'm not surprised by the 'almost reckless' tone of the preamble... Tom was very much his own man.
But times change and people change, and it's clear that for all their success in turning around the technical and operational aspects of the business, under Tom's current leadership, they still haven't really grasped what needs to change.
We will have to wait for the report now, but Tom if your reading thanks for everything you have accomplished, and if I may pay a little tribute to your own no nonsense communications approach... Good Riddance! 😉
Joking aside, we'd like to wish Tom and his family the best and may he have a long and happy retirement.
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I’m with ya there, I don’t see ‘bitter’….the man’s a rude asshat, but I don’t see bitter.
Well hopefully way is only up now when Mr Kirby has stepped down.
Well, this is now the second time he’s stepped down as CEO, but he’s still going to be there ss Chairman, so any new broom will still have to dance to his tune. Expect no changes (for the better) any time soon. After all, I can’ t think of much good that came out of Mark Wells’ tenure. Does n ‘t sound like the numbers are good this year. No surprise.
Oh well. I quess it sounded too good to be true then.
Ah, I did wonder if he’s hold on as Chairman thus maintaining his power-base. Wouldn’t expect to see any change in course at all then. We of course never found out why Mark Wells departed, but I would guess he tried to force some changes Kirby disapproved of and was handed the boot.
Oh great. Now I have image in my head about Tom Kirby being power behind scenes like Victor Donovan from Dead or Alive games.
First he bash against 3d-printers and after that he say “It is possible that one day we will sell them direct via 3-D printers to grateful hobbyists around the world.”…. Man we all know that production will die, and HAS TO DIE, pretty soon. There is no need for paying manufacture when people can do it at a local level, on demand and no shipping/customs and other burdens included. Quality is improving and soon there will be no need for miniatures production companies, only great games, IP’s and sculptures will remain in the long run, and that is a great… Read more »
I agree. The moment that all gamers have access to high quality 3D printers will be a great day for our hobby, if not for the companies who can’t adapt to it.
I still think affordable 3D home printing is 5-10 years away at the moment. Still not sure why it will make figures cheaper though. At the moment even highly qualified CAD operators take 5 or 6 goes to get a model right before they finally get the design right ( this from a friend who works in the 3D printing industry). All that will happen is that the price of the CAD designs will go through the roof as 99% probably wont have the skills or the patience to create the designs themselves
Well said. At the moment a sculpture can spend a long time designing a miniature knowing that they can sell many copies of the finished sculpt. Once 3D printing enables people to print as many copies as they like from a purchased file, the cost of buying that file will sky rocket. It will have to to make designing the miniatures cost effective.
I think you’ll see DRM protected miniature templates that will allow you to print a limited number of copies before the license must be renewed. I don’t like everything GW does but I do believe Tom when he says that they know what they’re talking about when it comes to 3D printing and I suspect as a company they know more about that technology, the direction of its development and the trends of cost, quality and speed of personal 3D printing because its a potential threat to their current business model; a threat that I can bet they are looking… Read more »
yeah 4 or 5 passes is pretty common for some minis, some are a lot quicker,
… there is a certain company out there that made me do over 250 versions …
… for a 10 man unit (@ , @)
errrr, I had to have discussions about that one 😛 ha ha
… there’s only one problem I can see with selling minis kind of… “direct to home 3d printers”, and it’s that the prices per mini will probably double at least… and even then, I don’t see mini companies jumping to be the first to offer that service : / I know that sounds a bit weird, but think of it this way … would you… as a company, spend years developing a game, paying concept artists, sculptors, etc, to design a range of minis, ( which is a Ridonculous amount work ) and then sell the raw files to some… Read more »
It doesn’t work like that, here there was tons of illegal copies of videogames being seld everywhere and they didn’t have success thanks to internet and cheaper online retailers like Steam, Humble Bundle and GoG. I can completely image Humble Bundles of miniatures wargames, what they need to find is some type of DRM that will limit the amount of copies you can do and give user access to really good tools for posing and tweaking parts of the miniatures. Everyone will love to be able to print them in one go or with the exact bits you want and… Read more »
” free tools like Blender that let you make high quality 3D models for free ”
Well I just shoved a load of Greenstuff in the kitchen blender and it didn’t work!
No free models. 🙁
Do you think I should have taken the tomatoes out first?
“Free tools like Blender that let you make high quality 3D models for free”
A pencil and a piece of paper is cheap, but how many of us have the talent or skill to draw an amazing picture? This idea that one day we’ll all be making our own miniatures at home is pie in the sky. I have a laptop and a printer but I don’t sit at home writing my own books to read.
Besides, I already spend a lot of time posing and tweaking and converting my miniatures the way I want them.
The cheapest way to make models is probably to pay a sculptor and cast it in metal
You’re totally right.
I work in the video games industry/software development. I studied 3D modelling at university and have been doing it ever since but I don’t specialise in it. Despite being a very proficient modeler I would struggle to make a top-notch humanoid character like some of these artists do.
There’s some serious skill in todays digital sculpters and it’d be a mistake to think anyone with a copy of Blender could bash something out that looked as good as a pro model!
errr, I see what your trying to get at, … but there’s no way to limit how many copies people can make, anyone could just cast multiple copies afterwards in resin or metal, … because it’s how they’ve always been made, and thats what the printers are for, to make masters 😛 … and even in 3d, one size does not fit all, so it would be really hard to make parts swap like that, … also, posing a 3d sculpt is a biaatch 😛 probably the hardest part to make look right 😛 ha ha it’s not a simple… Read more »
Printing companies were worried about home printers destroying the book trade… It didn’t… Ebooks did…
If I wanted to, I could download a movie or tv show to my laptop right now and watch it, download an album and listen to it, or download a book and read it. If/when the day comes that 3D printers are good enough to produce home-printed high quality minis and affordable enough that the average household can own one, no-one will be able to download a CAD file and wargame with it. It *has* to be printed out. This means the bulk of the cost is taken on by the consumer whether they pirate the mini or purchase it.… Read more »
@redben what you describe is a very long way off, if indeed it ever comes. It is still far far more expensive to print a book out on my affordable home printer than it is to buy a copy in a book shop. The reason I have stopped buying so many physical books isn’t because I could print them myself, but rather because I can now read a novel on my ipad. At present 3D printing technology is way off being able to print out high quality miniatures at home. There are cheap 3D printers available but they just don’t… Read more »
I was referring to reading a book digitally, not to printing it out. It is an option with a book that isn’t there with a mini. I never put a timescale on this. I am engaging with the idea that home-printed minis will kill the industry because of piracy and stating that I think the opposite is true.
Until the day comes that we’re printing out our own minis, then the piracy thing isn’t an issue anyway. Even if someone can invest in a really expensive one and pirate them that way, that’s just the same as the recasting industry now.
(@ , @) … again, I just can’t see it working as a business right now 😛 ha ha … it’s just soooo risky 😛 … although I understand what you mean about trying to make things more easy to release for new companies, … but that’s what kickstarter’s for 😉 ha ha … now on the subject of affordable home printing for small mini companies, … I’m literally counting the days 😛 ha ha the moment I see an affordable printer that meets the right standards I need I’m gonna be all over that like a vulcher circling a… Read more »
To reiterate, as I fear my previous comments may not have been clear, I am not setting a timescale nor suggesting it is possible now. I am engaging with the idea that if/when they arrive, they will destroy the industry. I disagree and think if/when it happens, they will liberate the industry.
Everyone predicted that the videotape, and subsequently, the DVD, would destroy the movie industry, but that has not been the case. It has simply augmented the industry. Sooner or later pirated 3D models will show up, and we will print them on 3D printers, but I think we will have the same result. People will get into the hobby cheaply (currently not a GW option) and will subsequently look for better figures.
Well there is a saying Mr Kirby and it goes like this “If your not doing it someone else will a whole lot better” as we have seen from many companies. I would like to say on this note, thank you very much for pricing me out of the GW products your price hikes were my favourite of all time(Sarcasm intended). And the fury you have left some of your life long customers in is just amazing go on do it again I love to feel like a pauper amongst my friends. Mr Kirby you have been found “Wanting”. And… Read more »
Amen
I look forward to seeing what the future brings!
So GW has spent a small fortune in the short term to cut running cost, so potentially saving in the long term. Of course this means this year’s profits are likely to be down. Cue the prophets of doom predicting the demise of GW 😉 GW feels like a company struggling to stay top dog in the face of increased competition. So far they are still the market leader, but it would appear that their market share is falling. I don’t think this is the beginning of the end personally. They are still the biggest game in town by a… Read more »
I would like to see the end of the Kirkby show and the beginning of a GW that actually gives a damn about its customers. It’s always a nice preamble if you are one of the trust funds that have invested in GW For everyone else it a pint that is all froth and no body. You can have as efficient, lean company as you like. But while the prices keep rising and value ever reduced it means nothing. Now you will tell me that there is a lot of value. But when my LFGS owner holds up a box… Read more »
“Of course this means this year’s profits are likely to be down. Cue the prophets of doom predicting the demise of GW”
That really depends on how much they fall. There’s no doubt that the six-monthly report reflected a drop in sales. We’ve also been given figures in that statement on what they’ve invested. If this report is no better than the previous one even accounting for this investment, and especially given the release schedule since then, that would be a concern.
It’d be nice to see them being less-litigious! I doubt it’ll happen though. Its a shame they are such ass-hats because the models do look amazing but I just can’t support a company so at odds with its consumer base. I think they think kids still buy miniature games in toy stores. Welcome to the future GW!
‘Long-term survivability’?
B1tch please, that’s what has been killed off in favour of boosting the profits in the short term- if they’re now falling too I’m seriously worried for GW.
Cutting back stores is NOT a move for long-term survivability. It IS a way to encourage people to go out there and find new stores where people can play whatever game they want and see that there’s more to ‘The Hobby’, as GW likes to refer to themselves, than just their Hobby.
I does not read like a CEO happy with life, or the position of his company. The GW report reads like a company with a serious decline issue. They have cut all the fat off the lamb, so the only option for the future will be slaughter. I don’t see either document showing a stable or confident company. Revenue down about 10%, operating profit down about 43% and earnings on shares down by half. Cannot see anyone happy with this, either the customer or the investors.
A wonderful mixture of arrogance and technical ignorance. Sail on Ahab
About time. The bitterness is there. He’d like to be a non executive board member, if they’ll have him! Smacks of being pushed to me.
hes a wanna be
For a wannbe he’s been around a hell of a long time.
I like the bit where he talked about people stealing their ideas…
… heaven forbid anyone copies those elves, orcs, tree people, xenomorphs, rat men, trolls, ogres, dinosaurs, dwarves, genetically engineered space soldiers, hobbits, satyrs, wizards, cyborgs, gargoyles, goblins, knights on horseback, dragons, “imperial guard”, the concept of the gods of chaos, giant robots, regular giants, dragons, judge “arbites”, vampires, priests with hammers, giant spiders, zombies, “dark” elves, haemonculi, “insert fantasy race” in space, skeletons, mummies, winged demons, the green goblins glider, harlequins, griffons, unicorns, hydras, actual bane, terminators …
… because… you know… that would be plagiarism 😛
So pleased Kirby’s steady hand will continue to grip the tiller
Please feel free to interpret that as a double entendre
I’m struggling to understand how they spent £4,000,000 on their new webstore…
Let’s hope they bring in someone who can stir things up – Kirby’s preambles make me think he doesn’t live in the same reality as the rest of us.
“All this has significantly de-risked the business. We have far fewer key personnel to replace if need be, and a much lower cost base (£2 million p.a. less). It has cost, in total, around £4.5 million to accomplish. The new web store allows us to sell online more efficiently. It cost around £4 million. ” Looks like a total of £8.5million has been spent to save £2mill per annum. 4 years to get that back so long as all things remain equal. Which they rarely do. De-risked. What the hell does that even mean? They chucked out a load of… Read more »
indeed…I just de-boned myself,
and I’ve found far more practical to fit into small spaces now 😛
And i’m gonna de-eat my lunch, excuse me… XD
chibi your killing me lol lol 🙂
I believe Tom Kirbys wife is a consultant for the company on IT related stuff.
oh @warzan I would love to answer that with a very funny joke but I think it would be too rude.
Has she tried turning him off and back on again?
Ohhhhh so that’s where the 4mil went! LOL
Sounds like the kind of thing you read about in Private Eye a lot of the time..
Lol, the site is not even responsive ( resize the screen and the elements won’t adjust ), you can’t browse it in a smartphone O.o . Plus it seems they use Ember.js and they have a few file that are not even compress for faster download… They also use Angular.js O.o
Some overcharge them pretty hard or they redesign and redo things hundreds of times ( literally! ), even at that point is just freaking silly.
i study graphic design and i have never heard of a website costing that much to design and implement, i have heard of a company pay 1 million to update all of there brand, this is just a website
There is a huge SAP backend system driving the whole thing, so don’t be surprised 🙂
They should have spent that money on a new soul instead
ha ha 😀 almost mad me breath in my soda 😛
Can you do that after you selling the original one?
yes chibi GW released a codex about the devil and how to sell your soul its on page 665 the page before summoning the Greater Greed Demon and lesser legal demons.
Among lots of other things, It went out with White dwarf being nothing but a shallow GW catalogue with no community contents whatsoever. Specialist games could have stayed around as well, to enrich their existing universes of 40k and fantasy .. why didnt GW actively support and encourage campaign gaming spanning over a range of different systems? Fear of loosing customers from the main IPs of course, but all it did was making it too clear the company had lost perspective on their precious game worlds and the respect for their customers. Isolating themselves in their own reality took off… Read more »
I know Kirby is not going to lose a wink of sleep over all the good people he threw out of work just to grease the shareholders and make the spreadsheets look good. There were some good GW store staff, I knew, who gave GW and the hobby much more than the pittance they were paid and then got treated like toilet paper for all their years of service and loyalty they gave GW. Shame on you Kirby.
Its probably the inability to feel shame doing things to others that put him there in the first place. This sub species usually do good in the corporate world.
Sadly, you are absolutely right the amoral user/abuser types are everywhere and flourishing and Kirby is a prime example.
This is hypothetical. If GW’s web sales increase significantly due to having exclusive products only available on their webstore and not through any other internet seller or external store there’s the possibility they might start closing their own brick and mortar stores to make further savings. If this was the case they might start supporting local gaming stores slightly as that would be an entrance point for new customers. By support I mean a few posters and starter kits with ‘now you’ve started look at our exclusive online range you can only buy direct’. This could be good (although still… Read more »
After ever increasing restrictions and pressures on my LFGS from GW, at a time of ever diminishing sales of ever more expensive goodies, the owner has had enough and this week announced he has ceased dealing with GW.
While this is purely anecdotal, and not necessarily indicative of the overall trend with independents, I assume that trading practices are uniform throughout the UK.
All things being equal, I only see the independents getting squeezed out.
In a small isolated town in the land of Oz, there was a new GW store, in which a pin could be heard to drop. Strangely, the town also had a small independent store, in which all other games are represented, except one notable company. You cannot hear the trucks braking outside for the sound of rolling dice. Independent stores are doing well here. GW is not.
They can’t close their bricks and mortar stores. They’d be in breach of their own trade agreement. That must be why they no longer sell random bits.
Restructuring costs can explain decreasing profits but it will be interesting to see if a sales figure drop is also responsible for the loss of profit. Half year results were not very encouraging on that matter.
They reported a revenue shortfall last year. That’s a sales drop. They’re restructuring because their revenues no longer support their old cost structure.
Sales
Reported sales fell by 8.2% to £123.5 million for the year. On a constant currency basis, sales were down by 6.5% from £134.6
million
to £125.9 million; progress was achieved in Other sales businesses (+
20.9%) and Export (+2.7%) while sales in UK (
–
7.1%), Continental
Europe (
–
10.6%), North America (
–
7.5%), Australia (
–
9.4%) and Asia (
–
3.3%) were in decline.
Okay, BoW community, the time has come for a serious question. I really have to ask this because everything I know about Kirby or GW or 40K is what I get here on BoW. So here it goes. Where . . . oh, where . . . oh, for the love of all that’s holy, please tell me where . . . did this guy learn to write? Here on these sites we all admittedly tap out posts and blogs and articles and whatever, no one really checks our material to any kind of standard because frankly we’re no longer… Read more »
he sacked his secretary to save money he thought in all his arrogance he could do a better job.
Probably GW’s single biggest failing point is their inability to communicate. They have got to have some of the worst PR I’ve ever seen. It does incalculable damage to their brand. I would guess that a significant portion of the GW hate you see in this hobby would dissipate if they would just learn how to write a press release or talk to their customers at all. They communicate like a company in the 1980s would (back when the term “layoffs” was seen as a positive without having hide behind words like “restructuring”). I don’t know from what archaeological dig… Read more »
Hey, they recruit for attitude, not skill don’t you know. It makes you great!
He de-scripted the document
From my experience as a committed regular player of the Strategy Battle game, despite a really well organised player base all I have seen is a complete neglect of my favorite game, and souring prices for miniature manufactured in some of the cheapest materials used in manufacturing. I am happy with plastics, though still appalled by the complete failure of fine cast that simply does not deserve the name. Under this mans leadership the company has pretty much priced out its majority fan base, perhaps crucially the teenagers some of which stay on with the hobby and become pretty much… Read more »
I have met a lot of gamers that simply do not buy from G.W. anymore due to what we feel are ridiculously high prices! My former spending and now not spending at G.W. is replicated amongst the majority of my gaming companions.
does anyone here feel that because of the price hikes GW made many miniature companies have followed suit in the prices thinking well they buy GW at that price?
Absolutely…Thankfully prices for historical 28mm is still reasonable enough
Nope.
New site is shit comapred to the old one
Stores only open half the bloody week and close when the staff need the Loo
The models are now obnoxiosly expensive and i havn’t bought new for almost a year
the poor handling of the game led me to play other games as it was dull and unbalanced
Yep glad to see the back of Kirby, man was an idiot
Working a shop on your own is always a loser for all concerned.
Have been in such a position (not GW) and yes at times you need to go for a pee.
No lunch break, having to shut up the shop to take cash to the bank, go an get stock from the storeroom etc and worse of all it pisses off the customers
Not good.
So please spare a thought for any poor sap who has to operate a one man store.
The only positive is for the board when they show how much money they have saved by axing jobs.
Gw is going the same way as all other big companies in this country. The bean counters have squeezed as much money out of its customer base as they can and are now beginning to bail. The hack and slash policy is to make sure the board members qualify for their bonuses each year. GW has tried and failed to be the Microsoft of the gaming world. It is shedding loyal customers like rats leaving a sinking ship. GW used to give a damn about what its fans thought about its products and even used to state this on occasion… Read more »
Shedding loyal customers…. money matters more than content…. smaller companies have better quality products…. That sounds exactly like Microsoft to me 😀
I expect their numbers to have worsened further (sales down 20% or more), even though they brutally cut staff and costs wherever possible. Their numbers will have worsened even though they desperately threw a new 40k Edition onto the market ( which really didnt tackle any of the games bigger issues and out of date designs, but just appears to be primarly designed to enable and officialy sanction their customers to be able to field EVERY single (40k) model (Fantasy is dead) they release and therefore enable them buy every Model they release no matter what faction one actually plays… Read more »