[unofficial weekender] Melting point

[pagan8thParticipant 10744xp 0]

Not sure what to think about the Hornby purchase.

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

But Hornby’s already riddled with debt and rising – this looks more like they’re after a slice of the “lucrative but niche” tabletop gaming market in a quick cash-grab.

@blinky465 “Invest money, take ownership, syphon of assets, sell dead husk of warlord” Looks like Hornby is taking a page from various video game companies. And we’ve all seen how well those go.

In other news the site (and project system) seems a bit more stable during day time and even a wee bit faster. Troubles I may have on Tuesday evenings might as well be a problem with the local ISP or something.

Valiant Teapot

@horati0nosebl0wer loving that name. John could name his Maus that… if it ever sees the day of light.

First Monday on my weeks off. Feels awkward and I’m so tense in waiting for the inevitable “we have problem we need you” call. Sucks the enjoyment out of it. And having a heat soaked environment doesn’t help either XD

In other news: in case you have missed it, I started a Secret Santa 2023 thread. Get in there while it’s hot!

Christman 2023 – Secret Satan!

Now for some coffee. 8)

[blinky465 17027xp 0]

take ownership, syphon off assets, sell dead husk of warlord

Many years ago (mid-90s?) I went to apply for a job at Dapol, as the factory had just opened up in my (then) home town of Llangollen. I desperately needed the money (and quite fancied one of the girls who worked in the Dr Who shop). I was interviewed by the then-owner himself, David Boyle.

The man was a complete creep and I found him to be an arrogant berk. He seemed more interested in lording it over the plebs in a funny little Welsh village than any of my technical skills or requirements for the job. But he insisted that if I “went away and found out everything about his company Dapol” within a week, he’d give the job I desperately needed.

We were still using magazine-cover-CDs to connect Compuserve to various bulliten boards back then, there was no concept of “the internet” or “just Google it”. But I held him to his word (and spent days travelling to various libraries and went to their old office in Winsford – after all, I had a cheap railcard and not much else to do until the following week).

A week later, as I explained how his company got into serious financial difficulties, then mysteriously had a fire prior to its moving to the Winsford industrial estate, and a massive insurance payout, clearing its debts, he didn’t seem too impressed. When I pointed out that Dapol had agreed to sell many of its moulds to Hornby just prior to moving to Wales, then myseriously had a fire that destroyed much of its back catalogue and the moulds to remake them (and thus immediately increased its valuation of goods in stock as their scarcity sky-rocketed) it became clear to both of us that neither of us actually wanted me to work there.

The historical part of the company was subsequently bought up by Hornby. Strangely, many of the previously-believed destroyed moulds turned out to be perfectly useable, and very-much in-demand super-scarce products suddenly became available again.

So we have a company with a history of making products super-expensive through scarcity, selling to a company with a history of buying up scarce nostalgia-based products (Dapol sold a lot of Airfix moulds to Hornby that also mysteriously re-appeared) in order to create a cash-cow.

And now the company with the history of buying up nostalgia to drive up sales, and making things scarce to drive up profit, then regurgitating old products with licenced IP branding on to generate “real money” (Thomas the Tank and Harry Potter we big profit-generators in the early 2000s but were mostly just cheap stickers stuck onto existing product lines) which is currently wholly owned by an asset management company (PAM) has taken on yet more debt to acquire a 25% share (with  a mandatory buy-out clause after two years) in a company in a marketplace known for price gouging and artificial scarcity as a mechanism for driving up prices? (*cough, GW pre-orders cough*)

PAM were brutal in cutting more than half of Hornby’s product line, in a drive for profitability.
It doesn’t feel like this is particularly good news for “our” industry.

 

[blinky465 17027xp 0]

@warzan @tgu3 @dignity – I just noticed that when I create a new post on the forum, I need to tick the captcha box. But I can edit (and save) changes to a post without ticking it. Is this a loop-hole our spam-generating friends could have been exploiting lately?

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

it became clear to both of s that neither of us actually wanted me to work there.

Dude, that’s a scary story. If you where in the US I’d be scared for someone now trying to sue you for “spreading misinformation” or something.

But I agree, it seldom leads to something good when big fish swallows little fish :S

[blinky465 17027xp 0]

Yeah. Except it did happen. And it’s even on the Dapol (and Hornby) wiki page(s):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dapol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornby_Railways

[templar007 52366xp 0]

WoW…………I didn’t think the ‘Hornby’ news sounded like it was good for our hobby.

Now after reading all of the additional inside info I feel the need to step up my purchase orders to aquire all the remaining ships I need to complete my ‘Battle of Trafalgar’ ships.  The British fleet is pretty much set, (more or less), but I only have about twelve ships of the Franco Spanish fleet.

It would indeed be sad to see Warlord go down.

Hopefully this doesn’t happen.  But plan for the worst and hope for you he best.?

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

But plan for the worst and hope for you he best.

Yarp.

[horati0nosebl0wer 19610xp 0]

With the info coming together it does look grim. I guess it does look like Warlord is doing the same thing like Forge World with their limited releases already so it’s not too far of a stretch.

Perhaps this is hedging the bet on historic gaming over fantasy/sci-fi in a widening market due to 3D printing? Catch the consumers who don’t want to print and are willing to buy plastic crack and you have your in to make sales.

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

What irritates me the most: Hornby is (if I read this correctly) already financially unstable and “on life support” of some kind? How is it then that they are granted *more* money (aka make more debt) to buy another company (or 25% of shares in this case)

In the long run I do feel physical wargaming pieces will become more “niche” and collectors items. Sad. 🙁

[sweetdaddygParticipant 70xp 1]

I find the hornby purchase oddly fitting though, some of my earliest terrain was hornby based back in the days when getting that sort of stuff was tricky here and you got bored of home made cardboard buildings etc

 

takes me back to a simpler time when all this were fields…

[pagan8thParticipant 10744xp 1]

@sundancer… “Yarp!”

Hot Fuzz fan?

And all that Hornby/Warlord stuff does not sound good.

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

[zorg 18799xp 1]

[blinky465 17027xp 0]

How is it then that they are granted *more* money (aka make more debt) to buy another company (or 25% of shares in this case)

I forget the exact details, but when I worked at the car supermarket, the company accountant explained it to me. The “umbrella company” at the time (owned by two individual directors)  was making lots of money. The turnover was in the region of £140m and I think profits for each were around £5m. To get their money out of this company was subject to corporation tax (on profits). So one of the directors bought a failing car sales site, that was making losses of around £10m. This allowed him to “lend” money (from the profitable site) to the failing site. He could then take (his own) money out of the “failing site” tax free (since the company wasn’t profitable, it wasn’t subject to corporation tax) as a “loan repayment”. So instead of paying tax by withdrawing his £5m a year profits from the profitable site, he “loaned it” to the failing site, and could withdraw his £10m “rescue fund” tax free.

I may have the exact details wrong (I really should have paid more attention, but you know what company accountants are like! *snooze*). But that’s the basic gist of it.

Couple that with recent UK tax laws that – in an effort to turn us into a “manufacturing powerhouse” thanks to a non-specific political event in 2016 that we don’t talk about – give tax breaks of x10 for anyone registering a patent for “new IP”, and you can see how a cash-rich company (e.g. an asset management company) is quite happy to sink £1.25m into a failing business; all they need is one patent to be granted (I think even a patent *application* was good enough at one point) and they could get to withdraw £12.5m tax-free at a stroke (this is on top of the usual feed-money-from-a-profitable-company-into-a-failing-one trickery that accountants get up to, and it’s not difficult to see why it happens).

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