Leon meant a figure of Kevin Spacey in marine garb.

Quote from: Techno on 17 January 2015, 06:50:05 AM
Oi !! .
(Man of War must have come out after I left, 'cos I don't remember that one at all.)

Cheers - Phil

Ships 'n' stuff. Not I hasten to add the new giant floating cities they brought out a while ago.

I started collecting Man of War and painted ships and had sea elementals and all sorts. Then I decided I really wanted a Dwarf Navy, but it had gone by then!

You still do get some of the "Uncharted Seas" stuff.....

IanS

Long long ago when I started wargaming (41yrs ago) the main options where airfix airfix of airfix and the rules of Donald Featherstone. Where I lived in Sheffield had no wargames shops so one waited for the Sheffield wargames show,can anyone remember it being at the victoria hotel,anyhow I digress.the day a new shop called Games Workshop opened on the Moor was a dream come true cos it sold allsorts citadell miniatures heroic and ros etc etc then suddenly almost over night all you could get was GW. And once more Sheffield became devoid  of options until the birth of wargames emporium. Its interesting to find out when I visited Sheffield last year that GW had closed its shop at Meadowhall shopping complex thus leaving its shop on the Moor. One wonders at the business acumen  of those in power thee to shut a shop in one of the busiest shopping centres in the country and keeping a shop which unless you know its there does not have passing custom cos it at one end of town and off the main drag

Shutting high street shops - They did the same in B'ham and Wolves - I think they just see the cost of rent and go "nah, our captive customers will schlep out wherever we are, move back to the back streets!".

Quote from: raykey on 18 January 2015, 01:52:35 AM
Long long ago when I started wargaming (41yrs ago) the main options where airfix airfix of airfix and the rules of Donald Featherstone. Where I lived in Sheffield had no wargames shops so one waited for the Sheffield wargames show,can anyone remember it being at the victoria hotel,anyhow I digress.the day a new shop called Games Workshop opened on the Moor was a dream come true cos it sold allsorts citadell miniatures heroic and ros etc etc then suddenly almost over night all you could get was GW. And once more Sheffield became devoid  of options until the birth of wargames emporium. Its interesting to find out when I visited Sheffield last year that GW had closed its shop at Meadowhall shopping complex thus leaving its shop on the Moor. One wonders at the business acumen  of those in power thee to shut a shop in one of the busiest shopping centres in the country and keeping a shop which unless you know its there does not have passing custom cos it at one end of town and off the main drag

Yep and the one at the bottom of the Moor is a pain to get to by car, thanks to the council's hate affair with the private motorist. Yet another reason to steer clear of GW in my book.

Also happened in Southport. The shop in a well trod shopping arcade closed and re-opened in a much less frequented area. In fact I have not needed to visit it for about a year so I don't even know that it's still open.

Quote from: toxicpixie on 16 January 2015, 04:39:29 PM


Aren't we the Peoples Front of Pendraken? Or are we the Pendraken Peoples Front?

No, we are the Popular Peoples Front of Pendraken 

Are we Popular People? I thought we were a shadowy underclass?

Quote from: raykey on 18 January 2015, 01:52:35 AM
One wonders at the business acumen  of those in power thee to shut a shop in one of the busiest shopping centres in the country and keeping a shop which unless you know its there does not have passing custom cos it at one end of town and off the main drag

Quote from: toxicpixie on 18 January 2015, 09:34:39 AM
Shutting high street shops - They did the same in B'ham and Wolves - I think they just see the cost of rent and go "nah, our captive customers will schlep out wherever we are, move back to the back streets!".

Quote from: Dour Puritan on 18 January 2015, 10:45:58 AM
Also happened in Southport. The shop in a well trod shopping arcade closed and re-opened in a much less frequented area. In fact I have not needed to visit it for about a year so I don't even know that it's still open.

It might seem an odd decision, but the first thing I'd do if I were in charge of GW is move the stores onto secondary high streets or out-of-town retail parks.  The rental on prime high street space is ridiculous and I don't think wargaming is the type of thing that attracts a lot of people in who are simply passing.  Most people buying from a GW shop are already a GW customer, so the high street location is not really important.  Now the argument is of course that having a high street presence will hopefully generate some sales, but I don't think that those walk-in sales will justify the added costs of being there.  Moving to a secondary high street or retail park means lower rent, usually better access and parking options, and would also allow the option to take on a larger premises without it costing a fortune. 

As an example, a quick Google brings up a 2400 sq/ft retail unit in Meadowhall, Sheffield (probably a bit bigger than the average GW shop) currently available with a rent of £264,000!  On top of that you've got rates of £125,000 taking you upto almost £400k before you've even considered insurance / staff / stock / etc.  That's a huge amount of money to try and recoup through sales.  Going on their latest statement, that one shop would need to be taking over £5 million to be hitting their current margin, which is virtually impossible.  £100k per week in one shop?  No chance.

Another quick search throws up a variety of other similarly sized retail units on what still look to be shopping areas in the £30,000-£50,000 bracket, over 80% saving on your rent.  If you did that with every shop they've got, they would save an absolute fortune and I don't think sales figures would be hit too badly.

Even in Middlesbrough, the GW shop here will be paying around £40-£60k in rent for a shop that's in a pedestrianised area, you can't park near it, slightly away from the main footfall and it's always empty.  Why not move that onto one of our local retail parks, where for the same price they could get a bigger shop with parking right in front of the building?  More space for stock or tables and a lot easier to get to and visit.

I'm sure the GW board and exec's will probably think that having a high street presence is vital to their business and almost a status symbol of the company's success, but it's not something I think is necessary anymore.

Quote from: Leon on 18 January 2015, 07:20:18 PM(...)  if I were in charge of GW (...)

Lord spares us !

Yeah, ok, that's rather more rent than I'd imagined! Makes me wonder how *anyone* makes enough margin for that!

I wonder if they'd be better at the Hobbycraft model as you suggest but would that lose a lot of "visibility" - I'm assuming they deliberately aim for capturing the whole mid teen potential Wargamer market in every town across the country....

I'd have thought the Hobby Craft model is a good plan for GW.

We would often make a significant trip to a Hobby Craft, usually to get stuff for my wife, but also because I knew that I could always find something of interest wargames wise too. Retail parks are much better for parking - also they tend to have a variety of stuff close to hand.

Bigger retail park stores would allow more gaming space.

But the biggest problem with the GW model, is that they believe that there is just the GW hobby and there are no other wargarmers (or gamers for that matter) in existence. A big store with various boardgames and other more family games could work. Bit like GW was back in the day?

Quote from: fred    12df on 18 January 2015, 10:08:12 PM
But the biggest problem with the GW model, is that they believe that there is just the GW hobby and there are no other wargarmers (or gamers for that matter) in existence. A big store with various boardgames and other more family games could work. Bit like GW was back in the day?

That would be Part 2 of my 'Fix GW' plan, where we would start to acknowledge the wider wargaming community and companies.  They've got the biggest distribution network in the industry, so if they were able to arrange some good deals with the likes of Mantic or Reaper, bringing more stock selection into their stores, they would open themselves up to a wider customer base and make themselves a more attractive destination. 

Again, there would be arguments from the board/execs about this, but they're not beating the competition currently anyway, so why not use the success of these other companies to add to their own offering?  They've already got the retail space, the infrastructure and the staff in place, so all they need to do is buy the stock in, allocate a couple of shelves/racks to these other companies and away they go.  The likely 40-50% margin they could negotiate on that stock is an easy profit for little work. 

The key question would be how many people would walk in, see the price difference between GW and the other products, and then go for the cheaper Reaper/Mantic models instead?  That's an unknown, but it's worth a punt to make the shops more attractive to more people.  If it succeeds then you've created a wider wargaming shop that caters to more people and has more viability as a business.