Are you standing in the way of Games Workshop’s relentless profit machine? Come see what one investment article has everyone is saying about GW’s current direction.
After last week’s scathing Annual General Meeting editorial about Games Workshop, it seems that no one can tell GW anything, but yet everyone has something to say about the situation.
There seems to have always been a disconnect between GW and the hobbyists who they call their customers, however the big reveal may have come last week at their AGM as to who GW values more – “collectors” or “gamers”.
Via Richard Beddard’s Games Workshop AGM: A relentless profit machine
Point One – The GW Customer?
I’ve got bad news for disenchanted gamers complaining on the Internet. The company’s attitude towards customers is as clinical as its attitude towards staff. If you don’t like what it’s selling. You’re not a customer. The company believes only a fraction of the population are potential hobbyists, and it’s not interested in the others. The move to one-man stores has reduced the number of customers, sometimes by 30%, but the stores are profitable now.
Point Two – The GW Gamer?
I’m told that the word “Game” in Games Workshop encourages the misconception that games are its business, but that only about 20% of Games Workshop’s customers are gamers. The rest are modellers and collectors. Maybe half of them think about playing now and then. The other half have no intention. People actually walk into the stores because they’re curious about modelling fantastic armies.
Point Three – The GW Collector?
When another shareholder asks if the company would sell games with pre-painted easy to assemble miniatures like the popular Star Wars themed X-Wing game, there’s a collective growl from the Games Workshop people. It wouldn’t be a hobby business then, it would be a toy company.
Point Four – The GW Hobby?
Games are easy to sell if they catch on, but it’s the modelling aspect of Warhammer that makes it a hobby, sometimes for life, and peculiarly lucrative to Games Workshop. Some of the individual models we’ve seen in glass cases, those from the company’s Forgeworld collection, retail at £1,250 each. Some customers spend many thousands of pounds a year and they paint them with incredible craftsmanship. These are good customers.
Rick Priestly (the father of Warhammer 40k) also chimed in a few months ago about the state of affairs with rising customer disconnect against the current Games Workshop company.
So from all of this it seems like GW’s perfect customer is a gamer (with a penchant to collect things), that likes to model, as a hobby.
What kind of customer are YOU?
About the Author: Rob Baer
Rob Baer
Job Title: Managing Editor
Founded Spikey Bits in 2009
Socials: Rob Baer on Facebook and @catdaddymbg on X
About Rob Baer: Founder, Publisher, & Managing Editor of Spikey Bits, the leading tabletop gaming news website focused on the hobby side of wargaming and miniatures.
Rob also co-founded and currently hosts the Long War Podcast, which has over 350 episodes and focuses on tabletop miniatures gaming, specializing in Warhammer 40k. and spent six years writing for Bell of Lost Souls.
Every year, along with his co-hosts, he helps host the Long War 40k Doubles Tournament at Adepticon and the Long War 40k Doubles at Las Vegas Open, which attracts over 350 players from around the world.
Rob has won many Warhammer 40k Tournaments over the years, including multiple first-place finishes in Warhammer 40k Grand Tournaments over the years and even winning 1st place at the Adepticon 40k Team Tournament.
With over 30 years of experience in retail and distribution, Rob knows all the products and exactly which ones are the best. As a member of GAMA (Game Manufacturers Association), he advocates for gaming stores and manufacturers in these difficult times, always looking for the next big thing to feature for the miniatures hobby, helping everyone to provide the value consumers want.
While he’s played every edition of Warhammer 40k and Warhammer Fantasy (since 5th Edition) and has been hobbying on miniatures since the 1980s, Titans of all sizes will always be his favorite! It’s even rumored that his hobby vault rivals the Solemnance Galleries, containing rulebooks filled with lore from editions long past, ancient packs of black-bordered Magic Cards, and models made of both pewter and resin.
