Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University.  This week, Thorne looks at a WizKids promotion and the Games Workshop situation.
 
I have to agree with Rod Lambertifo's Talk Back (see "Rod Lambertifo of Rodman Comics on WizKids' 'Con In Your Store' Promotion") about the WizKids' "Con In Your Store" promotion.  It was a great idea to help move some of their older product and give stores an event to draw their HeroClix customers in with cool promotional items.  Unfortunately, as with many WizKids releases, timing proved an issue.  We set up our event for early August, as did many other stores, only to receive a notification that, due to overwhelming response, the "Con In Your Store" materials would not arrive until mid-August, meaning we would have to run the event in the shadow of Gen Con.  In addition, the other promo items, such as the Trinity of Sin figure (for which we had to pay), did not come into stock until late August, way too late to serve any use in promoting the event.  I like WizKids.  I make money from WizKids.  WizKids Storyline Campaigns draw more people into the store than Yu-Gi-Oh! tournaments do, currently, and I will keep promoting and running WizKids events.  However, I will likely shy away from any events like this one that give only short-term notice and don't indicate that the promo items are already in hand.
 
Still, WizKids is not having nearly the problems that Games Workshop is.  Worldwide sales down 8.2%, North American sales down 7.5%, profits down about 50%.  The company has slowed down the sales drop from the first half of the year (see "Games Workshop's Sales Dip 10.4%") but, geez, the company is still hurting.  Opening 10 stores this year while closing 23 leaves the company at 87, just over 10% fewer than the company had a year ago and about 70% of those stores remaining are "one-man" stores, which only employ one person, put them on salary and let that manager, within restrictions, set the hours for the store (incidentally, according to Glass Door, the typical Games Workshop one-man store manager makes about $34,000 per year, with just over another $7000 in bonuses).  This is a far cry from the Battle Bunkers of yore, with a dozen miniatures tables set up and half as many staff members, ready to demo a game at the squeal of a Squig.  I don't care how devoted they are to the hobby, one staff member cannot give customers the same attention that a staff of 4+ can, and getting new players into Games Workshop requires a significant amount of hand holding.  No-one walks into a store with the intention of dropping $90 to $100+ on GW product without trying it out first and getting infected by other players.
 
GW does appear pretty happy with the amount of costs it has cut by moving to the new distribution model.  However, speaking from the independent stockiest viewpoint, Games Workshop could do two things to juice sales at my end.
 

1. Remember those new players I mentioned earlier?  Produce a beginner's box for me to sell to them.  No, Dark Vengeance is not a beginner's box; it is a starter set.  Different animal.  $99 is not a price point for a beginner's box, $20 to $40 is.  We sell the Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder Beginner Boxes on a regular basis and most of those purchasers come back to invest more money in the game.  Produce a box with a pair of plastic five-figure squads (that the customer doesn't have to glue together, except maybe to the base) dice, and cardboard range markers and templates.  GW will make lots of money off this person over the next 5-8 years, but I need something with which to set the hook.

 

1. Give me information about your new releases.  Keeping retailers and customers in the dark has not generated any more anticipation about GW products than existed before, it just makes it harder for us to know what is coming out and we look clueless when our customers come telling us about some rumored new release (that usually turns out correct) that we know next to nothing about.  I really have neither the time, nor the desire to scour the Bell of Lost Souls for information on new GW products coming out that GW should be giving stores weeks or even (gasp) months in advance.

 
I don't expect GW to listen to me (I've been telling them to stick packing lists back in their shipments for months now and we can see how much good that has done) and, surprise, we have Space Hulk arriving this week.  Sigh.  It would have been really nice to have spent the last few weeks ginning up interest on this and the new Nagash undead figures.
 
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.