A Hopeful Wake-up Call

Well, it's happened.  A news item dropped in the hobby and I'm writing about it...the same day!  Pretty amazing, huh?  What am I talking about?  GW's pretty bleak financials.

 

Now, I am not a finance person by any means.  I took Micro and Macro Economics in College...at 8 AM and there is nothing you can learn at 8 AM ever.  Still I did well and beyond that I'm a hobbyist so I can comment when my hobby or more specifically the company that makes it, takes a major hit. 

Without going too much into the report, or the rambling basically GW had about a 12% drop in sales in the 6 months leading up to December 1st (I guess they don't have calendars over there but whatever)  The reaction to this news was pretty clear.  GW's stock took a nose dive, losing 25% of its value today.  It's often said that GW's bad practices are done because as a public company, their loyalty isn't to their customers, but their stockholders.  Yeah, how's that working out for you today?

I don't want this to be all negative, so lets see what good we can take from this.  First, this wasn't a secret they just discovered, unless they really are awful businessmen.  Those bundles in December that actually were a bargain could have been a reaction to try and increase sales.

So what am I hoping will come from this?  Well for starters, we might stop getting gouged so much.  I doubt we'll see price drops, but maybe they'll stop raising them for a little.  The other issue we've seen lately is the lack of rule support and basically no play testing.  The competition, which is gaining on them by leaps and bounds, knows to treat their customers well so maybe this will finally be the catalyst for the dinosaur that is GW to finally start to evolve.  The new website is due soon and who knows what the year will bring in terms of rules and models.  This might just be what gets them off the cliff they've been fast approaching Thelma and Louise-style...or they might just keep going.*

*this is a reference to the Thelma and Louise ending to Wayne's world, which was awesome...not Thelma and Louise...which was not, thank you.