Today's sermon is going to be as brief as I can make it, but I can't lie to you, it's a huge issue so it might go on for longer than I initially intend. As I say, I don't want to bang on about this topic any more than I have too today, but I think it's something that needs wider discussion within the industry and people seem to be pussy footing around it. Primarily I'm talking about the sustainability of our hobby. I'm not just talking about whether big retailers like Maelstrom Games are actually sustainable in a fiscal sense, but how the whole industry seems to be in a bit of a mess from top to bottom, and how us as hobbyists aren't exactly helping things. We have Games Workshop who have all but confirmed they have an annual above inflation price hike every year to keep their business 'sustainable'. May I humbly suggest if the largest player in our industry feels the need to do something that ultimately will prove inherently unsustainable, we as a hobby and industry have a problem. A big problem! Also how many of their stores in the UK are hitting their extremely modest targets? If store managers I know are to be believed not many.
But why is that important? Well because we have a model of business in this industry that is massively antiquated, it's so old that even the Victorians were trying desperately to evolve it, yep I'm talking about passing trade. This is a model that says to pull people into our hobby we need to expose them to the product in person, and the only method we've come up with so far is via bricks and mortar stores in the center of towns, where people will hopefully stumble across them. It's hardly cutting edge marketing techniques, but we know for a fact that it has worked, what seems less certain is whether it's still working now. You see in this day and age, with Internet retail already such a huge part of most of our lives, and all the 21st Century has to offer, bricks and mortar retail is becoming increasingly difficult in all sectors, let alone niche sectors like ours. Companies like eBay, Amazon, Play.com and many more besides are selling us goods from the comfort of our own homes (depending on how comfy ones sofa is). They're shipping them to us, and undercutting high street retailers who have their massive overheads and sales environments to manage. The same is true of our industry. Yet it's only a problem because we as invested hobbyists don't support our local shops. Why should we as rational consumers? Sustainability is important but shops shouldn't be treated as charity cases that need our support.
In North America I guess you guys have the Warstore and Mini Wargaming, while in Europe we've had Wayland Games and Maelstrom Games, with the new kid on the block Firestorm Games trying to cut out its own piece of the gaming market. There is no question that such large discount online retailers have had an impact on our hobby, for starters people like Maelstrom Games have introduced people already in the hobby to HoMachine, Infinity, Mofaux, Freebooter's Fate and many more besides. Whether that is positive or negative impact remains to be seen in the long-run. I'll be honest here and say that I looked into opening my own shop a few years back, I wanted to run a shop in a town center, not on an industrial estate miles from any recognisable high street, because I know that the lifeblood of our hobby is new customers. There were a few snags for me, first was professionality within the sector, or the lack thereof... but I might return to that at a later date. The other was the inconsistency in what companies said they wanted, and how they actually behaved, I guess that's professionality too.
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