"End of a era" Topic

Well not a very long era

So historic miniaures have never been big in norway, it's all GW stuff.

So when I started wargaming it was online only.

Then a few years back, my local nerd store(lego, live rolplaying stuff, boardgames, GW stuff, books, collectables)

They started to take in historic stuff, first flames of war. But then warlord games stuff showed up, mostly thier plastic ancients, then boltation, and later pike and shotte(they order way to much of the pike and shot stuff, and I think 4 years later some of the same pike and shotte boxes are still there) They even started to sell plastic perry stuff and plastic victrix.

They only sold plastic sets, never metal blisters. The price was a little higher then online prices, but no shipping, and it's nice to get the miniatures right away.

They did not seem to have a real plan, they orderd random figures. I still did most of my buying online, But every now and then I would get an itch, and go down there and find some stuff to paint. most of the time either bolt action or some napoleonic.

But the last dozen times I've stopped by the store, there has been no new figures, some of the boxes are gone so some got sold, they also got a new guy dealing with the miniatures. And I asked him today, and he said they have scaled it back, as nobody is buying it.

Right now they only have bolt action and the said pike and shoote. oh and TWO boxes of warlord landwehr.

So while they litterly got a billion blisters and boxes of GW stuff. and some of those warmachine stuff thingies, no new historicals will be orderd unless you ask them to order something for them, but then whats they point, the reason I bought from there was the instant gratifiaction.

And it's not like wargaming is dead, like I said, lots of GW stuff, and just a couple of blocks away there is an offical GW store with more GW stuff. So while those 2 blocks and sustain a billion million GW boxes, a dozen or so historical plastic boxes is not sustainable.

Fear not, Gunfreak, you can still do mail order from manufacturers in the UK or the US!!

Well, like you said:

"I still did most of my buying online, "

If their target audience isn't buying stuff there why would they carry it.

If you want your local store to keep carrying stuff you like you have to buy it there.

I would have if they carried what I wanted, as I said they only sold plastic sets, no metal blisters.

So even if I bought most of my plastic from then well I would still need most of the other stuff online.

Aslo they only carried like 1 box of each, so it would be impossible to do a project based on that, I can not do a project based on buying ramdom figures they happen to sell.

It also helps to breed new gamers to support your selected hobby. The store isn't doing anything wrong. They are a business and operating under good business practices. Your occasional sales and the 5 other people who liked to see historicals on the shelf are not enough to justify the floor space. Not when you can bring in more warmachine with a turn over rate of 3 or 4 when the historicals have a turn over of 1 or 2.

If you want a local store to carry stuff then offer to help them out by running game demos once a month or promoting escalation leagues. Otherwise the only viable option is online were the historical guys from all over the world can support several retailers and manufacturers.

The reason GW and PP stuff is so popular is because they have regular events and an established community. No community… no sales.

"So even if I bought most of my plastic from then well I would still need most of the other stuff online.

Aslo they only carried like 1 box of each, so it would be impossible to do a project based on that, I can not do a project based on buying ramdom figures they happen to sell."

Then buy what they have and order the rest of it through them or if they won't carry the metal figures at all then order the plastic stuff from them and get the metal stuff elsewhere.

They aren't going to stock stuff if you don't buy it.

It is hard for a store to stock historicals. If you stock it in 15mm they want it in 28mm. If you stock Foundry they want Old Glory.

Even if you have 28mm Old Glory Napoleonic French the customer wants the early stuff and you have Waterloo stuff.

Now in this case it sounds like they not only had the right scale and the right manufacturer they also, in some cases, had the right figures.

And the historical gamer still didn't buy most of his stuff there.

I'm not sure if you are just wondering about this or actually complaining but there is a reason why the GW stuff is there and the historical stuff isn't. It is because GW gamers actually buy the product.

Gunfreak,
We see this where I live, too. If it's any consolation, the store would cut back on GW, if sales dropped. My local store had two meters of wall space for Reaper, which apparently didn't sell as well as it once did, so now they have gradually cut back to one meter. While I got some of my Reaper figures there, I also undermine them by stopping at the Reaper factory store in north Texas twice a year, and getting half my characters and creatures and Reaper paint there. They are never out of stock, I get to look at everything, I get to see the latest things, etc.

I try to buy things from local stores, but probably don't do that good a job. Yeah, it is a vicious circle.

Grelber

Our local shop is an example of adaptation and finding ways to make a product move. When they first opened they had mostly RPG's with some Ral Partha minis and a few board games. Over time the RPG section shrunk and more board games appeared as well as more miniatures like Confrontation.

At some point they started doing cardgames, but stopped when the bottom of the market began to fall out and avoided being stuck with tons of unsold stock.

RPG's were dying because of D&D's OGL debacle while boardgames flourished.

But after many years, inevitably they had to stock GW, it sold well, until a certain point and they switched to historicals, mostly Warlord, Perry and Victrix with some Crusader and Artizan metals.

They relentlessly ran demo games, painting demos, everything to get the product going. They had to close the shop because of personal and other reasons they had no unpaid bills, everything was settled and they just pulled while they were still ahead.

Far too many shops just stock a small selection of everything and then sit back and wait for the sales to happen and then are surprised they go bust.