"GW - Help me understand" Topic

So this pass week I was in St Louis and found out there was a GW store close by to where I was staying. It was Monday and I was leaving Tuesday night.

I figure the store probably would open up at 10am, but we didn't stop on by until 12.

Well unfortunately the store was closed both Monday and Tuesday.

What really struck me was the store hours.

Closed Mon-Tuesday
1pm – 8pm Wednesday – Friday
11am – 8pm Saturday
11am – 6pm Sunday

It was also closed from 4 – 4:30pm every day it was open.

Now I am not a rocket scientist, but having a store basically open 3 days for 6.5 hours and 8.5 and 6.5 hours respectively on the weekends seems a little off.

How can any store, make any money with those hours. Every successful gaming store that I have ever been to is open at least 6 days a week and has hours that go to at least 10pm at night.

I just thought wow, they are either really doing well to have those kind of hours or are really really dumb.

Please help me understand.

GW opened a bunch of stores like that, designed to be staffed by a single person. So there is no backup to provide lunch breaks, etc.

Naturally they focus on after school/work hours as that is when most of their core customers are shopping.

No point opening too much when your customer's are in school.

Open the store in the afternoon, and run into the evening after school.

So – they make a big effort at the weekend : and then Monday/Tuesday is the weekend for the staff.

It also keep the employee hours under 40.

The hours seem reasonable for the demographic. It is also common for small operations to be closed on Mon, or Mon and Tues, if they are open on Sat and Sun.

The other two major (independent) game stores in St. Louis, The Fantasy Shop and GameNite, both are open seven days a week, roughly 11-9 ish every day. Guess where I game and shop, even when I buy Warhammer stuff.

I am having hard time seeing how those business hours are profitable enough to pay for the stores operating expenses. They have to be losing money and are just using it for advertising.

Those are the same exact hours here in Denton, TX.

What happens when the only employee is sick?

I was in one of these stores while travelling. The fellow running it didn't play or paint miniaturess. GW closed it the following year due to poor sales. That was a shocker. :-/

The primary driving force behind the switch to one-man shops was the reduction in overhead costs (reduced payroll, and most switches were accompanied by downsizing the stores to smaller and cheaper locations). Those cost reductions (along with increased prices) kept GW's profits in the black while sales have continued to steadily decline overall.

You have to remember GW is being run by management answering to a group of hedge funds. It is not being run either by gamers or by regular businessmen trying to grow and maintain their company. As a result, the ONLY thing that matters is keeping up profits and thus cash dividends.

No, I really think it's the whole state of Missouri. So many businesses have the weirdest business hours. Now it's true I moved here from Central Florida where they know how to cater to tourists, so I'm spoiled. Still, Missouri is just…weird.

Those cost reductions (along with increased prices) kept GW's profits in the black while sales have continued to steadily decline overall.

So true, thing is this will only keep them looking like they are making a profit for just so long.

When it stops doing that they will need to change again, like only being open on the Weekends.

A buddy of mine worked for one of the GW stores. He says it is so bad that he has to kick everyone out of the store if he so much as has to take a leak. They dont want him out of eyesite of the product with customers in the store.

If he takes a lunch break, same thing, he has to kick everyone out until he is finished.

The discount on product was a nice perk though.

My guess would be that they have access to their POS reports and know exactly when they do and do not sell product. Thus they can adjust opening times to suit their traffic flow and save on overheads while they're at it. Speaking as someone who has to track traffic flows and revenue reports daily to adjust opening hours and promotions, I think this makes a lot of sense.
"You have to remember GW is being run by management answering to a group of hedge funds." Isn't this true of any publicly owned company?

Same hours for the store in Kenosha Wisc.

Re the hedge fund issue, it is a little different for GW than many, because it is a handful of firm that control most of the stock, and they profess to milk it for cash (people have read those funds own comments). In that sense it is like other firms owned by hedge funds, but most companies are owned by investors or investor funds that have some sort of balance between growing the company and maximizing revenues. GW's actions have consistently seemed short-sighted to anyone and everyone who follows them--i.e., most investors would be far more wary of a company that year-after-year posts declining sales and market share.

I am having hard time seeing how those business hours are profitable enough to pay for the stores operating expenses.

In the morning the adolescent boys who make up the core customer base are in school. So, open up at 1PM – do all the "getting the store ready" stuff : restocking, tidying, checking stock levels etc for an hour and two and then the customer's turn-up at 4PM.

Seems very sensible.

How can teenage boys be the target when the prices are so high?

Mom and Dad are the real customers.

Parents who will drop $60 USD for a video game will also drop $60 USD for a box or two of minis. For a certain demographic, that is what gaming costs, so the price is not seen as artificially high.

Well, as many times as I have been to GW stores I have rarely if ever seen a bunch of kids buying or playing games. It's always 30-40 year old guys, or old dudes like me.

Its a jihadi plot I tell you.

@nazrat : like this ?

They even run school holiday events in GW stores…

A kid from my son's Boy Scout troop sold off hundreds of dollars worth of memorabilia to purchase a ton of Warhammer stuff last year. Age 14.

The GW expense is no worse than a lot of other hobbies kids get in to. Some parents will pay. Heck, I do. My daughter sings so gets weekly singing lessons. Her last teacher was a practicing Soprano who moved to join an opera company. Before that it was horses.

Not everyone can afford it, but some can, and do.

I blame Priestley et al. for the original management sell-out.

No, I really think it's the whole state of Missouri.

It's not just Missouri. The GW store in Austin, TX has the same hours and one man staffing model. As others pointed out, it was a cost cutting move.

I blame Priestley et al. for the original management sell-out

It goes farther back than that. I blame Ansell. When he sold the company that was the start of the decline. It's no coincidence that the first really bad shenanigans GW pulled such as the big price hike after the '93 "lead scare" (which they blatantly lied about) and their first round of purposeful forced obsolescence occurred after the company changed hands.