"Brexit Impact on Wargaming Industry?" Topic

Any forecasts on what the Brexit might mean for the British wargaming industry?

Maybe more export orders due to the current low exchange rate but that might go back up to some extent.

Otherwise, there should be no immediate effect.

Yes, I think it's alright now but in a few months/years, will we have taxes again. I remember a lot of time ago, I ordered some 25mm Minifigs figures and had huge tax fees to pay (I am in France).
But the brexit is a choc for me…

How many Aud is the Gbp today then?

Looks like 0.54gbp to 1.0aud to me, same as it has been for a while.

I am in a similar situation as AUXILIAPAL, only I am in the Czech Republic. I will order what I can from British companies but when customs taxes kick in I will be buying strictly from the Continent.

What a pity Napoleon isn´t around to enjoy his Continental System.

Nothing much will change in the short term, the most important factor will be how the pound moves against the Euro.

On the longer term, taxes and tariffs may rear their ugly heads, unless of course the European leaders give the UK a golden parachute trade agreement (A kind of nonsense that wouldn't surprise me at all)

I think as Europe sells more to Britain than it exports there will be a good deal and Britain's policy Laissez-faire will hopefully ring through

Europe now has the golden opportunity to blame the UK for all its problems rather than do something sensible about them. If you really expect them not to take revenge then you are fooling yourself.

I buy about 80% of my wargaming gear from the UK as I really don't want to pay twice the price for Aussie stores to just order them from the UK and usually take longer to arrive, and then they also add on their postage too.

Recently looking for some terrain, 3 pieces from Aus cost 120aud+ 20 postage, wait time 3 weeks!
Bought exactly the same from UK, cost me 65aud and 15aud postage, arrived in 10 days!

If the exchange rate gets better for me, I'll be spending more in UK stores.👍

I can't see it making any difference long term but right now with the pound on the ropes overseas orders might increase a bit.

I buy two ranges from overseas: Eureka and Wings of Glory. I suspect the latter will become prohibitively expensive in the UK for the foreseeable future.

If I were American, then I would be putting in the biggest UK orders I could afford (depending on what I wanted, of course) – the pound has crashed, it won't stay that way!

Norway trades to the EU without tariffs , Norway is in Europe ( EFTA member ) but not a member of the EU .
Agreed with Garrison , lots of futures traders just bet on remain and lost , the £ will recover …
Just like if Trump wins in November , the $ will fall but will rise again .
Share traders like nothing more than a ''chaos'' event they make fortunes on the rise and fall .

Yes, but the price of Norway's access to EU markets is that it contributes heavily to the EU budget, follows a huge proportion of EU rules, and is open to EU migration, all of which have been rejected by the British "out" campaign. Similar issues with the Swiss arrangement – you don't get market access without agreeing to freedom of movement, and a campaign that ran immigration as its number one agenda point isn't going to sign up to that….

This is all the usual political rubbish, stoked up by city traders trying to make a fortune out of uncertainty in the markets. We will see a crash and we will see a recovery with the market readjusting, as it always does.

When Brussels turns away the British PM with a deal worth zero they really should be surprised when the British electorate see them as anti-democratic. A very moderate deal with very few real concessions would have seen Britain vote to remain. It's all very well Juncker rushing off to be friendly with Putin, but riding roughshod over member states with no consideration for anything other than a dream of "ever closer integration" is simply ignoring the concerns of the electorates in many countries.

I should stress that I am not a little Englander, I was very much for remain initially, but Juncker's position made it impossible for me, and more than half the Brits who voted, to vote that way. When I speak to friends in Europe I explain to them that we are very pro-Europe in the UK, what the electorate has concerns about is the way the EU is run. That is not a xenophobic position and until yesterday it was a case of Britain attempting to change Europe from within, sadly we got nothing from trying to do that and the result is now all too plain to see.

Before you blame the British voters, consider the circumstances which created this result.

That is not a xenophobic position …

That might not have been one of your motives, but what we have seen on this side of the channel are very xenophobic rhetoric and images that have been used in the campaign. That rightly scares people.

But anyway, my view is also pragmatic, not much will change in the short term.

But it still baffles me that the UK simply says about the EU "Not interested anymore" – while it's arguably one of the largest post-WW2 peace efforts in Europe.

…stoked up by city traders trying to make a fortune out of uncertainty in the markets

You can bet you bottom dollar they did a lot of currency deals this week… and made a small fortune over this last night.

How many days until the new pound prices filter down to us consumers in the US who wish to take advantage of cheap prices?

I still worry about orders from the UK sitting in customs for over a month as I've been hearing, which tends to keep me US focused in my spending.

Pretty much immediate – credit card companies and Paypal tend to set their exchange rates on a daily basis, and at a time like this may well be updating it more frequently. I'd certainly expect you to see the change in exchange rate by tomorrow if buying in pounds.

for the moment, it will mean more orders placed to British manufacturers.

In the long run probably not much will change, maybe tariff of some sort.

Mister Tibbles, I think you'll find that US Customs barely holds anything. You have to make huge orders of over $400 USD for them to even care enough to look at the package.

The savings is already baked into the currency. The US dollar is worth 10% more now so when you pay for your order you'll get the effective discount in the form of the new exchange rate. Your credit card or paypal will handle this automatically.

Foundry probably gearing themselves up for rush of transatlantic orders while the exchange rate makes them less valuable than gold for a while.

Overall I concur with Rich Lard, the EU could have easily prevented this result but chose not to. And the markets are like a naked nervous system which reacts violently to anything unexpected. They'll right themselves soon enough. Trying to make long term predictions from one day's trading is like trying to tell the time by only watching the second hand of a clock.

Plan on taking advantage of lower exchange rates in short term

If you are thinking of buying UK materials I'd keep a close eye on the exchange rates offered, the pound has already started to recover rapidly from this morning's crash, how much it recovers and how soon is anybody's guess.

I expect the hedge funds will have made millions off today's news.

Overall I concur with Rich Lard, the EU could have easily prevented this result but chose not to.

I guess that's the British view. The view on the mainland is significantly different.

Phil,

Is that because you feel the EU is entrenched in it's views? Certainly in much of middle England the view has very much been that the EU has dictated too many times about the simple things in life, daft issues like what sort of light bulbs can be sold. Trivia for sure but then the reporting of the EU has never been that positive, in the UK, and at worst it's seen as dictatorial and monumentally wasteful. Whether that reporting is true or false is another matter. For better or worse or very much the same, today marks a change and there may well be more countries democratically voting to leave the EU which is perceived by many to be irrelevant.

My small business has a German company, based in France, as a client. We spoke yesterday and they assured me that whatever the vote there would be no difference to our business relationship. So in my own tiny microcosm I suspect that experience is reflective of the conversations many businesses are having with their clients across Europe as we sit here.

Timmo,

I agree we will not see immediate effects, and small-scale business will continue to operate as they used to. Any change in trade agreements, tariffs etc. might only play out in a couple of years or so.

But the feeling is that for the UK it was never enough. The UK already had many opt-out packages that they negotiated. Schengen? The Euro? It was never enough. Heap on that a lot of negative reporting over the last decennia through the tabloids, and the result is what we have today.

The EU certainly has made the mistake they have not projected a far more positive image about the effect of the EU on the life of everyday citizens.

But in a sense, the Brexit is probably positive for the EU. With a remain, we would have been stuck with a country that would have continue their boycott on all sorts of European initiatives. So if you're not in with your heart, you better leave.

Nevertheless, a sad day for Europe.

I'm wondering how this is going to affect me, going the other way, because one of the options for my Kickstarter backers (physical copies of TableMaster) included shipping set for "EU Countries" which, at the time I set it, included the UK, and I've got a number of backers getting that. Hopefully the US Post Office won't suddenly decide to jack up the rates between now and July 25, when the physical copies ship. For once the USPS's case of turtle nervosa is probably a good thing; it takes them forever to do anything. It's less likely to be an issue than the intra-EU tariff/exchange rates are for miniatures companies, but it's definitely not something I thought of when I wrote up the "Risks and Challenges" section. Great, my very own case of Brexit uncertainty.

BREAKING NEWS: WE'RE FUNDED! THE EMAIL JUST CAME IN! 12 HOURS TO GO AND THE KICKSTARTER JUST REACHED ITS GOAL. A huge *hug* to everyone here on TMP who backed us.

Well, I just dropped a few hundred $ on some UK orders, so there is that……

As to the rest, I wish my brethren in the UK all the best.

Wintertree – the UK is still an EU country until we actually exit which may be around 2018 so for now it's business as usual.

Wintertree what was your kickstarter?

Duane

Being in the US, I too thought about making orders to English companies. But currently, the GBP is down to $1.37 USD. Before it was about $1.45 USD. So it doesn't seem like a huge change, less than 10%.

Same for the pound to Canadian, still 1 = 1.75.

One thing that occurred to me, once the UK leaves the EU, wouldn´t UK companies stop charging VAT on EU orders?

If that is the case, it could actually be cheaper to order from the UK as long as you are under the customs tax level. Here in the Beautiful Czech Republic it is ridiculously low, I believe 25 euro, but I have had more expensive orders get through with no problem. Just a thought…

Syr Hobbs/Duane: TableMaster, GM aid software. It's still live for another 11 hours: link . I've been nattering on about it in a thread down the board a bit; it was some people from TMP who got me to write a new version the software 16 years after I shut down Wintertree the first time.

(I'm trying to figure out where in the Kickstarter interface I set stretch goals right now)

Timmo UK: Okay, sounds like I'm good for now, shipping-wise. (despite the EU saying "don't let the door hit you on the way out" to the UK) Though knowing the USPS, they'll find some way to jump in and screw things up anyway. We're talking about the folks who delivered one package and returned another as "no such address" -- SHIPPED FROM THE SAME COMPANY (AMAZON) ON CONSECUTIVE DAYS.

So it doesn't seem like a huge change, less than 10%.

A 10% drop on anything economy related is a huge change. People startle even at 3-4%.

What a pity Napoleon isn´t around to enjoy his Continental System.

well now that you mention it, yeah. I guess it is. Of course, it was voluntarily achieved this time about.

One very minor impact is that my (rather modest) discretionary budget has evaporated. Nothing to do with the wargames industry in particular but I suspect that a whole raft of price increases will be blamed on Brexit just as they were blamed on decimalisation. Need parts for a European car, they'll go up etc.

Sort of like in the US, when fuel prices went up, shipping services raised their rates because fuel was more expensive; when fuel prices went down … the rates stayed high. Because they could.

Well,anyway, the neighboring thread made interesting reading before(as expected) it got nuked.

Any forecasts on what the Brexit might mean for the British wargaming industry?

I imagine costs of metals will go up, which will lead to price hikes.

Once out of the EU sales to the remaining countries could still attract VAT at the rate of the receiving country depending on that country's registration limits under distance selling rules. These would make UK companies register in the destination country.

Well there will be new figures for the future EU army and perhaps a ruleset to cover the Anglo-European War of 2032.

Vigilante – that has ALWAYS been the case even with the UK as part of the EU…. Noone takes any notice of the countries that have a threshold of zero (as some do).

Mike

Based on what we , here in the USA , are hearing on TV from economic pundits. It will be over two years from the enacting of article 50 before Britain can void any EU regulations and take new action.
This makes me think that there will not be any serious affect for years. But I am here and not there so my info may not be right or badly slanted at the least.

Some EU leaders are calling for a rapid exit. How realistic that is I don't know. My guess is there is years of work ahead not months.

If I were betting on this I'd say that by the time we actually leave others will be well on their way to doing the same. Right now France, Italy, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands are all calling on their politicians for referendums. Interesting times ahead.

"Any forecasts on what the Brexit might mean for the British wargaming industry?"

Well Im planning on rules scenarios and miniatures for the forthcoming Disunification Wars…

As noted above, it is become increasingly clear that the whole thing is going to take years and not actually change very much at all.

So business as usual, for a few years anyway.

"Some EU leaders are calling for a rapid exit."

LOL. If anything is guaranteed to get peoples backs up it is being told to F off by a load of eurocrats.

We have to wait for Article 50 to be invoked, and only a government can do that. Now that Cameron is resigning, we don't really have a functioning government, so they will have to wait.

Legally, it might take years. But things will change much more rapidly in reality.

Even though still a member, the UK effectively will lose all its influence within the EU right away.
Brits will not be considered anymore for any EU jobs.
Companies that will have to decide on where to invest will take the brexit into account.
Exchange programs for students or research funding will take the brexit into account as well – cfr the measures many universities took after the Swiss referendum 2 years ago.
Ordinary citizens might reconsider moving to or from the UK since they don't know what the future might bring.
Etc.

So yes, it will take many years before the UK officially is not a member anymore. But in reality it will take effect much more quickly.

Btw, a nice analogy I heard was about a girlfriend telling her boyfriend she wanted to break up in 3 months, when she would leave for college. She was surprised her boyfriend wanted to break up right away.

As a Yank, I will take advantage of the exchange rate for now – $1.37 USD USD to 1 Pound? That is the best it has been for a long time. I might be making some purchases this Summer.

Phil, there seem to be loads of doomsday predictions flying about.

This thing with student exchange programmes for example. What has the EU got to do with any of that? My daughter is currently visiting universities here in Britain as she needs to apply soon. I was with her yesterday and they were telling us about their various exchange programmes. These included universities in Germany, the USA, and China. Not all of these are in the EU!

While some who voted to leave did so because of the immigration issues, the majority who voted to leave feel that the EU is run for the benefit of a small clique of politicians and big businesses. There is too much red-tape, too many ridiculous petty rules about stuff like lightbulbs and vacuum cleaners. Not enough democracy and accountability. Even the language used is negative to Brits. The EU issues 'directives' that have to be obeyed. The word 'directive', to us, sounds far too dictatorial and authoritarian.

Most British people, including those who voted to leave, would be happy with an EU that was about trade.

The EU seems to be set on this ever closer union thing, however. And despite attempting to bring a bit of rational pragmatism to the table for the best part of forty years, we felt the EU leaders were carrying on down the same path regardless. There comes a point when you just have to give up and walk away….