I work in a independent book store in Norway. Ive had two calls from GW wanting to convince us to start selling Warhammer.
First time i fobbed him off, we barely have room for our product as is. But he insisted he wanted to talk to the owner. Shes rarely in the store, but i told him to call back later to talk to someone else. He called again today and got me again, he was still very keen on getting us to carry warhammer, and ended up taking the owners email to send her a pitch.
This is not the first time theyve called, they pitched us back around 2016 or so. At the time there was no local gaming store, but that has changed and a major one is now operating barely 15 minutes from where we are.
Simultaneously to this, we are not the only ones being pitched. We have a FB group of independent stores, and someone in there posted asking if anyone had any experience with warhammer, as they'd clearly had the phone call and received one of the little sample packages they send out.
The two most interesting things i got from the guy who called was
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GW doubled their sales 2022 to 2023. I assume that was the Norwegian market he was referring to.
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They were calling because they want to capitalise on this boom in sales and are pushing for more book and toy stores to carry GW products to "reach a wider audience".
My take is they are pushing hard to maintain or raise sales in 2024. Cost of living and inflation has hit hard everywhere, GW stock has been loosing value for 6 months and just now their CFO dumped two thirds of her stock as she's leaving the company. I dont think their sales this year will match 2023, and with the recent drama they might have alienated enough customers they'll be taking a serious hit.
I did want to, but a minimum level of keeping work and private life separate is healthy. But when he started getting chatty I regretted not fishing for more info. And getting in some jabs over femstodes.
Our enemies do not act so.
Now my job is in tech for a company that has basically no money, so I have the liberty to be as mean as I want in making sure that vendors understand their call is not welcome.
Our enemies can also be openly sexist and racist wherever they please and are often encouraged to do so. We can’t be play their game, they now control our workplaces
Yours maybe. Mine is too cheap to have initiatives.
Purely from a business perspective, you may have been doing your boss a favour if you did some digging on what exactly the douche was trying to sell you. It could be in typical woke fashion, that this has nothing to do with them trying to sell you 'Games Workshop' products but woke shit they're trying to offload on some unsuspecting bagholder e.g. the female custodes crap they're selling.
If the boss doesn't know this they may get a phone call finally from GW thinking they've scored it big but in reality it's some desperate douchebag who's trying to talk up Warhammer to the store when they've got tons of product that they can't move. Just my usual schizo paranoia posting but it was kind of a red flag to me that you were getting repeat calls. People who aren't in a desperate position as we know from business psychology usually have no problem walking away from a deal.