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
-
GW doubled their sales 2022 to 2023. I assume that was the Norwegian market he was referring to.
-
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.
Perhaps the real goal of DEI is to destroy all existing IPs and replace them with their own 'licensed' games that you can play but never own.
Conspiracy hat time for me - I know!
But it seems like any entertainment they are going for is/was already popular and they want to drive it into the ground.
Diversity is a cure-all that is only ever administered to perfectly healthy patients who then fall mysteriously and fatally ill.
No one has ever tried to diversify an already failing company - because there’s no money or influence in it. The entire purpose of DEI is to redistribute a prosperous company’s material successes to non-whites, women, gays, etc., most of whom were hired due to mandates dictated by the state or global finance. It’s basically an enforced welfare scheme masquerading as a wholly beneficial and organic expansion of their workforce.
Now consider that something like 94% of all new corporate jobs since George Floyd have gone to non-whites. That’s the level of redistributive welfare - in the form of gifted salaries - that is now forcibly embedded in our “capitalist” economy.
Look at AAA game dev. These studios have multiple thousands of employees, but most of the games are shit. How is that possible? It’s simple: for every 1 competent dev, you need 1 diverse dev. So you need to pay twice as much as 5-10 years ago for the same or worse productivity, and that’s before accounting for inflation.
It’s like this in every industry now. Every dollar you spend is being filtered through a diversity prism that redirects half of the money to useless and/or destructive people. It’s a recipe for total collapse.
I disagree, there's a whole trend you can see particularly in publishing, circles where the left bias is already very high.
The company is going broke, and the editors and millennial lefty staff push for it, as a last ditch effort to turn things round they'll claim. The upper management might believe their lies BUT it's also a push from the editors themselves to secure clout and secure their next job. It's not just go woke go broke, it's a vicious cycle of go broke go woke. By doing that they become heroes in their little bubble, they get social clout, and they get an excuse either way. They did their best but it still wasn't enough, or it was the trends...
Comics, book publishers, journalism, there's a go broke->go woke cycle as well. Precisely because there is influence in it.