MODEL BUSINESS MODEL – PART 1
HOW TO SCREW YOUR BUSINESS IN TEN
YEARS…
A few months back, I wandered into a Games Workshop (GW) store. It was in a different place. A couple of years earlier it held a prized position in the shopping centre, on a corner, right near the food court. This is the place in shopping centres that GW likes to dominate. Lots of foot traffic where young males hang about. This one use to be across from a clothing store aimed at under fifteen year-old girls, but let’s face it, they have no place in GW, GW makes no effort to make them feel welcome, and the awkward young males lurking in GW are of no interest to those girls, often for the most obvious of reasons.
But this time, this visit, the GW store wasn’t there. They were a good mile foot-slog away, jammed up the back in a dead zone where only the lost, and folks who arrived too late to get a good parking spot, travel. It spoke volumes about how things had been going downhill for the company. The two guys inside looked disinterested. One played with the computer. The other one looked like he was playing with himself. A game of something, but, yeah, sure, probably what it sounded like. Nobody else was in the store. When I wandered in, their demeanour changed a great deal, though not for the better.
The
one at the computer, who looked like he was in his sixties, frowned like my
presence inconvenienced him. The other one sidled up to me with his sad, sparse
goatee, like he wanted to buy pot, or had a stolen phone to sell. “You play?”
He asked, eyes darting around, anywhere but me. “Use to,” I answered. “You
looking at getting back into it?” He expanded, half-hearted, like he knew the
answer. “At these prices?” I said, looking at him, watching the light go out
behind his empty, vacant expression. “Not likely.”
And
that was it. He wandered away and ignored me. The other one glared at me, the
sneer on his face a look of such contempt I may as well have been something on
the bottom of his boot. Some things never change, although there use to be a
lot more of it, mirrored in the pimply, butt-ugly faces of the elitist trash
that use to populate the store. There would be at least a dozen of them, acting
like they owned the joint, and you had no place there. Then their numbers thinned,
dwindled, and eventually vanished altogether.
That’s
what happens when you screw over your market. That’s what happens when you
continue to screw them over for years on end. That’s what happens when you screw
them over for decades and then insult them, mock them, bully them with lawyers,
and boast about how you’ve done (and plan to keep doing) it, forever. How did
GW get to this place? Pretty much the same way as every other two-bit scammer
company, and, as the author and sarcasm genius Tim Colwill would probably
point-out, through absolutely no effort whatsoever on the part of authorities
to discourage their unethical behaviour.
GW
got to that place with twenty years of determined effort to violate Fair Trade
and Workplace Bullying laws, while screwing customers for every last cent they
could wring out of them by using extortionate prices, for increasingly shitty
products that had a half-life expectancy less than a bag of skittles in the
very shaky hands of a reefer with the munchies. It was a time of hopes and
dreams… you’re going to have to cross your eyes and waggle your head about to
get the fade effect…
…
it was 1996 and a guy I knew had just landed a job working for a company
selling models and games for a hobby that had been part of his life for five
years. We’ll call him G. Back in 1991, G had stumbled across a copy of White
Dwarf (issue 155) on a shelf and just had to buy it. It cost $6. Back then, G told
me, he had bugger-all money, but still managed to buy some discontinued models
on sale for $20 and his collection began. But five years and half-a-dozen
part-time and casual jobs later, what little savings he had were spent on
securing that job with GW.
https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/5abmlf/my_experience_with_the_local_games_workshop_store/
The company called to offer him an interview. He had to take a bus to Sydney, from Brisbane, and then figure out how to get to their head office. He’d never been to Sydney before. About twelve hours later the bus had pulled into the depot. The Gay Mardi Gras had been held the night before. Trash littered the streets, used condoms and gay folk discarded and strewn haphazardly amid it, and the place stank of urine, a pair of people in underwear, leather and chains adding to it as they pissed on the wall of a church.
Needless
to say, as a country kid from Victoria, he said he wasn’t impressed. Still, he
caught a bus to where he was meant to go and walked the rest of the way on
foot. He changed his shirt and shoes for the good ones in his backpack, took
some deep breaths, and went in. The interview, he said, didn’t go well, at
first. He’d been asked to run a game. He’d never done that before. Hadn’t
played in years. It’s hard to find fellow players. Faced with a problem, he
adapted, changed tact, ditched the rules and just made it fun.
The
attitude of the two folks interviewing him changed in that moment. They said
they’d let him know how it went. He made my way back into the city and waited
for the bus back to Brisbane. Eighteen hours later, on a Friday afternoon, he
got back to the flat where he lived and the phone rang almost immediately. He
never had an answering machine, and mobile phones back then were beyond his
ability to fund. Most of us were in the same boat. It was GW. They wanted him
to start a one-week trial the next day. They agreed to let him delay it until Monday.
They
sent him to Chatswood. The only place he could find to stay for the week, with
no advanced warning, was a seedy room above a Nightclub. The lack of sleep that
week would prove exhausting. He said he got about two hours a night and lived
on junk-food. It was a 7AM start and staff got to leave at 6PM, later on Thursdays.
Six eleven hour days at 38 hours wages. He recalled how they had sent him to do
banking that week. He was so tired it took him three attempts to get to the
right bank. He got to the counter each time before realising my mistake.
He
claimed he actually slept on the bus back to Brisbane on Sunday. Anybody who
has travelled that way knows how hard it is to sleep on a bus. The six day
trial had left him 5 kg lighter, and so tired he simply couldn’t stay awake
even if he tried. That evening, as he staggered into the flat to head for the
shower, the phone rang. It was GW. They wanted him to start the next day, at
Castle Hill. He had to explain to them that he’d need time to find somewhere to
live, move his stuff, and break his contract with the people he currently
rented from. Reluctantly, as if they were inconvenienced, they gave him a week.
The
only place he could find even remotely in his price range was a ground floor
flat in Parramatta. It had no furniture, like him. It cost two-thirds of his
wage. He slept on the floor. It was half-an-hour bus ride to the store. Except
there’d been a change of plans. He had been redeployed… to Miranda. His days
began at 5AM and required a walk to the station and then over two-hours on the
train to arrive at just before 7:30. They ended at 6PM with a walk to the
station to catch the 6:30 train to Central then change to get back to the flat
by around 9PM. Later on Thursdays. Thirteen days a fortnight for 38 hours wages
a week.
But
as if that wasn’t bad enough, management wasted no time demonstrating just how
indifferent they were to workplace bullying laws. He had made the mistake of
questioning his redeployment the moment he was told. “Miranda?” he’d asked.
“But I was told I’d be working at Castle Hill. I’ve just signed a contract for
a flat in Parramatta.” The response was immediate. “If you don’t want your job,
there’s hundreds of others who do.” So began my first two-and-a-half months
with the company.
His
store manager was a jackass called Karl. He lived a couple of streets away from
the store, in a flat he rented with the city store manager, Adam. I’d spent
time with both of them, too. Karl had a very odd approach to management, but
well within the GW model. He showed up around 8AM but expected the rest of the
staff to be there before 730AM. Back then, there were two or three full-time
staff to every store, and a casual after school finished for the day. GW had an
expectation of set sales totals that each staff member had to meet, regardless
of what customers wanted, and anybody that failed to meet their share would get
an official warning. Rack up three of those and you got fired.
Now,
as you’re probably aware, selling an item customers actually want isn’t the
issue, it’s convincing them to part with two or more times what they believe it’s
worth that’s the problem. So when they were lucky enough to make an actual
sale, in would swoop Karl to work the register under his code, taking the
credit. The other staff would sell product, and occasionally be the cause of it
to be exchanged for money, but on paper their sales didn’t count. The average
staff member lasted around three months.
Karl
was tough on breaks too. He tracked G down and dragged him back one day after
twenty minutes of his lunch break, insisting G had been gone an hour, and
threatened to fire him. Another day G arrived at 7:45AM, fifteen minutes before
his shift started, but later than usual because there’d been a murder at
central and all the trains had been delayed. “You should have thought about
that before you came to work then,” Karl had said. It was G’s second warning.
One more and he’d be terminated.
Dave,
one of many that worked for the company, was one of the nicest guys you’d ever
meet. Popular with regulars, customers and other staff alike. Pressures from
work ultimately ended his relationship with his girlfriend, and he was fired
soon after. His first warning had been for poor sales figures, thanks to Karl,
and his second for showing up late. 8:05AM he stumbled in, bleeding from a head
injury. He’d been mugged in the carpark. Karl told him he could see a doctor in
his lunch-break. Dave was fired a couple of weeks later for his third warning:
poor sales figures, again, thanks to Karl.
But
by then G had been moved to the city store for a few days. It was a blessing. His
travel time was reduced to one-and-a-half hours each way. He got to sleep in
until 6AM, and arrived back at the flat before 8PM. It gave him time to finish his
painting quota. Oh, yeah, staff had to paint models for the company displays,
in their own time. A lot of them had time to paint his their models, or play
games, anymore. GW was sucking the life out of them as well as or joy and love
for the hobby.
Adam
needed replacement staff. Some of his had been redeployed at Chatswood, where (rumour had it) their astonishing sales figures had been exposed by an angry parent and a bunch
of very angry cops. Turns out the staff from the Chatswood store had been
selling product using their staff discount as an incentive, reducing the cost
of a bonus item. But the icing on the cake was it was used as cover to sell and
narcotics to the regulars buying from them. Whoops. It was a PR nightmare and
left a shit-mess for the company to clean-up.
So
Adam apparently liked G. He made a glowing report that saw him redeployed to
Castle Hill, where he’d been told he’d be working when he started. Adam said he
wished he had others who were as popular with customers, moved as much product,
and could do the books the way G did, and didn’t understand why Karl had told
management G was useless. He thought G had been trained years earlier, not just
a couple of months ago. His work with the register at the end of the day was so
quick, and always accurate, they all got to leave before 5:30PM, except
Thursdays of course. Karl was fired a few weeks later.
Working
at Castle Hill meant G could sleep in until 6:30AM and have breakfast before
running out the door. He’d been skipping breakfast for almost three months,
gradually losing weight because lunch was always rushed, a burger from
McDonalds, and dinner was noodles if he had the energy to make it before
falling asleep. He’d been losing track of time. Same day, one after the next,
without television or even seeing any news to keep up to date. But Castle Hill
wasn’t much better than the culture at Miranda.
The
store was run by another Dave, this one a complete piece of shit who had worked
in a UK store for a time the year before. He was in his twenties and boasted of
how he’d been fornicating with a fourteen year old girl. “That’s illegal,” G
had said, “and sick.” Dave just grinned at him, unhinged. “Not in my house,” Dave
had sniggered. One time a kid had come into the store with $10 pocket money.
He’d never been into a GW store before. Dave snatched his money away and gave
him a copy of that month’s White Dwarf. “You want this,” he said. The kid said
he didn’t, asked for his money back, but left in tears.
The
magazine price had been increasing. $6 in 1991. $10 in 1996. It’d be about $14
by 2017. As expensive as a novel. It was advertising. The customers actually
paid for advertising. It was a core sales target. You had to sell a certain
number of the damned things. Ten minutes later, an irate mother came in with
the boy and demanded his money be returned. Dave told her she could only
exchange the magazine, insisting the boy made the purchase himself. That’s what
he was like. A model employee. No morals. No ethics.
Dave
had a day off a couple of weeks after G started there. He called G at 10AM. GI
was on my own. Dave told G to get a pen and paper and proceeded to give him
instructions on what G had to do that day. He started with arriving at the
store, cleaning, stocking shelves, opening at 8AM, and got angry when G told
him it was 10AM and he’d already done that. He demanded G write it all down. Dave
spent his spare time smoking a lot of pot. G left the phone off the hook,
wandered away, and hung up five minutes later.
It
wasn’t all bad though. There was the raffle every month. A collection of new
models were up for bids. You put in bids at 50 cents each and head-office would
do the draw and let you know who won. It wasn’t optional. You had to
participate. At least $5 worth of bids. But over eighty-percent of the prizes
were won by people at head-office, who had about 20% of the total staff, so instead
of boosting staff morale, it made things worse. Nobody questioned it. There’d
been warnings for those that did. People had been fired.
Then
things got quiet. The company had got greedy again. Jacked up the prices. “Tell
them it’s because of the new taxes,” staff were told, “or the exchange rate.”
The government had increased taxes, though it didn’t affect the company, and
the exchange rate should have reduced the prices. Didn’t matter. People had no
money. They couldn’t afford the products. The company had been gradually
pricing itself out of its own market, increasing prices to off-set the reduced
profits resulting from a drop in sales figures.
But
it was more than that. The stores had a bad reputation. Parasitic elements had
been encouraged to troll the outlets, elitists, arrogant little pricks who
seemed to think that they were the authority, bullying anybody that dared to
enter the store, a place they considered their territory. It was an anti-social
culture assimilated by other wannabes, made all the worse by the fact that
these idiots were too arrogant and too stupid to learn at school. The parents
blamed the company.
Some
days it was a ghost town. One day, when G was on his own, his total for the day
was just $80. That didn’t even cover his pay for the day. By 1 AM, after the
lunch break, which a one-store employee does not get despite Workplace
Agreement laws, G had called head-office and spoke to one of the managers,
another Dave. Honestly, there should have been a control shoot to thin out
their ranks. G explained the situation, spent ten minutes getting chewed out and
blamed for it, then asked if he could do a stock-take.
The
time was well spent. The cupboards and storeroom were filled with stock the
store manager, Dave, had ordered but wasn’t actually selling. The Dave from
head office came out with two others to check the findings. Dave the store
manager and paedophile was fired a week later. It became apparent he had no
idea what he was doing, and a look at the banking before G had started at the
store showed a number of discrepancies. But head-office wasn’t done. Staff were
all hauled in on another public holiday and told to brainstorm ideas to improve
things.
Public
holidays meant nothing to GW. Staff worked on those days. Stocktakes, painting
tasks, whatever. They didn’t get paid. The store didn’t open, but you came
because “if you really love your job, you wouldn’t complain like this,
especially when so many others would happily do it.” You came, or you got
fired. That simple. So there they are, a whole group of them, trying to figure
out what the company wanted them to say so they can put their idea in place and
blame the staff when it went sideways. Not G.
“The
parents hate us because they think we’re a bad influence,” G said. “Their kids
are having trouble reading, so why don’t we move the novels range up beside the
counter, encourage kids to buy them, get into reading? The parents may see that
as a positive, it sells product, and it addresses literacy issues.” It was met
with aggression from management. They weren’t there to sell books. Books, they
were told, are not going to make the company money. Twenty years later… well,
if only they’d listened to G then.
“What
about more special sales with buy two, get a third at half price deal,” G
suggested, “or reduce the prices on certain days. It would expand the size of
our market.” Head-office management just glared at him. “We can sell product,” G
said, “but the price is the problem. People say they’d actually make a purchase
if it was half as expensive. We have to compete with computer games that don’t
require painting or cost hundreds of dollars to play an actual game.” The other
retail staff nodded, agreeing. They stopped nodding when G was threatened with
the sack if he ever said anything like that again.
A
week later, G called Dave from head-office and told him he was done. In the
four months since he had started, all his savings were gone. His wage wasn’t
covering his expenses. He’d lost fifteen kilograms, down from 73kg, what
doctors insist is his healthy weight range, to just 58kg. Months of no sunlight
and only fluoro had left him anaemic. He was sick, exhausted, penniless, and
fed-up. Dave pleaded with him to stay. They needed G to run the Castle Hill
store. He offered G the position of manager.
But
G had seen what happened to staff there. Managers too. Not just the grind that
wore them down and shat them out when the company had used them up, but what it
did to them. They lost their love of the hobby. They became nasty, vindictive,
self-centred, narcissistic… sociopathic. The same thing happened to kids that
wandered in and didn’t have the common sense to get the hell out. They became
the same, elitist trolls inflicting themselves on others, or bullied,
embittered, moody and broken.
A
week later, his bond gone for breaking his lease, he arrived back in Brisbane
and managed to get his old flat back with his last pay. Nobody had moved in.
Nobody with money lived that far out. Not then. Only when developers moved in
and folks like him got moved out. G was bedridden for weeks. Exhaustion,
malnutrition, and the depression that had dogged him for years made all the
worse by working for GW. His love of the hobby was shaken by his encounter with
the company but, like so many other fans of the hobby, he still followed their
progress, even if it is as part of GWs used-up, cast-off, unwanted fringes.
