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The internet is a great tool for leveling the playing field and giving small companies quick and easy access to their customers. TGN is an example of this as are the many message boards, websites and Yahoo Groups that exist to help connect gamers with companies willing to supply them with product.

I would say that in the past four years it has become substantially easier for gamers to find companies and products and it will continue to do so as companies continue to expand their use of the web. There is a downside to this though in that it often gives people a distorted impression of the relative size of the companies in the industry.

This became all too apparent recently with news that Games Workshop was going to be reducing 10% of their workforce as part of a cost cutting measure. This is estimated to be about 280 people giving GW (world-wide) a size of 3100 - 2800 people. To put this in perspective, Privateer Press, probably one of the top three or four miniature manufacturers in terms of size has about 50-75 employees. To put this even further in perspective a company like Baccus probably only has two full-time employees.

GW probably has more people doing HR work for them than the combined staffs of Hasslefree, Baccus, Black Scorpion and a hand-full of other independent miniature companies. Which is to be expected. Games Workshop also produces a lot of miniatures, books and material over the course of a year but I think that when we all browse through sites and look at product we tend to forget that these smaller companies are often run by a single person or at most group of two or three.

Its always quite amazing to compare the amount of production that a small company like Black Scorpion can generate in a year when you realise that there isn’t a huge infrastructure in place to support the designer creating the miniatures. Its often the same person sculpting, doing PR, packing orders and updating their website.

Most miniature companies have developed to compete in a market where the expectations regarding pricing, production and quality have been created and maintained by a company, GW, that is 100s of times larger than them. The fact that they can and do compete to meet these expectations is commendable but I think that we as miniature gaming consumers need to keep the size of these firms in mind when we make expectation regarding pricing and service. Especially in terms of pricing.

The wild and wooly world of online merchandising is often defined by the expectation of discounts. This has an immediate impact on local game stores but it also has a carry-over effect on direct sales from smaller, independent manufacturers. A 20% discount on GW products from an online retailer is often a much different proposition than a 20% discount on a sale from a company such as Crusader or Black Scorpion. Just because these companies seem to be as efficient as a much larger entity as GW doesn’t mean that they have the same financial flexibility as Games Workshop or online retailers that sell GW products. I am sure that most of these firms would love to be able to have the same sort of price margins that Games Workshop does but the fact is that they don’t and if they want to continue to invest in coming out with new products for us that means that they need to be taking back as much of their margin as they can to continue to prosper.

Ultimately, profit is good for these companies and the more of it that we can given back to them the more I think we all benefit from having a healthier industry.