U.K.-based Games Workshop has built a $100 million business out of fantasy. Its legions of players shell out $3 to $50 per model, building armies to battle their friends. John Stallard, head of the firm?s North American operations in Glen Burnie, recently explained the hobby and tried to counter its “geeky” image.
How did you get involved in this business? You are from England. Did you grow up playing these games?
Oh yes, very much so. I?ve been a war-gamer all my life. When I left college with my psychology degree, what else was there to do but enter the wacky world of model soldiers?
Do you still play?
Yes, absolutely.
How does a game work?
Our hobby is best summed up by saying it is the collecting, modeling and painting of armies and then, finally, you get to play.
Each type of model has a point value. If you look at our futuristic game, Warhammer 40,000, a Space Marine tank might have a point value of 300 points. Infantryman might only be 10 points each, because they?re not as good or as devastating. You decide with your opponent how many points you are going to field on each side. He then goes and assembles his army, looks at all his models and thinks I?m going to have lots of infantry, five tanks, an armored personnel carrier …
You then need a battlefield, which is quite often a kitchen table. You can make your own tabletop, a bit like a model railway layout.
You then decide what the objective is going to be — and you start to play. Each model has a certain number of inches it can move at a go. Each weapon can also fire at a different range or at different effect. So you move, then you fire — and then, it?s your opponent?s turn to do the same. It?s sort of chess-like.
And these figurines are produced in Glen Burnie?
We make a great deal of them, many millions. We are the biggest model-soldier manufacturer in the world.
How many employees do you have here?
Including our retail staff, we?ve got about 320 in America, about 130 [in Maryland.]
How long have you been in Glen Burnie?
I guess about 14 years.
Why did you put your North American headquarters there?
There are two reasons: There?s the official reason, which is it?s in the Baltimore-Washington corridor, good demographics, access to a container port and BWI airport. The unofficial reason is that the guy we originally sent to run it, I think his mom lived in Baltimore.
It?s a big business. You do $135 million a year globally. How big is the U.S. market?
We?re at about $40 million. We?re a sizable portion of it. We?re the biggest single sales territory, if you include Canada.
Is the market growing?
Yes, every year.
Are video and computer games your No. 1 competitor?
I would say it is, [but] I would honestly say our biggest competition is McDonald’s and things like that, the cinema. There?s no direct competition.
There?s nobody that?s got games with this much depth. We?ve been doing this for 25 years. We?ve got a range of perhaps 15,000 models and a long background and history for these games.
There are other people that do some really great stuff. But they don?t have their own magazine, they don?t have their own stores, they don?t have their own mail-order department, they don?t have a thousand trade accounts like we have in America. That really is what?s made us strong.
Is the company interested in expanding into computer games?
In some ways, not at all. If you think about it, if you were going to set up a model-soldier company, you wouldn?t have chosen the last 25 years if you feared computer games. However, we have our own company called Warhammer Online, which has been busily working away for the last two years on producing an online computer game. It will go live in about a year?s time.
The stock, which is traded in London, has quadrupled in the past two years. Can that continue?
We?re always looking to the long term. Though we?re innovative, in some ways, we?re quite a traditional company. We want this to be going for the next 25 years. We?re not in it for the quick hit. I?ve been with the company for 20 years, and we?re still having a whole bunch of fun.
You recently began selling a “Lord of the Rings” game in conjunction with the movie. Has that been successful?
Yes, it?s been super. But we always knew that it?d be no more than 10 percent of our sales. That?s been the case. It?s been a nice addition, but it?s definitely been cream on the cake rather than the secret of our success. We can?t wait for the second movie to come out. We?re very fond of “Lord of the Rings”; it?s the granddaddy of them all, really.
Most of your market is teen-age boys. Any worry that as they “grow out of it,” the market will shrink?
No. I?ll tell you what happens. A lot probably start getting interested in our stuff at about 14 and get deeply involved in it by 16 or 17. Then they go to college and discover sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, whatever.
What we find is, they come back to us when they?re 25 or 26. They?ve never thrown their armies out. It never leaves you, really. You?ve invested a lot of personal time in collecting and painting them. Some drop out, absolutely, but there?s always new people coming in.
Is the Baltimore area a center for gamers?
The whole Northeast is, probably because we?ve been here the longest. But it is countrywide.
Are you concerned with the impression of the hobby as “nerdy?”
Absolutely not. I think if you came and saw us here, you?d find that we?re all fairly normal looking guys. We all like a laugh.
What?s your favorite character?
The space marines; they?re our archetypal soldier. They?re something we created — seven-foot-tall, bioengineered hard men of the 40,000th century. They?re just great.
