BREAKING – Games Workshop Announce New CEO
November 11, 2014 by warzan
Here's the lowdown...
"The Board of Games Workshop is pleased to announce the appointment of Kevin Rountree as Chief Executive Officer with effect from 1 January 2015.
Tom Kirby, Chairman and Acting Chief Executive Officer, will take up the position of Non-Executive Chairman with effect from that date.
Kevin, 45, joined Games Workshop in 1998. He is currently Chief Operating Officer of the Company.
Commenting on the appointment, Tom Kirby said: "The Board undertook a thorough process in selecting our new CEO, receiving a significant number of applications for the position, both internal and external. Kevin was the outstanding candidate.
The board congratulates Kevin on his appointment and wishes him every success in his new role.""
So an appointment from the ranks - Not Unexpected, so do we reckon change is on the horizon or business as usual?
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wow his letter must have been AWESOME to have beaten justins.
Er Ma Gerd!!!
Round of applause for your name.
“Kevin Rountree joined Games Workshop in March 1998 as assistant group accountant. He then had various management roles within Games Workshop, including head of sales for the Other Activities division (including Black Library, licensing and Sabertooth Games). Kevin was appointed CFO in September 2009. During the year ended 29 May 2011, he took on the responsibility of managing the Group’s service centres globally. To reflect this, his title was changed to chief operating officer from chief financial officer. He, however, still retains responsibility for all financial matters within Games Workshop. He qualified as a chartered management accountant in August 2001. Prior to joining Games Workshop, Kevin was the management accountant at J Barbour & Sons Limited and trained at Price Waterhouse.”
Sounds a bit like the CV of an ‘administrator’
Though Tim Cook (apple) got promoted from a similar role…
Ooo an accountant can’t wait to see the amazing figures? will be coming out of GW now then. LOL
@dignity is inconsolable, ‘he should a been a contenda!’
My guess would be that a promotion from the ranks = little or no change.
I would have preferred the board to hire someone to “clean house”, so to speak. They’re circling the plug hole.
They wonder why the company is not growing and yet the industry is getting larger. I was hoping for new blood so i could get back into 40k. Oh well, there are other companies like mantic. I hope the warpath reboot is a good one, because I will be out of 40k for a while.
I don’t think that’s how they see it. Their stated business model is a fascinating insight into how they view the market and their place in it.
Not expecting any changes now
As I posted in the forum. The wagons have circled just that little bit tighter. Expect no change. No change is coming. Kirby has got the man he wants and trusts – i.e. one who will make absolutely no changes to policy whatsoever. Prices will continue to rise exponentially, originality will continue to spiral downwards, and they will continue to act like d*ckwads to the community.
An Accountant? mmmmm will it be for love of money and the share holders or lover for the hobby its self. Of corse i know GW is first and foremost a business there is no point in denying that, but could the new CEO inject new life in to the sleeping giant.
Business as usual it looks like to me. I honestly feel GW won’t change much, if at all. The next financial report will be interesting, but I’m not going to hold my breath for them to do anything too radical with their business model. If I were to be really negative from a point of total ignorance I’d say it looks like a ‘Yes Man’ appointment. I think they are far too insular for their own good IMHO. I could be wrong and may be using a large brush here, but accountants aren’t exactly known for their powers of creative thinking, beyond cooking a few books at the behest of their corporate or drug baron overlords that is 😉
Not that I expect GW to do a Tesco or anything, I’m just saying I feel there’s a lack of creative impetus from the top which is why the games suffer or wither and die like so many burnt crops 🙂
I don’t think GW think they need to do anything other than what they’re already doing –
“Our continual investment in product quality, using our defendable intellectual property, provides us with a considerable barrier to entry for potential competitors: it is our Fortress Wall. While our 400 or so Hobby centres which show customers how to collect, paint and play with our miniatures and games provide another barrier to entry: our Fortress Moat. We have been building our Fortress Wall and Moat for many years and the competitive advantage they provide gives us confidence in our ability to grow profitably in the future.
Even though we have been in the UK for 35 years, we still see opportunities for growth here with smaller one man Hobby centres in market towns and suburbs of large cities. Compared to the UK, most of the rest of the world is for us still “green field” territory. This means we believe we can keep on growing steadily, using the same tried and tested approach of recruiting and retaining customers by opening Games Workshop Hobby centres, supported by the Games Workshop Webstore and independent Stockist accounts across the globe.”
(tumbleweeds)
I heard it came down to two candidates; the winner, who you know, was only a default choice.
Randal “Bucky” Smith from Blanchester Ohio, USA, was the first choice. Randal had an impressive resume, among other noted achievements he was a Dungeon Master of the 7th degree, collector of an impressive 20pt. Tyranid army, captain of his local Star Trek fan club and 7-time winner of the local Infinity ITS tournament that he runs semi-annually with his cousins Carl, Phil and other Carl; so far they are the only participants and Randal has won every time. This was highly impressive to GW, but what they were really after was his ‘soft skills’ package.
Randal is a well known inter-personal negotiator with a strong ‘nobody’s right but me’ attitude. This kind of gumption appealed to GW and they were particularly impressed with the candidates example of positive resistance negotiation tactics. When Randal’s mother would ask him to clean his room, Randal would insist that it was fine for habitation and if his mother truly had a problem with it, she would stop paying the rent for the whole house. When Mrs. Smith would press the point, particularly on internet forums, Randal would insist that he was in the business of habitation, not of keeping things neat and tidy; if the room occasionally was tidied in the search of various items, that would certainly be a betterment in habitation, but should not affect Randal’s general behavior.
In desperation, his mother took to the internet, posting pictures of Randal’s mess and even starting a blog to raise money to bring in a professional cleaning crew. Randal would have none of that! He instigated legal action against his mother, suing her for defamation, delivering cease and desist letters and claiming that she was using pictures of his room to unfairly monetize his intellectual property. He didn’t stop there either, Randal started to compare pictures of his room to other dirty rooms and began to sue them for copying his designs; after all, he argued, everyone might wear socks, but hanging overly-large socks from either side of his dresser, that was strictly his copyright!
To be honest, it was stories like this that made Randal a real front-runner in the whole process. Rumor has it that he was offered a preliminary package to gauge his interest actually taking the position. GW made a very generous contract proposal on the agreement that he would come to England and meet with the board so that they could confirm his suitability. Randal balked at the idea of reporting to a board of directors; to quote his response, he claimed ‘there is no chance in this lifetime that I will take a paycheck or any funding from any group or crowd of people!” Immediately Kirby knew they were losing a kindred soul.
Distraught by the news, GW went with Kevin. Or, at least, that’s the way I heard it. 😉
Lol.
Sorry mate, you’re giving me no choice but send a cease and desist as the name in this story looks lot like my name Ranbal Smyth.
I understand your concern, but seeing as how smith, smyth, and smythe are all exceedingly common names, and arguably names in the public domain or common usage, I think you will find that you will be unsuccessful in court. I fear that your only recourse will be to change your name to Astra Smithitarum and proceed from there. 🙂
Far more interesting that the original news story.
Well, they had their chance, they used it, was it a wise choice?
I really do not know, its too early to start digging the new guys grave, but the indications we all predicted, internal hiring, not creative guy, tick in, who knows he may be the right guy, just have too much bad heritage behind him.
Regardless who runs them, as long as their culture is “we make miniatures for collectors” and they behave accordingly, they are destined for failure.
Hmmm… you know how the last weekender asked the question “should GW ever crowdfund?” and the consensus seems to be that no, they’d be too embarrased to fail. Why? Because it’s all about perception and the risk that it would backfire…
So why, for f@#ks sake, go top all the bother of announcing (all modern social media style) some ‘open’ CEO recruitment activity that comes across all innovative and creative only to then announce the most boring, predicatable, safe appointment imaginable. Feels to me similar to a crowdfunding attempt that just failed so they’re resorting to good old fashioned, take out a loan from the bank style, slow-drip product development. The stunt backfired and they just look stupid!
Don’t get me wrong – from an business investor, risk assessed point of view he looks a sound choice; just leave the stunts to the likes of Google and small startups.
In (entirely undeserved) fairness to them, even with the “send us your dreams” application process, we were only ever going to see some chump in a dull suit who had previously worked for either Price Waterhouse or Goldman-Sachs (other malignant vampire squids are available). Hiring Tharl the Magnificent who rides many leagues from the Skytorn Mountains to sit on great council. was never a likely outcome…
They did manage an internal (=extra malleable) suit who had previously worked for Price Waterhouse though.
As Sir Terry Pratchett said…
Ave! Duci Novo, similis duci seneca!
The promotion from within sounds like there just trying protect the market share. But the problem is in a growing market even if your sales stay the same your overall market share actually drops.
Personally I’m hoping things getting shaken up a little at GW feels like they have become a bit stagnant and are not the new and innovative company they once were.
Wow, they’ve appointed their own accountant to run the business. And Kirby is still in charge as a non-exec.No change there then.
Price hikes and lower quality to reduce overheads on the horizon.
for like 25 seconds i hoped to see again Warhammer with baggage rules….
Wow… send us a letter and we’ll appoint an existing senior exec … quelle suprise’ 🙂
I have to agree with JAREC, no change here in real teams I see for the immediate future.
Party On Dudes!
I will admit, I was quite excited when I heard that GW was looking for a new CEO, I was under the impression that they recognized that the shit had hit the fan after that stock drop earlier this year, and they needed someone to really shake up their business. Now we can expect they will stick with the “tried and true” methods.
The issue being that they are leaving themselves wide open to disruptive methods, and I feel companies like privateer press are going to decimate them in the short and long run, as they are able to keep building up their market share with new players and keeping returning players happy as well.
Anyone
I must say it’s not a very nice way to find out I didn’t get the post but at least I’ll get to keep my good reputaion.
Anyone remember the Troubleshooter programs on TV. I’d love to see one on GW not that I’d want to see a really negative review but it would be good to see an independent assessment of the way the company is run.
They don’t listen to customers what chance has a outsider got then.
As I put on Facebook “Just a suggestion to throw in. Why is the assumption that this guy doesn’t care about the product? I work in finance and I play Warhammer. Isn’t it worth giving the guy 18 to 24 months before we condemn him?”
You’re right of course, but from what I’ve heard of GW’s internal culture and the business model, some of which is expressed already in these comments with past quotes from GW themselves, I still can’t see them taking any risks with their games or even realising why they’ve been losing money and custom. One can hope someone with genuine grounding, passion for the IP and a sense of the external market has become CEO with enough gall to tell Kirby et al they’ve had a gak year and why this may be the case, but it seems like a thin hope.
It’s not that they don’t care about the product, it’s that they don’t care whether anyone else does, particularly with regard to the rules for their games which sell the bulk of their product. At least that’s how I see it 🙂
First off there will be change. Anyone who has worked for long enough knows that when someone ‘new’ comes into a position of ‘leadership’ they make changes. They need to be seen to be making a difference. But as he was internal and previously promoted by thos ein power he will have the same types of ideas. The change will not be radical re-thinking.
Second he is an accountant (probably by nature as well) so the change will most likely revolve around streamlining (ie cost cutting). So yes it will be more of the same but just that little bit more intense. Less money being spent on the stores and product updates at a faster rate to get more sales.
Poor old GW will continue to fade into the west.
Oh, well nothing changes…. No innovation..to be expected to be honest… No doubt a price rise will occur pretty soon
Meat the new boss same as the old boss
I bet the worker will be the first to be hit?
If the discussion of this on The Weekender isn’t accompanied by a certain track by The Who and lots of air-guitar windmilling, then I’m going to be very disappointed.
I don’t think it necessarily follows that an internal appointment means ‘no change’ or that an external one would have shown they were going to change. After all, if they didn’t want to change, they could have found an outsider who said ‘I want to work for you because you’re perfect and I want to keep on doing what you’re doing’. Just as if they wanted to change, they could have looked at an existing employee and said ‘we know this guy, and he’s always coming up with ideas… well let’s try him out’.
In my experience it’s quite common to have a variety of different priorities and management styles within even quite small companies. Which isn’t to say that a variety gets right to the top and the real positions of power, but it is possible that this guy wants to shake things up.
That said, my guess is that they weren’t looking for change in the first place, so insider or outsider really makes very little difference. We’ll see!
I can see the logic in appointing someone with financial expertise to be CEO of a company that has relatively recently syffered a moderately significant financial shock. This could be simply an exercise in making sure that someone with the right mindset for running the business is,,, running the business. It is not as though the GW CEO’s job is to write codexs or engage in game design – they have the design team for that.
I am also not convinced that a chorus of claims of ‘more of the same’, ‘meet the new boss, same as the old boss’, or the standard form predictions of the imminent demise of the company (that let us not forget we have been hearing on a regular basis for knocking on fifteen years now) are anything other than premature. GW has already shown a change in direction with such things as their greater embrace of supplements and campaigns like the End Times products and the forthcoming Shield of Baal books which they have used to advance the lore that had remained static for years or even decades, and the increased use of White Dwarf to release rules, in some cases without a codex/armybook release which they have started to use to replace units originally feared lost from earlier releases. They are even providing some WD rules free on the Black Library website. It isn’t revolutionary, and it is far from market leading, but it is movement in what I consider to be a positive direction and seemingly in response to things the community has been asking for. They may be baby steps, but that still offers the possibility of further advancement in a way that does not gel with the common depiction of GW as inflexible and disinterested in anything the community has to say. It would surely behove us to encourage this new approach rather than dismissing it as insignificant.
There is no way to know what will transpire with this appointment, and it is possible that Kevin Rountree will simply fall back into the bad old GW habits, but that is far from certain. We should at least give the chap a chance to settle into the role and show us what he can do before we all do our best Chicken Little impressions and claim that the sky is falling on GW for the umpteenth time.
If he unambiguously screws up, by all means let him know it in no uncertain terms, but claiming that it is effectively impossible for him to do anything but fail before he even begins serves only to make the community seem perversely unwilling to countenance the possibility that things can get better, and suggests that there is perhaps nothing GW could conceiveably do that wouldn’t be met with knee-jerk derision.
The Who – Won’t Get Fooled Again: http://youtu.be/SHhrZgojY1Q
Meet the new boss same as the old boss ?
The Who – Won’t Get Fooled Again: http://youtu.be/SHhrZgojY1Q
buisiness as usual no change and still a steady decline
as my favourite saying goes……… History repeats itself, because no one was listening the first time and in GW’s case they never listen 🙂
Let’s do some math…
Kevin, 45, joined GW in 1998. That means he was 29 at the time.
He probably finished school at 25? (I assume he has a university degree). That means he held other jobs for mere 4 years before joining GW. The starting position of assistant seems to confirm this.
Call me an old coot, but the work you do before you turn 30 doesn’t really count for anything. Great, you’ve been in kindergarten. So has everyone else.
So, in addition to promoting someone from the ranks, they chose someone who has worked for GW management basically FOR THEIR ENTIRE ADULT LIFE!
Change? This guy doesn’t know anything but the GW way.
@redben, the fortress wall and moat comments are mighty interesting and very much in line with the publicity strategy.
But when was the last time you heard someone say entrenching deeper is a good business strategy? If I was an investor with money in a company saying this, I’d be looking for an exit strategy. You can shovel back the tide for only so long.
Entrenching deeper is exactly what GW did under Kirby’s current reign. They’ve reduced the areas in which their IP is vulnerable whilst going after those who might be infringing on it. They’ve renewed their commitment to their chain stores whilst at the same time giving them an even greater focus on recruiting new customers as opposed to servicing existing customers. They’ve also invested heavily in a new webstore. None of that is to say Kev will necessarily continue down that path, but it does at least show that GW don’t perceive themselves as on the road to ruin and needing switch courses. They seem more convinced than ever that their business model is the way to go.
I’m got a lovely warm glow when i imagine this new guy to be a secret Man O’ War fan just waiting for his chance… 😉
Business as usual it looks like. It is making it that much easier to put Fantasy and 40K down and move on to Infinity, Dust (Battlefield) and Bolt Action.