Colonel Bills

[Steve J]

I see Colonel Bills are now no longer attending shows after Battleground:

https://www.thewargameswebsite.com/news-from-colonel-bills-20/

[Scolty]

Sad news. I always enjoyed looking at Col Bill's stuff at the shows.

[jimduncanuk]

Sad but unfortunately necessary.

I usually project about half of my show spend in their direction.

[steve_holmes_11]

It's understandable.
Few operations are big enough to maintain mail order and a busy show schedule.
We often forget that Leon heads up a relatively large, hardworking and well run organisation - by wargaming standards.

I've done good business with the Colonel, and expect to continue doing so online.

[Big Insect]

It's understandable.
Few operations are big enough to maintain mail order and a busy show schedule.
We often forget that Leon heads up a relatively large, hardworking and well run organisation - by wargaming standards.

I've done good business with the Colonel, and expect to continue doing so online.

 I also understand that Colonel Bill's suffered a lot of 'theft' at some shows as well. I think I remember seeing a sign on the stand at a show one-year stating that they were a small business and that theft was damaging their profitability. It's sad if that really was part of their decision to no longer attend shows.

[steve_holmes_11]

I also understand that Colonel Bill's suffered a lot of 'theft' at some shows as well. I think I remember seeing a sign on the stand at a show one-year stating that they were a small business and that theft was damaging their profitability. It's sad if that really was part of their decision to no longer attend shows.

Very sad to think of crime intruding into a generally civilised hobby like ours.

[Orcs]

It is a shame when traders stop attending shows.  I can see why they choose this as the costs both of the stand, and attendance plus the impact on normal business is huge.

 

[Leon]

It'll be a shame to lose Stu from the shows, but I'm actually really pleased for him.  This is part of a longer-term exit strategy that he's been working on for a few years and it's nice to see his plans coming to fruition now. 

There are a lot of companies on the circuit who don't seem to think much about this aspect of their businesses and it really needs to be considered, especially given the advancing years of some.

I also understand that Colonel Bill's suffered a lot of 'theft' at some shows as well. I think I remember seeing a sign on the stand at a show one-year stating that they were a small business and that theft was damaging their profitability. It's sad if that really was part of their decision to no longer attend shows.

I think I remember that too and sadly it does happen from time-to-time, usually for more 'commercial' items like GW or FoW boxsets.  It often seemed to be at the same events too, with both Colours and Warfare being well known for it.  I think there was one year at Warfare (in the old venue) where they managed to catch them at it. 

We've had it ourselves too, there was one year at Colours where we'd just started stocking the larger Vallejo primer pots.  We had 18 pots on the shelf when the doors opened at 10am, and none when I checked at about 11am.  I got quite excited at first thinking that we'd got a good seller, only to be told by Dave/Cliff that they'd not sold a single one.

It gets hard these days with the stand being so large, but for big events like Salute we have great helpers like Orcs who can keep an eye on things when there's a lot of people about.