Do you think this strategy is the right one, and is it something they can execute? It seems a bit outside their traditional expertise.

However, the release of the video game Space Marine 2 changed things. It sold around 4 million copies at four and a quarter each. About 2% of those customers transitioned to the 40k miniature business, and they couldn't keep anything in stock for about 90 days. The intellectual property, specifically the IP license for the video game, drove miniature sales in the short term.

Is this data across third and first-party channels or just their internal channels?

It seemed like they had everything together, but as I left, they didn't. This goes back to the tech debt because in North America, they're still using Sage, specifically the 500 version, which is an AS 400 mainframe. Do you remember the little green screens with the typing from 80s movies? That's what North American distribution is still running on. It has a web-based GUI interface through Windows now, but it's no better than that. It's an old, unsupported version of Sage running the largest, most profitable part of their business. It doesn't deliver data effectively. They can't data mine like they could if everything was on Microsoft E365, which they're trying to transition to, but they're still not there. It's seven years after they planned to get on it, and they're still not there globally.

Regarding release cycles and cadences, you have the 40k year with a three-year release cycle, which is a local maximum. The Age of Sigmar year is a step down, followed by what is referred to as the off year, featuring The Horus Heresy and other products. Was there ever any internal consideration to manage and smooth out this cycle, or is it simply accepted as it is?

It's a challenging concept to grasp because it puzzled me for years. I used to wonder why we don't just release a new 40k every year to make every year a record year. It's crazy, but it's true. You get this long tail of customer buying behavior and a long track record that you see not in detail but in the bottom line. If you look at the channel sales of 40k and Age of Sigmar, you can see it. The same cycle applies to Sigmar. In the first year, they buy it, in the second year, they get the army they're excited about, and in the third year, they become competitive. That's the consumer cycle.