Games Workshop: saviour of the High Street

What if this paradise for teens and glue addicts had the secret to saving our tired high streets?

Walking round Croydon at 5pm, it can seem a bit of a bleak place. Once a retail haven, now a parade of boarded up shops, empty aisles and depressing bookies. But carry on walking to an unfashionable end of town and there’s a window whose welcoming glow invites you to join a shop thronging with customers of all ages. Warhammer.

For the uninitiated, Warhammer (the retail arm of Games Workshop) is a creator and retailer of miniature wargames: kits of models that can be assembled, painted and played with. Chances are there’s one near you: pretty much any town that has a Primark or a Next, has a Warhammer.

And before you ask, yes they’re very nerdy. 

A key reason for their vitality is that they offer more than just shelves of stuff. Stores will host competitive games and showcase their customers' best painted models in the window. New hobbyists are welcomed in with the verve of a youth pastor bringing in a new convert. Shoppers are offered lessons on painting and game mechanics and introduced to other local players, all for free. All staff are DBS checked and parents have been known to drop kids there while they shop.

These aren’t the kind of shoppers afraid of buying things online. And yet, here they are in their thousands while other shops wilt on the vine.

If stores are to survive our transition to online shopping, it’s obvious that they have to offer something new. For too long, people have looked to bookshops with poetry readings and bike shops that sell kombucha as the solution. But what Warhammer proves is that the business model is scalable and profitable for a multinational company with a mass audience.

Imagine a high street where Zara offered sewing circles, where B&Q helped you build a table from scratch (borrowing their tools, buying their lumber), where Tesco let you cook your dinner (using their ingredients) alongside fellow shoppers. I’d even do pilates in Sports Direct.

What a happy high street! One where we buy less, but spend more. Where we own less but live more. It’ll take a bit of work, but where the nerd leads, the herd follows.

This piece was first featured in Which? Magazine 2023