I'm back into making threads now guys

So I went into GW on Friday and the prices were ridiculous. One model and two paints costing over £20? I think that GW could lower prices by 20% and actually get a better profit. A battlesuit commander (tau empire) costs £25. Doesn't anyone agree that this could be dropped to £20 and still be considered overpriced? What really pisses me off though is that a model half the size and made of the same materials is just £9.50? I'm tempted to abandon GW and head to the outpost, a store across the street that sells the same models for £15. A much cheaper solution to GW. I recommend you all visit there sight, they do other games such as dystopian wars and dropzone commander too.

I use Outpost for all my orders too so I agree with that recommendation. In terms of prices, it is what it is. Not much we can do about it.

Ah but at outpost you have to pay yearly to get discount to use tables and on top of the 100 gbp membership cost
to start saving you have to pay 500 gbp to get a 20% discount stupid to do that.

Stop playing GW games, and magically you stop caring about the prices too.

 e.earnshaw wrote:
Ah but at outpost you have to pay yearly to get discount to use tables and on top of the 100 gbp membership cost
to start saving you have to pay 500 gbp to get a 20% discount stupid to do that.

On the online store everything is just 20% off.

Oh right I didn't know I've only been in the shop and the "deals" and got a very hostile atmosphere in there.
Also my other local independent stockist offers 25% percent off some times depends on economy.

I think GW could get away with charging more for their kits. They are a company that sells such models to collectors, that their kits are also brought by penny pinching game players is happy coincidence.














I think it's obvious I'm not being serious.

 e.earnshaw wrote:
Ah but at outpost you have to pay yearly to get discount to use tables and on top of the 100 gbp membership cost
to start saving you have to pay 500 gbp to get a 20% discount stupid to do that.

Yes, but I don't use their tables. I go to a local gaming club which costs just £2 a month. For twice a week.

I saw on the Blood Angels thread that a single plastic marine character is now £18. That's ludicrous for a plastic 28mm figure, it's just a single small sprue. While moulds are expensive, it's just a very small section of a large mould and individual figures cost almost nothing to cast. Plastic doesn't offer anywhere near the quality of metal or resin. And I thought Knight Models charged a lot for their Batman figures at about £13 a pop. It's no wonder GW are selling less stuff, many of their prices are beyond sense, what are you paying for other than the brand name? Which is what GW think they can rely on now, as they see themselves as being like Apple.

Cut prices 40%.
Do market research.
Advertise.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I saw on the Blood Angels thread that a single plastic marine character is now £18. That's ludicrous for a plastic 28mm figure, it's just a single small sprue. While moulds are expensive, it's just a very small section of a large mould and individual figures cost almost nothing to cast. Plastic doesn't offer anywhere near the quality of metal or resin. And I thought Knight Models charged a lot for their Batman figures at about £13 a pop. It's no wonder GW are selling less stuff, many of their prices are beyond sense, what are you paying for other than the brand name? Which is what GW think they can rely on now, as they see themselves as being like Apple.

£18 plastic Space Marines aren't new, the Librarian and Captain that came out with C:SM were £18 too. It is ridiculous though.

 ImAGeek wrote:
On the online store everything is just 20% off.

Except, just like all the other so-called "discount" online wargaming stockists, their stuff comes with an additional VAT cost. So, that ~£12 box of Skeleton Warriors looks pretty good vs GW ~£15 box, right? Well, you actually pay ~£14. Your discount is £1.03, less than 10%. This is the same with Wayland and all the other sites advertising "20-25%" off.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Plastic doesn't offer anywhere near the quality of metal or resin.

No, but it makes those shady recasters' job a lot more difficult... which I'm sure you'll agree is the most pressing concern.

 Anfauglir wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:
On the online store everything is just 20% off.

Except, just like all the other so-called "discount" online wargaming stockists, their stuff comes with an additional VAT cost. So, that ~£12 box of Skeleton Warriors looks pretty good vs GW ~£15 box, right? Well, you actually pay ~£14. Your discount is £1.03, less than 10%. This is the same with Wayland and all the other sites advertising "20-25%" off.

Erm, I've bought things off there for 20% off, no extra costs... You sure you weren't just paying for delivery..? (Delivery is only free over a certain amount).

Unless you mean the little VAT value they show? That's not added on to you order that's just showing how much the VAT is...

GW should sell their models for 40% of what they cost now. Not only their models should be cheaper but also their books that are now printed in China.

 Chute82 wrote:
GW should sell their models for 40% of what they cost now. Not only their models should be cheaper but also their books that are now printed in China.

It's easy to say "40% of what they charge now" but I think 60% off is asking a ridiculous amount. That would be cheaper than when I started 10 years ago. And I would happily pay for the books, if they were actually well written. The issue is more of value than price I think.

Hmm, déjà vu..


http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/607437.page

What should GW sell their models for?

Scrap.

 Mr. Burning wrote:
I think it's obvious I'm not being serious.

On any forum other than a GW fansite, maybe.

Token attempt at on-topic discussion: If wee historical sellers like the Perrys, Warlord etc. can invest in outsourced plastic moulding and still sell the results for about 50p a figure, I wouldn't be sorry if GW decided to do the same with their in-house stuff. GW minis are slightly bigger and more... bitty, resulting in fewer figures per sprue, but I hope no armchair economists are offended by my thoughts that the volume sales allowed by their ubiquity (so far), frenzied fan base (while it lasts), and infrastructure (those bridges that are yet unburnt) outweigh that consideration. All the same, I'd be willing to give the benefit of the doubt and perhaps go as high as £1 per plastic infantry figure. Unfortunately only a handful of the lowliest horde grunts in WFB still match that, IIRC.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Hmm, déjà vu..


http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/607437.page

You know what you are.......


Otiose...


In a niche.

Yeah, I get that a lot.

To be fair to GW. Their prices arent a problem for me, its the written product and laughable business decisions they make that puts me off them atm.

Deliver on the promise of making the best minis in the world and give a crap about your written content and you could almost justify the current pricing. Added value and all that.

 Riquende wrote:
No, but it makes those shady recasters' job a lot more difficult...

Does it? My guy has them for $5 a pop.

 Riquende wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Plastic doesn't offer anywhere near the quality of metal or resin.

No, but it makes those shady recasters' job a lot more difficult... which I'm sure you'll agree is the most pressing concern.

Let me tell you...it doesn't

I think me and this guy were thinking the exact same thing: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_zSxQnZ3TM8


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Has anyone being a victim of GW's great idea of getting the shop managers to hunt the customer down as soon as they walk through the door?

Da Stormlord wrote:
I think me and this guy were thinking the exact same thing: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_zSxQnZ3TM8


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Has anyone being a victim of GW's great idea of getting the shop managers to hunt the customer down as soon as they walk through the door?

That I do hate. Especially with my (fairly mild and improving with therapy) social anxiety, I'd really rather they left me alone. I avoid GW stores now, and that's the main reason more than the price, to be honest.

I hate it too, mate. Its not that serious, but I do have anxiety disorders and I try to avoid public places when I don't feel too good. When I feel ok I don't really care, but when I have a bad day I stay in and play on the xbox.

Da Stormlord wrote:

Has anyone being a victim of GW's great idea of getting the shop managers to hunt the customer down as soon as they walk through the door?

You mean customer service? That's far from something only GW does. Most retail chains actually instruct you to go out of your way to approach and greet customers as they walk in.

There's a world of difference between catching the customer's eye and exchanging a greeting (simultaneously breaking the ice, communication wise, and letting them know you know they're there - useful from a security point of view and also encourages them to hang around if you're busy, rather than them feeling ignored and walk out) and jumping on them the moment they walk through the door.

Not doing the former or doing the latter would get you a bollocking from me if you were on any sales team I managed.

In Australia they could easily lose 30% and still be more expensive than their competition.

But they don't just need to drop their prices, they also need to make a game worth playing. At the moment, they're not doing that.

 -Loki- wrote:
In Australia they could easily lose 30% and still be more expensive than their competition.

But they don't just need to drop their prices, they also need to make a game worth playing. At the moment, they're not doing that.

Or make the models worth collecting. They really just can't stand up to the 52 and 75mm resin sculpts you can by for the same price or cheaper. GW have this idea that they are selling to collectors but compared to the collector's market they really are no better than toys in many cases.

 jonolikespie wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
In Australia they could easily lose 30% and still be more expensive than their competition.

But they don't just need to drop their prices, they also need to make a game worth playing. At the moment, they're not doing that.

Or make the models worth collecting. They really just can't stand up to the 52 and 75mm resin sculpts you can by for the same price or cheaper. GW have this idea that they are selling to collectors but compared to the collector's market they really are no better than toys in many cases.

That too.

But some of that they just can't fix due to the way they design their games. Since there's so many options, they need to make their stuff as modular as possible, right down to individual little details. So their rank and file units and some of their bigger models suffer in decent posing options without severe cutting and filling. Then add the model counts needed for games and the desire to not have repeat poses. When they do a single pose model these days, like their single clampack plastic characters, they're usually quite nice.

But when you take, say, an Ork Boy or a Tactical Marine that have been built without cutting and filling with just stock parts and stand them next to models from other ranges that have single pose models (even plastic single pose) and they're really lacking.

However, that undermines their idea that they're selling to collectors and not to gamers. If they were selling to collectors, they'd simply make the best miniatures they could (like they do with their single pose models) and not bother too much with the multipart natures of many of their kits. It really is quit an odd situation on the model quality side of the issue.

I'd love to see what GW actually COULD do with cheap models, say, €1 per figure. Given the quality of Dark Vengeance, I'd say the results would be pretty sweet. I'd buy the gak out of "GW budget line".

i think they should at least think about decreasing cost and relying less on older methods of making miniatures. Transfer from casts to actual digital 3d printing machines, which can be more personalized and better created and allow for more personalization.

As someone who studies 3d modelling. I can tell you over the long term if you simply make it not by hand but by machine you are going to have far more detail from a computer than from a cast.*


*as long as it is in capable and experienced hands.

For painting and assembling.

 cincydooley wrote:
For painting and assembling.

Bad dum tish.

Yeah because I paint my marines.

*Plastic and unpainted marines.*

 prowla wrote:
I'd love to see what GW actually COULD do with cheap models, say, €1 per figure. Given the quality of Dark Vengeance, I'd say the results would be pretty sweet. I'd buy the gak out of "GW budget line".

Down here the budget line is called forgeworld, and for the price they do some pretty sweet models compared to the expensive 'regular gw' range.

I used to buy a fair bit at the US retail prices, it was right at the limit of what I could tolerate, but the new kits all costing 20-30% more than their predecessor really broke what I could do. $50 for 5 plastic sternguard? $30 for a single Space Marine character? $35 for 5 monopose plastic guardsmen? $50 for a tonka truck?

The mediocre quality of releases with their new approach to price rises really burned me, on top of the game just not being worth playing. Perhaps if I still found the game enjoyable, had it not been absolutely wrecked by the 7th edition ruleset and GW's business decisions, I might tolerate the higher prices in very small doses, but as is? Not a bloody chance; there isn't a single new kit since 6th I'd even consider buying, and most of the ones since 5th don't appeal to me either on aesthetic, price and interest grounds.

 Azreal13 wrote:
There's a world of difference between catching the customer's eye and exchanging a greeting (simultaneously breaking the ice, communication wise, and letting them know you know they're there - useful from a security point of view and also encourages them to hang around if you're busy, rather than them feeling ignored and walk out) and jumping on them the moment they walk through the door.

Not doing the former or doing the latter would get you a bollocking from me if you were on any sales team I managed.

I'm not sure which one you're saying GW do, but in my experience it's definitely the latter.

Having said that I remember a few years ago now, my grandad took me to London and we went in the store down Oxford Street, and I saw one of the staff building one of the plastic stegadon and the manager let me buy one a week early because we'd traveled fairly far. So their customer service generally is pretty good, it's just as soon as you go in nowadays there's someone talking to you about what you're looking for and they always try and get you to buy more. It's almost impressive how they manage it seeing as they're all one man stores now...

 Asherian Command wrote:
i think they should at least think about decreasing cost and relying less on older methods of making miniatures. Transfer from casts to actual digital 3d printing machines, which can be more personalized and better created and allow for more personalization.

IOW, add a few zeroes to the price of each model. 3d printing is not a viable option for GW.

As someone who studies 3d modelling. I can tell you over the long term if you simply make it not by hand but by machine you are going to have far more detail from a computer than from a cast.*

And as someone who studies 3d modeling I can tell you that this is just laughably wrong. A 3d model can have more detail on the screen, but once you translate that into a physical object there's absolutely no difference between digital and traditional sculpting. And you certainly aren't getting better detail out of a 3d printed model than an injection molded or cast resin model, at least not from any 3d printing method that would be anywhere near the price of a current GW model.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 prowla wrote:
I'd love to see what GW actually COULD do with cheap models, say, €1 per figure. Given the quality of Dark Vengeance, I'd say the results would be pretty sweet. I'd buy the gak out of "GW budget line".

Probably not very much. GW's models aren't expensive because they're more expensive to design and produce, they're expensive because GW has decided that their business strategy should revolve around selling a small amount of models at a high price to a few dedicated collectors instead of cutting prices and making their money through market share and sales volume. If GW ever released a "cheap" line of models they'd have to deliberately make them suck so they don't damage sales of their "core" lines, if they made the "cheap" models as nice as possible they'd be the exact same models as we have now with a smaller price tag.

 Riquende wrote:
Stop playing GW games, and magically you stop caring about the prices too.

That's the easiest solution by far, or using non-GW mini's for GW games if you must.

Verviedi wrote:
Cut prices 40%.

That's about what I get to as well. It'd likely then price them below a lot of competition and all them to use economies of scale to compete properly.

I've wanted to buy the Hobbit Goblin Town box since launch, and kept putting it back on the shelf until I got it at 40% off. £45 for a plastic starter set is much more appealing than £75. That's more than I paid for the 40K starter boxes when I started, but their costs have gone down and inflation has happened.

The 40% just about works in all cases too; it makes the marine characters £10.8 in plastic, instead of £18, which is expensive but tolerable. I'd generally not pay more than about £6/7 for a 28mm character regardless of material, unless it was something particularly special. I'd pay more for resin than metal, and more for metal than plastic, and I've bought resin mini's for less than £11 each.

 Anfauglir wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:
On the online store everything is just 20% off.

Except, just like all the other so-called "discount" online wargaming stockists, their stuff comes with an additional VAT cost. So, that ~£12 box of Skeleton Warriors looks pretty good vs GW ~£15 box, right? Well, you actually pay ~£14. Your discount is £1.03, less than 10%. This is the same with Wayland and all the other sites advertising "20-25%" off.

I've never seen that. In the UK, unless it's aimed at the trade, prices are almost always VAT included (GW's retail prices are VAT included). There may be a VAT breakdown on the bill, or a shipping charge, but the discount will still be available (usually 10%). Granted, you might need to spend £50-100 to get free shipping, but at GW prices that's barely anything. It's different in the US where local taxes are required, but the same would apply to GW direct, so the discounter will still provide a discount if you're buying enough to offset the shipping.

When asking about fair prices for product, you should check what the recasters ask of you. Mould-Making isn't cheap, however you do it and the cost of artists to design the miniatures should be negligible for a company selling across the world, so whatever the recasters are asking is about fair game. You could also look to similar sized historical model kits for comparisson.

Long story short, instead of 25€, a box of basic troops should be around 15€ maximum. Tanks may be as expensive as 30€, the really big ones maybe up to 60 or so. A single infantry model should under no circumstances be more than 5-6 €. Everything above that is just GW charging you extra for their name.

I've seen the GW Knight kits for as cheap as 35 $, ffs. Says it all.

I agree with the previous comment. GW doesn't do any advertisement or market research and their products do not see any reliable sort of QA or even playtesting. If a recaster is able to produce at a very similar quality at a significantally lower price, then the current prices are a joke.

In our opinion, the old LotR tabletop (LotR SBG) boxes were fairly priced. You know, before GW increased the price by almost 200%. Iirc, the boxes had e.g. 24 Warriors of Minas Tirith for...ugh..someone help me out here...20€? 24€?

We all complain about prices but yet most of us still pay them haha! Im still buying models and complain all the time hahahahaha!

40KNobz11 wrote:
We all complain about prices but yet most of us still pay them haha! Im still buying models and complain all the time hahahahaha!

Less and less people are buying them, which is why GW's sales are declining. I think it's a 50/50 split roughly between price and the rules.

Reminds me of Steam sales and game developers. They have been reporting that even though they are taking significant cuts in pricing they are still making a lot of money on the sheer number of people buying the games at the discounted price.

40KNobz11 wrote:
We all complain about prices but yet most of us still pay them haha! Im still buying models and complain all the time hahahahaha!

If people wanna pay the prices, then fair play to them.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:
i think they should at least think about decreasing cost and relying less on older methods of making miniatures. Transfer from casts to actual digital 3d printing machines, which can be more personalized and better created and allow for more personalization.

IOW, add a few zeroes to the price of each model. 3d printing is not a viable option for GW.

As someone who studies 3d modelling. I can tell you over the long term if you simply make it not by hand but by machine you are going to have far more detail from a computer than from a cast.*

And as someone who studies 3d modeling I can tell you that this is just laughably wrong. A 3d model can have more detail on the screen, but once you translate that into a physical object there's absolutely no difference between digital and traditional sculpting. And you certainly aren't getting better detail out of a 3d printed model than an injection molded or cast resin model, at least not from any 3d printing method that would be anywhere near the price of a current GW model.

Considering how inexpensive it is now to actually get a 3d Printer. Just having a few could be more viable than the current casting system that they use.

3d Printers and the materials they use are the same it just wont be done by hand.

They use it for tons of other companies. Hasbro and several other companies do it as well. They don't simply rely on the injection molds they use a variety to spice it up a bit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vash108 wrote:
Reminds me of Steam sales and game developers. They have been reporting that even though they are taking significant cuts in pricing they are still making a lot of money on the sheer number of people buying the games at the discounted price.

true. Considering how much money you make just by putting your game on steam is incredible.

40KNobz11 wrote:
We all complain about prices but yet most of us still pay them haha! Im still buying models and complain all the time hahahahaha!

Not sure why you complan about them if you still buy them anyway. Makes the complaining pretty pointless.

 Sigvatr wrote:

40KNobz11 wrote:
We all complain about prices but yet most of us still pay them haha! Im still buying models and complain all the time hahahahaha!

Not sure why you complan about them if you still buy them anyway. Makes the complaining pretty pointless.

Its not that hard to find superior products that cost less than GW Anvil Industry and several other studios produce models at more agreeable prices and even have sales.

Sales in general are quite good for business and great models to have .

40KNobz11 wrote:
We all complain about prices but yet most of us still pay them haha! Im still buying models and complain all the time hahahahaha!

Not me. Haven't bought anything from GW in three years.

And from their last report, it looks like I'm not alone.

That's true. This means that GW had at least half an once of sense before they decided to sell to a bunch of millionaires

I almost started a Dark Elf army, Dark Elves were my first Warhammer army back in the day so I have a nostalgic affection for them. I worked out an army for Lion Rampant using Dark Elves as substitute medieval troops. I've just built a Hussite force from scratch for this rule set that cost me about £60 (42 28mm metal models from 1st Corps).

£35 for 10 plastic Witch Elves soon put an end to that project. Those prices are comedy bad.

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:

40KNobz11 wrote:
We all complain about prices but yet most of us still pay them haha! Im still buying models and complain all the time hahahahaha!

Not sure why you complan about them if you still buy them anyway. Makes the complaining pretty pointless.

Its not that hard to find superior products that cost less than GW Anvil Industry and several other studios produce models at more agreeable prices and even have sales.

Sales in general are quite good for business and great models to have .

Certainly. My point is that if you buy products nevertheless, then all your complaining is void. You bought it, and that's everything any company cares for.

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
There's a world of difference between catching the customer's eye and exchanging a greeting (simultaneously breaking the ice, communication wise, and letting them know you know they're there - useful from a security point of view and also encourages them to hang around if you're busy, rather than them feeling ignored and walk out) and jumping on them the moment they walk through the door.

Not doing the former or doing the latter would get you a bollocking from me if you were on any sales team I managed.

I'm not sure which one you're saying GW do, but in my experience it's definitely the latter.

Having said that I remember a few years ago now, my grandad took me to London and we went in the store down Oxford Street, and I saw one of the staff building one of the plastic stegadon and the manager let me buy one a week early because we'd traveled fairly far. So their customer service generally is pretty good, it's just as soon as you go in nowadays there's someone talking to you about what you're looking for and they always try and get you to buy more. It's almost impressive how they manage it seeing as they're all one man stores now...

I'm not generalising either way, just responding to the assertion that it was somehow "customer service" to jump on someone the moment they set foot in store, and making the point that there is a right and a wrong way of doing it, and that as someone with experience running teams of retail salespeople I definitely have strong views on how my staff should approach that initial contact.

Personally I don't find GW staff too bad, but being a bit of a sales ninja myself, and GW only offering fairly basic sales training (judging by the techniques I've seen employed) I tend to be more amused than annoyed when they try and sell at me.

I don't understand why people continue to pay the full prices when there are places online/in store that sell for up to 25% off RRP. I understand not everybody has the luxury of purchasing from there but if enough people stop paying full RRP eventually something may come of it...

That's already happened - a substantial part of the range is Direct Only!

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:

40KNobz11 wrote:
We all complain about prices but yet most of us still pay them haha! Im still buying models and complain all the time hahahahaha!

Not sure why you complan about them if you still buy them anyway. Makes the complaining pretty pointless.

Its not that hard to find superior products that cost less than GW Anvil Industry and several other studios produce models at more agreeable prices and even have sales.

Sales in general are quite good for business and great models to have .

Certainly. My point is that if you buy products nevertheless, then all your complaining is void. You bought it, and that's everything any company cares for.

It is because people are hoping that GW does something about those prices before those people reach the point where they stop buying.

Your comment is along the lines of 'why are people bailing if the boat is gonna sink anyway?' - and has much the same answer: Because they don't want the boat to sink.

Meanwhile Cap'n Kirby of the HMS GW is steerin' straight towards the iceberg, because navigation is otiose in the Arctic.

People want to continue buying GW products, but can see the writing on the wall that their days of making purchases at the prices that GW is charging is fast approaching an end.

And for more and more people those days are already long past.

At this point... I do not see myself buying from GW any longer, even if they did drop their prices by 60% - my interest in supporting them has reached negative levels.

The Auld Grump

 Peregrine wrote:


Probably not very much. GW's models aren't expensive because they're more expensive to design and produce, they're expensive because GW has decided that their business strategy should revolve around selling a small amount of models at a high price to a few dedicated collectors instead of cutting prices and making their money through market share and sales volume.

You are correct, of course, in that it's GW's own decision to make expensive collectibles. For GW to sell cheaper kits, they'd have to change their whole business model and actually sell 'miniature wargames' rather than cater for collectors. Although I'm still wondering from where did they pull the whole 'collectible model' thing - haven't they always been a game company, and their main audience still is wargamers who actually want to play games with the models?

 Kosake wrote:
When asking about fair prices for product, you should check what the recasters ask of you. Mould-Making isn't cheap, however you do it and the cost of artists to design the miniatures should be negligible for a company selling across the world, so whatever the recasters are asking is about fair game. You could also look to similar sized historical model kits for comparisson.

Long story short, instead of 25€, a box of basic troops should be around 15€ maximum. Tanks may be as expensive as 30€, the really big ones maybe up to 60 or so. A single infantry model should under no circumstances be more than 5-6 €. Everything above that is just GW charging you extra for their name.

Warlord's Bolt Action in 28mm is pretty good comparison point. Their cheapest plastic infantry boxes they have are around €30 for 30 models (prices from large UK webstore), and tanks are between 20-30 euros. I think King Tiger is the biggest tank they produce - one of the biggest tanks in WW2 - which is £26 on WLG's webstore, so maybe around €32 at a larger internet retailer.

Quickly comparing BA to GW: Cadian troops are about €56 for 30 models, compared to €30 for 30 German Infantry, Predator tank is €37 compared to €21 for a PzIV, and Land Raider is €47 compared to €29 for a Tiger I. I'm not even going to compare the elites and HQ's

-

 Bottle wrote:
If you buy at the rate you paint, the prices aren't too bad at all. To me a 2000 point army in 40k or WHFB is a goal to work towards. Not something you'd be purchasing at once.

This is kind of fallacious. Either the price is too high for the item in question, or it isn't, deferring the cost may make the purchase easier to manage, but has no bearing on if the price asked is disproportionate or not.

 TheAuldGrump wrote:


Your comment is along the lines of 'why are people bailing if the boat is gonna sink anyway?' - and has much the same answer: Because they don't want the boat to sink.

No, you got that wrong. My point is that GW cares for nothing but money - as most companies. They don't care for and don't want customer feedback. If you buy a product, then you can complain all you want, but GW got your money. If you want them to change course, you need to stop giving them money. It's the only way. It's a binary decision. Buy. Don't buy. Buy = I like your product. Don't buy = I don't like your product.

What Sigvatr said. The only winning move is not to play.

 Bottle wrote:
If you buy at the rate you paint, the prices aren't too bad at all. To me a 2000 point army in 40k or WHFB is a goal to work towards. Not something you'd be purchasing at once.

I never bought whole armies at once, just individual boxes at a time. The prices were and are daft.

-

 Sigvatr wrote:

 TheAuldGrump wrote:


Your comment is along the lines of 'why are people bailing if the boat is gonna sink anyway?' - and has much the same answer: Because they don't want the boat to sink.

No, you got that wrong. My point is that GW cares for nothing but money - as most companies. They don't care for and don't want customer feedback. If you buy a product, then you can complain all you want, but GW got your money. If you want them to change course, you need to stop giving them money. It's the only way. It's a binary decision. Buy. Don't buy. Buy = I like your product. Don't buy = I don't like your product.

Correct. I think I didn't buy a single box of GW products during 2014. I certainly could afford a box now and then, but totalling up how much I've already put into my army AND considering adding 500-1k of new things to it.. Yeah, not gonna happen.

 Bottle wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
If you buy at the rate you paint, the prices aren't too bad at all. To me a 2000 point army in 40k or WHFB is a goal to work towards. Not something you'd be purchasing at once.

This is kind of fallacious. Either the price is too high for the item in question, or it isn't, deferring the cost may make the purchase easier to manage, but has no bearing on if the price asked is disproportionate or not.

I see your point. However, often I feel people complain about the price after working out the total for a grand army that should take a considerable amount of time to collect and model in my opinion. When the price of an entire army is measured up against a longer period of time, it makes up a smaller percentage of the money earned over that time.

But that's the same argument!

If something is overpriced, it is irrelevant to how overpriced it is whether you can afford it or not, how deferring the cost makes it affordable when a one off purchase may not be or anything else. If you're ok with GW prices, that's your choice, but please don't try and argue that spreading the cost somehow makes them not overpriced.

It's fine to think GW are over-priced. Just from my experience of collecting a fantasy army this year I've not found the prices to be bad at all. I'm not into other miniature games, so the price of the models is compared with other things I buy on a regular basis, and in that context it doesn't seem so expensive at all.

But, again, that's a false comparison.

Comparing collecting a GW army to collecting vintage sports cars is going to make the GW army seem laughably cheap, but it isn't a valid comparison. The only valid comparison is to companies who make a similar product, for a similar purpose using similar production techniques.

On this basis, GW are frequently found wanting. Not necessarily on a simple cost basis, it is easy to find comparable products which cost the same or more on a model by model basis. But frequently if you take a wider perspective and look at a purchase's overall contribution to a workable, legal force in a game, or the number of needed boxes to make a unit that functions as it should, or at an optimal level, then GW are woefully poor value (Witch Elves probably being the most extreme example right now.)

 Azreal13 wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
There's a world of difference between catching the customer's eye and exchanging a greeting (simultaneously breaking the ice, communication wise, and letting them know you know they're there - useful from a security point of view and also encourages them to hang around if you're busy, rather than them feeling ignored and walk out) and jumping on them the moment they walk through the door.

Not doing the former or doing the latter would get you a bollocking from me if you were on any sales team I managed.

I'm not sure which one you're saying GW do, but in my experience it's definitely the latter.

Having said that I remember a few years ago now, my grandad took me to London and we went in the store down Oxford Street, and I saw one of the staff building one of the plastic stegadon and the manager let me buy one a week early because we'd traveled fairly far. So their customer service generally is pretty good, it's just as soon as you go in nowadays there's someone talking to you about what you're looking for and they always try and get you to buy more. It's almost impressive how they manage it seeing as they're all one man stores now...

I'm not generalising either way, just responding to the assertion that it was somehow "customer service" to jump on someone the moment they set foot in store, and making the point that there is a right and a wrong way of doing it, and that as someone with experience running teams of retail salespeople I definitely have strong views on how my staff should approach that initial contact.

However you personally might approach it, I've been trained at two separate national retail chains to do exactly what GW is being hanged for here. It's very standard retail chain customer service practice. I've even seen other wise competent sellers get moved to the stock room for NOT doing that.

Doesn't make it good service, just makes it an aggressive sales technique that some companies still employ that is demonstrably unpopular with a large number of people.

What the market will bear.

It's clearly not too high because people are still buying them.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Doesn't make it good service

Please point out where I said it was "good service". I said it was standard customer service, never said it was good service.

That said, that style does actually work to aid loss prevention, but while it's a good idea for large chains like Target and Barnes and Noble, it's not as good an idea for a tiny one man op.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Doesn't make it good service

Please point out where I said it was "good service". I said it was standard customer service, never said it was good service.

Whoa, where'd those goalposts go?

What point is there in any customer service if it isn't aspiring to be good?

It isn't customer service of any stripe, it's a sales technique, and a lousy one.

Azreal13 wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Doesn't make it good service

Please point out where I said it was "good service". I said it was standard customer service, never said it was good service.

Whoa, where'd those goalposts go?

What point is there in any customer service if it isn't aspiring to be good?

It isn't customer service of any stripe, it's a sales technique, and a lousy one.

When you have a store the size of a 2-story complex, it's a customer service technique because there's not other way to greet everyone. Also:

Platuan4th wrote:

That said, that style does actually work to aid loss prevention, but while it's a good idea for large chains like Target and Barnes and Noble, it's not as good an idea for a tiny one man op.

Post-post edits.

You knew the risks.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Post-post edits.

You knew the risks.

Actually, hadn't seen you'd posted again.

My edits usually happen as soon as the page comes back up.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
What the market will bear.

It's clearly not too high because people are still buying them.

It's clearly too high when there are fewer and fewer sales.

 Asherian Command wrote:
Considering how inexpensive it is now to actually get a 3d Printer. Just having a few could be more viable than the current casting system that they use.

...

You really don't know anything about 3d printing. Cheap 3d printers have terrible quality, you might be able to make a vaguely space marine shaped lump of plastic with one but nobody is going to pay money for it. And considering how long it takes for that cheap 3d printer to make an object compared to the time required for injection molded plastic the 3d printed lump would have to be more expensive than GW's current models.

They use it for tons of other companies. Hasbro and several other companies do it as well. They don't simply rely on the injection molds they use a variety to spice it up a bit.

Err, lol? No company is selling mass-produced stuff with 3d printers, and 3d printing is not in any way a substitute for injection molding. You seem to be confusing the use of digital sculpting tools and 3d printing to create prototypes and master models with 3d printing the finished product that the customer buys.

-

 Bottle wrote:
Do GW have to base their pricing on that other other miniatures? I think everyone agrees that they seem to be trying to brand themselves as a luxury good. And that in of itself isn't a bad business move. In lots of other areas products successfully brand themselves as luxury (for example designer clothes).

They might be trying to do that, but they're failing miserably. GW's quality isn't any better than the cheaper companies, all they're doing is declaring "WERE A LUXURY BRAND!!!!!" and raising their prices.

I also want to ask if GW are selling the same product as their competitors or if taking their hobby stores into account differentiates them enough. When I buy a box of £15 Empire State Troopers, the fact that I have a store within 5 mins of my office where I can paint on my lunch break is a massive boon.

I don't think taking hobby stores into account favors GW. Their own retail stores are worse than independent stores, and really only appealing if you don't have a decent independent store in your area. And outside of the UK you probably don't have a GW store that close.

(Also, I really don't understand why anyone wants to paint in a GW store. You have to haul all of your stuff over there, you don't have an ideal space to work in, and you have tons of distractions. If I'm painting models I'm doing it at home, I'd never even consider taking my stuff to a GW store.)

This is what I was talking about. I don't have the Dark Elf army book but I imagine there's a (5+) in its unit size entry. Fielding a massive block of Witch Elves should be an end goal of a substantial modelling project. Plus, you only need 5 (im guessing) for a legal unit. At 2000 points 5 isn't going to contribute much, but at 500points or in Regiments of Renown it's a substantial part of a playing force.

Maybe it's different in WHFB than in 40k, but hardly anyone plays those tiny games. If you don't have a full 1500-2000 point army you're standing around watching games, not playing. So the fact that you can theoretically buy a single 5-model box and use it immediately doesn't help very much in the real world.

-

whatever the market clearing price is. Where MC=MR

 Peregrine wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
Do GW have to base their pricing on that other other miniatures? I think everyone agrees that they seem to be trying to brand themselves as a luxury good. And that in of itself isn't a bad business move. In lots of other areas products successfully brand themselves as luxury (for example designer clothes).

They might be trying to do that, but they're failing miserably. GW's quality isn't any better than the cheaper companies, all they're doing is declaring "WERE A LUXURY BRAND!!!!!" and raising their prices.

To highlight this, here is the problem with passing their goods off as luxury items: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/629715.page

If this gentleman had bought an actual luxury good (like a rolex), he would be able to take it down to a pawn shop and get some immediate money from it. Most 'true' luxury goods have something like craftsmanship and/or materials in their price. GW sells very expensive cheap plastic. It looks cool (to some people), but it has no value other than hype in an otiose niche.

 Torga_DW wrote:
To highlight this, here is the problem with passing their goods off as luxury items: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/629715.page

To be fair, a big part of that thread is simply that used models, no matter how nice the original kit was, have limited value in a hobby where a big part of the appeal is building and painting your own unique army. Selling used stuff is kind of like trying to sell a broken rolex or stained piece of high-end clothing: sure, you might get a bit of money for it, but you're not going to get anywhere near full price. But NIB stuff keeps its value just fine because it hasn't been ruined yet.

If this gentleman had bought an actual luxury good (like a rolex), he would be able to take it down to a pawn shop and get some immediate money from it.

I don't think this is true at all. You can have plenty of luxury goods that don't fit the pawn shop market very well (for example, a $50 million private jet is clearly a luxury item, but good luck selling one to a pawn shop). A pawn shop wants stuff that they can sell to any random person who walks in the store, and miniatures of any kind are a niche-market item that only a few people would be interested in. So the pawn shop knows that even if the models are really nice and potentially worth decent money they're likely to collect dust on the shelf for a long time before a potential customer finally shows up.

A better way to identify luxury goods in the miniatures industry is to look at the quality relative to other miniatures. For example, FW is GW's luxury brand, and you clearly get a nicer product compared to "main" GW kits. On the other hand "main" GW fails this test. Relative to the rest of the model industry GW's plastic kits aren't really anything special, and the only advantage they have is a huge line of products to choose from. The only thing "luxury" about them is the high price.

That's entirely my point: If you're short on cash and need to pay the next rent, you will probably find a buyer for a private jet (although you may not like what you get for it). You need to sell something 40k at quick notice for a reasonable return? Much much harder. As you say, a pawn shop wants stuff that they can sell to any random person who walks in the store, and a rolex or jewellry or an apple-brand i-whatever will move much quicker than a limited edition space marine codex.

 Torga_DW wrote:
That's entirely my point: If you're short on cash and need to pay the next rent, you will probably find a buyer for a private jet (although you may not like what you get for it).

But notice that you've dropped the requirement of getting a reasonable return from this statement. Yes, you can sell a $50 million jet for $100 pretty easily (though not as easily as you might think, since the buyer would still pay taxes on the full $50 million value), but if you want to get a reasonable percentage of that $50 million value you might be waiting a while. That doesn't mean that the jet isn't a luxury item, it just means that there are few people who have the ability and desire to buy a $50 million jet on short notice. Difficulty in selling something doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't a luxury item.

You need to sell something 40k at quick notice for a reasonable return? Much much harder. As you say, a pawn shop wants stuff that they can sell to any random person who walks in the store, and a rolex or jewellry or an apple-brand i-whatever will move much quicker than a limited edition space marine codex.

But that has very little to do with the inherent "luxuryness" of the product, it's about two things:

1) The market for miniatures of any kind has fewer people than the market for iThings. In fact, this kind of produces the opposite relationship between "luxury" and quick sale ability: selling an Ultramarines tactical squad for a reasonable price is probably going to be easier than selling a FW titan (the clear luxury product of the two) for a reasonable price, simply because there are more people who want Ultramarines tactical squads and have $20 available to buy one.

2) Any models that aren't NIB are damaged goods. Again, the fact that you might have trouble selling a broken iThing or the burned-up wreckage of the private jet you crashed doesn't mean that those things weren't luxury goods when you bought them.

And I'm not disputing the fact that GW selling their limited edition books at obscene prices is a case of screaming "THIS IS A LUXURY THING" and raising the price, I'm just disagreeing with your methods of determining what is and isn't a luxury item. Ease of selling something has very little to do with whether it's a luxury item, and isn't a useful test.

 Sigvatr wrote:

 TheAuldGrump wrote:


Your comment is along the lines of 'why are people bailing if the boat is gonna sink anyway?' - and has much the same answer: Because they don't want the boat to sink.

No, you got that wrong. My point is that GW cares for nothing but money - as most companies. They don't care for and don't want customer feedback. If you buy a product, then you can complain all you want, but GW got your money. If you want them to change course, you need to stop giving them money. It's the only way. It's a binary decision. Buy. Don't buy. Buy = I like your product. Don't buy = I don't like your product.

The problem is that's a stupid business model and because GW don't do any market research they will have no fething idea WHY people are no longer liking their products. If you like money and your business revolves around serving customers you can't afford to not care about customers. You have to care about them, if for no other reason than figuring out what the largest proportion of people want and are willing to pay in order to maximise the money they comes in.

That's why people are screaming about what they don't like trying to get GW to listen.

Exactly; the easiest way to make money from customers is to figure out what they want to give you money for and do that, which is much easier if you, y'know, ask them.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

That's why people are screaming about what they don't like trying to get GW to listen.

I'd say people are screaming because they like the IP and the game in general, and would like to continue enjoying the 40k universe. Unfortunately, GW is making poor business decisions, that are diminishing the player base and even threatening the company's survival.

At least that's the case for me. I like 40k, but the business practice is horrid

 Peregrine wrote:
But notice that you've dropped the requirement of getting a reasonable return from this statement. Yes, you can sell a $50 million jet for $100 pretty easily (though not as easily as you might think, since the buyer would still pay taxes on the full $50 million value), but if you want to get a reasonable percentage of that $50 million value you might be waiting a while. That doesn't mean that the jet isn't a luxury item, it just means that there are few people who have the ability and desire to buy a $50 million jet on short notice. Difficulty in selling something doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't a luxury item.

True, but I was also assuming an equivalent value in warhammer products. Someone who needs to sell a $50m private plane to make up their rent will do it easier than someone who needs to sell $50m worth of secondhand 40k products. There'll be far more people with the ability and desire to buy them (like charter companies) because it's a product with a value outside of hype.

 Peregrine wrote:
But that has very little to do with the inherent "luxuryness" of the product, it's about two things:

1) The market for miniatures of any kind has fewer people than the market for iThings. In fact, this kind of produces the opposite relationship between "luxury" and quick sale ability: selling an Ultramarines tactical squad for a reasonable price is probably going to be easier than selling a FW titan (the clear luxury product of the two) for a reasonable price, simply because there are more people who want Ultramarines tactical squads and have $20 available to buy one.

2) Any models that aren't NIB are damaged goods. Again, the fact that you might have trouble selling a broken iThing or the burned-up wreckage of the private jet you crashed doesn't mean that those things weren't luxury goods when you bought them.

And I'm not disputing the fact that GW selling their limited edition books at obscene prices is a case of screaming "THIS IS A LUXURY THING" and raising the price, I'm just disagreeing with your methods of determining what is and isn't a luxury item. Ease of selling something has very little to do with whether it's a luxury item, and isn't a useful test.

Sorry, i should have added 'premium' or 'quality' to luxury goods (since it's a discussion about how much the models should be sold for). Ah well. But on 2) - the models are used, not damaged. In the case of 40k products they may have become rendered useless due to being put together 'wrong', but an iThing won't be damaged just because you were listening to the 'wrong' music. Using the product before selling it != the product is broken (for most products anyways, i'll give you that it can happen with games workshop stuff). I still maintain my trifecta of a quality luxury item - craftsmanship, materials, resale. GW tends to fail on all three.

 Vermis wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
What the market will bear.

It's clearly not too high because people are still buying them.

It's clearly too high when there are fewer and fewer sales.

I don't have any numbers on hand so I can't speak to that, I do know I see new players starting 40k about as frequently as I see people dropping the game where I am.

That said it is a chicken/egg problem. The fewer sales the more they have to charge to stay profitable.

You don't need numbers, it's easy to infer.

Costs have been cut, prices have been increased, revenue and profit have fallen.

There's only so many pictures you can paint with that information.

40KNobz11 wrote:
We all complain about prices but yet most of us still pay them haha! Im still buying models and complain all the time hahahahaha!

Orly? I've got probably something around 3000 pts orks, 1500 pts Khornate Demons, currently busy building another 1500-2000 points of CSM with various loyalist and traitor bits to form maybe another 1000 pts give or take and the orkish part of the blood bowl starter kit. I haven't bought a single model from GW directly.

GW should sell their models at a fair and competitive price.

The fact that I can buy similarly sized models in the same material and at a greater quantity per dollar means that the value is greater. Also please consider that historical minis, for example, have even greater value as they are rules agnostic and may be used for more than one game. I would submit that sci-fi figures could also be considered rules agnostic as familiar tropes such as power armor, flak vests, gribbley/buggy aliens, laser guns, hovercraft, war-bots, energy swords, etc. Are covered by a wide array of sci-fi rules.

The rules are not dependant on the fluff or the models, nor are the models dependant on the fluff or the rules, neither is the fluff dependant on the rules or the models. These things can all stand on their own and may be mixed and matched at will.

I agree with what you're saying. Keep in mind though, gw seems to think they invented power armour, marines in space, energy swords, etc.

Yes, I think that GW has huge margins and make a ton of money from selling their models. I think they could probably lower prices greatly.

One argument is that when you buy a model, your not just paying for a model, but for the whole system to play the models in. Your paying for the fluff development, the rules development, everything that goes into making warhammer needs to be funded by their model sales. So yes the prices are high, but its also a total systems price for paying for the whole world to play with the models in.

You could probably buy models cheaper, but then again the system behind the models would also be cheap.

Da Stormlord wrote:
I'm back into making threads now guys

So I went into GW on Friday and the prices were ridiculous. One model and two paints costing over £20? I think that GW could lower prices by 20% and actually get a better profit. A battlesuit commander (tau empire) costs £25. Doesn't anyone agree that this could be dropped to £20 and still be considered overpriced? What really pisses me off though is that a model half the size and made of the same materials is just £9.50? I'm tempted to abandon GW and head to the outpost, a store across the street that sells the same models for £15. A much cheaper solution to GW. I recommend you all visit there sight, they do other games such as dystopian wars and dropzone commander too.

Welcome to my world. I have been paying their high prices for 6 years to support this game. After seeing no changes to make the game balanced I no longer support this company. Always buy used on ebay because you will get a better price and you are helping someone recoup their losses. In most extremes, buy from another company that makes mini very similar to wh40k. Exercise your buying power by not giving them your money! Should the company GW go bankrupt, then its their fault, not yours.

Around 15 to 20% reduction would be nice on mist models. but an end to the points pricing relationship they have is a must. It has caused the ridiculous price imbalances that we have. Guard are still fairly reasonable but others are higher point value models are just crazy. Also needed is a return to black library being a normal book company with normal book prices.

 Smitty0305 wrote:


One argument is that when you buy a model, your not just paying for a model, but for the whole system to play the models in. Your paying for the fluff development, the rules development, everything that goes into making warhammer needs to be funded by their model sales. So yes the prices are high, but its also a total systems price for paying for the whole world to play with the models in.

That might be true if you'd get the rules and the fluff for free

 prowla wrote:

 Smitty0305 wrote:


One argument is that when you buy a model, your not just paying for a model, but for the whole system to play the models in. Your paying for the fluff development, the rules development, everything that goes into making warhammer needs to be funded by their model sales. So yes the prices are high, but its also a total systems price for paying for the whole world to play with the models in.

That might be true if you'd get the rules and the fluff for free

Hell, some of the rules systems that are free are superior to GW products - better balanced, tighter rules, fewer exceptions. Kings of War is immensely better than Warhammer Fantasy Battle, in my opinion, and is free.

Mantic miniatures are not as expensive, and are arguably not as attractive - but despite having less expensive models Mantic has created the superior rules system - and puts effort into keeping the game balanced.

So, in what way, beyond price, is the game 'cheaper' than the bloated, exception ridden, unbalanced mess that is the most recent edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle?

The Auld Grump - that mess was the nicest thing that GW could ever have done for Mantic....

xraytango wrote:I would submit that sci-fi figures could also be considered rules agnostic as familiar tropes such as power armor, flak vests, gribbley/buggy aliens, laser guns, hovercraft, war-bots, energy swords, etc. Are covered by a wide array of sci-fi rules.

The rules are not dependant on the fluff or the models, nor are the models dependant on the fluff or the rules, neither is the fluff dependant on the rules or the models. These things can all stand on their own and may be mixed and matched at will.

Oh yes. Yes.

Yes.

Smitty0305 wrote:One argument is that when you buy a model, your not just paying for a model, but for the whole system to play the models in. Your paying for the fluff development, the rules development, everything that goes into making warhammer needs to be funded by their model sales. So yes the prices are high, but its also a total systems price for paying for the whole world to play with the models in.

You could probably buy models cheaper, but then again the system behind the models would also be cheap.

Ugh no. No.

No.

What Auld Grump said. And on the minis side of thing, as is often said, the Perrys and others can turn out great historicals plastics and sell them for about 50p each, even without GW's in-house mouldmaking and other infrastructure advantages, and arguably without as big and... 'enthusiastic' a fan base.

 Smitty0305 wrote:


One argument is that when you buy a model, your not just paying for a model, but for the whole system to play the models in. Your paying for the fluff development, the rules development, everything that goes into making warhammer needs to be funded by their model sales. So yes the prices are high, but its also a total systems price for paying for the whole world to play with the models in.

You could probably buy models cheaper, but then again the system behind the models would also be cheap.

That's the point though. GW rulesets are poorly developed, receive almost no updates, do not go through any QA and are not playtested. Why would I want to pay them for doing a bad job?

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Smitty0305 wrote:


One argument is that when you buy a model, your not just paying for a model, but for the whole system to play the models in. Your paying for the fluff development, the rules development, everything that goes into making warhammer needs to be funded by their model sales. So yes the prices are high, but its also a total systems price for paying for the whole world to play with the models in.

You could probably buy models cheaper, but then again the system behind the models would also be cheap.

That's the point though. GW rulesets are poorly developed, receive almost no updates, do not go through any QA and are not playtested. Why would I want to pay them for doing a bad job?

I dare say they don't even bother with spellcheck. The codices in 6th ed. that I have read were full of spelling errors, even in cases where the dumbest version of spellcheck should have found the mistake.

 Smitty0305 wrote:

One argument is that when you buy a model, your not just paying for a model, but for the whole system to play the models in. Your paying for the fluff development, the rules development, everything that goes into making warhammer needs to be funded by their model sales. So yes the prices are high, but its also a total systems price for paying for the whole world to play with the models in.

This argument isn't completely false, though - with GW what you are paying for is the 'GW brand', and ' brand' in general is a loose term for all the immaterial benefits, in their case high quality, well-known IP, large number of players, good vendor network and so on. So if your 'brand' is strong, it brings extra perceived value to the customers, and you can charge more money for it - and part of that money can be used to further boost your brand.

Unfortunately, GW is grossly overestimating the current value of the 'GW brand', especially compared to the competition. It seems they are lacking even the basic market research, and stuck on the image they had 10-20 years ago. They make good kits, but the competition is very close on their heels, quality-wise. They used to have the best sales network, but the internet has affected that a lot. Nowadays, the FLGS's are often better stocked and more player-friendly than the GW stores. Simply put, the market is changing, and the company should be reacting to things.

They did a bunch of good decisions 10-20 years ago, with production etc., but since then they have stalled a bit. GW still has a lot of potential to be the big market leader, but at the moment they are losing their gains.

What should GW sell their models for?

Less. A lot less.

156 USD for 9 warplock jezzails.

Mind = Blown

If GW cut it's prices by 25% and didn't do a yearly price increase for a few years (barring massive inflation of course) I would purchase tons of models from them, and recommend the game to 4+ of my friends who would buy tons of models from them.

However... as their current prices stand it is painful to purchase more than one kit at a time, every few months, and I can't in good faith recommend the game to anyone because of the fact that this game will inevitably get more expensive.

I honestly think they are hurting themselves with these prices. If they made an effort to make the game affordable, they would have tons of new players, which in turn would equal more money.

In summary: Competitive Pricing = More Buyers = More Money.

...and I know that what I just said above has already been said by numerous other people... just venting at this point.

I was wondering about this over the Christmas break. I felt perfectly fine putting Warmachine and X-Wing kits on my wish-lists, but I felt reluctant about GW models. I was trying to figure out why that was.

One conclusion that I came to was that you can buy a much larger change in game experience in X-Wing or Warmachine with a much smaller purchase than you can for Warhammer/40k. Additionally, many Warhammer/40k purchases require multiple other purchases to actually be 'useful'.
A single WMH Warnoun is a complete purchase package which on its own introduces a huge change in how you play a game. A heavy beast/jack represents 20% of your force on its own, again significantly changing the way you play. When most X-Wing fleets have 2-4 ships, a single additional ship represents a 25% change in your game. But most 40k purchases were 10% or less of a 40k force. The purchasing itself is less satisfying because the item doesn't make a big difference to you. For the ones which required additional purchases (ie, you need 2 boxes of witch elves, or 3 individual broadsides) people seemed reluctant to get those as gifts because they know they're getting you something incomplete.

In my mind, GW needs to move to a pricing model where a single mid-level purchase produces the same level of game changing experience that other game do. A $50 (AUD) model/unit should be 15-25% of the points value of an army. They need to reduce the incentive for people to purchase duplicate units. And they need to move to a pricing model which allows people to experience any faction with only a single, non-prohibitive cost.

A significant part of this would be to give away starter rules in battleforce boxes, and unit stat cards with all other purchases. PP manages to still sell their Rulebooks and faction books while still doing both of the above. Put the army fluff, special formations etc in the faction books, but don't make them a required buy. Otherwise, people begin to resent being 'forced' to buy expensive books.
Adding a character in to the battleforces and making them a single $150 AUD purchase for ~750pts would be an appropriate price level. A 1500pt army should be max $500 AUD.

Trasvi wrote:
In my mind, GW needs to move to a pricing model where a single mid-level purchase produces the same level of game changing experience that other game do. A $50 (AUD) model/unit should be 15-25% of the points value of an army. They need to reduce the incentive for people to purchase duplicate units. And they need to move to a pricing model which allows people to experience any faction with only a single, non-prohibitive cost.

That's never going to happen because of the scale of the game. FFG can sell you 25% of an X-Wing fleet for $15 because a whole fleet is four models. You aren't going to match that when you have armies with 10+ tanks, several hundred infantry models, etc.

I, after many years, have been priced out of GW too.

It happened when I came to update my IG, only to find that the new codex cost £30 (as opposed to £12 when I began) and that I was expected to pay over £20 for 10 men with only 3 of the total of 9 weapon upgrades available to them supplied. I can buy better quality miniatures from Warlord games at the same scale and with all the weapon upgrades included at £24 for 25 Infantry. Thats less than £1 per man as opposed to GW's pricing of £2.30 per man.

I also looked at updating my Skaven as I have been after some Warplock Jezzail snipers for some time now. At £10 per figure I would be needing to spend at least £90 on a single unit. For me that just is not worth it.


GW either needs to increase the quality of there mini's and decrease the size of the games or they need to drastically cut there prices by at least 50%, preferably 60%.

 Peregrine wrote:

Trasvi wrote:
In my mind, GW needs to move to a pricing model where a single mid-level purchase produces the same level of game changing experience that other game do. A $50 (AUD) model/unit should be 15-25% of the points value of an army. They need to reduce the incentive for people to purchase duplicate units. And they need to move to a pricing model which allows people to experience any faction with only a single, non-prohibitive cost.

That's never going to happen because of the scale of the game. FFG can sell you 25% of an X-Wing fleet for $15 because a whole fleet is four models. You aren't going to match that when you have armies with 10+ tanks, several hundred infantry models, etc.

I don't think that your argument invalidates what Trasvi says. GW prices for models are overblown compared to other models of similar size and the least they could do is make a single kit large enough to form a full unit and not just minimal size. Compare 40k to say Bolt action. For less than 100€ you get a crapton of infantry, several support weapons and a tank or two, enough for 1000-1500 points. Or, you know, 20 guardsmen, one Leman russ and some single HQ choice. Yes, a 40k army will never be as cheap aas a skirmish-sized game, but it may be at least similarly priced to historical games where you can expect model prices of less than 0,50€ per model and not close to 10€ (looking at you, flash gitz).

The thing is GW are running at a margin of between 10-13% most years so a price reduction of any significant amount would cut into their margin dramatically.

At a basic level reducing price by 20% requires an increase in sales of over 30% to maintain margin position and mitigate the extra overhead (assuming only 5% cost uplift and a 10% margin position).

That's hell of a lot of effort and a bigger risk just to break even. I'm no salesman but I'm not sure the extra sales are possible given such a reduction. It would be a massive roll of the dice to try and put this into action.

As a business trying to please shareholders there is zero chance of a Chairman putting his cock on the block for numbers like that.

Realistically I think the best GW could offer is holding prices for an extended period of time. The move to resin and the paring down of shops/staff makes this possible.

 Peregrine wrote:

Trasvi wrote:
In my mind, GW needs to move to a pricing model where a single mid-level purchase produces the same level of game changing experience that other game do. A $50 (AUD) model/unit should be 15-25% of the points value of an army. They need to reduce the incentive for people to purchase duplicate units. And they need to move to a pricing model which allows people to experience any faction with only a single, non-prohibitive cost.

That's never going to happen because of the scale of the game. FFG can sell you 25% of an X-Wing fleet for $15 because a whole fleet is four models. You aren't going to match that when you have armies with 10+ tanks, several hundred infantry models, etc.

If you consider a game to be around 1850pts, it's totally realistic to expect 15-25% (25% might be pushing it, depends on the army) for $50. Wargames Factory sells 28mm infantry for as little as 75 cents per model (skeletons, WW2 infantry) up to about $2.20 per model (Eisenkern Stormtroopers).

If GW sold Cadians for $1 each, $50 would buy you 50 models which would be a sizeable chunk of an 1850pt army, even if it was just 30-40 models but including weapons for special weapon squads and what not, that would be in the 15-25% region.

When you pay for GW, you are paying for the retail chain whether you like it or not.

GW will never drop the retail chain as it is what drives their turnover. It is why they are the size they are comparatively to all others wargames companies.

 notprop wrote:
When you pay for GW, you are paying for the retail chain whether you like it or not.

GW will never drop the retail chain as it is what drives their turnover.

Drives their turnover into the ground, amirite? It doesn't seem to be driving their growth or even maintaining what they have, anyway. More people just want to buy minis these days, without supersizing their order to include a shop.

 notprop wrote:
When you pay for GW, you are paying for the retail chain whether you like it or not.

GW will never drop the retail chain as it is what drives their turnover. It is why they are the size they are comparatively to all others wargames companies.

If the retail chain is doing it's job, you aren't paying for the retail chain, the retail chain results in increased sales and thus pays for itself. If the retail chain isn't paying for itself, you're doing it wrong.

 notprop wrote:
The thing is GW are running at a margin of between 10-13% most years so a price reduction of any significant amount would cut into their margin dramatically.

At a basic level reducing price by 20% requires an increase in sales of over 30% to maintain margin position and mitigate the extra overhead (assuming only 5% cost uplift and a 10% margin position).

That's hell of a lot of effort and a bigger risk just to break even. I'm no salesman but I'm not sure the extra sales are possible given such a reduction. It would be a massive roll of the dice to try and put this into action.

*snip*

If it's cheaper, you'll buy more.

Look at Mantic. Yes, they put out some real sh*t, but people go absolutely mental on their KS campaigns. Boxes and boxes of stuff that will likely never be opened!

I think GW could drop to somewhere between their prices and Mantics. As long as they kept the quality they have we'd all be very happy and they'd be raking it in. I'd rather buy a full, viable unit in one box than over two or three.

 Vermis wrote:

 notprop wrote:
When you pay for GW, you are paying for the retail chain whether you like it or not.

GW will never drop the retail chain as it is what drives their turnover.

Drives their turnover into the ground, amirite? It doesn't seem to be driving their growth or even maintaining what they have, anyway. More people just want to buy minis these days, without supersizing their order to include a shop.

Rurite? No.

It drives turnover by creating new players and maintain brand presence. At that point thy are ideally placed to pick up the initial binge spend by the new player and recover it at 100% of RRP. That's the theory anyway and seemingly reaonanbly successful at doing this. It would be be a huge vanity operation if these didn't cover their costs and I've never seen GW shy away from shutting something down if it costs money or doesnt meet targets. I would imagine that HO Overheads are seperate to this.

Existing players then have the option of discounting or continue supporting 'their' shop at full RRP.

 notprop wrote:

 Vermis wrote:

 notprop wrote:
When you pay for GW, you are paying for the retail chain whether you like it or not.

GW will never drop the retail chain as it is what drives their turnover.

Drives their turnover into the ground, amirite? It doesn't seem to be driving their growth or even maintaining what they have, anyway. More people just want to buy minis these days, without supersizing their order to include a shop.

Rurite? No.

It drives turnover by creating new players and maintain brand presence. At that point thy are ideally placed to pick up the initial binge spend by the new player and recover it at 100% of RRP. That's the theory anyway and seemingly reaonanbly successful at doing this. It would be be a huge vanity operation if these didn't cover their costs and I've never seen GW shy away from shutting something down if it costs money or doesnt meet targets. I would imagine that HO Overheads are seperate to this.

Existing players then have the option of discounting or continue supporting 'their' shop at full RRP.

That may have been true before the days of one man shops, stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'.,

And may still be true, in those places with decently staffed GW shops in decent locations.

But, increasingly, that is no longer the case.

So... GW is heading in a groundward direction, with a pilot that is insisting that everything is fine. ('GW had very good year....')

I think that GW stores could be real moneymakers - but that they need to diversify, carry things that are not GW products. (Even if it is only the RPGs based on GW IP.)

Instead they are a millstone around the neck of the company, while GW is dog paddling like crazy, trying not to sink.

The Auld Grump, I will take my metaphors mixed, not shaken....

 TheAuldGrump wrote:


So... GW is heading in a groundward direction, with a pilot that is insisting that everything is fine. ('GW had very good year....')

Well, yes. The GW stores barely made any profit last year, if you calculate that the operating costs were around 50m and were responsible for 42% of the sales, total profit of the company being 123m. FLGS's sold 40% or so of their product. Revenue dropped almost 10% and profit was worst in 5 years.. Kirby's statements about a great year with solid investment in the future were fairly optimistic, I'd say - especially when their main growth strategy is stated to be opening more stores

 prowla wrote:

 TheAuldGrump wrote:


So... GW is heading in a groundward direction, with a pilot that is insisting that everything is fine. ('GW had very good year....')

Well, yes. The GW stores barely made any profit last year, if you calculate that the operating costs were around 50m and were responsible for 42% of the sales, total profit of the company being 123m. FLGS's sold 40% or so of their product. Revenue dropped almost 10% and profit was worst in 5 years.. Kirby's statements about a great year with solid investment in the future were fairly optimistic, I'd say - especially when their main growth strategy is stated to be opening more stores

The value of GW stores can't be measured purely off what they sell. They are a form of advertising as well. How many people bought their first box from a GW but now buy from an FLGS, how many people play in GW's but buy their stuff from an FLGS, how many people would have quit if it weren't for their local GW, but still buy their stuff elsewhere? Those are the relevant questions. Even going back to the mid 90's when I started out, I bought my first box in an FLGS before I discovered GW existed, but the GW store is most definitely what kept me in the game... but I still bought stuff from the FLGS.

And that 40% from FLGS's as far as I'm aware also includes online discount shops? I'm sure there's a ton of people that play at a GW but buy from online stores, or even GW's own webstore.

Now I don't disagree GW are mismanaging their stores and the stores probably aren't worth it (in some areas definitely, in other areas I'm sure they are doing well) but it's really not possible to tell just based off store sales vs sales through other means.

Also do we know that the stores are loosing sales or is it the webstore or both.

The webstore would seem more likely given that if you can be bothered to fire up a browser your half way to finding a discount store.

GW store could be performing well for all we know; indeed GW continue to open more.

 notprop wrote:
Also do we know that the stores are loosing sales or is it the webstore or both.

The webstore would seem more likely given that if you can be bothered to fire up a browser your half way to finding a discount store.

GW store could be performing well for all we know; indeed GW continue to open more.

By my calcs the webstore sales rose about 10% from 2013 to 2014 (at constant currency) and GW stores fell by around 9%. FLGS sales also fell about 9%. It could simply be more items going to direct only and GW stores stocking less so it's easier to have things shipped to your house directly from the webstore than have your store get it in for you indirectly.

 notprop wrote:
The thing is GW are running at a margin of between 10-13% most years so a price reduction of any significant amount would cut into their margin dramatically.

At a basic level reducing price by 20% requires an increase in sales of over 30% to maintain margin position and mitigate the extra overhead (assuming only 5% cost uplift and a 10% margin position).

That's hell of a lot of effort and a bigger risk just to break even. I'm no salesman but I'm not sure the extra sales are possible given such a reduction. It would be a massive roll of the dice to try and put this into action.

As a business trying to please shareholders there is zero chance of a Chairman putting his cock on the block for numbers like that.

Realistically I think the best GW could offer is holding prices for an extended period of time. The move to resin and the paring down of shops/staff makes this possible.

Agreed; a price cut is risky. But there's almost no risk or cost in increasing value. Doubling the number of sprues in a troop box costs pretty much nothinv but makes the box better value and should increase sales by more than enougb to compensate.

 notprop wrote:

 Vermis wrote:

 notprop wrote:
When you pay for GW, you are paying for the retail chain whether you like it or not.

GW will never drop the retail chain as it is what drives their turnover.

Drives their turnover into the ground, amirite? It doesn't seem to be driving their growth or even maintaining what they have, anyway. More people just want to buy minis these days, without supersizing their order to include a shop.

Rurite? No.

It drives turnover by creating new players and maintain brand presence. At that point thy are ideally placed to pick up the initial binge spend by the new player and recover it at 100% of RRP. That's the theory anyway and seemingly reaonanbly successful at doing this. It would be be a huge vanity operation if these didn't cover their costs and I've never seen GW shy away from shutting something down if it costs money or doesnt meet targets. I would imagine that HO Overheads are seperate to this.

Existing players then have the option of discounting or continue supporting 'their' shop at full RRP.

I'd say that the chain is demonstrably not pulling it's weight.

Why move to one man stores if stores with multiple staff were making money? Surely even the densest mind at GW management wouldn't think that having the stores closed on days they were previously open, and open for shorter periods in the day would somehow net more cash than a multiple FTE model if that was already making money?

Why have this rolling program of store closures and openings if the locations were profitable? I'll concede that retail locations can require a special sort of alchemy, and sometimes locations which have no reason not to succeed crash and burn and others prosper where they have no right to, so a certain amount of risk and experimentation is required, regardless of how much research one does, but if that were the only reason we wouldn't be seeing well established stores closed in favour of new locations in the next town, or next shopping centre, or next street. We also wouldn't be seeing a near complete withdrawal from some locations (chiefly in the States and Antipodes) if those stores (many of which have been open for some time, so, presumably, making cash or at least paying for themselves) were pulling their weight.

I've said before that the chain is GW's biggest problem, it is inhibiting the way they can do business, and they are now stuck with the legacy of the decision to focus on their own stores to the detriment of third parties when, ideally, they need to be free of this sort of commitment. GW's gross margin on their products is nearly 75%, their net profit is around 10% - a substantial part of that difference can only be accounted for by the costs of running the stores.

Let me state that explicitly - if GW dropped their whole retail chain and their sales almost halved as a result, they wouldn't be in a significantly different position than they are now.

I think it's more arrogance than stupidity. I think the assumption is that the customer will buy anyway and there aren't opportunity sales, so a reduction in opening hours just means the wallets will come back another time or use the webstore.

Sadly, I have absolutely no trouble believing that. GW management's apparent disconnect with the reality of their business is quite troubling.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 notprop wrote:

 Vermis wrote:

 notprop wrote:
When you pay for GW, you are paying for the retail chain whether you like it or not.

GW will never drop the retail chain as it is what drives their turnover.

Drives their turnover into the ground, amirite? It doesn't seem to be driving their growth or even maintaining what they have, anyway. More people just want to buy minis these days, without supersizing their order to include a shop.

Rurite? No.

It drives turnover by creating new players and maintain brand presence. At that point thy are ideally placed to pick up the initial binge spend by the new player and recover it at 100% of RRP. That's the theory anyway and seemingly reaonanbly successful at doing this. It would be be a huge vanity operation if these didn't cover their costs and I've never seen GW shy away from shutting something down if it costs money or doesnt meet targets. I would imagine that HO Overheads are seperate to this.

Existing players then have the option of discounting or continue supporting 'their' shop at full RRP.

I'd say that the chain is demonstrably not pulling it's weight.

Why move to one man stores if stores with multiple staff were making money? Surely even the densest mind at GW management wouldn't think that having the stores closed on days they were previously open, and open for shorter periods in the day would somehow net more cash than a multiple FTE model if that was already making money?

I don't know, we are dealing with Tom 'Osmium' Kirby....

The Auld Grump

 Azreal13 wrote:


Let me state that explicitly - if GW dropped their whole retail chain and their sales almost halved as a result, they wouldn't be in a significantly different position than they are now.

Let's see;
>Massive redundancies, so an unnecessary cost in jobs and a use of capital to get rid of all those Redshirts.
>Breaking hundreds of leases would also generate a drop in capital.
>R&D and manufacturing that are out of scale with the business as a whole, this would so be lost/downscaled to fit but this would equally have an impact on output and capability.
>Stock prices would tank and the overall value of GW would reduce a fraction, ultimately being removed from trading on any major market - not good for the many people that own shares.
>I think your estimation of turnover is way off and your being way too generous. The last time GW had little or no shops was the late 80's so a comparable level of turnover might be more accurate, say £15-20M would be my estimate. So about the same size as PP. So that's basically handing the competitive advantage you have built up over 20years and pissing down the swany. I suspect GW would lose that battle.
>No more little Timmys. Hooray call the audience but you've wiped out a generation of new players plus all of the othe players that like the ubiquity of GW product will start to walk.

Hardly that similar commercially or structurally.

If you do not like their prices then do not buy it! Buy used on ebay and craigslist! You will help other players recoup their money.

 notprop wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:


Let me state that explicitly - if GW dropped their whole retail chain and their sales almost halved as a result, they wouldn't be in a significantly different position than they are now.

Let's see;
>Massive redundancies, so an unnecessary cost in jobs and a use of capital to get rid of all those Redshirts.
>Breaking hundreds of leases would also generate a drop in capital.
>R&D and manufacturing that are out of scale with the business as a whole, this would so be lost/downscaled to fit but this would equally have an impact on output and capability.
>Stock prices would tank and the overall value of GW would reduce a fraction, ultimately being removed from trading on any major market - not good for the many people that own shares.
>I think your estimation of turnover is way off and your being way too generous. The last time GW had little or no shops was the late 80's so a comparable level of turnover might be more accurate, say £15-20M would be my estimate. So about the same size as PP. So that's basically handing the competitive advantage you have built up over 20years and pissing down the swany. I suspect GW would lose that battle.
>No more little Timmys. Hooray call the audience but you've wiped out a generation of new players plus all of the othe players that like the ubiquity of GW product will start to walk.

Hardly that similar commercially or structurally.

Not quite the point I was making, I was more trying to illustrate what a significant impact the running of the chain has on their profit, not put forward an actual proposal to close it all overnight!

That said, to address some of your points as a theoretical exercise -

GW apparently has high turnover of staff - as a result it would probably be quite a lot cheaper to divest a lot of the staff than you think. Staff with less than a year's service can be drop kicked for any reason, with no comeback, and at a months salary per year of service redundancy, I doubt many staff would be entitled to significant payouts.

Leases would be a little harder, but ultimately landlords are only interested in getting their rent, so are often open to lease transfers etc. It wouldn't be easy, but the costs could be mitigated.

You're massively overestimating R+D costs, their cost of sales is less than a quarter of their revenue, and that includes production costs, materials etc, as well as design. Production costs would fall with a fall in unit sales, but I don't think it would be impossible to protect the design team, with perhaps a few redundancies.

Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity. It isn't relevant what their turnover is compared to PP, if PP are making the same profits at the end of the day, who's in a better position? Plus I'm not really estimating, I might be using round figures and loose mental arithmetic, but the numbers I'm using are taken from GW's statements, so while I might be off by a few percent here or there, the fundamentals are more or less accurate.

There were little Timmys before GW, otherwise where did all the wargamers that predate them come from? There are little Timmys finding their way into the hobby all the time in the US where GW's stores in no way are as saturated as they are in the UK. Know why? GW isn't the beginning or the end of the wargaming hobby. If all GW stores closed overnight, it wouldn't be long before independents began to replace them, that's in the parts of the world where anyone would notice the closure of all the GW's shops, of course.

 Azreal13 wrote:
GW apparently has high turnover of staff - as a result it would probably be quite a lot cheaper to divest a lot of the staff than you think. Staff with less than a year's service can be drop kicked for any reason, with no comeback, and at a months salary per year of service redundancy, I doubt many staff would be entitled to significant payouts.

In a lot of places it would be free to get rid of those employees. For example, here in NC unions are an abomination before god and you can be fired at any time for any reason, and all your employer owes you is your last paycheck for the hours you've already worked.

There are little Timmys finding their way into the hobby all the time in the US where GW's stores in no way are as saturated as they are in the UK. Know why? GW isn't the beginning or the end of the wargaming hobby. If all GW stores closed overnight, it wouldn't be long before independents began to replace them, that's in the parts of the world where anyone would notice the closure of all the GW's shops, of course.

And this needs to be emphasized. GW stores in the US might as well not exist, there aren't very many of them and they're rarely in high-traffic areas that would attract customers. So even when new customers do start buying at a GW store it's almost certainly because they heard about GW online/had a friend that plays/etc, things that would still happen at an independent store. If GW closed all of their stores overnight hardly anyone would notice their absence. The few people who buy and play at a GW store because it happens to be the closest store in their area would drive a bit longer and move to independent stores, and the majority that already buy and play at independent stores would continue on without any interruption.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
The value of GW stores can't be measured purely off what they sell. They are a form of advertising as well. How many people bought their first box from a GW but now buy from an FLGS, how many people play in GW's but buy their stuff from an FLGS, how many people would have quit if it weren't for their local GW, but still buy their stuff elsewhere? Those are the relevant questions. Even going back to the mid 90's when I started out, I bought my first box in an FLGS before I discovered GW existed, but the GW store is most definitely what kept me in the game... but I still bought stuff from the FLGS.

It's a really expensive form of advertisement, though - they spend 50m in it every year. It might be that it used to be important for GW presence and availability, but I doubt the same thing is true today. There's a good FLGS presence (despite competition from 400 GW stores!) and web shops serve you 24/7.

What would happen if GW dropped their stores? They might lose a few sales, but I'd say more than half of that would go to FLGS/internet. That would be +25m of profit, part of which they could use for advertisement and presence. Also, we probably would see a couple more FLGS's pop up, with some of the competition removed.

Being VERY general here:

Cut prices to the point Land Raider sized stuff is 50 bucks.
10 man squads 25
A codex with everything in it, paperback (No dlc bs) 25
Big Rulebook 50

And boom GW's stuff will sell like hotcakes.

Subject: What should GW sell there models for?

Answer: About half of current prices would still be "high".

Herzlos wrote:

 notprop wrote:
The thing is GW are running at a margin of between 10-13% most years so a price reduction of any significant amount would cut into their margin dramatically.

At a basic level reducing price by 20% requires an increase in sales of over 30% to maintain margin position and mitigate the extra overhead (assuming only 5% cost uplift and a 10% margin position).

That's hell of a lot of effort and a bigger risk just to break even. I'm no salesman but I'm not sure the extra sales are possible given such a reduction. It would be a massive roll of the dice to try and put this into action.

As a business trying to please shareholders there is zero chance of a Chairman putting his cock on the block for numbers like that.

Realistically I think the best GW could offer is holding prices for an extended period of time. The move to resin and the paring down of shops/staff makes this possible.

Agreed; a price cut is risky. But there's almost no risk or cost in increasing value. Doubling the number of sprues in a troop box costs pretty much nothinv but makes the box better value and should increase sales by more than enougb to compensate.

This is basically my thought. Don't make things cheaper by halving the price of current boxes, make them cheaper by doubling the number of models in a box, or make everything 3 for the price of 2. The cost of the sprues themselves seems minor compared to the other costs involved in selling the models, so your main goal should be to get the most money out of each customer even if it means giving them more product.

Azreal13 wrote:I'd say that the chain is demonstrably not pulling it's weight.

Do we even know how much it costs GW to keep the shops open? I flicked through their report and couldn't see it explicitly stated, but maybe I just missed it. Is 50M what they have said or what we have guessed?

Given the hobby centres make 42% of sales, I would not be too hasty to close them. Especially since I think a lot of sales come from other sources but are still a result of the stores existing. I would be taking a far closer look at which stores are making money and which ones aren't and aim to improve the poor performers long before I consider just giving up on them completely (rather than GW's current strategy of simply culling staff and moving them to areas of cheaper rent).



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 prowla wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
The value of GW stores can't be measured purely off what they sell. They are a form of advertising as well. How many people bought their first box from a GW but now buy from an FLGS, how many people play in GW's but buy their stuff from an FLGS, how many people would have quit if it weren't for their local GW, but still buy their stuff elsewhere? Those are the relevant questions. Even going back to the mid 90's when I started out, I bought my first box in an FLGS before I discovered GW existed, but the GW store is most definitely what kept me in the game... but I still bought stuff from the FLGS.

It's a really expensive form of advertisement, though - they spend 50m in it every year. It might be that it used to be important for GW presence and availability, but I doubt the same thing is true today. There's a good FLGS presence (despite competition from 400 GW stores!) and web shops serve you 24/7.

What would happen if GW dropped their stores? They might lose a few sales, but I'd say more than half of that would go to FLGS/internet. That would be +25m of profit, part of which they could use for advertisement and presence. Also, we probably would see a couple more FLGS's pop up, with some of the competition removed.

That would be a hugely epic gamble to think closing your stores would result in customers still buying but from elsewhere. Not something I'd expect any company to do without far more thought and planning. When half your customers buy directly from your stores that sell only your products I'd be very hesitant to tell them go buy from an independent store that is also pushing a bunch of other products that are your direct competition.

 notprop wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:


Let me state that explicitly - if GW dropped their whole retail chain and their sales almost halved as a result, they wouldn't be in a significantly different position than they are now.

Let's see;
>Massive redundancies, so an unnecessary cost in jobs and a use of capital to get rid of all those Redshirts.
>Breaking hundreds of leases would also generate a drop in capital.
>R&D and manufacturing that are out of scale with the business as a whole, this would so be lost/downscaled to fit but this would equally have an impact on output and capability.
>Stock prices would tank and the overall value of GW would reduce a fraction, ultimately being removed from trading on any major market - not good for the many people that own shares.
>I think your estimation of turnover is way off and your being way too generous. The last time GW had little or no shops was the late 80's so a comparable level of turnover might be more accurate, say £15-20M would be my estimate. So about the same size as PP. So that's basically handing the competitive advantage you have built up over 20years and pissing down the swany. I suspect GW would lose that battle.
>No more little Timmys. Hooray call the audience but you've wiped out a generation of new players plus all of the othe players that like the ubiquity of GW product will start to walk.

Hardly that similar commercially or structurally.

You're assuming they'd just drop the retail wing at once, with redundancies. Most likely would be that they'd just stop renewing leases unless they are cheap enough to get out of, and not replacing staff when they leave. Sure it'd probaly take them 10 years to run them all down but they'd be able to shed a dozen or so stores a year and make comparative savings, and it'd allow them some opportunity to migrate to a FLGS model at the same time.

Though this is GW, so that might be too sensible.

I'm not assuming I'm just following the premise that another had started.

Quick or Slow, There is nothing sensible in dropping a retail arm that generates 42% of sales at 100% of RRP.

This is one of the major factors why GW is 10 times larger than its nearest competitor.

 notprop wrote:
I'm not assuming I'm just following the premise that another had started.

Quick or Slow, There is nothing sensible in dropping a retail arm that generates 42% of sales at 100% of RRP.

This is one of the major factors why GW is 10 times larger than its nearest competitor.

That retail arm is also a very big reason on why their profit on each model sold goes from 78% to 12%. That is what Azreal13 is saying. It doesn't matter how many sales they are generating if they are stifling their profits by this much.

Also, their retail arm might be one of the major factors why GW is so big IN THE UK, the rest of the world couldn't care less about it and it still has to pay for it.

PhantomViper wrote:
Also, their retail arm might be one of the major factors why GW is so big IN THE UK, the rest of the world couldn't care less about it and it still has to pay for it.

Exactly. Here in the US GW's own stores might as well not exist. For example, in my area there are 3-5 independent stores (depending on how far you're willing to drive) and a single GW store, and the fact that we have even one GW store is unusual. Up until (IIRC) 2-3 years ago there wasn't a GW store in the entire state. So no, GW's retail stores have not in any way contributed to the success of GW products in this area, and the rest of the US is pretty much the same.

And if you reduce the turnover by dropping you do not reduce the base costs of manufacture. So the 78% gross profit will reduce at at least the same rate as the lost retail sales possibly more as you will now have increased the reliance on sales to distributors and FLGs (i.e. 55% RRP and not 100%). The cost would become a much greater factor against the smaller turnover making even a minor a price reduction very unlikely assuming it was possible to make any margin. It simply isn't possible to shear off a huge chunk of a company and discard it.

As for the UK vs RotW, its entirely relevant as its a UK company with a major stake in its home market. You pays your money you takes your chance on that one I'm afraid.

We are also forgetting another big chunk of the after gross profit charges will be international distribution and storage. 6 of one half a dozen of the other it would seem.

 notprop wrote:
And if you reduce the turnover by dropping you do not reduce the base costs of manufacture. So the 78% gross profit will reduce at at least the same rate as the lost retail sales possibly more as you will now have increased the reliance on sales to distributors and FLGs (i.e. 55% RRP and not 100%). The cost would become a much greater factor against the smaller turnover making even a minor a price reduction very unlikely assuming it was possible to make any margin. It simply isn't possible to shear off a huge chunk of a company and discard it.

If you take a -50% hit on sales and -50% hit on RRP, you're still at +12,5m, though. That would have doubled this year's profit

Obviously they don't need to axe all of their stores, but with 140 stores in the UK alone, I'd say there's some pruning to do. They could remove 80% of the UK stores, and still have a good presence with 30 strategic locations.

I remember about a year ago seeing a job advert on their website looking for someone to basically go around all the shops in all the countries where they operate and report directly to Kirby on what works or not, so I don't think they're going to just drop the retail arm anytime soon. Even with the decline of the high street, it'd be excessively hasty to do so.

 Davylove21 wrote:
I remember about a year ago seeing a job advert on their website looking for someone to basically go around all the shops in all the countries where they operate and report directly to Kirby on what works or not, so I don't think they're going to just drop the retail arm anytime soon. Even with the decline of the high street, it'd be excessively hasty to do so.

No your absolutely right mate. I was trying to give some logic to the position so that there could be some more realism to the wishlisting.

Conversely GW have been one of the few examples of UK High Street (read Main Street) retails that have strengthened their presence when many such locations are increasingly bereft of any shops other than the usual High Street Chain suspects.

I buy all of my GW minis from eBay. Currently building an Imperial Guard/Scions army.


30 Scions: $210 from GW, payed around $70 buying the bits instead of the box sets.

2 Taurox primes: $100 from GW, payed about $15 for each of them buying the bits individually.

Recently won an auction for a Cadian Defense Force set for $90. Sells for $165 on GW's site and has about $200 "worth" of IG in it.

I get what you guys are saying about GW's ridiculous prices, and I completely agree. However, there are cheaper ways of getting minis if you put in the effort.

 notprop wrote:
When you pay for GW, you are paying for the retail chain whether you like it or not.

GW will never drop the retail chain as it is what drives their turnover. It is why they are the size they are comparatively to all others wargames companies.

That is why they became that big, it's not why they stay big. And I only got into the hobby because I could get second-hand miniatures for half the price or less from ebay etc. And even that only because I have a job.
If they reduce their prices, more people might flock to them. I was interested in 40k when I was 12 or so, but i couldn't afford it back then and not every little Timmy has got rich parents.
So yeah, they would need to dramatically improve their sales numbers if they slash the prices. But that might revert the trend of dwindling customers and ever-higher pricing, scaring off more and more newcomers.

Hi folks.
Here are some figures I was given by my friend who works in manufacturing at Nottingham GW site.
The TOTAL cost of manufacturing the plastic kits and boxing them ready for shipping, including ALL over heads for manufacture , is 8% of the retail price.
(Design-development, materials, labour costs, and depreciation of assets,buildings and machinery etc.)

This rises to 24% of retail cost when the over heads of all other GW functions apart from retail and logistics are added.(Corporate/corporation level overheads.)

And finally a 32% of retail cost when all over heads EXCLUDING retail are added.

So if GW plc did not have a retail chain they would make 68% profit of their current retail prices, not just 12%

So 42% sales through GW stores costs them 56% of their profit!

(Note figures were only for plastic kits manufacture and packed in Nottingham facility, last year.)

Da Stormlord wrote:
I'm back into making threads now guys

So I went into GW on Friday and the prices were ridiculous. One model and two paints costing over £20? I think that GW could lower prices by 20% and actually get a better profit. A battlesuit commander (tau empire) costs £25. Doesn't anyone agree that this could be dropped to £20 and still be considered overpriced? What really pisses me off though is that a model half the size and made of the same materials is just £9.50? I'm tempted to abandon GW and head to the outpost, a store across the street that sells the same models for £15. A much cheaper solution to GW. I recommend you all visit there sight, they do other games such as dystopian wars and dropzone commander too.

Most people I know dont really care about the Prices... If the game was FUN to play people would pay its that simple.. I think the reason why the question about the prices keeps coming up is because people can no longer justify paying what they are for GW, when they are no longer having any fun playing the game

Other game systems that offer alot more FUN for your money are cheaper so why PAY more for less??...

 zlayer77 wrote:

Da Stormlord wrote:
I'm back into making threads now guys

So I went into GW on Friday and the prices were ridiculous. One model and two paints costing over £20? I think that GW could lower prices by 20% and actually get a better profit. A battlesuit commander (tau empire) costs £25. Doesn't anyone agree that this could be dropped to £20 and still be considered overpriced? What really pisses me off though is that a model half the size and made of the same materials is just £9.50? I'm tempted to abandon GW and head to the outpost, a store across the street that sells the same models for £15. A much cheaper solution to GW. I recommend you all visit there sight, they do other games such as dystopian wars and dropzone commander too.

Most people I know dont really care about the Prices... If the game was FUN to play people would pay its that simple.. I think the reason why the question about the prices keeps coming up is because people can no longer justify paying what they are for GW, when they are no longer having any fun playing the game

Other game systems that offer alot more FUN for your money are cheaper so why PAY more for less??...

I buy figures mostly for the painting and modelling interest as I get few few games of anything in. I used to buy and play GW a lot. Currently I'm earning more than ever in my life with the fewest other responsibilities, and I just can't justify the expense. You just don't get enough plastic in the box for what GW charge. Their prices are sky high for a weedy amount of product. I can afford it, but I can't justify it.

Lanrak wrote:
And finally a 32% of retail cost when all over heads EXCLUDING retail are added.

So if GW plc did not have a retail chain they would make 68% profit of their current retail prices, not just 12%

So 42% sales through GW stores costs them 56% of their profit!

That doesn't add up. If 32% of retail price is before it gets to stores and GW made 12.5% profit last year the cost of running the stores would be 55%. If you then close the retail chain, unless all your sales go to the online store (unlikely) but rather go to independents, they discount around 45% (I believe) for independents so their profit would only be 23% assuming they managed to have the same number of final sales.

Now obviously 23% is better than 12.5%, but I wouldn't be rushing out to close all the stores and expect to not lose any sales. I think the smarter thing to do is micromanage the stores better than just closing them, figure out which stores are doing well and which are doing poorly, figure out which stores were doing well before the shift to 1 man stores and are now doing worse, close stores that are unsuccessfully competing with FLGS's, in regions where there aren't many FLGS's and local GW stores are doing poorly look at some local advertising campaigns (global ad campaigns are massively expensive, but some local stuff might be realistic). I'd even look at doing sales and running local events in areas where sales are poor.

GW would also have the benefit of knowing (since the shift to having a lot of direct only items) if there's areas where there aren't many FLGS's, there are local GW's which are doing poorly but they still get decent online sales in those locations (indicating there's a community there but they mostly buy online rather than from stores) and they could try and work with local clubs in those areas.

 Filch wrote:
If you do not like their prices then do not buy it! Buy used on ebay and craigslist! You will help other players recoup their money.

I don't buy of ebay.
You know why?
People think that because they've painted an £18 tau pirahna they can suddenly sell it for £25


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And if you guys want to save around 40% on your models, I have a trick: Buy the web bundles instead of individual boxes

Da Stormlord wrote:

And if you guys want to save around 40% on your models, I have a trick: Buy the web bundles instead of individual boxes

Are...are you being serious?

When you say 'Web Bundles', do you really mean 'Special Boxed Sets', because the web bundles are literally only saving clicks. They are the exact sum of the all the kits in the bundle with zero discount.

Da Stormlord wrote:

 Filch wrote:
If you do not like their prices then do not buy it! Buy used on ebay and craigslist! You will help other players recoup their money.

I don't buy of ebay.
You know why?
People think that because they've painted an £18 tau pirahna they can suddenly sell it for £25


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And if you guys want to save around 40% on your models, I have a trick: Buy the web bundles instead of individual boxes

As mentioned earlier: 3k points of orks, 3k points of CSM, 1.5k points of demons and not a single piece bought for full GW price. When buying from ebay, 60% of retail is the absolute maximum I am willing to pay, and even that only if it's precisely what I need or is still in the box.

And yeah, Blacksails has it right: the web bundles don't save anything. Never did.

 Blacksails wrote:

Da Stormlord wrote:

And if you guys want to save around 40% on your models, I have a trick: Buy the web bundles instead of individual boxes

Are...are you being serious?

When you say 'Web Bundles', do you really mean 'Special Boxed Sets', because the web bundles are literally only saving clicks. They are the exact sum of the all the kits in the bundle with zero discount.

Well, its what a dude said on youtube.

Ebay/local ads

Well Modeling supplies I don't mind paying GW coz they are reasonable IMO. Plus I can pick up a new brush or occasional pot of spaint/spray paint in town when i run out rather then wait.

In terms of models...

I like buying sprues coz well I like to put the model together myself. I enjoy the process..

Seriously.. I got 10 DA brand new on sprues in box(you know the one before they decided to downsize the box to 5...) for the price of 5 GW are selling for NOW on ebay...
5 HB oop metal ones (the nice ones) NIB for £5 - GW price £24 pmsl
I got OOP metal farseers off ebay for 99p each.. (new unpainted) Missing heads granted but guess what... the DA sprues come with 16 heads to make 10 models

The so called "books" ( ) - Free on torent pdf if you want to go down this route.
Otherwise BRB and codex from GW is like £80... £80!!!!????
(I can get like 4 sets of game of thrones books for that money and maybe a used car.. okay, exaggerating but seriously..)

The only thing I am considering buying from GW is the farseer box that comes with 3 warlocks coz I realy like the model and they are not too common so might as well pay retail...


In terms of price ?
If they dropped 30% - 40% off their model ranges(limited edition stuff can stay the same price as collector exclusive pieces..) and about 60-70% of the books I would buy from GW only.

Da Stormlord wrote:


Well, its what a dude said on youtube.

So what you're saying is that you blindly trusted some dude on the internet without doing even a basic check yourself to see if it was true or not?

The web bundles offer zero savings. Go look yourself.

The box sets do offer savings. You can tell the difference because in the picture on the website, there will be a box behind the models. These offer savings somewhere in the 20-25% range, usually, but it varies.

The boxed sets are frequently also available from 3rd party sellers too, who offer further discounts, so it still makes no sense to buy from GW.

 Azreal13 wrote:
The boxed sets are frequently also available from 3rd party sellers too, who offer further discounts, so it still makes no sense to buy from GW.

True, which, when combined, can exceed 40% savings, or at least in the ballpark of that.

So that could explain Stormlord's 40% figure.

Unless what you want to buy is direct only, in that case you're fethed.

I'm actually happy buying the products of other companies at this point. Now that I think about it I can't understand why I was okay with GW's heroic scale in the first place.

I see a simple question to ask here: what would be a reasonable price for a new player to get into the hobby with an average sized army, say 1500 pts?

 prowla wrote:
I see a simple question to ask here: what would be a reasonable price for a new player to get into the hobby with an average sized army, say 1500 pts?

$200 for models and rules imo. Ignoring paint and hobby supplies I can get into most (all?) other games at the smaller end of average points for that much (or less).

*Just to clarify I find this reasonable from the perspective of someone looking at various games sitting on a shelf, now from a GW pricing point of view. Asking for 1500 points at that price is ridiculous, but only because they overcharge so badly.

 jonolikespie wrote:

 prowla wrote:
I see a simple question to ask here: what would be a reasonable price for a new player to get into the hobby with an average sized army, say 1500 pts?

$200 for models and rules imo. Ignoring paint and hobby supplies I can get into most (all?) other games at the smaller end of average points for that much (or less).

*Just to clarify I find this reasonable from the perspective of someone looking at various games sitting on a shelf, now from a GW pricing point of view. Asking for 1500 points at that price is ridiculous, but only because they overcharge so badly.

And I'm going to take this opportunity to keep on beating my drum that "its not about the prices its about the value".

Raise the points cost of everything back to what they were in 3rd or 4th edition and suddenly that price seems much easier to achieve. What would also help is if GW dropped this DLC nonsense and included all the rules in the army books like they were supposed to and scaled back the cost of the physical rulebooks to what they are actually worth.

I'm guessing that if all of the above was made, they wouldn't even need to touch the price of the actual miniatures.

PhantomViper wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:

 prowla wrote:
I see a simple question to ask here: what would be a reasonable price for a new player to get into the hobby with an average sized army, say 1500 pts?

$200 for models and rules imo. Ignoring paint and hobby supplies I can get into most (all?) other games at the smaller end of average points for that much (or less).

*Just to clarify I find this reasonable from the perspective of someone looking at various games sitting on a shelf, now from a GW pricing point of view. Asking for 1500 points at that price is ridiculous, but only because they overcharge so badly.

And I'm going to take this opportunity to keep on beating my drum that "its not about the prices its about the value".

Raise the points cost of everything back to what they were in 3rd or 4th edition and suddenly that price seems much easier to achieve. What would also help is if GW dropped this DLC nonsense and included all the rules in the army books like they were supposed to and scaled back the cost of the physical rulebooks to what they are actually worth.

I'm guessing that if all of the above was made, they wouldn't even need to touch the price of the actual miniatures.

Also if you didn't have to buy 2 boxes to make one unit, whether because of options not included (e.g. SM heavy weapons) or because a box only has 5 and you typically want 10 (e.g. Dire Avengers)

their prices should be lowered by 50%.

KaptinBadrukk wrote:
their prices should be lowered by 50%.

I think that would be dangerous. If sales don't double in the first year they are in the hole. A better idea is to double the contents of the boxes. Most of the costs involved in a box of tactical marines is packaging, shipping, storage and the costs of the store selling them. The plastic involved is maybe a couple of cents. They wouldn't eat any extra costs but would drive sales right up.

KaptinBadrukk wrote:
their prices should be lowered by 50%.

I love posts like this. What justification do you have for picking the 50% number? Is it based on analyzing GW's finances and concluding that a 50% reduction is the optimal point on the supply vs. demand graph? Or is it nothing more than "I want my toys to be cheaper, therefore GW should make them cheaper"?

 Peregrine wrote:

KaptinBadrukk wrote:
their prices should be lowered by 50%.

I love posts like this. What justification do you have for picking the 50% number? Is it based on analyzing GW's finances and concluding that a 50% reduction is the optimal point on the supply vs. demand graph? Or is it nothing more than "I want my toys to be cheaper, therefore GW should make them cheaper"?

That depends if we are discussing what would be optimal for GW, or about what do the customers want

 prowla wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

KaptinBadrukk wrote:
their prices should be lowered by 50%.

I love posts like this. What justification do you have for picking the 50% number? Is it based on analyzing GW's finances and concluding that a 50% reduction is the optimal point on the supply vs. demand graph? Or is it nothing more than "I want my toys to be cheaper, therefore GW should make them cheaper"?

That depends if we are discussing what would be optimal for GW, or about what do the customers want

Its a good point, but 50% would benefit GW

Da Stormlord wrote:

 prowla wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

KaptinBadrukk wrote:
their prices should be lowered by 50%.

I love posts like this. What justification do you have for picking the 50% number? Is it based on analyzing GW's finances and concluding that a 50% reduction is the optimal point on the supply vs. demand graph? Or is it nothing more than "I want my toys to be cheaper, therefore GW should make them cheaper"?

That depends if we are discussing what would be optimal for GW, or about what do the customers want

Its a good point, but 50% would benefit GW

They have a less than 10% average profitability on each model sold.

If they didn't do anything else other than just cutting the price of everything by 50%, they would be bankrupt by the end of this year...

How do they have 10% profitability and yet sell to trade customers at like 40 or 60% retail?

 Peregrine wrote:

KaptinBadrukk wrote:
their prices should be lowered by 50%.

I love posts like this. What justification do you have for picking the 50% number? Is it based on analyzing GW's finances and concluding that a 50% reduction is the optimal point on the supply vs. demand graph? Or is it nothing more than "I want my toys to be cheaper, therefore GW should make them cheaper"?

In all honestly, I also consider GW prices to double what they should actually be (in certain cases, triple or more), so a 50% drop all across their ranges would be a fine move towards getting themselves back into their own market.

Of course they'll never do it, and actually doing it right now could end up killing the company on a short-term scenario. But it's only their fault things have got to this point.

 jonolikespie wrote:
How do they have 10% profitability and yet sell to trade customers at like 40 or 60% retail?

That percentage is based on the trade price, not the retail price.

 jonolikespie wrote:
How do they have 10% profitability and yet sell to trade customers at like 40 or 60% retail?

Because those sales have someone else covering the additional cost of store rent, salary for the retail employees, shipping, etc. And if GW set the final price to that level they'd have to sell to third-party stores at half the current price, or effectively stop doing business with third-party stores that would no longer be able to compete with GW's own stores.

Korinov wrote:
In all honestly, I also consider GW prices to double what they should actually be (in certain cases, triple or more), so a 50% drop all across their ranges would be a fine move towards getting themselves back into their own market.

But, again, WHY should the prices be half (or even less!) or what they currently are. Have you analyzed GW's financial information and concluded, with solid evidence to support your conclusion, that GW would make more money by selling more boxes at a lower price per box? Or are you just another person who thinks that "I want my models to be cheaper" inevitably leads to "GW should make everything cheaper"?

For a minute there, i thought he might be australian.

A quick apology about my mistake in my previous post.

I meant to say if GW had not got the cost of a retail chain to pay for their gross profit would be 67% of the retail price, rather than just 12%.
So their chain of B&M stores that give them 42% of sales costs them appx 55% of their profit.

GW plc simply have to do market research to find out what adds value to their product, from the customers perspective.

When the GW B&M stores were 'Hobby centers' they added value.
When WD was a 'Hobby supplement' , it added value.
When the rules were focused on game play, not short term money grabs, they added value.

A while back GW plc had the option to take on competition directly in the open market.Engage with customers in a meaningful way and be competitive on value for money in the open market.
OR follow an insular marketing approach , using thier B&M chain to try to isolate GW customers from the rest of the war games market.

The easiest option the 'fat and lazy' one was the second option.
The world has changed massively since the 1990s, but GW business plan has not.