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Wings of Purity wrote:I find the staff members nice when they ask you if you need anything,I dont get frustrated with that...
But if they treat you bad just because you messed up the game tables a little bit or not buying something or not buying enoguh,I say screw them

Ah. So they actually gave you hassle because you hang out and use their tables and mess them up, while at the same time not spending money in the store?

Somehow this is all starting to make sense.

BTW, for those who are wondering, high detail, high durability injection molds for something as complex as a sprue can easily run in the 800k plus range.

The 'low cost' comes because you can produce a mold for pennies, so if you're making 10 million of something, that 800k gets spread out among an awful lot of units.

RisingPhoenix wrote:BTW, for those who are wondering, high detail, high durability injection molds for something as complex as a sprue can easily run in the 800k plus range.

The 'low cost' comes because you can produce a mold for pennies, so if you're making 10 million of something, that 800k gets spread out among an awful lot of units.

Yeah, obviously, volume lowers the cost per unit. The query is about the cost of an injection mould piece, while I'll repeat that I'm not in plastics manufacturing, from what I've seen that $800k cost seems high by an order of magnitude.

£500,000 ($800,000) moulds are very rare, most cost up to around £250,000 which by anyones standards, is a huge amount of money. Then they have to recoup that money. As someone has already said look around you. You cannot find anywhere models of the same quality that are cheaper. It just can't be done, especially when you consider everything else that is done with GW products, history, hours of playtesting, painting costs, modelling etc

Flames of War wanted to be, they promised to stay cheaper to lure in people, the only thing is that they too had to raise their costs, in some cases more than GW and PP costs per model.

sebster wrote:

RisingPhoenix wrote:BTW, for those who are wondering, high detail, high durability injection molds for something as complex as a sprue can easily run in the 800k plus range.

The 'low cost' comes because you can produce a mold for pennies, so if you're making 10 million of something, that 800k gets spread out among an awful lot of units.

Yeah, obviously, volume lowers the cost per unit. The query is about the cost of an injection mould piece, while I'll repeat that I'm not in plastics manufacturing, from what I've seen that $800k cost seems high by an order of magnitude.

Once you factor in the cost to hire a sculptor, sculpt the piece, render it in SolidWorks, transform the SolidWorks model into assimilable sprues, create a low-quality test mold, refine the sprue and test mold, then finally create the high quality final mold?

Sure. $80,000 seems reasonable for that procedure...

Hah yes - If we were all happy to play with really badly made miniatures THEN we could have our cheap ass warhammer models.

I've made a few molds and seen a lot of molds made (not for plastic - glass, silver and ceramics. but the principles are the same). anything over a 3 part mold is an absolute pig to make, you have to be a total perfectionist and even then it can all go horribly wrong.

We had an experienced Norwegian blacksmith in our university and he made a bet with the tutors that he could copy a plastic farmyard cow in ceramics. they laughed at him, and it turned out to be a 7 part mold!!! for a cow!!. He did finally manage it but he had a whole pile of deformed cows by the end. he probably spent upwards of 72 hours on this. for a cow...

So I can well believe that even amongst old pro's like GW the odd disaster like someone dropping a mold part could cost a bomb.


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you can always buy second had real cheap, so i think the real issue here is the price of codex and the way they keep changing them so you have to get new ones to play at the store

Anyone have a secondhand tau manta?


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RisingPhoenix wrote:

sebster wrote:

RisingPhoenix wrote:BTW, for those who are wondering, high detail, high durability injection molds for something as complex as a sprue can easily run in the 800k plus range.

The 'low cost' comes because you can produce a mold for pennies, so if you're making 10 million of something, that 800k gets spread out among an awful lot of units.

Yeah, obviously, volume lowers the cost per unit. The query is about the cost of an injection mould piece, while I'll repeat that I'm not in plastics manufacturing, from what I've seen that $800k cost seems high by an order of magnitude.

Once you factor in the cost to hire a sculptor, sculpt the piece, render it in SolidWorks, transform the SolidWorks model into assimilable sprues, create a low-quality test mold, refine the sprue and test mold, then finally create the high quality final mold?

Sure. $80,000 seems reasonable for that procedure...

800K is 800*1000=800,000 - not Eighty thousand, ten times less~!

RisingPhoenix wrote:Once you factor in the cost to hire a sculptor, sculpt the piece, render it in SolidWorks, transform the SolidWorks model into assimilable sprues, create a low-quality test mold, refine the sprue and test mold, then finally create the high quality final mold?

Sure. $80,000 seems reasonable for that procedure...

Meh, fair enough. As I said a bunch of time I haven't worked in the industry, but my vague experience indicated injection moulds like that came in at a fraction of the cost. If you know the industry pretty well I'm happy to hear that I was wrong.

sebster wrote:
Meh, fair enough. As I said a bunch of time I haven't worked in the industry, but my vague experience indicated injection moulds like that came in at a fraction of the cost. If you know the industry pretty well I'm happy to hear that I was wrong.

The problem essentially is, that for an ultra high detail, ultra precise mold (many molds are simply 'good enough' as you don't have any real need for high tolerances) around the size of a sprue, you blow $80,000 just on the mold. I think that's what you're working off of.

The problem is, there's 3 sprues per box. So that's $240k right there (3 molds). Now factor in the modeling, sculpting, and CAD work. That's probably another $60,000 or more. Dry run on molds using lower quality - $60,000-$240,000 (depending on how much lower the quality is). Making 10-30 sample pieces, assembly, examination for flaws, quality control, drawing revision to fix flaws - call it another $30k+.

That's before anything goes wrong. Yeah, you can easily pop $800k that way. There's just too much fiddly in there.

P.S. Chris...

Monster Rain wrote:

Wings of Purity wrote:I find the staff members nice when they ask you if you need anything,I dont get frustrated with that...
But if they treat you bad just because you messed up the game tables a little bit or not buying something or not buying enoguh,I say screw them

Ah. So they actually gave you hassle because you hang out and use their tables and mess them up, while at the same time not spending money in the store?

Somehow this is all starting to make sense.

Not at the same time,when you have bought most of your army at the store,and you are enjoying your time but you forgot to fix up the terrain after the game,And they get mad,i get pissed.
When they force you to buy something and you don't ,and they get mad,I get really pissed
When you buy something and they want you to spend more,but you don't,and they ignore you for that,I would leave and never come back

Wings of Light wrote:
When they force you to buy something and you don't ,and they get mad,I get really pissed
When you buy something and they want you to spend more,but you don't,and they ignore you for that,I would leave and never come back

With respect, do they really force you to buy? Really? They rant and rave, blood pumping in their temples ready to burst because you don't buy anything?

Oh no!
You are in a STORE and they want you to BUY something!
That must be HERESY!!!

/sarcasm

RisingPhoenix wrote:The problem essentially is, that for an ultra high detail, ultra precise mold (many molds are simply 'good enough' as you don't have any real need for high tolerances) around the size of a sprue, you blow $80,000 just on the mold. I think that's what you're working off of.

The problem is, there's 3 sprues per box. So that's $240k right there (3 molds). Now factor in the modeling, sculpting, and CAD work. That's probably another $60,000 or more. Dry run on molds using lower quality - $60,000-$240,000 (depending on how much lower the quality is). Making 10-30 sample pieces, assembly, examination for flaws, quality control, drawing revision to fix flaws - call it another $30k+.

That's before anything goes wrong. Yeah, you can easily pop $800k that way. There's just too much fiddly in there.

P.S. Chris...

Fair enough. Thanks for the explanation.

They don't really force me to buy anything,they ignore me if I don't,and I get pissed at that

Um, duh, if you're not supporting the store, why should they give a gak about you?

So you don't like them hassling you to buy things, but you sound annoyed when they don't bother you?

And you mess up their tables? You don't sound like a model(pardon the expression) customer.

So, which link is more appropriate?
1
Or
2

RisingPhoenix wrote:
P.S. Chris...

Yeah yeah lay off wasn't reading the poster names properly and didn't notice you were the origin of 800k, typo confused with innumeracy. Soz ^_^

guys, if you've been to GW Ringwood they are really nice,


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also in GW chadston, they are supposed to be nice.

ChrisCP wrote:

RisingPhoenix wrote:
P.S. Chris...

Yeah yeah lay off wasn't reading the poster names properly and didn't notice you were the origin of 800k, typo confused with innumeracy. Soz ^_^

I didn't say anything

Edit: My smiley looks much more evil than intended

cool vene! love those links. first one get my vote. I work in retail too and get narked from all the people who blame me personally for all the stores short comings.

RisingPhoenix wrote:

ChrisCP wrote:

RisingPhoenix wrote:
P.S. Chris...

Yeah yeah lay off wasn't reading the poster names properly and didn't notice you were the origin of 800k, typo confused with innumeracy. Soz ^_^

I didn't say anything

Edit: My smiley looks much more evil than intended

Hehe, I noticed ages ago - started to feel bad - damn conscience

Guys, seriously, does this stuff about evil smileys have all that much to do with the thread?

What is just interesting as mentioned earlier is that even though GW reported 127M in revenue, only 7M was profit.

120M went back into the business for operating costs and moulds etc.

That other 7(9 inc royalties) will be definitely used, like any other business to reinvest back into the business, for new products etc etc.

Like I said earlier, think about how many releases come out a month; and then think about all the additional costs that would come for each of these releases, each month.

Was that 08/09 or 09/10? I thought they were over 10M in real profit last report.

I'm not sure what the cost of moulds has to do with validating GW's business model. While I do concede that GW plastic kits have generally improved greatly in the past 10 years in both complexity and detail - the kits themselves have exceeded the level of detail provided by budget model companies (Revell) but are still somewhat primitive compared to kits made by high end pastic kit manufacturerers (Tamiya, Dragon, Hasegawa etc).

Using mould complexity to justify GW's price structure would suggest that other manufcaturers using equally (or more) complex mould systems should be charging GW level prices - OR be losing money! A good example of another company using complex moulds would be Bandai and their Gundam line - considering that the models once built, are rugged enough to see considerable play. Their moulds, like GW are able to deliver crisp detail and hollow barrels. They also boast composite multi-colour, multi material sprue including clear and rubber parts, pieces moulded in composite colours and generous use of polycaps for articulation. One might think that because of the complexity required to produce sprue of this type that the resulting models would be proportionally expensive - but this technology is applied to their whole line - basic 1/144 (~$10USD each) to super huge 1/48 (~much more expensive USD each)!, from the mightiest hero robot to the lowliest stumpy one episode appearing mono-eyed enemy! One might think that using multi-colour sprue technology on the $10 models must be losing them money - but Bandai's model making arm doesn't appear to be going bust any time soon...

This suggests to me that while the costs of complex moulds are substantial (say - £400k x 20 each year = £8 out of £120) - they only comprise a fraction of GW's annual costs and as such, are only proportionally responsible for the cost of their product.

-EDIT-

http://investor.games-workshop.com/downloads/results/results2010/2009-10_FinalFullYearReport.pdf

GW seems to have £16M profit 2010 after royalties. I think the key here is to note that there's only a +£0.8M increase in revenue over last year though and DECREASED revenue at constant currency. Therefore, to my uneducated eyes, it looks like the added profit must be coming from operational savings.

Bandai; the company that gives us Power Rangers, Tanagotchis, Ben 10 in their 3 guises, Harumika as well as dominating the market with products, spin offs with TV, films, cartoons and hundreds of licensing deals?

The company that has a turn over of $44.8 Billion and had profits of $229 million?

Do you really think you can compare the two? Really?

@Elmodiddly: Sure - why not? - unless you would like to posit that Bandai is losing money from their model making group and subsidizing it from its other arms.

As for claims that Bandai enjoys more widespread appeal, while Gundam is kind of a cultural phenomenon in Japan, it is still a niche product outside Japan. Its merch is targetted at and mostly consumed by fans of the series, very much like how GW merch is directly driven by fans and players of the GW universe through the wargame (and to some extension, the video games). To suggest that something like Tamogotchi or Ben10 would translate into additional Gunpla sales is ludicrous.

Bandai is doing what GW is trying to transition towards (cue CT Gamer from the first page) with its increasingly diverse portfolio of video games, card and board game and the upcoming Ultramarines film. The fact that Bandai has other profitable arms doesn't change the fact that while mould costs are expensive, they don't factor as much into the costs as defenders of GW's business plan claim.

While I am well aware that pleasing all customers is impossible - I think that to give GW's business model a free pass on that basis is silly, as there's clearly room for improvement in their strategy. I'm afraid that you and I will never see eye to eye on that.

They should just abolish the stores and drop prices slightly. Keeping only a few of the bigger, more clubbly stores open I think

GW customer service can be more tuned, their business strategy is spot on though considering their latest profits are up on last year.

What I am saying is that you can't compare a company such as Bandai because they have many fingers in many pies and such a large manufacturer can afford to do such things as you describe with their models because their business can absorb such costs.

GW cannot absorb such costs, you have seen the year reports, you can see where the molney is gong the same as me. They have to increase costs, it is business facts, items increase in costs, moulds etc so that has to be factored into it otherwise they don't make profit.

It's not about defending the business plan, it is the only business plan available to GW! They simply cannot afford to offset costs until such things as the movie take off and increase revenue.