Redbeard wrote: I really don't understand the international laws or intricacies enough to follow the restriction topic. To me, Mark Wells put a letter out on Facebook saying that they needed to limit Eureopean sales to Australia because they needed to support the Australian infrastructure in Australian dollars. Given that I don't have any data, I'm fairly willing to believe that, because it has a certain logic to it.
Well, I can't really place an argument against that.....I think it's a simple case of you choose to believe, and I don't. I don't believe they have analysed the needs of the Australian Market, we've had this discussion before. If they need to make prices so overboard that the customers complain, or feel jsutified in buying fro international retailers, then quite clearly
GW marketing strategy for that region has failed.....I don't really see any other way of putting it.
Redbeard wrote: Having seen the picture of the new finecast sprue, yes, it's obvious that they re-engineered these molds to work with the new material. Who asked them to? I would expect that it was forward-thinking on their part. Metal prices have been rising a lot in recent years. For them to move out of metal may not have lowered our prices, but it may not have raised them as much as they'd need to be raised otherwise.
Well, I don't agree with this at all. The only resin sprue I've seen so far was of a new to market miniature from the Dark Eldar range.....that's no proof of re-engineering to me. The proof of the pudding will come from the blister packs that used to be metal miniatures....however, I think they'll be resin casts without sprues......I wonder why.
You call it "forward thinking"....that's your opinion. However, what's forward thinking about resin....it's hardly a new material is it? However, you can give
GW all the credit you wish.
Redbeard wrote: There has always been a balance between what models they choose to produce in what material. Historically, plastic is used for larger pieces, where the cost of materials, or weight, are factors. And plastic is used where they expect more mass sales. Metal has been used where they expect fewer sales. The reason for that is that the initial cost for metal molds is lower than that for plastic, so to commit to a plastic mold is more of a commitment upfront. They've been pretty good at knowing where to make the split, with a few notable exceptions. One of these, I think, was the Bloodcrushers. Initially, they released them in metal. I don't think they expected people to want to field 16, or 24 of them. But, in a nod to old-school chaos rules, the 40k unit sizes for the elite section were all based on the favoured numbers of the gods, so khorne got 8 bloodcrushers as a unit size, and people did just that. A year or so later, they redid the models in plastic. That's an awful fast turn around. I think the Bloodcrushers were a tricky case. They were not quite as big as a vehicle, but clearly use a lot of metal. When they realized they were hitting enough volume on them to justify the plastic mold, they redid them, and they're a lot cheaper in plastic now, they actually did pass the savings on to us. Some people forget (or fail to notice) when that sort of thing happens.
Fair enough, I'm not familiar with the history of that unit, so I can only take your word for it.
Redbeard wrote: Well, yes, but so do I. I'm both a gamer and a painter. I buy boutique minis to paint. I also buy GW models to paint, but I game with them too. As a gamer, I recognize that there are cheaper lines out there, but as a painter, I'm not interested in their quality level. I've been painting minis for 30 years. I started playing GW games seven years ago. I avoided GW for a long time, not because of price, but because their models looked static and cartoony. In the late 80s and early 90s, GW quality was awful compared to Ral Partha or even Grenadier. That's no longer the case. GWs stuff is among the best. Of the lines I look at, only Freebooter produces more consistently good models, in my opinion..
And you have a right to that opinion. I however, don't agree.....I think the new Dark Eldar range, by and large is the best range of miniatures have produced...ever! Even so,
IMHO, they still don't come close to certain other brands, but are we really going to argue on this point....it's a matter of personal taste surely.
Redbeard wrote: Yeah, my brother's father-in-law works in that industry too. Mandated 5% price reductions every year as part of the contract and all.
But you're supplying an industry, not consumers. Consumer sales and industrial sales are not the same at all. When the price of gasoline goes up, do the trucking companies eat it, or do they pass that along to the consumers in the form of higher prices on everything? If the price of copper doubles, and you've got a contract that says you have to reduce your price every year, you have to eat that loss or you lose the contract. I don't know how many contracts you have, but there aren't that many automotive companies out there. Losing one customer may well be 25% of your base. Selling to end-level consumers is nothing like that. One customer leaves, there are ten thousand (or more) remaining. You cannot compare hobbies like crashing Ferraris with mini wargaming, but you also cannot compare consumer sales with industrial sales. They're just different animals.
I think you missed the point of my "story".....you are absolutely correct, they are different.....however, the way markets work isn't so different. The long and the short of my point was, markets can drive a product and how a company deploys that product, not to mention price pressure. Take
LG and Samsung, selling their LED TVs, if Samsung dropped their prices, but still produced a great product, how long do you think it would be before
LG was forced to revisit their prices? Would consumers be happy to pay double or triple the price for a
LG over a Samsung LED TV?
Even in the world of wargames,
GW practically owns the market, so they can dictate the flow.....if there were more competition, we may see a change in tactics from
GW, and one that seeks to embrace the consumer.
Redbeard wrote: That is, of course, your choice. They don't make you feel good. I, however, look at the competition and I don't see a company trying to screw me over, I see a company trying to exist in an increasingly difficult economy, in a niche market. I don't leap to the conclusion that they're incompetent or worse, I look for data. I find rising prices for metal, for plastic. I see similar price increases in every aspect of my daily life. And I realize that ComEd isn't apologizing to me for raising the price of my electricity and BP isn't bending over backwards to justify the higher price of gas, and I have no expectation that GW should either. They're not my friend, they're a company. They're not cheating me, they're supplying a product at market standard prices. I do not feel taken advantage of, not because I am made of money and able to weather the increase in prices, but because I have done the research to determine why the prices must be raised for them to stay in business. And I've watched other gaming companies that don't make such decisions go under.
Utility companies have you buy the short ones, unless you want to roll up to the nearest cave and start buring firewood for warmth, and using cave drawings for entertainment, you're pretty much stuck with those guys, and they AREgoing to take you for every penny. Do we hate the Gas companies? or the electricity companies? how could you not?....however, like I said, I need those guys, perhaps more then they need me....can the same be said for
GW? If I don't buy that latest miniature, will I go hungry? will I freeze to death?...most likely not, so given the fact that
GW needs me more than I need them, shouldn't their business practices be a little different to the utility companies?
I'm gonna leave this discussion there I think. I think we can agree we can argue this one out till the cows come home. I think it's fair to say, that we have both tried to wrap our arguments in pseudo logic and inform "facts", but the bottom line is this, we don't have all the true facts about
GW, and how they operate their business. In the end it comes down to you and I as customers, and ultimately, how we feel as individuals. Either you can pull out your wallet and purchase with a smile or you can't....no one is going to be able to persuade you to change your mind, and why should they.
Some of your statements, do bear consideration.....but for me, I hate being bent over a barrell, and certainly not when it comes to my hobbies and how I spend my disposable income. Me going to
PP and others, has opened up the gaming market, and left me less vunerable to the wiles of
GW (whether Justified or not)....right now, I have some
GW stuff (
IG army, and a recently sold
DE army) and I can play with what I have. In terms of future investment, I will try to help other companies build competition for the market leaders....that's my choice.
