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Herzlos wrote:
Since when has GW shown any common sense?

Getting rid of finecast.

Herzlos wrote:
And would they really try and avoid upsetting customer A by upsetting customer B instead? I think you're giving them far too much credit.

If it increases revenue yes. Welcome to the world of publically traded companies where decisions are made by out of touch old men & the customers feelings don't really matter, as long as they keep buying.

Again I admit it was ultimately about trying to get more money (As is every decision they make) but it was also about PR damage control.

If it wasn't a money grab they would announce a second printing and take orders for that as a online sale and supply the stores with the copies they have.

 Shas'O Dorian wrote:

Herzlos wrote:
Since when has GW shown any common sense?

Getting rid of finecast.

They still have finecast, they've just generally made it online only so it's harder to check/return.

Again I admit it was ultimately about trying to get more money (As is every decision they make) but it was also about PR damage control.

Fair enough. I still maintain that money was their only consideration.

Herzlos wrote:

 Shas'O Dorian wrote:

Herzlos wrote:
Since when has GW shown any common sense?

Getting rid of finecast.

They still have finecast, they've just generally made it online only so it's harder to check/return.

That's funny because it's actually easier to check/return if you place an order through a GW shop.

 Shas'O Dorian wrote:
I don't need a citation it's common sense. I'm not saying extra money wasn't a factor but it wasn't a PURE money grab as OP claims.

Bad PR is bad for business many people flat out said "If I can't get hardcover I'm not buying one" which means some people might not even check the site for book IV and just said F it. There were talks on podcasts of people just putting their hardbacks up on ebay and being done with end times (further decreasing sales) Every decision GW (or almost any for-profit company) makes ultimately comes down to "How much will this make or lose us?"

Yes money played a factor but no it wasn't a PURE cash grab it was also to mitigate bad PR which in turn affects business revenue. So it does all come down to $$ (just like any other business) and call it a cash grab if you want, I see it as damage control.

GW had some options, but they chose the one the one that made them the most money in the short term and screwed stores doing business with them, and the customers of those stores. GW has always been about the money. But they used to think long term, not short term. They used to value stores selling their product, not their own website.

They mitigated some bad pr, gained bad pr with stores. Its a wash. All that's left is the cashgrab.

Herzlos wrote:

 Shas'O Dorian wrote:

Herzlos wrote:
Since when has GW shown any common sense?

Getting rid of finecast.

They still have finecast, they've just generally made it online only so it's harder to check/return.

By that loigic, they still have metal miniatures too. Eldar Farseers, for example.

Finecast and metal are just outdated models that haven't yet been replaced. They aren't stocked at stores, because they are obsolete, and finecast causes too many problems for local stores. GW's replacement policies, by the way, are excellent; the best in the industry as far as I'm concerned. Take a picture of a bad or damaged piece, and you'll get it replaced by FedEx within a few days, with no hassle at all. I have emailed them many times on both plastic and finecast (sometimes a piece is broken in a box set). Once, I even emailed them on a damaged sprue on a box I bought more than a year prior that I just had never opened, and they sent me a replacement right away.

In a couple of cases, I've had a whole sprue sent to me, when only part of it was damaged.

 Shas'O Dorian wrote:
I don't need a citation it's common sense. I'm not saying extra money wasn't a factor but it wasn't a PURE money grab as OP claims.

Bad PR is bad for business many people flat out said "If I can't get hardcover I'm not buying one" which means some people might not even check the site for book IV and just said F it. There were talks on podcasts of people just putting their hardbacks up on ebay and being done with end times (further decreasing sales) Every decision GW (or almost any for-profit company) makes ultimately comes down to "How much will this make or lose us?"

Yes money played a factor but no it wasn't a PURE cash grab it was also to mitigate bad PR which in turn affects business revenue. So it does all come down to $$ (just like any other business) and call it a cash grab if you want, I see it as damage control.

So, a man that owns two FLGS's is telling you that he now has a soured relationship with GW as do many other FLGS's and that's not bad PR? What do you think will happen the next time someone comes into his/their store(s) and expresses an interest in tabletop gaming? I'll give you a hint, it won't be, "Let me show you the fine products from GW!" More like, "I'd show you GW products but they stopped letting me carry their products so how about some Privateer Press?" The silly thing is how last-minute this whole thing is. If they thought they were going to sell out that quickly, they could have ordered a larger printing or communicated in some form before-hand with FLGS's to soften the blow but nope, didn't happen.

I'll be back in a moment, I'm going to go find some wax for that untarnished armor you're wearing.

 agnosto wrote:

 Shas'O Dorian wrote:
I don't need a citation it's common sense. I'm not saying extra money wasn't a factor but it wasn't a PURE money grab as OP claims.

Bad PR is bad for business many people flat out said "If I can't get hardcover I'm not buying one" which means some people might not even check the site for book IV and just said F it. There were talks on podcasts of people just putting their hardbacks up on ebay and being done with end times (further decreasing sales) Every decision GW (or almost any for-profit company) makes ultimately comes down to "How much will this make or lose us?"

Yes money played a factor but no it wasn't a PURE cash grab it was also to mitigate bad PR which in turn affects business revenue. So it does all come down to $$ (just like any other business) and call it a cash grab if you want, I see it as damage control.

So, a man that owns two FLGS's is telling you that he now has a soured relationship with GW as do many other FLGS's and that's not bad PR? What do you think will happen the next time someone comes into his/their store(s) and expresses an interest in tabletop gaming? I'll give you a hint, it won't be, "Let me show you the fine products from GW!" More like, "I'd show you GW products but they stopped letting me carry their products so how about some Privateer Press?" The silly thing is how last-minute this whole thing is. If they thought they were going to sell out that quickly, they could have ordered a larger printing or communicated in some form before-hand with FLGS's to soften the blow but nope, didn't happen.

I'll be back in a moment, I'm going to go find some wax for that untarnished armor you're wearing.

it is bad PR as well but a few angry retailers is LESS bad than dozens of podacasters with hundreds of listeners & social media reaching thousands. it was a lose-lose they just made a decision to minimize the damage. My LGSes don't care that they aren't getting HC they're happy to have SC as it means they won't run out.

There are many people without a LGS and instead play in local clubs and all order online. it was going to be bad one way or the other, pissing off a portion of retailers is less bad than creating another social media gak storm affecting thousands if not tens of thousands.

Upsetting the people selling your product is not less bad than upsetting the people buying your product. Even if it was to delay the Web store selling out, it might buy the them a few minutes.

Herzlos wrote:
Upsetting the people selling your product is not less bad than upsetting the people buying your product. Even if it was to delay the Web store selling out, it might buy the them a few minutes.

Yes. It is. If you upset the people BUYING your product the people selling it will no longer CARRY your product. The end buyer can still order direct of their site pissing off the end user is probably the single worst thing you can do.

Think about it, The flow goes User & Money <<<Models/Money>>> Distributors <<<Models/Money>>> GW. if you remove distributors it will decrease sales but it still leaves users& Money<<<Models/Money>>>GW & Models

if you remove users you get Nothing, as no distributor will stock a product that doesn't sell.

 Shas'O Dorian wrote:

Herzlos wrote:
Upsetting the people selling your product is not less bad than upsetting the people buying your product. Even if it was to delay the Web store selling out, it might buy the them a few minutes.

Yes. It is. If you upset the people BUYING your product the people selling it will no longer CARRY your product. The end buyer can still order direct of their site pissing off the end user is probably the single worst thing you can do.

Think about it, The flow goes User & Money <<<Models/Money>>> Distributors <<<Models/Money>>> GW. if you remove distributors it will decrease sales but it still leaves users& Money<<<Models/Money>>>GW & Models

if you remove users you get Nothing, as no distributor will stock a product that doesn't sell.

Miniature Market became large enough to ignore GW and their hijinks and now no longer carries their products. An example of how large retailers can tell the company to go play someplace else. Since they are a very large FLGS as well in a large market (St. Louis), guess where GW products are not being purchased?

 agnosto wrote:
[

Miniature Market became large enough to ignore GW and their hijinks and now no longer carries their products. An example of how large retailers can tell the company to go play someplace else. Since they are a very large FLGS as well in a large market (St. Louis), guess where GW products are not being purchased?

There are other retailers. I'm not saying it won't affect them I'm saying they chose the lesser of 2 evils.

 agnosto wrote:

 Shas'O Dorian wrote:

Herzlos wrote:
Upsetting the people selling your product is not less bad than upsetting the people buying your product. Even if it was to delay the Web store selling out, it might buy the them a few minutes.

Yes. It is. If you upset the people BUYING your product the people selling it will no longer CARRY your product. The end buyer can still order direct of their site pissing off the end user is probably the single worst thing you can do.

Think about it, The flow goes User & Money <<<Models/Money>>> Distributors <<<Models/Money>>> GW. if you remove distributors it will decrease sales but it still leaves users& Money<<<Models/Money>>>GW & Models

if you remove users you get Nothing, as no distributor will stock a product that doesn't sell.

Miniature Market became large enough to ignore GW and their hijinks and now no longer carries their products. An example of how large retailers can tell the company to go play someplace else. Since they are a very large FLGS as well in a large market (St. Louis), guess where GW products are not being purchased?

I live two miles from their store, and have four or five comic/game stores within 15 minutes, all of whom sell GW products....at full retail. GW is sold in saint Louis, and doing fine. Although many other games are also doing well. There's also a GW store about 40 minutes away.

Never said GW was dead in StL. I am never able to understand how people continue to attempt to spin loss of market presence as anything but a bad thing. Sure, they have some stores that turn over a relatively small amount of inventory but volume of salea is where businesses make money, not places primarily dedicated to Magic like Game Nite, comic shops or a tiny GW. When a place like Miniature Market stops selling your miniature game, you have issues.

Not sure if this is even on topic but it is on the topic of original post.

It makes sense for them to pull them from local game store, it is their best seller "that I lived through" and all these store are selling at a discount "which pissed them off online".. So by making them direct only HC is easy math.

People who bought all HC to date will want complete collection and other local game store probably still have some in stock not making money so.

Now people will say well people would not buy it because they want dicount or what ever well they probably did the math.

If they sell 600 at X- 20% because stores give a discount = Y amount of money
Now if they sell 500 at X = They break even with if they gave to Local game stores and still have 100 more to sell.

Now since some stores give a 20% discount they obviously get a better discount then that so games workshop would get even a smaller cut well gimping their own stores who have them in stock.

Unfortunately, we really don't have the information to base any sort of 'Best Seller' claims on.

We do know that they sell out, and apparently somewhat quickly (not sure how many, if any are still in stores...). However, we don't know the size of the print runs. It may just be a(nother) example of GW not knowing their customer base at all.

If they are printing 1000 copies, and 2000 people want it - that isn't really an example of an item being their best seller...it really just shows how disconnected they are. Their best seller would have been the Space Hulk game from a few years back (not this time around...as I have heard that it has fallen a bit flat from where they were expecting it to be).

Even worse than that though is that because they are so disconnected from their customers, the 1000 copies will end up costing them in the end. Shipments get lost, damaged or otherwise don't make it to their end users. Book bindings are broken, glued together pages or otherwise defective. GW is obligated to make those issues right, and without actually having any stock on hand - they can't.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 mikhaila wrote:

 Shas'O Dorian wrote:
I don't need a citation it's common sense. I'm not saying extra money wasn't a factor but it wasn't a PURE money grab as OP claims.

Bad PR is bad for business many people flat out said "If I can't get hardcover I'm not buying one" which means some people might not even check the site for book IV and just said F it. There were talks on podcasts of people just putting their hardbacks up on ebay and being done with end times (further decreasing sales) Every decision GW (or almost any for-profit company) makes ultimately comes down to "How much will this make or lose us?"

Yes money played a factor but no it wasn't a PURE cash grab it was also to mitigate bad PR which in turn affects business revenue. So it does all come down to $$ (just like any other business) and call it a cash grab if you want, I see it as damage control.

GW had some options, but they chose the one the one that made them the most money in the short term and screwed stores doing business with them, and the customers of those stores. GW has always been about the money. But they used to think long term, not short term. They used to value stores selling their product, not their own website.

They mitigated some bad pr, gained bad pr with stores. Its a wash. All that's left is the cashgrab.

I don't know if they really mitigated any bad PR. The items will still be difficult to get online (most likely) and that will mean that plenty of people will not get copies who want them. You will still see it show up on eBay for sale at above retail, sort of a given with any product now - especially those in relatively short supply. All of that doesn't do well to stop the consumer PR issue.

It definitely gains bad PR with stores, but it also creates additional bad PR that they didn't have before - the B&M store consumer. There are still a lot of people who buy locally - because that is what they do. They dutifully have preordered through their local store and were confident that they would receive the product, just as they have done for the past 20 years... Now, they find out that they won't...but they can go online and try to get a copy that way. I doubt that you will find many store owners who are willing to take the bullet for GW on this sort of thing, so the blame and bad PR from this new disgruntled customer group is going to rest squarely at the feet of GW.

What GW does get though is 35-50% - ish. Ish, because they have to pay for shipping and additional logistics labor for individual orders which is greater than if they shipped to stores (per unit).

Fingers crossed that it ends up backfiring on them and they have a pile of books at the end of this with no one who actually wants them.

Is Thanquol the fourth book in the series?

My local retailer posted a message today to apologize to all the folks who'd preordered a hardback copy of book 4 of the End Times. Apparently GW switched them all out for softcover copies and didn't even bother informing the store. The store itself is eating the cost and GIVING these gamers the softcover editions for free.

angryboy2k wrote:
Is Thanquol the fourth book in the series?

My local retailer posted a message today to apologize to all the folks who'd preordered a hardback copy of book 4 of the End Times. Apparently GW switched them all out for softcover copies and didn't even bother informing the store. The store itself is eating the cost and GIVING these gamers the softcover editions for free.

Yeah the fourth in the series.


Fair play to your retailer on doing that

I posted this in the other group, but I'll post it here. This was an awful situation, but was easy enough to work around. Stores that managed to order a few got credited the margin difference from ordering direct, so theres that. A little legwork needed our store 50 copies of the HC

 Sergeant Horse wrote:
I posted this in the other group, but I'll post it here. This was an awful situation, but was easy enough to work around. Stores that managed to order a few got credited the margin difference from ordering direct, so theres that. A little legwork needed our store 50 copies of the HC

I've only been to it once, but their store is pretty dang awesome if you ever get the chance to go.

 Sergeant Horse wrote:
I posted this in the other group, but I'll post it here. This was an awful situation, but was easy enough to work around. Stores that managed to order a few got credited the margin difference from ordering direct, so theres that. A little legwork needed our store 50 copies of the HC

Is there that big of a fantasy community at gigas? Are those all hardcovers? I'm not a fantasy player so haven't been keeping up with the end times except for the occasional plot recap.

 warboss wrote:

 Sergeant Horse wrote:
I posted this in the other group, but I'll post it here. This was an awful situation, but was easy enough to work around. Stores that managed to order a few got credited the margin difference from ordering direct, so theres that. A little legwork needed our store 50 copies of the HC

Is there that big of a fantasy community at gigas? Are those all hardcovers? I'm not a fantasy player so haven't been keeping up with the end times except for the occasional plot recap.

There sure is, about 30 are sold so far and all are Hardcover copies

Wow - that's insane that you could get 50! Great for your local player base, and well done on your part as the retailer. Sucks that most retailers couldn't do this though, with all the hoops to jump through.

And yet my local GW couldn't get a single damn copy to put on the shelves.

 Kanluwen wrote:
And yet my local GW couldn't get a single damn copy to put on the shelves.

A lot of that goes to the new and improved GW logistics system. They go through and randomly assign stock to the Eurozone, Australia (not sure if you guys even have your own warehouse anymore...) and Memphis. Most likely they over assigned stock to the UK and under assigned stock to the US. As opposed to paying a bit of air freight to correct the issue - they send 50 copies to Ireland (not besmirching them for it).

If they want to play the just in time logistics game, they need to have the legs for it. GW doesn't, which is why they have so many of the issues they have relating to stock since they cut Memphis to the bone.

Luck o' the Irish, I guess.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
And yet my local GW couldn't get a single damn copy to put on the shelves.

A lot of that goes to the new and improved GW logistics system. They go through and randomly assign stock to the Eurozone, Australia (not sure if you guys even have your own warehouse anymore...) and Memphis. Most likely they over assigned stock to the UK and under assigned stock to the US. As opposed to paying a bit of air freight to correct the issue - they send 50 copies to Ireland (not besmirching them for it).

If they want to play the just in time logistics game, they need to have the legs for it. GW doesn't, which is why they have so many of the issues they have relating to stock since they cut Memphis to the bone.

That store is in Marietta, Georgia not Ireland...

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
And yet my local GW couldn't get a single damn copy to put on the shelves.

A lot of that goes to the new and improved GW logistics system. They go through and randomly assign stock to the Eurozone, Australia (not sure if you guys even have your own warehouse anymore...) and Memphis. Most likely they over assigned stock to the UK and under assigned stock to the US. As opposed to paying a bit of air freight to correct the issue - they send 50 copies to Ireland (not besmirching them for it).

If they want to play the just in time logistics game, they need to have the legs for it. GW doesn't, which is why they have so many of the issues they have relating to stock since they cut Memphis to the bone.

That store is in Marietta, Georgia not Ireland...

it sure is I just happen to BE Irish, so still that luck,( and 3 and a half hours on the GW website ordering.)