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So, the question I got is: has anyone heard about any further price reductions (other than the previous price announcement in December)?

As an owner of a small injection molding company, I have notice that spot prices on Polypropylene have dropped over 50% since their highs in August with Polyethylene and Polystyrene showing similar trends. Prices in plastics have reach lows unheard of in years .

And GW reaches their target profit margin 2 years ahead of schedule.

I'm guessing most of that is due to the current economic meltdown. The price of oil is also at a low not seen in years and since plastic is made from it, it stands to reason why you're seeing those drastic drops. You likely know all of that so I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir.

I've been wondering myself, given so many things in general went up with the price of gas because of the cost of fuel for distribution, if we'd start to see prices of things go down. So far I haven't seen anything in the way of most commodities drop drastically with the exception of fuel. My guess is everyone is betting on fuel going back to 100+ dollars a barrel and so are not dropping prices. If GW were smart and had the rescources for it, or anyone that is in the business of making models, they would buy lots of plastic now while the price is so low.

If they dropped the prices they would only raise them again in 2 years when the price of oil skyrockets. This is a lull in price caused by the universal fall of production worldwide. It's far from a longstanding trend.

The price won't go down because the sales volume also went down, so most likely, any reduction in materials / transportation cost just offsets the overall reduction in demand.

Why do you think Vegas rooms are so cheap? Those casinos have about the same cost whether they are empty or full.

Ever since the Black Orc box came out a few years ago there has been a general drop in plastic box prices. All calvery boxes are 5 models for $22 now, from the cold ones to the cool new chaos knight and maurader horsemen.

prices will never go down even if the base material cost drops.

Like people always say " companies are there for profit, do they look like charity organization? "

As long as the high price wont show a significant effect on our purchases , GW will not lower the price

Oxfordseth wrote:Ever since the Black Orc box came out a few years ago there has been a general drop in plastic box prices. All calvery boxes are 5 models for $22 now, from the cold ones to the cool new chaos knight and maurader horsemen.

Yes but Calvary units was also 8 per box not 5.

$28 for 8 = 3.5 each
$17.5 for 5 = 3.5 each

thats like saying hey, i'll sell them in boxes of 1 calvary for $3.5 and omg thats so much cheaper then the $28

LunaHound wrote:
Yes but Calvary units was also 8 per box not 5.

Except that all the boxes that were previously 8 to a box still are 8 to a box (Empire, Bretonnia, Tomb Kings, High Elves, Wood Elves to name a few). The newer plastic cavalry that are 5 to a box for 22 used to be 5 metal models to a box for 40-50. Most of these represent special/elite units as well. That's a pretty significant savings.

GW always passes the savings onto the consumer. Of course, their definition of 'consumer' is 'themselves', so sadly we miss out.

Cheaper plastics production doesn't = lower prices for us, it = more profit for them.

BYE

whitedragon wrote:

LunaHound wrote:
Yes but Calvary units was also 8 per box not 5.

Except that all the boxes that were previously 8 to a box still are 8 to a box (Empire, Bretonnia, Tomb Kings, High Elves, Wood Elves to name a few). The newer plastic cavalry that are 5 to a box for 22 used to be 5 metal models to a box for 40-50. Most of these represent special/elite units as well. That's a pretty significant savings.

i wouldnt really call it savings, i would just consider it GW is ripping me off abit less :3

you cant justify elite units been more expensive directly, as its all related to how many would be bought vs how much was invested into putting it into production.

While the cost of raw materials have come down; GW doesnt buy these; rather they do a futures trade.

Besides you cant adjust prices everytime the price of your materials go up or down; thats like changing prices for your box sets on a hourly basis...

Aeon is right. Companies can't bing-bong prices up and down on a daily basis.

GW like any large company hedge against movements of raw materials costs, and this smooths out price fluctuations.

Also, the cost of plastic in a kit only accounts for about 2-3% of the total price. Even a 50% reduction in the cost of raw polystyrene would only drop the price of a Dreadnaught by about 38p.

I commented on the drop in the price of tin (and all metals) a couple of months back. The price of metal is a much greater proportion of the cost of a metal model, than the cost of plastic is for a plastic model, yet even so, I think the consensus reached was that the sensible thing for GW to do in response at the moment is nothing! Even given they increased the price of metal models in October citing the cost of metal as part of their excuse.

It's never sensible for a company to make a long term decision like pricing based on short term issues like commodity fluctuations, as, as Aeon mentioned, the company is likely hedged against them anyhow.

GW's pricing decision should (and is) more focused around perceived demand for their products, and as far as cost influences go, distribution and retail costs are far greater influences.

My long standing "issue" with GW is that I believe GW think their customers are a lot more price insensitive, than I think they are, and that is why I think they are overcharging. It has nothing to do with the relative cost of manufacture.

I was wondering, in the last five years, has GW lowered the cost of making their plastic kits? I remember when they would only make a couple of plastic sprues per army, as it was too expensive to make one for anything other than the troop choice. Now, looking at the Orks in particular, almost every model has a plastic sprue.

Chrispy wrote:I was wondering, in the last five years, has GW lowered the cost of making their plastic kits? I remember when they would only make a couple of plastic sprues per army, as it was too expensive to make one for anything other than the troop choice. Now, looking at the Orks in particular, almost every model has a plastic sprue.

I believe that GW has both invested in more inhouse injection molding equipment to make the plastics, and more CAD tech to design the plastic sprues. Their cost has gone down while the quality of the plastics has gone up. Compare the current Ork Trukk to the original Rhino for an idea of how much more detail and parts they've gotten unto every sprue.

If anything, GW will release more army bundles, formation packages, etc. with a built in discount rather than drop prices across the line.

they lower plenty of blisters by a US dollar in price... when they're 1 month away from being discontinued!

Yeah, the short answer is no. The longer one has a silver lining or at least the possibility of one. I have run several stores even a few from the ground up, and have seen GW evolve its pricing plans over the last 15 years or so. I have seen them force retailers to by 6 of every new blister, change minimum order levels and shift there support when they felt like it. Now adays They do change stuff when it don't work but a lot of the time the consumer probably wont see it.

Todays GW is A LOT more store owner friendly which allows them to stock what works best for them, that allows GW to get a more realistic hold on what is selling. Not the block ham fisted "you must have it all" ways of the past. All that info allows them to make better kits and make stuff that will sell better based on what WE are buying.

The do their annual "price review/alignment" all people comment on is stuff that went up, even though a fair amount of stuff goes down. Agreed that the stuff that goes down usually isn't some thing you gonna buy more of any why but the price did go down.

As evident with some of the newer plastic kits esp AoBR is more bang for you buck. There is way more bits and modeling possibility on the average sprue nowadays. So I think they are trying to make the high price worth it buy upping the over all quality and versatility of their product to us.

I always said putting out those press statemnet of " we a jacking up prices because oil and raw materials are going up" was a bad idea, cuz you know damn well when oil and raw materials come down the prices will not. So if the quality and value of the future product gets added to with out the price going up I think it sort of balances out.

Kilkrazy wrote:Aeon is right. Companies can't bing-bong prices up and down on a daily basis.

GW like any large company hedge against movements of raw materials costs, and this smooths out price fluctuations.

Also, the cost of plastic in a kit only accounts for about 2-3% of the total price. Even a 50% reduction in the cost of raw polystyrene would only drop the price of a Dreadnaught by about 38p.

Yeah, I didn't think about the fact that most of thier kits probably don't even have a pound worth of plastic in them, so the cost of the resin itself is probably less than $0.50 per kit.

FYI, most injection molders (and thermo and blow-molders) do ping-pong thier prices as raw materials go up and down but that is because resin makes up anywheres from 40-60% of the cost to produce and thier profit margins are extremely low. So I am sure that thier supplier (I assume they outsource to an injection molding operation) is passing on price increases and decreases to GW. But as you concluded, it wouldn't make much of an impact in their per piece cost to us the end consumer.

I am kind of doubtful that they buy on the futures market as not even Primex Corporation (a massive thermoforming operation in the states - my brother is the President of one of thier largest plants) which consumes around 500 million lbs of PP, PE, and PS combined each year, buys on a futures market. I don't know what thier annual global sales are but I doubt they exceed 500 million plastic kits.

Over here in the UK, VAT means everythings got weird prices now, on a side note, when the oil runs out, we'll have no more plasticrack, so either:
1. Run around yelling "I'm free! I'm free!"
2. RECYCLE YOUR SPRUES NOW

My Brother's plant has been experimenting with Bio-Plastics as alot of his consumers have been jumping on the "Green" bandwagon. Supposedly this is a PP resin produced from waste from the corn biofuel industry. It is more expensive than PP produced via conventional methods though.

P4NC4K3 wrote:Over here in the UK, VAT means everythings got weird prices now, on a side note, when the oil runs out, we'll have no more plasticrack, so either:
1. Run around yelling "I'm free! I'm free!"
2. RECYCLE YOUR SPRUES NOW

3. Oil won't even come close to running out in our lifetimes. Continue construction on your giant sprue castle.

It doesn't have to run out for everyone to be fundementally screwed. It's not a question of running out of oil, its not being able to produce enough to keep up with demand.

As it happens the current low oil price coupled with decades of underinvestment is setting us up for another oil shock that will make July 2008 look tame by comparison. Oil companies are cancelling projects left and right, which means that when the economy (and oil demand) recovers there probably won't be enough oil to meet demand.

Oh and according to the International Energy Agency, we will need to find and develop six Saudi Arabia's worth of oil between now and 2030. Where the hell is that going to come from?

Another real issue is that the net amount of energy we've been getting from oil has been decreasing as we've been using up the easy to get stuff first. Hence the increasing emphasis on unconventional oil, like the Alberta oil sands. The kicker is that you could have vast amounts of oil somewhere, but if it costs you 1 barrel of oil to extract 1 barrel of oil's worth of energy, you may as well forget it.

Enhanced oil recovery won't save us. If it could then US oil production would have recovered by now, given the incentive for oil companies to do so.

Peak oil will happen (it may have even happened already) and it will do so on our watch.

see www.theoildrum.com for more analysis on this topic.

the world is going to end in 2012 anyway so it doesn't really matter.

Like people always say " companies are there for profit, do they look like charity organization? "

More like the opposite, the money we give them is charity.

That's how I like to think of it, anyway. It isn't "big greedy company" so much as "desperate starving company". Without us helping them out they'll die.

usernamesareannoying:

That signature pic is priceless

P4NC4K3 wrote:Over here in the UK, VAT means everythings got weird prices now, on a side note, when the oil runs out, we'll have no more plasticrack, so either:
1. Run around yelling "I'm free! I'm free!"
2. RECYCLE YOUR SPRUES NOW

GW recycles unused sprues so they are 'kind of' a green company (thou I doubt they will justify high prices with the line that they care about the environment )

Linkdead wrote:

P4NC4K3 wrote:Over here in the UK, VAT means everythings got weird prices now, on a side note, when the oil runs out, we'll have no more plasticrack, so either:
1. Run around yelling "I'm free! I'm free!"
2. RECYCLE YOUR SPRUES NOW

3. Oil won't even come close to running out in our lifetimes. Continue construction on your giant sprue castle.

But we'll probably hit peak oil.

JohnHwangDD wrote:The price won't go down because the sales volume also went down, so most likely, any reduction in materials / transportation cost just offsets the overall reduction in demand.

Why do you think Vegas rooms are so cheap? Those casinos have about the same cost whether they are empty or full.

As some one who lives in Vegas and whose girlfriend works in a casino I can tell you you are woefully misinformed. The hotel room costs fluctuate daily, based on events going on like fights, concerts or holidays.

As someone who goes to Vegas from time to time, hotel room *PRICES* are far cheaper than they've been in quite some time.

That is, Vegas hotel rooms follow basic Econ 101 with a a classic reduction in price following a reduction in demand, assuming a fixed supply.

Also, Econ 101 point for you: PRICE isn't COST. PRICE is what someone is willing to pay. COST is what the seller has to pay. I submit that the cost of the Vegas infrastructure (mortgages, leases, staff, electricity, etc.) is relatively fixed whether they are full or empty. It's not like they can cancel a show due to reduced ticket sales. Nor can they shut down a hotel due to reduced room sales. Sure, they can cut hours to some extent, but that isn't going to save so much on costs which need to be recouped. So, better to price cheaply to get some revenue than to hold price and get nothing.

usernamesareannoying wrote:the world is going to end in 2012 anyway so it doesn't really matter.

ONOZ! 23!