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 fraser1191 wrote:

 Supershandy wrote:
Wow, we missed this party!

But then again we've been extremely busy lately, to answer one important question we are not planning any price rises this year so you can be rest assured that not only will you be able to get hold of high quality paint in various dropper bottle sizes in GW matched shades, you will now save even more money buying through us!

In regards to our products being available in retail environments, there are plans to get this underway this year in the U.K only for now but we plan to be hitting international stores within 2-3 years (unless we get any requests in the interim, we've already had some interest from U.S stores)

As for international markets, this was one of the first considerations we made when we were planning the brand and our pricing is the most competitive in the market as well as fast (Parcels arriving in Australia in a much as 2 weeks...sometimes less).

We're also getting a lot of love for our metallic paints at the moment across social media with the realism being one of the high points as well as it's ease of use, we also regularly update our lines with new colours and we also have a new version of our washes on the way, same great colours and higher pigment content than GW...or less if you go for the Soft version but it will stay exactly where you put it and not run off everywhere allowing for some great precision when applying the washes.

You can use the links below to check out more about us and if you look at our recent work, you'll see an interesting modification we did to a Riptide model

Was this copied from somewhere?

Supershandy is the owner of INSTAR Paint.

 fraser1191 wrote:
Has anyone ever thought of starting a petition for GW to lower their prices/fix their foreign prices. I'll probably have to pay $120 for a box now

Ouch! There was a petition online last year. I doubt the things influence them much. I'm afraid decreasing sales is the only thing that could influence their behavior in the players' favor.

Customers will always ask for lower prices. In general its rare to find any market where there isn't someone asking for a lower price.

bigger businesses get it en-mass through the net and most of the time they won't even rise to comment on it. They just chug along and look at the actual sales data. If their product starts to dwindle in sales then they can conduct market research and look at why their product isn't selling - though the argument might be more complex than "too high a price". Quality, customer service, access, stores etc... could also confuse and muddy the water.

So petitions won't do much; esp online where they can be faked. I don't just mean fake accounts, but also people voting who are not, nor never will be, GW customers even if they gave you their product for free.

Blastaar wrote:

 fraser1191 wrote:
Has anyone ever thought of starting a petition for GW to lower their prices/fix their foreign prices. I'll probably have to pay $120 for a box now

Ouch! There was a petition online last year. I doubt the things influence them much. I'm afraid decreasing sales is the only thing that could influence their behavior in the players' favor.

There's always a couple floating about (1, 2 & 3, for example) but they never go anywhere (and then there are these ones...).

beast_gts wrote:

Blastaar wrote:

 fraser1191 wrote:
Has anyone ever thought of starting a petition for GW to lower their prices/fix their foreign prices. I'll probably have to pay $120 for a box now

Ouch! There was a petition online last year. I doubt the things influence them much. I'm afraid decreasing sales is the only thing that could influence their behavior in the players' favor.

There's always a couple floating about (1, 2 & 3, for example) but they never go anywhere (and then there are these ones...).

That's soul crushing...

If they kept the current boxes the same price but newer boxes were more expensive then yeah sure, but I don't want all boxes to go up. Also for the record straight conversion of prices a start collecting box should be 76 in Canadian (id settle for 80) but I gotta pay 24 dollars more for I guess shipping? Or just the GW premium I suppose

Even higher prices?

Here's a semi-rhetorical question: How do other model manufacturers such as Perry, Gripping Beast and Fireforge manage to sell boxes of stuff like.... 44 plastic Romans (various poses with variety of equipment and body part swaps), or 12 multi-part War of the Roses plastic cavalry with more customisable options than the GW kits... for £22, yet GW expects people to pay £35 for 5 space marine Stern Guard or what-ever that have roughly the same or less volume of plastic made in the same manner?

We could pretend that GW molds are made out of platinum and their plastic is blended with unicorn dust and foie gra, but let's not kid ourselves here. As for 'detail' and quality of sculpt - some of these other companies beat GW hands down.

beast_gts wrote:

Blastaar wrote:

 fraser1191 wrote:
Has anyone ever thought of starting a petition for GW to lower their prices/fix their foreign prices. I'll probably have to pay $120 for a box now

Ouch! There was a petition online last year. I doubt the things influence them much. I'm afraid decreasing sales is the only thing that could influence their behavior in the players' favor.

There's always a couple floating about (1, 2 & 3, for example) but they never go anywhere (and then there are these ones...).

That last one…

 Wulfmar wrote:

Here's a semi-rhetorical question: How do other model manufacturers such as Perry, Gripping Beast and Fireforge manage to sell boxes of stuff like.... 44 plastic Romans (various poses with variety of equipment and body part swaps), or 12 multi-part War of the Roses plastic cavalry with more customisable options than the GW kits... for £22, yet GW expects people to pay £35 for 5 space marine Stern Guard or what-ever that have roughly the same or less volume of plastic made in the same manner?

A semi-rhetorical answer:

Historical games have the andvantage that they don't need to pay designers to develope the art/beackground/look of the specific units and don't need to protect the IP

Another reason is the army size, as most historical games are not valued by a per model prize but a "how much do I pay for the whole army"
A reason why smaller scales were a thing as armies in 28mm full metal were not affordable and players prefered 15 or 6mm (even 15mm WW2 Soviet light tank armies were rare before cheap plastic tanks were available)

So people from different games are willing to pay different prices for their armies.

A historical player who has not a growing system but need the full army at once is not willing to spend more than 200-300 for it (and never 800 or 1000)
A GW game were you start small and have a growing collection also start with those 200/300 but you end up with much more
This was a reason why Warhammer 8th did not work out that well as new gamer needed to spent 600 or more just to start the game (the nice mix of increase prize per model and model count per army)

40k also started low with a 2000 point army consisted of what you get in a nowadays core box.
The per model prize did not really change over time, but the model count per army did and the playerbase just got used to it over time

PS:
GW also had once an experiment about prizing
The plastic Chaos Knights and Hounds were released for cheap just too look if the lower prize will increase the sales to a point were higher profit is made
Suprisingly it did not. People could say now that an elite unit were you don't need much in an low model count army for a system that is already decling is a bad example, but GW's conclusion was different

PPS:
Just for the general info about the cost of such a product, the full color cardboard box costs more than the plastic inside regarding raw material and manufactoring
the high cost for HIPS come from the high start investment the get the design and molds done

Is this the reason GW is increasing the price of paint?...

GW also have a lot more overheads, Nottingham HQ, hundreds of physical store locations (plus staff), in-house manufacturing with all of the associated maintenance, etc. I imagine people like the Perry's have a much, much, leaner organisation (i.e. a small design office using outsourced manufacturing).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Not trying to defend the prices per se, just advising caution in your comparisons.

 Jadenim wrote:
GW also have a lot more overheads, Nottingham HQ, hundreds of physical store locations (plus staff), in-house manufacturing with all of the associated maintenance, etc. I imagine people like the Perry's have a much, much, leaner organisation (i.e. a small design office using outsourced manufacturing).
(....)

Which is why I will never, ever, buy a new GW model no more. I am surely willing to pay for the manufacturing of the model and of course the design. I don't need to pay for staff in another countery, IP I don't like or the GW shareholders.
There's businesses and greed.

The few models that GW produces and that I actually like, end up on ebay eventually. Just a matter of patience.

 Jadenim wrote:
GW also have a lot more overheads, Nottingham HQ, hundreds of physical store locations (plus staff), in-house manufacturing with all of the associated maintenance, etc. I imagine people like the Perry's have a much, much, leaner organisation (i.e. a small design office using outsourced manufacturing).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Not trying to defend the prices per se, just advising caution in your comparisons.

Yeah, that's why hand made items are universally orders of magnitude cheaper than mass produced ones.

 kodos wrote:

 Wulfmar wrote:

Here's a semi-rhetorical question: How do other model manufacturers such as Perry, Gripping Beast and Fireforge manage to sell boxes of stuff like.... 44 plastic Romans (various poses with variety of equipment and body part swaps), or 12 multi-part War of the Roses plastic cavalry with more customisable options than the GW kits... for £22, yet GW expects people to pay £35 for 5 space marine Stern Guard or what-ever that have roughly the same or less volume of plastic made in the same manner?

A semi-rhetorical answer:

Historical games have the andvantage that they don't need to pay designers to develope the art/beackground/look of the specific units and don't need to protect the IP

Thats right. No historical model designers have to do any work at all in research and development of the kits they are going to produce, in order to ensure they are correct for the era. Nope, none at all.

 kodos wrote:

A historical player who has not a growing system but need the full army at once is not willing to spend more than 200-300 for it (and never 800 or 1000)

Oh please. Really? Really? "its because historical players are cheapskates"?

Suggest you take a look around at some of the historical armies and projects out there and then work out some of the costs involved!



PS - why are GW raising prices again? Because they always do. /end thread.

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

Thats right. No historical model designers have to do any work at all in research and development of the kits they are going to produce, in order to ensure they are correct for the era. Nope, none at all.

There is a difference between model a tank/plane/ship/model after detailed pictures and plans available for everyone
or pay someone who have to create those detailed pictures and planes and make sure that those are completely unique so you don't get into copyright problems

If you think that paying the designer of a new race for a SciFi model is equal to buying an book about WW2 Uniforms, ok

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

Oh please. Really? Really? "its because historical players are cheapskates"?

That is not what I said, I said for them the total army price is relevant.
The common player will never go and just buy a 1000€ army that is equal the standard point game in size and the Perrys won't sell a lot models if they would rise their prizes on a GW level and not just becaue historical players are cheapskates

I feel like this thread should go to General now. We are past the news point for the most part..
(I guess roll on Feb 4th when it can for sure..)

 kodos wrote:

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

Oh please. Really? Really? "its because historical players are cheapskates"?

That is not what I said, I said for them the total army price is relevant.
The common player will never go and just buy a 1000€ army that is equal the standard point game in size and the Perrys won't sell a lot models if they would rise their prizes on a GW level and not just becaue historical players are cheapskates

Never mind.

Here's a semi-rhetorical question: How do other model manufacturers such as Perry, Gripping Beast and Fireforge manage to sell boxes of stuff like.... 44 plastic Romans (various poses with variety of equipment and body part swaps), or 12 multi-part War of the Roses plastic cavalry with more customisable options than the GW kits... for £22, yet GW expects people to pay £35 for 5 space marine Stern Guard or what-ever that have roughly the same or less volume of plastic made in the same manner?

As someone posted it is about overhead and the infrastructure GW is financing. There seems to be a somewhat different design process as well and I would like to wonder what the overhead of those differs as I imagine the GW process is somewhat more expensive(whether that justifies such a large increase in pricing is another thing).

There is one thing I can tell about the process though. With many of the historical minis it is much easier to build a new one on the same basis as another. It's what they used to do in toys(see Toys That made Us - Star Wars for examples) and it cuts a lot of the cost down dramatically. For GW a new unit can cost much more in production due to it being relatively unique in the line. I mean, there aren't many kits that you could make the Tervigon out of cheaply which is why GW tends to make multi-part kits out of a new kit to save on development where they can. It is one of the reasons they(GW) can relatively easy churn out those Primaries lieutenants: they are just using the existing model and reposing and modifying a little bit. Compare that to something more advanced like the new Ork buggiez. I went through some of the Perry lines and saw where they were basically using the same basic model but adding different clothing on top. This cuts corners dramatically and historical armor is often more easy to make as it is easier to clone between models compared to some proprietary snowflake uniforms that vary(often wildly) between units.

I would also add that the detail work on the historical minis and GW are in different leagues. The historical minis are proficiently done especially compared to the fact that many(if not most) are handsculpted in an analog way, but they do not have the same level of finesse and detail as the digital counterpart. I work with some really talented digital sculptors and that takes time and money and that is before we count in computers, software licenses, and other overheads. if you look at some of the older GW lines that were handmade like many of the historical figures you start to see the pricing become much more similar to their historical counterparts.

There is also some differences depending on the kit. The Foreign Legion at Perry is 7.5 pounds for monopose static models. For a multi-part kit with a lot of options and ways to pose you get the Cadian Command Squad for just about double. Both detail and options between the Perry one and the Cadian Command Squad are very different. There I would say you are paying for both options, details, and more plastic in general.

Now, don't get me wrong. GW could do with lowering prices on some things(Fyreslayers for one), but with some of the costs on models I fear we are still suffering from the Kirby era pricing.

In short there are a lot of factors and it would be a bit dishonest to do a 1-to-1 comparison as there are very different factors at work. That does not mean that GW couldn't have more room to improve their pricing on various sets.

All those painting videos and podcasts and community content and cartoons and community engagement that everyone has been raving about... that all costs money. GW miniatures are also physically larger and more complicated that historical plastic miniatures, so fewer fit on a sprue. The perry brothers sculpt their own miniatures so they don't have to pay sculptors or researchers and don't need concept artists and don't have to work with background writers to determine what to sculpt. And there's no doubt the quality of the engineering on GW plastic is much higher than the historical kits done by renedra.

beast_gts wrote:

 fraser1191 wrote:

 Supershandy wrote:
Wow, we missed this party!

But then again we've been extremely busy lately, to answer one important question we are not planning any price rises this year so you can be rest assured that not only will you be able to get hold of high quality paint in various dropper bottle sizes in GW matched shades, you will now save even more money buying through us!

In regards to our products being available in retail environments, there are plans to get this underway this year in the U.K only for now but we plan to be hitting international stores within 2-3 years (unless we get any requests in the interim, we've already had some interest from U.S stores)

As for international markets, this was one of the first considerations we made when we were planning the brand and our pricing is the most competitive in the market as well as fast (Parcels arriving in Australia in a much as 2 weeks...sometimes less).

We're also getting a lot of love for our metallic paints at the moment across social media with the realism being one of the high points as well as it's ease of use, we also regularly update our lines with new colours and we also have a new version of our washes on the way, same great colours and higher pigment content than GW...or less if you go for the Soft version but it will stay exactly where you put it and not run off everywhere allowing for some great precision when applying the washes.

You can use the links below to check out more about us and if you look at our recent work, you'll see an interesting modification we did to a Riptide model

Was this copied from somewhere?

Supershandy is the owner of INSTAR Paint.

Certainly am!

And this is where it all started

I find it interesting that most of the posts I've seen on this thread are from users I've never or rarely seen in GW threads. It seems like it's mostly been people for whom the price raise is irrelevant since they don't play GW games.

vince1248 wrote:

 Jadenim wrote:
GW also have a lot more overheads, Nottingham HQ, hundreds of physical store locations (plus staff), in-house manufacturing with all of the associated maintenance, etc. I imagine people like the Perry's have a much, much, leaner organisation (i.e. a small design office using outsourced manufacturing).
(....)

Which is why I will never, ever, buy a new GW model no more. I am surely willing to pay for the manufacturing of the model and of course the design. I don't need to pay for staff in another countery, IP I don't like or the GW shareholders.
There's businesses and greed.

So every single product you buy manufactured by an internationally operating company you buy second hand, right?

Your clothes, the phone/computer you use to view this forum, tv, books, etc. What about food and other groceries? No shopping at major supermarket chains for international food brands either I guess.

 EnTyme wrote:
I find it interesting that most of the posts I've seen on this thread are from users I've never or rarely seen in GW threads. It seems like it's mostly been people for whom the price raise is irrelevant since they don't play GW games.

The ones most likely affected are those on the fence about getting into the game. A rise in price acts as another barrier to their entry even if they already had other barriers; it just adds to them and makes it feel as if the company is pushing them away from it.

Those who already have armies and are committed to them are going to grumble a little, but at the same time might not need any more start collecting boxed sets; or have used this as a justification to grab a few more before the prices go up and the stock runs out before the change.

Meanwhile those who aren't into the hobby at all aren't here to comment. So its no surprise to me that its people on the fringe who are wavering in and out wanting to start

 Wulfmar wrote:
Even higher prices?

Here's a semi-rhetorical question: How do other model manufacturers such as Perry, Gripping Beast and Fireforge manage to sell boxes of stuff like.... 44 plastic Romans (various poses with variety of equipment and body part swaps), or 12 multi-part War of the Roses plastic cavalry with more customisable options than the GW kits... for £22, yet GW expects people to pay £35 for 5 space marine Stern Guard or what-ever that have roughly the same or less volume of plastic made in the same manner?

We could pretend that GW molds are made out of platinum and their plastic is blended with unicorn dust and foie gra, but let's not kid ourselves here. As for 'detail' and quality of sculpt - some of these other companies beat GW hands down.

There are a lot of reasons which sort of add up.

Historical miniatures do not really need designers, fluff writers etc. They just need 3D CAD modellers to turn existing historical images into renders.This is where a lot of the money goes, the volume of plastic involved hardly even counts as a cost.

GW have a lot of costs which could probably be regarded as "keeping the hobby as a whole alive" such as running their large network of stores and their promotional budget. There are a few big companies producing a few profitable lines which keep the networks of FLGS open and operating Without them we would be back where we were before GW got big - the only real place to play those historical games was at home or at clubs which were rather few and far between (and poorly publicised and hard to find). The small companies such as you mention do not maintain chains of stores nor do they really do any of the legwork in maintaining the profitability of anything but themselves. That is perfectly fine and that is how small companies in this industry have always operated - but if the big companies started operating that way then the hobby as a whole would diminish over time back to the tiny size it had before.

GW do most of their manufacturing in the UK and pay western wages - while a lot of other companies may be based in western countries I am not aware of many of the smaller ones producing plastic minis anywhere other than by outsourcing it to China. Actually paying workers a decent wage seems to be very unfashionable in business these days but it is not something I can find it in my heart to condemn GW for doing.

Gw is certainly a gateway company for miniature wargames in general. In fact with hobbies like Airfix and such being on rather a downer at present I'd wager that GW is possibly the primary introductory point for many.

Certainly in the UK market GW is very well known - most parents have heard of it and by and large most people are aware it exists. So they've already got a huge influence on drawing new people into the hobby.



GW is doing a vast amount of the recruitment legwork that many other companies in the miniature wargames market rely heavily upon even if they might not realise it.

I'd also wager that Historical is on a timebomb in that because they don't market as heavily they are a risk that many of their gamers are much more senior with a much smaller proportion of younger players. This runs a higher risk that they can wind up with a big generation gap and thus, at some point, will lose a large portion of customers around the same time and will have a hard time rebuilding.

Here is What Fireforge said about why their fantasy prices are higher than their historical prices:

"maybe could be strange for you, but our company will earn the same selling one box of an historical product or two boxes of our future fantasy range

This is due to the different production cost.

Our intention is to release on the market really nice figures for fantasy games, from the wargames to the roleplay games and honestly we think they are nice, and also a great push forward from our past production, here some differences:

The proportions are better
There will be the bases you need also for other games
They will be as usual compatible with other sets
There will be a lot of option to assemble them in different ways
The details will be well defined (like the chainmail)
The joints of the parts will be better for assembling
There will be command options to assemble leaders, standard bearers and musicians in all the boxes (except the Living dead peasants, but you will have a double command option in each Living Dead soldiers set to use with peasants)

And in any case, i would like to tell a couple of things:
-1 we are not doing our production with the idea to sell figures for other games, these models are thought for our game, if people will buy them to play AOS or 9th age etc, we will be happy of course, but our intention is our new game
-2 there are companies (someone told about historical companies but it is not only this case) that to increase the price or continuing to sell with a low price their products give you a plastic lower in quality as material: this will be not our way to work as our customers know


A lot of things, for example definition of the sculpts, different sculpting work, more working hours, number of parts and accessories and more.

In past we released historical figures thanks to recycling parts of other plastic sets: otherwise it was impossible to release them. The new fantasy production will not follow this way and each plastic kit will have different parts from others (the torso of a northmen archer is different by the torso of a northmen warrior and so on) and of course this increase a lot the costs.

Who will join to our campaign will do that because think our figures are nice and wants some.
Who will not join our campaign because don't like our models, don't like our prices or other right reasons, will not do that. I think there is nothing of bad. But absolutely there will not be a change of the project to satisfy all the different opinions and wishes, it is simply impossible to do. This campaign will be the result of the best we can offer at the moment, if there will be enough people supporting us we will be happy to release these figures otherwise the project will be cancelled and we will continue to work on our usual market. "


EDIT: This is in response to Wulfmar's question.

 Wulfmar wrote:
Even higher prices?

Here's a semi-rhetorical question: How do other model manufacturers such as Perry, Gripping Beast and Fireforge manage to sell boxes of stuff like.... 44 plastic Romans (various poses with variety of equipment and body part swaps), or 12 multi-part War of the Roses plastic cavalry with more customisable options than the GW kits... for £22, yet GW expects people to pay £35 for 5 space marine Stern Guard or what-ever that have roughly the same or less volume of plastic made in the same manner?

We could pretend that GW molds are made out of platinum and their plastic is blended with unicorn dust and foie gra, but let's not kid ourselves here. As for 'detail' and quality of sculpt - some of these other companies beat GW hands down.

1) There is more competition in Historical miniatures. More competition leads to better prices for the consumer.

2) The historical game companies do not need to keep a staff of talented artists and model markers on hand to fully realize an entirely new unit. All you really need is a large breadth of reference photos and a few guys who can take those reference photos and construct them in a 3D CAD program.

3) GW is a big, big company and it needs to support a huge staff and a world-spanning empire. The prices of its models are set to a bit below what GW believes the market will bare.

"They have high overheads" is categorically not an inherent defense for higher prices.

If you take a luxury car compared to a basic one, you can point to areas where the manufacturer has used more complex systems, higher quality materials, simply included more, to justify a price difference.

If you take two pots of acrylic paint, both comprised of a carrier and a pigment, and the only justification for one's higher price is "muh overhead" then what you have is a company that's managed itself into a situation where it can't compete.

GW leans so hard on its market position for leverage sometimes that should there ever come a time where this sector attracts attention from any sort of market disruptor it's going to have a real fight in its hands.

The absolute reason GW charges what they do - is because people pay it. End of story. If they weren't selling, GW would reduce prices, or reduce inventory, or reduce stores (something they've done several times in the US - anyone who's been around knows how spastic they were about retail locations for the past 15 years).

I don't tend to buy new GW products (except at discount, with free shipping...and additional sales) and won't in the future. However, that doesn't mean other people aren't. I can genuinely say that 80% of GW's current new products are not worth the MSRP "to me". Some are decent deals (particularly via other retailers), but I don't find the models' costs justified.

It's overwhelmingly obvious GW is doing well, and people are still buying stuff at very reasonable rates. They've zero reason to cut costs. Nothing speaks louder than actually stopping buying new product ---- but that would mean tens of thousands of ardent supporters stopping buying stuff from GW. It's not going to happen. Will they eventually price themselves into the stratosphere? Perhaps. Could they sell a box of Primaris marines for $25? Absolutely. Will they? No. No reason to...people are buying them for $60.

Almost any hobby/model company would love to be able to charge what GW does. If we're honest, GW doesn't need retail stores, and they could reduce their overhead substantialy if they desired. They don't see the need to do that at the moment.

 Azreal13 wrote:
"They have high overheads" is categorically not an inherent defense for higher prices.

If you take a luxury car compared to a basic one, you can point to areas where the manufacturer has used more complex systems, higher quality materials, simply included more, to justify a price difference.

If you take two pots of acrylic paint, both comprised of a carrier and a pigment, and the only justification for one's higher price is "muh overhead" then what you have is a company that's managed itself into a situation where it can't compete.

GW leans so hard on its market position for leverage sometimes that should there ever come a time where this sector attracts attention from any sort of market disruptor it's going to have a real fight in its hands.

Exalted!

And it is hard to believe sometimes that this real, credible market disruptor hasn't shown up yet though!

 Elbows wrote:

If we're honest, GW doesn't need retail stores, and they could reduce their overhead substantialy if they desired. They don't see the need to do that at the moment.

This is the part I disagree with. They do need the stores.
Where else will younger players just getting into the hobby learn that there is only Warhammer to play. That you must buy only GW terrain to play a GW game. You only paint with GW brushes and use GW paints. That you can only ever use GW figures for GW games. Etc etc etc.

It's the reason there's the comments like "I'd like to try game XYZ, but I don't like the figures by the XYZ company". It's why there's so many people defending GW on here and looking forward to the price rise. GW need the shops for that cult-like brainwashing.