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Bombot has become my enabler.

At least that's what I'm telling the DEA.

Just curious... wouldn't photos of the boxed sets fall under Fair Use since BWBits is a US company?

Posted By Polonius on 03/21/2007 12:05 PM

One question that only GW has the answer to is: What percentage of overall sales are by hardcore GW gamers, and what percentage are by casual modellers, collectors, etc? I'm guessing the amount of product purchased by hardcore gamers like us is smaller than we think, and they sell a fair amount of kits to folks who buy one off blisters or tanks. I clearly could be wrong, but you know GW has (or should have) those numbers.

They don't.

21 March

• <strong align="left">Games Workshop & Battlewagon Bits [/b]
  There have been alot of rumors flying around the web lately about our March 20 announcement. We will issue a statement next week about our plans for the future. In the meantime we are still open for business, with all products still available for purchase.

Posted By Kesher on 03/21/2007 8:18 PM

21 March

• <strong align="left">Games Workshop & Battlewagon Bits [/b]
  There have been alot of rumors flying around the web lately about our March 20 announcement. We will issue a statement next week about our plans for the future. In the meantime we are still open for business, with all products still available for purchase.

Posted By Breotan on 03/21/2007 7:36 PM
Just curious... wouldn't photos of the boxed sets fall under Fair Use since BWBits is a US company?

From wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

"Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—

<dl><dd>

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work."

</dd></dl>Essentially, fair use is what allows Weird Al to make parodies, movie critics to show clips, teachers to make photocopies of newspaper articles, etc.  Using anothers IP for profit is harder, especially if the profit to be made is at the expense of the owner, is generally not fair use.  For example, Weird Al's "Amish Paradise" didn't limit demand for Coolio's CD.  I think GW would argue that BWB's use of their IP allows them to make a profit at GW's expense, because it limits demand for buying stuff from GW. 

Posted By Polonius on 03/21/2007 8:54 PM

Essentially, fair use is what allows Weird Al to make parodies, movie critics to show clips, teachers to make photocopies of newspaper articles, etc.  Using anothers IP for profit is harder, especially if the profit to be made is at the expense of the owner, is generally not fair use.  For example, Weird Al's "Amish Paradise" didn't limit demand for Coolio's CD.  I think GW would argue that BWB's use of their IP allows them to make a profit at GW's expense, because it limits demand for buying stuff from GW. 

Heh. I remember GW's statement around 2002 regarding this issue. Yeah, GW is taking control of their box art IP on internet retail sites for the good of the B&M stores....my ass...

Thanks for the laymans clarification, Polonius.

If limiting images is good for B&M stores, why is GW making such an effort to kill off the B&M with their boutique mall outlets?

In addition to their shops in select locations, GW dictates to B&M shops how to display product, minimum $ amounts for ordering, huge initial start up costs for ordering, bad accounting practices. The IP internet issue was simply stated to blur the real issue. GW wants to be able to sell their own product and dictate their own prices. It's GW's bottom line, not anyone else's they are concerned with.

GW must be run by idiots! Any reasonable widget producer welcomes more resellers. More sales = more profits... simple economics. Second, and more importantly, GW has recently stated that they have ignored the "Hobby People" in the past and are looking for avenues to bring them back into the fold. This would, to me, would seem to be a turn down the wrong highway.

GW looks at this all wrong... Internet sales is basically free advertising for their wares. The more people who see their products the more who might buy them. They should not be so concerned with the profit margin from every single sale but instead should be looking to increase profit by increased sales and lower prices. Again, simple economics. This whole "artificial scarcity" thing that GW is creating really turns my stomach.

they are not idiots just have the wrong plan for the states. they are thinking it is ok to sell 20% less at 40% more profit. if you can sell 100 dollars retail to a B&M shop for 60 bucks, you would be better off to sell 80 retail stuff through your own stores. The problem is that most people will not spend fifty bucks in one shot for 5 terminators. but would spend 100 bucks over time if they could get terminators at $5 at shot. boxing every thing turns it from pocket money purchases to expensive. i would probally pick up a lot more crap from GW if i could go to their store and walk out with something for less then $10 but it is getting harder and harder to do that.

I'm sorry, not understanding day 2 of micro-economics 101 makes them idiots in my book.

Someone mentioned about BWbitz buying from a distributor - they do - that distributor is GW. As another poster pointed out GW is a wholly vertically intergrated company.

It seems like the easiest thing for BWBitz to do is get pictures of painted models/squads/vehicles for the box sets. It would not suprise me to see a large number of people send it photos of their squads for them to use. i'd send them pics of my tau (which I bought wholly from them and ebay - thanks for the plasma rifles...).

Beefheart: I suspect that GW does understand day 2 of micro-econ. While not being a strict monopoly (there are other games to play, I'm blanking on the exact term right now, it's been 10 years since I finished my M.S.), they can charge enough on their product to return a very nice sustainable return.

What seems to be more of a problem for them is that they have not adjusted their pricing models to take into account the downturn in the overall gaming industry partially brought on by the last couple years of world wide instability in the general economy. Since gaming is a luxury item, and the housing market is taking a nose dive in the US, leading to increased fears of a recession I know I've been buying less GW stuff (except bitz from BWBitz) as money has gotten tighter.

Enough rambling on my part. Hopefully Bitz will stay around as it's the only place I can reliably buy parts for conversions/modeling at a decent price.

I hate to see a legit business tank.  It's more choice for us to buy from!

Warseer had a thread on this topic but if I recall it was a bunch of circlejerking "support GW!" posts mixed with a bunch of ignorant "well I didn't know what they sold so it doesn't affect me anyway!" crap. I can't find it so it must have been deleted but it's funny how Warseer, supposedly a bastion of conversion-fluff-theme (instead of evil powergaming Dakka ), didn't know much about BWBits and their useful service.

And I just find it ironic that GW would try to shut down a business selling individual parts GW itself doesn't even sell, from boxes that BW buys from GW, but I guess forcing you to buy the whole box (sprues don't even work with half the items in the online store so you have to go to their shop to order from the Bitz Catalog) is the reason. Eh.

Posted By stonefox on 03/22/2007 6:44 AM
Warseer had a thread on this topic but if I recall it was a bunch of circlejerking "support GW!" posts mixed with a bunch of ignorant "well I didn't know what they sold so it doesn't affect me anyway!" crap. I can't find it so it must have been deleted but it's funny how Warseer, supposedly a bastion of conversion-fluff-theme (instead of evil powergaming Dakka ), didn't know much about BWBits and their useful service.

To be fair about the ignorance of BWBits, I think that's because Warseer is more Europe-orientated than Dakka.

The "buy from GW direct" posts make me want to chew my fist though.

I agree there are other games to play and that is exactly what will happen if GW continues along their current path. No new LotRs movie will be able to save them. Their stock continues to fall, sales fall, profits weaken and their only solution is to increase prices and limit distribution... This clearly does not show a firm grasp of even the most basic economic principals.

Posted By budro on 03/22/2007 6:20 AM
Someone mentioned about BWbitz buying from a distributor - they do - that distributor is GW. As another poster pointed out GW is a wholly vertically intergrated company.

It is my understanding that BWBits was buying its Bitz from a third party, and not from GW, hence why it was a rogue company. But as I said earlier, from what I understand, its all been taken care of and BWBitz is in the clear to do what it does.

 

Actually the thread on Warseer was more about complaints against BWbits and people's bad experiences with it. There were quite a few posts from people that either didn't get the parts they ordered or had to jump through hoops to get them. There were also pro-BWbits posts, but I think the thread was removed because it was just a lot of fighting.

Posted By skkipper on 03/22/2007 6:03 AM
they are not idiots just have the wrong plan for the states. they are thinking it is ok to sell 20% less at 40% more profit. if you can sell 100 dollars retail to a B&M shop for 60 bucks, you would be better off to sell 80 retail stuff through your own stores. The problem is that most people will not spend fifty bucks in one shot for 5 terminators. but would spend 100 bucks over time if they could get terminators at $5 at shot. boxing every thing turns it from pocket money purchases to expensive. i would probally pick up a lot more crap from GW if i could go to their store and walk out with something for less then $10 but it is getting harder and harder to do that.

I don't know if I'd set the numbers where you have.  The profit per unit/number of units sold curve is a tricky thing to play with, and judging by the stories we always hear about the number of unpainted models people have in our collections (and the boxes here in my home office), GW may have had the prices too low in the past.

Still, they probably do need to adjust downward, or at least stop with the increases for a while.  They are definitely losing market share in the US; once they stop being the most available game to play, they lose BOTH incoming new players AND continuing sales from us veterans.  Right now Warmachine is going strong at my FLGS, with a very active league (see links at top of page), and we're having to struggle to get any traction with our 40k league.  It's darn hard to recruit people when there's generally one or two games of 40k played on a league night, and 15+ of WM.  People want to be in the party with the large attendance.  For many years that was GW, and in the UK maybe it still is, but in the US it's becoming less so.  There are multiple factors which contribute, but even if pricing is only one of them, it at least is something over which GW has control.

Posted By Toreador on 03/22/2007 8:29 AM
Actually the thread on Warseer was more about complaints against BWbits and people's bad experiences with it. There were quite a few posts from people that either didn't get the parts they ordered or had to jump through hoops to get them. There were also pro-BWbits posts, but I think the thread was removed because it was just a lot of fighting.

The "post your experiences with BWBits" is a different thread than what I was talking about.  The one I was talking about is specifically about the legality of the bits service with this topic in mind. It is nowhere to be found.

It was in a legality thread, saw it devolving into an experiences thread.

Posted By Sarigar on 03/22/2007 5:04 AM
In addition to their shops in select locations, GW dictates to B&M shops how to display product, minimum $ amounts for ordering, huge initial start up costs for ordering, bad accounting practices. The IP internet issue was simply stated to blur the real issue. GW wants to be able to sell their own product and dictate their own prices. It's GW's bottom line, not anyone else's they are concerned with.

To be blunt, your wrong. I've sold GW product for 20 years. I've never been told how to display it, unless you're referring to them giving me as many free racks as I want, free posters, paint racks, and shipping me 3 1400.00 lighted display cases. Really twisted my arm on that one.

There are no minimum orders from GW. There used to be a minimum order That gave you free freight. If you wanted to pay the freight, there was no minimum. Currently, I can place an order for 80.00 and it came in freight free. (And, every other game distributor I order from has a minimum for free freight, it's a common deal.)

There is no huge initial start up. The retailer has about 6 different suggested starting levels, as detailed out in the Trade Order Form, or can talk to his rep about doing something different.

GW has gotten much better in the last two years in their relations with B&M stores. I never found them that hard to deal with at all, compared with other distributors I work with.

Posted By stonefox on 03/22/2007 6:44 AM
Warseer had a thread on this topic but if I recall it was a bunch of circlejerking "support GW!" posts mixed with a bunch of ignorant "well I didn't know what they sold so it doesn't affect me anyway!" crap. I can't find it so it must have been deleted but it's funny how Warseer, supposedly a bastion of conversion-fluff-theme (instead of evil powergaming Dakka ), didn't know much about BWBits and their useful service.

Warseer has a high population of posters from Great Britain. BWB is located in the states. It's a lot less viable to order bits and ship them across the pond. There are, however, English based bitz services that have started up.

Posted By budro on 03/22/2007 6:20 AM
Someone mentioned about BWbitz buying from a distributor - they do - that distributor is GW. As another poster pointed out GW is a wholly vertically intergrated company.

Actually, no, they haven't been buying from GW, or at least, not directly. To deal with GW directly, you must have a B&M store front, not just sell GW on the internet. You can do both storefront, and internet, and order from GW directly.

For a time, BWB was posing as a B&M, and getting shipments from GW, but was only running a warehouse and shipping center for it's internet sales. GW actually made a trip to the area of the address they were shipping to, nosed around a bit, found the warehouse, and paid a visit. After that, they were given a choice: have a storefront and stay as an active account, or continue as an online seller, and order through a distributor, such as Alliance Games, ACD, or Blackhawk Dist.  The discount from a subdistributor is less, something like 35%, vs. 45% from GW. (Distributors have to have a profit margin or why do it?).

BWB has been basically getting their GW goods from another B and M store, or several of them, and hasn't had an active GW account for months. This causes problems for both them and the store they order through.

What's probably happening at this point, is that instead of continueing to break rules and fly under the radar, (and getting calls from GW's legal dept.), they are taking steps to become a legitimate business and stick around for the long haul. This last paragraph is my opinion/guess.

Mikhaila, thank you for this.  It's nice to see some intelligent, even-handed commentary amongst all the shennanery going on lately.

Plus, I learned some stuff too.

It might be different for your mikhaila, but my LGS owner has had never had much good to say about doing business with GW.

Course he isn't usually that positive in the first place...

I have no idea what the deal is with the selling part of this, but as a website owner who's had a lot of long chats with GW's IP guys, I can help explain that part.

First, let me say I haven't seen BWB's site lately, so I could be wrong here.  But I believe some of the images they were using were images from GW's website.  Here's what they don't like.  They said the same thing about non-retail sites.  They pay a crew of guys who take pictures, make JPGs/GIFs of the box art, all that stuff.  So they've paid for this labor so they can use it.  Along comes John Smith, grabbing those images, and using them - at no cost to himself - to make money.  Something they put money into is now making someone else money.

The way they explained it to me was that you can take your own pictures, and they don't particularly mind.  So BWB could, as someone suggested, use pictures of assembled units, including painted units, and models, to illustrate.  However!  This would mean that BWB would have to put out money and effort to do so.  Before you complain about them having to put out money and effort to make themselves money, think about that, and how GW already did that and found someone else making money off of their work.

Trust me, I'm no GW apologist, especially with some of the migraines I had over the stuff, but I understand it.

Mikhaila

"To be blunt, your wrong. I've sold GW product for 20 years. I've never been told how to display it, unless you're referring to them giving me as many free racks as I want, free posters, paint racks, and shipping me 3 1400.00 lighted display cases. Really twisted my arm on that one.

There are no minimum orders from GW. There used to be a minimum order That gave you free freight. If you wanted to pay the freight, there was no minimum. Currently, I can place an order for 80.00 and it came in freight free. (And, every other game distributor I order from has a minimum for free freight, it's a common deal.)

There is no huge initial start up. The retailer has about 6 different suggested starting levels, as detailed out in the Trade Order Form, or can talk to his rep about doing something different. "

 

-Where do  you do business from?

Posted By Nuwisha on 03/22/2007 11:22 PM
It might be different for your mikhaila, but my LGS owner has had never had much good to say about doing business with GW.

Its definately different.  Before my FLGS closed, the owner got nothing but a headache dealing directly with GW.  I personally liked the 'newer' paint rack that I helped him put together.  Not going to go into all that though.

The problems he was having may have been because he was only an hour away from a GW battlebunker and it was the time when GW stopped actually 'helping' most smaller stores.

On topic. As someone else mentioned earlier, except for metal bits that you can buy seperately from their website, GW isn't really in the bits business are they?  I mean those that come off the plastic sprues.  Pictures of the metal bits may be a problem but single pieces off a plastic sprue is stretching it I would think.  Maybe everything will work out.