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Aw, I thought they were going to dig a tunnel to the mainland :(

lord_blackfang wrote:Hi, my name is lord_blackfang and I'll be your "Infinity figures cost just as much as GW" guy today.

I probably speak for all of us when I say the above quote only applies in regions where it actually applies. Good day to you

I don't really know much about Infinity but I thought it was a skirmish game requiring only a handfull of models?

Therefor the cost of an individual mini may be the same but the overall cost of your army/crew/clan/group/squad/faction is a lot less making it a much cheaper option. I had the same logic with Malifaux. 6 models cost between $30-45 AUD where 5 sternguard cost $72.

My own GW spendings have been about $30 on some forgeworld bits on ebay.

Wise Guy Sam wrote:I don't really know much about Infinity but I thought it was a skirmish game requiring only a handfull of models?

Which is exactly why I'm always a little puzzled when people try to compare it (and other skirmish games) to 40K.

It's like saying that if fishing is too expensive for you to get into, you should try swimming instead. Sure, you don't need to buy as much stuff... but that's in large part because they're not the same thing.

So I take it from all this that none of those 'get a UK buddy' systems came to fruition?

I'm catching up on painting what i own, other than that my group have started playing RT and mtg these days. I do buy the odd paint, but thats about it

I haven't spent a yen on GW since.

The Plastic Surgeon wrote:So I take it from all this that none of those 'get a UK buddy' systems came to fruition?

I wouldn't be surprised if some people are doing it. Just not buying GW models is easier, though.

i send my cousin (NSW) stuff all the time, im happy to do the same for you lot

The Plastic Surgeon wrote:So I take it from all this that none of those 'get a UK buddy' systems came to fruition?

Mine worked. Then I approached a local online discounter who can, for almost the same price, supply our club.

He cuts his prices on larger orders, and for almost the same price we get the models sooner than if we ordered from the UK.

Did a fairly large order from Maelstrom prior to the embargo coming into effect and then started trawling ebay for anything else I need. Have a bunch of leman russ's as a result that I need to fix up.

First post, joining the dakka party.
Fortuitously my wife got a job in america for the next 3 years, so we moved over here just prior to the embargo taking place. However I still haven't bought any GW stuff and am pretty sure I won't bother. I have picked up a ton of rackham mid-nor figures from a variety of online stores over here, which will be my counts as nurgle army - anyone who knows of a local shop to them with mid nor in stock let me know via pm, still after a few warriors, prowlers and a warstaff. I really only collect Rogue trader era stuff now for 40k - squats, imperial guard, genestealer cult and orks. Anything new from a shop is normally flames of war or modelling supplies.

Not bought a thing since... and my plans for a $2000 purchase has been shelved for the moment (although I have relatives in UK and can buy that way)... I'm fethed off to the max, but it doesn't kill my GW addiction

Mik

Wow, this thread makes me want to start my own e-retailer that sells exclusively (not really...) to Australia at US retail price, that would still be a ~50% discount over the prices y'all pay, thats terrible...

It seems like GW has pretty much signed a death warrant for the hobby in Australia given the replies thus far in the thread...

chaos0xomega wrote:It seems like GW has pretty much signed a death warrant for the hobby in Australia given the replies thus far in the thread...

We don't make up a very significant portion of their sales though. Plenty of people still happily buying regularly.

What Loki said + they will rely on the FLGS now pushing their product strongly since they do not have the problem of foriegn exporters undercutting them.

I think that GW will have done this knowing that they will take a hit in the hope that sales rise again in the future with a stronger/fairer relationship with independent retailers.

notprop wrote:What Loki said + they will rely on the FLGS now pushing their product strongly since they do not have the problem of foriegn exporters undercutting them.

I think that GW will have done this knowing that they will take a hit in the hope that sales rise again in the future with a stronger/fairer relationship with independent retailers.

What I don't understand is why GW took the course of action they did. Wouldn't it make more sense for them to drop the AUS retail prices then it would to ban exports? They are really only hurting themselves by instituting such a restrictive policy.

chaos0xomega wrote:What I don't understand is why GW took the course of action they did. Wouldn't it make more sense for them to drop the AUS retail prices then it would to ban exports? They are really only hurting themselves by instituting such a restrictive policy.

From our point of view, yes, dropping prices seems like the obvious answer.

From GW's point of view, all that does is reduce their profits. Because GW's upper management have themselves convinced that they have no actual competition (see their financial reports for statements to that effect) they clearly believe that stopping Australians from buying overseas means that we will return to buying from Oz sellers.

Again, assuming that this was prompted by significant overseas sales. If it was prompted purely by complaints from independents about a perceived problem that doesn't actually exist, then stopping overseas sales has a negligible impact on sales and everything carries on as before, with GW Oz steadily losing market share to those cheaper alternative games that GW don't believe exist.

Who knows, maybe when the next financial report comes out and GW OZ are still doing badly despite the wonderful new captive market, they'll reassess the situation and try to figure out what's actually causing the problems here.

It should only take someone with a quarter of a brain (not even a half) to realize that stopping overseas sales to australia is going to hurt sales figures in two markets, not just one (in fact this is quite clearly evident in the latest financial release from GW that had sales figures in Australia AND Europe both being down. I'm sure most Aussies felt at least a minor desire to spend money locally when they needed something on short notice or if it was a smaller item, but th emajority of their purchases seem to have come from Europe. Now they can't buy from Europe, and as a result of not being able to support their hobby need, they will be less likely to buy locally at absurd prices.

chaos0xomega wrote:It should only take someone with a quarter of a brain (not even a half) to realize that stopping overseas sales to australia is going to hurt sales figures in two markets, not just one ...

Again, that's only true if there were a significant number of overseas sales happening in the first place, and if the people making those sales prove to be unwilling to pay Oz prices when they have no other easy option.

We have no evidence to make a call one way or the other on that at this particular point in time.

(in fact this is quite clearly evident in the latest financial release from GW that had sales figures in Australia AND Europe both being down.

That, again, has nothing to do with the territorial restrictions, since that financial release is for the period before the restriction was put in place.

I'm sure most Aussies felt at least a minor desire to spend money locally when they needed something on short notice or if it was a smaller item, but th emajority of their purchases seem to have come from Europe.

What are you basing that on, though? I've seen various people online who say that they buy everything from overseas, but they're in no way representative of the Oz gaming scene as a whole.

I sold off all my stuff. GW's exorbitant price gouging has gotten ridiculous. 6 dollars for an imperial guardsmen? They owe it to us to charge .50 and give us discounts every so often. In fact, they should provide all starting players a free army and paint set. Maybe even get the Heavy Metal team to paint all new player's armies for them.

I got into a much cheaper hobby....golf.

insaniak wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:It should only take someone with a quarter of a brain (not even a half) to realize that stopping overseas sales to australia is going to hurt sales figures in two markets, not just one ...

Again, that's only true if there were a significant number of overseas sales happening in the first place, and if the people making those sales prove to be unwilling to pay Oz prices when they have no other easy option.

We have no evidence to make a call one way or the other on that at this particular point in time.

(in fact this is quite clearly evident in the latest financial release from GW that had sales figures in Australia AND Europe both being down.

That, again, has nothing to do with the territorial restrictions, since that financial release is for the period before the restriction was put in place.

I'm sure most Aussies felt at least a minor desire to spend money locally when they needed something on short notice or if it was a smaller item, but th emajority of their purchases seem to have come from Europe.

What are you basing that on, though? I've seen various people online who say that they buy everything from overseas, but they're in no way representative of the Oz gaming scene as a whole.

From a stats point of view, Dakka isn't a very large sample population to draw conclusions from, nor is warseer, libararium, etc. but there are similar threads on those sites from many Aussies pretty much saying the same thing. It may only be a sample of say 100 people total, but out of those 100 it seems 90 or so are telling GW to get bent. Its the same method by which polls are conduced for political and research purpose. Yes, the error would be (a TON!) smaller with a larger population, but working with what we've got here, it seems that this is, in fact, the case. Now, its possible that there is a bias to the sample, perhaps the portion of the wargaming community in Australia that frequents these sites has some common shared characteristic that makes them predisposed to not spend much (if at all) domestically, but I cannot determine that, I'm not a sociologist, and I don't really care enough to be bothered to conduct a proper study.

Additionally, GW haven't embargoed the US. Sites like bitzbarn (their "complete sprue" range) are still cheaper (about 40%) than GWAU prices.

chaos0xomega wrote:It may only be a sample of say 100 people total, but out of those 100 it seems 90 or so are telling GW to get bent.

The thing is, of those 90 or so that it 'seems' are telling GW to get bent, you'll find it's probably a much smaller number of people than you think (it's easy to get a distorted view of just how many people are involved in a discussion) ... and of however many it actually is, a number of them will say 'get bent' now... but then in a month when they've calmed down a little, will decide that they still like GW stuff after all...

People will say all sorts of stuff in the heat of the moment. Following through is a whole different kettle of squig.


There's also the fact that these sorts of stats gathered off internet forums are by their very nature skewed towards those people who frequent internet forums. From my experience, that's a very small percentage of the Australian gaming community. Those who don't spend as much time online (which is most people) are less likely to be spending money online.

What I don't understand is why GW took the course of action they did. Wouldn't it make more sense for them to drop the AUS retail prices then it would to ban exports? They are really only hurting themselves by instituting such a restrictive policy.

When you have made a £400k loss in a sales territory, dropping the prices is not a sensible option.

marielle wrote:

What I don't understand is why GW took the course of action they did. Wouldn't it make more sense for them to drop the AUS retail prices then it would to ban exports? They are really only hurting themselves by instituting such a restrictive policy.

When you have made a £400k loss in a sales territory, dropping the prices is not a sensible option.

That is completely nonsensical. If you lose 400k GBP in sales a sales territory (which is different than making a 400k GBP loss, if that were the case I would advise GW to pull out of Aus entirely), that means that you're not selling enough. That means either there isn't enough supply or not enough demand. I'm pretty sure its not a supply side issue, considering I can go pretty much anywhere (in the States) that sells GW products, and there are tons of it sitting on the shelves. From the sounds of it, GW products aren't exactly flying off the shelves in AUS. Clearly its a demand side issue then. That means that there aren't enough people that want to buy the products. You fix that either by marketing (which GW doesn't do) or dropping prices.

chaos0xomega wrote:What I don't understand is why GW took the course of action they did. Wouldn't it make more sense for them to drop the AUS retail prices then it would to ban exports? They are really only hurting themselves by instituting such a restrictive policy.

Dropping AUS prices to "match" the rest of the world based on exchange rates and not based at all on costs of upkeep in Australia would result in every GW store in Australia going out of business. This is why wargamers are not economists.

And how many Australians actually make use of GW stores as opposed to internet retailers or indie shops?

Damn near every GW in the U.S. could close, and it'd be at most a minor inconvenience, because every city with GWs has tons of indies.

I don't give a flying feth if GW stores are costing them a ton to maintain. I didn't use them, why should I subsidize them?

.....Here we go again.

marielle wrote:When you have made a £400k loss in a sales territory, dropping the prices is not a sensible option.

It is if the reason you made that loss is that your prices are too high and that's encouraging people to go elsewhere...

ph34r wrote:Dropping AUS prices to "match" the rest of the world based on exchange rates and not based at all on costs of upkeep in Australia would result in every GW store in Australia going out of business. This is why wargamers are not economists.

What it would mean is that GW make less profit per item. Whether or not that would mean them going out of business would depend entirely on whether or not dropping the price resulted in more sales.

If the number of sales stayed the same, then yes, reducing profit means they do worse. But if reducing their prices encouraged more people to buy more, the end result is more profit.

There's a business ideal held by many companies that what you should be aiming for is the highest possible profit for the least amount of work. That's the balance that GW have always aimed for... but (IMO) they've tipped the scales too far in Oz. At some point, you have to acknowledge that you can't just keep raising the prices and expecting people to still spend the same amount of money for less and less product.

It's not a straight one-for-one deal. Once you reach the point where your prices are perceived as being too high, people stop spending altogether. Reduce your prices to a point that those people think is reasonable, and they come back.

ph34r wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:What I don't understand is why GW took the course of action they did. Wouldn't it make more sense for them to drop the AUS retail prices then it would to ban exports? They are really only hurting themselves by instituting such a restrictive policy.

Dropping AUS prices to "match" the rest of the world based on exchange rates and not based at all on costs of upkeep in Australia would result in every GW store in Australia going out of business. This is why wargamers are not economists.

I don't know the details on cost of living, etc. in AUS, but I can't imagine the costs could be so high to warrant a price that is twice of high.

After the announcement, I ordered a pack of meltaguns and BB player Hack Enslash. I haven't set a foot in a GW store or spent a cent with them since. To add insult to injury, they then raised the prices here. A CSM battleforce went from an already eyerolling $150, to a roll on the floor laughing $180. What a wonderful "Welcome back to GW AU, shopper" that garbage is.