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Just because you're on fire with a wallaby in your trousers doesn't mean that us people who are only on fire don't have a valid complaint.

GW Black Friday sale

"All models double price!"

In all seriousness, they don't do sales.

My FLGS does though. Damn skippy I'm gonna go crazy.

My local GW had an auction about a year ago, getting rid of all the stuff they weren't meant to sell anymore - Tallarns, damaged boxes, older metal kits, etc. Good deals there.

Worglock wrote:

Aerethan wrote:

Jon Garrett wrote:I think the last time I recall GW having a sale was the 25th Anniversary. A bunch of stuff was cheap during that. Don't recall one since, though.

didn't they just do army bundles for that? so you still had to spend money to save any money.

Isn't that generally how sales work?

Buy this (spend money), get this much off (save money)?

You're wording comes across like you expect them to just give stuff away. And then people would still complain.

"I only got ONE Speds Mahreen fo free!! They should have paid me to take two. Hurr Durr Stoopid GeeDub!!"

it almost felt like you never shop at other stores before.... besides GW....

He must live under the painting table.

I did go to one good sale shortly before 3rd edition came out. They were selling off all the old ork line for 75% off, and white dwarves were 50p each, and codex books were £2 each. One white dwarf came with a free metal Necron. The guy in the store tried to convince me to buy a whole stack. I probably should have done it. Could have had the bulk of a necron army for £10. Would be worth a fortune now. But with no ebay, miniatures didn't used to have the resale value that they do now.

I managed to finish off my collection of 2nd edition codex books. Though if anything I felt kind of cheated that I had already bought 7 of them for full price, and now not only were they £2 each, but they were also about to be obsolete. One of the things that contributed to me quitting GW for about 10 years.

Black Friday is an American thing, GW is a British company that doesn't do sales.

Hmmm, what could be the answer.....?

Smacks wrote:I did go to one good sale shortly before 3rd edition came out. They were selling off all the old ork line for 75% off, and white dwarves were 50p each, and codex books were £2 each. One white dwarf came with a free metal Necron. The guy in the store tried to convince me to buy a whole stack. I probably should have done it. Could have had the bulk of a necron army for £10. Would be worth a fortune now. But with no ebay, miniatures didn't used to have the resale value that they do now.

I managed to finish off my collection of 2nd edition codex books. Though if anything I felt kind of cheated that I had already bought 7 of them for full price, and now not only were they £2 each, but they were also about to be obsolete. One of the things that contributed to me quitting GW for about 10 years.

I remember that, I picked up Codex Sisters of Battle for £2 and Codex Assassins for £1. Also they sold off much of the sisters of battle range, I had Kyrinov and Uriah Jacobus for £2 each. They dumped chaos dwarves and my dad got heaps of hobgoblins too.

Of course the really big sale was the one when they shifted products containing lead at 50%. Which covered most of the stock in the shops at the time. Note they didn't do that with the switch to finecast, they took the metals off the shelves and took them back to Nottingham to be melted down.

The only sale for GW product I ever saw besides constant 20% sales from LGS's was 50% off when WotC decided to close all their stores and liquidated inventory.

I picked up the 6th ed. Empire battalion for $45 and the boxed game for $50 iirc. It was a good Christmas for me, as that is when I first started the hobby.

If the word "sale" ever appears on GW property/website, something has gone horribly wrong

Not sure why this comes up every single year heh.. Niche companies tend to not do sales because they don't have a very large market. Also the players have to buy your stuff anyway so why bother

Well it would still be a nice surprise to have thrown at the customer base occasionally

It seems a long time ago that they used to have 25%-off and 'buy 2, get 1 free' offers in White Dwarf (must be at least 10 years now?)

The closest thing recently I can remember to a sale recently was when you got a couple of free pots of paint with any terrain purchase, but that was poorly publicised and I think probably only because GW must have been sitting on an excess of terrain stock.

Well if not a sale why not reintroduce the reward card as they did with the Skullz? Now I never bought enough stuff at their stores to take advantage of it but I'm sure other customers would. Yet they don't do this, they do nothing to reward customer loyalty or those shopping at their stores.

For what it's worth, I got an email from Battlefoam announcing a 25% off black friday sale.

I think the last legitimate "sale" they had was when they started the Apoc stuff and were selling off things like Space Marine Companies for a decent discount. Still, it had a pretty steep buy-in and I didn't need an entire SM Company but it worked out to a bunch of free Rhinos.

One of my not so friendly local gaming stores does normally put on a ridiculous black friday deal.

In the past it has been buy 1 get one free on select GW items, or buy 2 get 1 free on everything.

Never seen a GW store have anything special though.

Polonius wrote:For what it's worth, I got an email from Battlefoam announcing a 25% off black friday sale.

Unfortunate that I have no extra money this year D:

miniwargaming.com has 25% off every model this entire week as their canadian version of a "black friday" I bought an annihilation barge + imotekh for myself and my buddy a chaos defiler for christmas

GW is the manufacturer of their product, and, in the US at least, they are not legally allowed to sell their currently stocked merchandise at less than MSRP. Thus...no sales.

Todosi wrote:GW is the manufacturer of their product, and, in the US at least, they are not legally allowed to sell their currently stocked merchandise at less than MSRP. Thus...no sales.

How are they legally not allowed to sell below msrp? Quote the law before claiming such things at least so as to inform the masses.

Todosi wrote:GW is the manufacturer of their product, and, in the US at least, they are not legally allowed to sell their currently stocked merchandise at less than MSRP. Thus...no sales.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Actually, I remember nosferatu claiming a similar thing when this issue was raised before. I will see if I can dig out the relevant quote.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Found it in this thread:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/60/394880.page#3289856

nosferatu1001 wrote:1) No, staff arent there to paint or assemble your models. They can assist but whole sale assembly is NOT their job. If you think it is....well, you have entitlement issues.

2) GW UK are prohibited from most promotional efforts, due to the CC ruling a few years back. As producer of a majority share of the modelling market they cannot leverage that in the retail space - so no sales, no giving away free models, no discounts, etc.

3) This seems like a reasonable way to get some interest without falling foul, as raffles are allowable (under certain strict rules, but it isnt a CC issue more a tax / gambling one) and swapping a staffers time to help assemble and paint YOUR army is fair enough. Remeber - thats NOT their job, usually!

Can people also lay off the gw staff member bashing? Yes, some are terrible painters / modellers. If they are in your area, and theyre running this promotion - great, dont bother. However to help batch paint 100 skaven slaves it may well lbe worth the investment, thats oe of the dullest jobs around...!

Since I know nothing about the competition commission here in the UK and have little desire to research further, I can neither confirm nor deny the accuracy of this information

Midnightdeathblade wrote:GW... participate .... sales

One of these words is not like the others, one of these words does not belong...

So as far as "legally allowed to do sales", yes I remember the whole UK thing, but that is just so inherently unAmerican it is hard to believe. Not saying it is impossible, just requires a bit more info. Extraordinary claims, and all.

Also if there were some sort of law of this nature in the US, I'd be curious as to whether it was local, state, or federal. It seems impossible for a federal level, but local, anything is possible.

What I could see is an internal company policy that says due to not being able to have sales in UK, then GW stores will not have sales at all. A policy like that almost makes sense, especially if the different regions are compared to each other. GW perspective: it would be unfair to UK if US got to have a sale and had a huge bump in earnings as a result. I'm speculating, here, of course.

I have heard multiple times that GW thinks that sales "Devalue the brand". I recall it distinctly from discussion with a black shirt, a while ago. Yes, I consider the source, but it makes a crazy sort of sense.

Edit - clarifications

Gymnogyps wrote:
I have heard multiple times that GW thinks that sales "Devalue the brand". I recall it distinctly from discussion with a black shirt, a while ago. Yes, I consider the source, but it makes a crazy sort of sense.

Works for Apple, BMW and many smaller luxury brands.

Gymnogyps wrote:

I have heard multiple times that GW thinks that sales "Devalue the brand". I recall it distinctly from discussion with a black shirt, a while ago. Yes, I consider the source, but it makes a crazy sort of sense.

It does make sense: if one minute GW are telling you that a Land Raider is wirth £40 and then a week later it's now worth £30- they've devalued the product.
Also you have to look at the business reasons that companies have sales: either because of competition or to clear old stock lines.
GW don't have competition in terms of producing and selling Warhammer and they don't (often) have old lines that need clearing- if something is going to stop being produced they just continue selling it until it's gone.

Todosi wrote:GW is the manufacturer of their product, and, in the US at least, they are not legally allowed to sell their currently stocked merchandise at less than MSRP. Thus...no sales.

This is entirely incorrect.

Paul wrote:
Works for Apple, BMW and many smaller luxury brands.

Sorry, Paul, if you're saying Apple and BMW don't have sales or promotions... they do.

Every year, Lexus and BMW advertise extensively for holiday promotional events. My understanding this is often related to financing, but likely its a choice of better interest rate or a set dollar amount off the negotiated price. Regardless it is a "sale" because it is dollars off the bottom line cost to purchase. The problem with trying to draw parallel to GW is this: for cars, the MSRPs are sort of... guidelines. Negotiable. And its large purchase, meant to last at least a year or two, maybe 10, to which people and society often ascribe a lot of status. This does not translate over to a hobby, with model miniatures game sold as (relatively) small discreet bundles, which can be expanded almost infinitely, with set MSRPs, which requires a lot of time and effort to learn and a community to play with...

Apple is closer to GW in having a set pricing structure and requiring a commitment to go Apple. Apple absolutely does have sales and promotions.

News story about leaked Apple flier showing Black Friday Sales: http://news.yahoo.com/leaked-apple-brochure-reveals-black-friday-deals-091726265.html "Every year on Black Friday, Apple offers many of its products at cheaper prices, with discounts usually ranging from 10% to 15%. This year will be no different, based on a leaked sales brochure. "

Also every year for the start of school, Apple does promotions for students. This is a way to sucker in, I mean, make customers of students so they will continue to buy Macs / Apple (at full price) once no longer students. The other side of it: When I bought my student Mac, several years ago, it was $100 off and a free printer. As a result, my SO and a friend also bought computers at full price, because they liked what they saw. How many parents go into the Mac store to buy for their college student, and get hooked? Apple knows, I'm sure.

Apple's token student discounts for school/Black Friday have not devalued their brand. Year round sales of Apple products seem just dandy and prices remain high, even though there are discreet sales / promotion events. A token "sale" of GW starter sets, like 10% off/one day only, could be considered the same sort of thing. Just sayin.

Lorizael wrote:It does make sense: if one minute GW are telling you that a Land Raider is wirth £40 and then a week later it's now worth £30- they've devalued the product.
Also you have to look at the business reasons that companies have sales: either because of competition or to clear old stock lines.
GW don't have competition in terms of producing and selling Warhammer and they don't (often) have old lines that need clearing- if something is going to stop being produced they just continue selling it until it's gone.

Lorizael, you listed a couple reasons, but there is another reason to have sales/promotions: increase customer foot traffic, brand exposure, and initial buy in/commitment. If that initial sale is made for GW, some fraction of buyers will get "hooked", and need to continue to spend to not lose out on the initial investment. The more first time buyers, the more customers who will make subsequent purchases to get more out of it.

See above, what of having a short run, 10% off, starter sets only, for the holidays? This is very different from clearing old stock or having a sale to beat the competition. The sale, in this case, is for the purpose of overcoming customer commitment phobia, to get that initial "hook". This idea works for GW and Apple both, because you're buying into a system/ hobby/ lifestyle/ whatever.

Finally, viewing a sale as devaluing of the product is really a pessimistic and negative way of perceiving it. I see you are in the UK, so maybe this is a cultural thing... It is equally valid to say that a sale is an opportunity for a customer to get a good deal, and/or risk buying a product they wouldn't otherwise purchase. Here in the States, things go on sale/have promotional discounts all the time- groceries, home improvement, cars, appliances, jewelry, amusement park admissions, pretty much everything. There is something incredibly compelling about not wanting to miss a "deal", so people buy when they otherwise would not. Groupon is an excellent example of an entire business model designed around this concept. It doesn't mean the product is worth less, just means the customer was lucky or shrewd enough to buy right then. Perception, see?

To sum up: Occasional/seasonal/limited promotions, if done right, do not devalue a brand. It can work to expand the customer base, hooking new customers, which is better for a business whose product inherently promotes expansion / commitment, or provides continuing service. Overcoming the initial commitment reluctance with perceived reduction of risk / increased value via a sale/promotion, is a valid tactic (see Apple).

Anyway, having sales/promotions is one way to be successful, but having a niche single source product with set pricing can be successful as well. All this leads up to the original topic: it is reasonable to think that GW might have sales/ promotional events, but also reasonable that they do not. I wish they would!

Gymnogyps wrote:

Paul wrote:
Works for Apple, BMW and many smaller luxury brands.

Sorry, Paul, if you're saying Apple and BMW don't have sales or promotions... they do.

Every year, Lexus and BMW advertise extensively for holiday promotional events. My understanding this is often related to financing, but likely its a choice of better interest rate or a set dollar amount off the negotiated price. Regardless it is a "sale" because it is dollars off the bottom line cost to purchase. The problem with trying to draw parallel to GW is this: for cars, the MSRPs are sort of... guidelines. Negotiable. And its large purchase, meant to last at least a year or two, maybe 10, to which people and society often ascribe a lot of status. This does not translate over to a hobby, with model miniatures game sold as (relatively) small discreet bundles, which can be expanded almost infinitely, with set MSRPs, which requires a lot of time and effort to learn and a community to play with...

Apple is closer to GW in having a set pricing structure and requiring a commitment to go Apple. Apple absolutely does have sales and promotions.

News story about leaked Apple flier showing Black Friday Sales: http://news.yahoo.com/leaked-apple-brochure-reveals-black-friday-deals-091726265.html "Every year on Black Friday, Apple offers many of its products at cheaper prices, with discounts usually ranging from 10% to 15%. This year will be no different, based on a leaked sales brochure. "

Also every year for the start of school, Apple does promotions for students. This is a way to sucker in, I mean, make customers of students so they will continue to buy Macs / Apple (at full price) once no longer students. The other side of it: When I bought my student Mac, several years ago, it was $100 off and a free printer. As a result, my SO and a friend also bought computers at full price, because they liked what they saw. How many parents go into the Mac store to buy for their college student, and get hooked? Apple knows, I'm sure.

Apple's token student discounts for school/Black Friday have not devalued their brand. Year round sales of Apple products seem just dandy and prices remain high, even though there are discreet sales / promotion events. A token "sale" of GW starter sets, like 10% off/one day only, could be considered the same sort of thing. Just sayin.

I don't know how it is done in the US, but in the UK BMW & Apple do not do sales as a genral rule, and that is all I can go on. Anyway, thats allot of words to pull appart an off the cuff statement about small niche brands not wanting to devalue there product by doing sales. That is what GW do. As someone else said, you sell something for £50 now and £40 next week people start to see the item as worth £40 and will wait.

Other than music, which Apple doesn't produce, what sales have they had of current products such as their iPad or iPhone?