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 G00fySmiley wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
But those other companies are clearly not impacting GW if their recent financials (which have been nothing less than stellar) are anything to go by.

GW also has a handy stranglehold on the Tournament Scene, where it's more common for them to adhere to a 'GW only' rule. This helps keep 3rd Party Counts As fairly niche.

GW raising their prices - and lets face it, it wasn't across the board, isn't going to affect that.

Lowered prices need to pull in a ridiculous amount of returning or new players. I'll explain with nice, round numbers purely for effect.

Let's say GW sells a £100 model kit. And they've got a markup on that of the often touted, but never proven, 75%.

For every one they sell, it costs them £25, so they make £75.

If they dropped prices 10%? Well, that's coming out their profit margin first and foremost. So each sale nets them only £65.

To make up the difference? That's a lot of extra kits they need to sell. Far more than one might think.

Yes it's just an example, not some insight into GW's pricing structure - because I ain't got one!

I don't think most players are playing in tournaments. sure there are more and mroe people doing so, but even the biggest tournaments liek the LVO or adepticon have what 500-750 players? compared to the number of 40k players in general I don't think its very big. Don't get me wrong I play some tournament play locally and find it fun but a huge swatch of local players here are mostly interested in open war/beer and pretzels type games and fun scenarios. many of them have recently started to build full armies of counts as models specifically due to GW prices.

I do get that they would need to move more plastic to make the same or more money. I just wonder if the less profit per kit would result in more profit overall with mroe sales. I wonder if they have considered dropping prices for a few kits as an experiment to see how that ends up working. or release a new imperial guard regiment at a lowe price and matching heavy weapons/such matching and see how well they sell. if not well then increase, if they sell liek hot cakes.. well maybe keep the experiment going

They did actually try that experiment and found it did not increase sales. Now I'm not saying it was designed to produce the results they wanted but the kits they chose were exclusively Warhammer Fantasy a game that was at the time dying on it's arse, were exclusively cavalry kits that were expensive in points and would not normally be ran in huge numbers and were for a limited number of armies. So taking all this into account they were shocked to find reducing the price of an item that was a subset of a subset of subset of your weaker products did not increase sales, basically nobody was buying extra cheap cav when line infantry were priced ridiculously high and you needed a ton of them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Excommunicatus wrote:
s. 172 Duty to promote the success of the company

(1)A director of a company must act in the way he considers, in good faith, would be most likely to promote the success of the company for the benefit of its members as a whole, and in doing so have regard (amongst other matters) to—
(a)the likely consequences of any decision in the long term,
(b)the interests of the company's employees,
(c)the need to foster the company's business relationships with suppliers, customers and others,
(d)the impact of the company's operations on the community and the environment,
(e)the desirability of the company maintaining a reputation for high standards of business conduct, and
(f)the need to act fairly as between members of the company.
(2)Where or to the extent that the purposes of the company consist of or include purposes other than the benefit of its members, subsection (1) has effect as if the reference to promoting the success of the company for the benefit of its members were to achieving those purposes.
(3)The duty imposed by this section has effect subject to any enactment or rule of law requiring directors, in certain circumstances, to consider or act in the interests of creditors of the company.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/46/section/172

/thread

Well in reference to (a) everything GW used to do was based on short term planning that's what got them into trouble in the first place there was no long term planning beyond the board getting more remuneration each year.


Then we have (b) due to the price hikes promoted by the board to increase there profits in the short term resulting in the company being driven into the ground nobody below senior management got a pay rise or bonuses for years. It also lead to the reign of fear encouraged by Kirby's little red book and absolutely ridiculous sales targets withe the threat of summary dismissal.

What about (c) do I even need to go there? Also (e) and (f) are looking pretty rough as well.

Hmm did you link this for a reason other than to show GW piss all over it?

yea, I more mean 40k and using a new kit that is for a popular army/faction.

guard I think is perfect for it as everybody allies them,. they can stand in for renegade guard/cultists, genesteeler cults and every single imperium army. so something like a $25 for 10 guardsmen, $30 for 3 heavy weapons teams, and 25 for command squad. call them tellarn or another codex option and see fi that does not result in some crazy sales numbers

 Eldarsif wrote:

Now they have generated some goodwill and gotten the sales figures back up expect business as usual to commence with price hikes

In the modern corporate structure it is not enough to have a lot of money - you must have all the money. It's an attitude that is choking the life out of the Planet.

Fixed that for you, and now I feel sad.

I am an Englishman who voted Remain and has since fled the sinking ship that is the UK, Brexit will be impacting business. To think otherwise is to be woefully ignorant of the way trade works. GW are a UK based company, a country that has for some reason decided to leave the world's largest trading bloc, while getting BFF with the likes of Trump... who is waging a Trade war with the world's manufacturing powerhouse. So yeah, good luck with that!

SeanDrake wrote:

Actually that’s not how plastics production works, the old kits which have all ready paid off there mould costs are the most profitable I mean they literally cost pennies to make the box costs more than the sprue’s, the margin on the guard boxes alone must be phenomenal bearing in mind they have gone up in price over 400% since release. The lord of the rings stuff is the same the quality of the old plastics are pretty shocking and they too have increased over 300% in price since launch.

The new kits on the other hand have to sell a minimum amount before they start making the margins that GW like, as such I would guess this price rise is to subsidise the new lines that are not selling as well as expected(ironically because they are overpriced in most cases).
If you were really cynical they could have crunched the numbers on new releases and decided that Sisters are not going to make the money expected and so there off setting that now with a “SoB tax”

It gets even more complicated. For example, switching out molds takes time and money, that's time lost that you're producing nothing. Slow selling product sits on shelves and that costs money. OTOH, new product that moves quickly gives you a quick return on investment and doesn't eat shelf space for long, and as you point out, mold costs have to be recouped - what better way than to push the new product (hype/marketing) and make sure that new product is readily available. Old product moves slower, so while the per unit profit is higher and the molds are long ago paid for, the warehousing costs make the return a long tail.

I'm sure GW knows what kits sell how many units per month and that tells them when they need to restock. That's the kind of data that drives their decisions. They can, have and will let stuff go out of print if it's more profitable to print out other stuff they know will sell more units. Far better to shift more units at slightly lower profits. If you reach a point where it makes sense to allow a LOT of units to go out of print, then you have to think about adjusting the prices of those units until it makes sense to actually do a run of them.

So yes, someone at GW is looking at a spread sheet and saying "It's not worth doing a run of Broadsides unless we add a couple quid to the price of them."

And stuff they have a relative glut of (Chaos Land Raiders?) will sit at lower prices until they run out of stock.

Been seeing this happen in a couple other miniature lines as well. I think the companies are all afraid of the continued trade war between the USA and China as well as the EU vs UK Brexit threats.

SeanDrake wrote:
So reading through this thread gave me a thought maybe GW are not happy with Primaris sales being lower than they forecast. But this being GW rather than thinking this might be because of the shonky rules and questionable aesthetics they figure it’s because the real marine kits are cheaper, so naturally the best way to increase Primaris sales is to increase the price of kits older than most of there customers by 17-20%

ok firsty of all you have no evidance primaris aren't selling, the only evidance I can present one way or another is what newly painted space marines I'm seeing.. lots of Primaris.
Secondly the idea that they'd sabotoge themselves to make Primaris look more popular then they are is rediculas. It's "Disney is buying up all the captain marvel tickets to ensure it makes a billion dollars" rediculas.

BrianDavion wrote:
ok firsty of all you have no evidance primaris aren't selling,...

He didn't say they aren't selling. He was suggesting that sales might be lower than GW forecast. Which isn't at all the same thing... They could be selling like hotcakes, and still be underperforming against sales targets.


And, honestly, while I doubt that Primaris are underperforming, the idea that they might price Oldmarines higher as an added incentive for people to switch to Primaris instead isn't actually that outlandish. It would be an odd move in isolation, but combined with GW's current blinkered focus on Primaris, and the fairly clear indications that Oldmarines are going to be phased out, it makes a certain amount of sense that they would want to encourage people to buy the new hotness instead.

I personally think in the long run it will kill some armies. The fact you need to spend $75 for 120pts of units you need to be battle forged is redonkulus!

 lolman1c wrote:
I personally think in the long run it will kill some armies. The fact you need to spend $75 for 120pts of units you need to be battle forged is redonkulus!

that ships already sailed TBH, I'm not buying into Imperial Guard in part due to the sheer cost of the army. I considered starting guard once, did some pricing and realized it simply was too exp[ensive

I have two large-ish 5000+ point armies.

They were all entirely sourced via eBay. The Eldar army's infantry are 90% metal...purchased and rescued. The CSM force is 90% from HH boxed sets (purchased at heavy discount or in part via eBay bits sellers). Tanks were patiently acquired via bits or random eBay postings, etc. I made the decision a while back that GW proper was just too fething absurd to consider. At one point, the best price I found on a MkIII Squad of Space Marines (10 models, new on sprue) was...$17.85 on eBay. That was obviously a split up box from HH...but as a standalone product that squad is now $60 direct from GW.

I was able to purchase metal Aspect Warriors for $20 for 7-10 minis most of the time...as opposed to $40+ for five gakky finecast minis etc. Even my Eldar wraith units were all sourced from splitting discount boxes with eBay sales etc.

In total my armies cost perhaps 30-40% of what GW would ask retail...but it took a lot of time and coincidence for it to happen. I'm happy with my armies now even if I'm not playing much if any 40K, but there's no way in fething hell I will ever start a new 40K army or follow GW forward with my current armies. If Eldar get a God-sent full replacement army....I still won't be buying them. $60 for 10 aspect warriors would still be out of the question for me.

It was, admittedly, a slightly sad realization. The only GW product I've purchased recently were two of their Underworld boxed gangs because they're not badly priced. I may even consider that Warcry game when it comes out because I'd like the minis for a dungeon crawl - but, I'm not really a GW customer anymore. Odd since I've got more expendable income than I have in the past.

The point of that post? GW doesn't care and shouldn't. The other guys in my gaming group still routinely spend $200-300 a month on GW products (often through other retailers, but the end result is the same). GW is doing fine. They won't miss the occasional grognard.