Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Yes I know my opinion, but look there's a reason why most of the other big companies chose dropper bottles over pots.
Vallejo, Scale 75, Army painter, Reaper paints, Andrea paints and so on. How many horror stories can you read across
the net about paint drying in pots in less than a year.
There are hundreds of people transfering paint from pots to dropper bottles, there are not many who do the opposite.

Of course there's a reason, but you've no more idea than I have about what that reason is, I speculate, you're just using confirmation bias to assume it's the reason you think it is.

BTW Coat D'Arms still use flip tops, I believe, as do P3.

What does that tell you?

Who uses coat d'arms? They dwell on the past. P3 is a small range, btw I have a few P3 paints and I gotta say the quality is amazing but the pots...

It tells me P3 will soon convert to dropper bottles...Coat d'arms will just die...ok the last sentence was just a joke.

Nevertheless, this daft little tangent can now be drawn to a close? People prefer different things, stating your preference as a fact is stupid and doesn't advance the conversation, even if that preference reflects a majority.

That GW are expensive is not news, that their hobby range varies from the slightly pricey to the ludicrous isn't either. There really isn't much room in a thread discussing whether GW has really changed or not about an aspect of the range which has remained largely unchanged over the course of the timescale in question.

(PS FYI Coat D'Arms may lay claim to the longest existing miniatures acrylic line in existence, probably means they're not going anywhere, joke or not.)

Yea, I agree. Let's move on.

 Azreal13 wrote:
(shock horror, not everyone thins their paints all the time, me included.)

Triggered

He he! I had a statement ready for that sentence but I bit my tounge...I mean slap my hand...

Hi Folks.
Did I suggest GW just half the current retail prices now?No I did not.

I asked IF GW current prices were half what they currently were, would more people buy GW product?And the answer would be yes.

The ONLY reason GW hikes up its prices every year is because it is can not grow profits by increasing sustainable volume of sales .

Because they have a very weak link in their product range .The rules.

Tom Kirby simple followed the easiest path for the corporate management .Higher returns of diminishing sales.(''Keep putting up the prices, the true fans will buy them at any price''.)

Rather than invest in developing good rule sets to grow interest and good will by providing better value for money for gamers. Thus increasing sales and profit, of higher volume sales .(Economies of scale is the reason they invested in the plastic manufacturing facilities in Nottingham, if you are old enough to remember the WD article explaining the lowering the barrier of cost of entry. )

GW plc is the ONLY company in their market that has a very costly chain of B&M stores.This is primarily to isolate GW customers from the rest of the market .

Which would not be needed if their rules were not as crap as they currently are.

Lanrak wrote:
Hi Folks.
Did I suggest GW just half the current retail prices now?No I did not.

I asked IF GW current prices were half what they currently were, would more people buy GW product?And the answer would be yes.

Then it was explained to you why halving prices wasn't a good idea and how they'd need to exceed double the volume to even consider it worthwhile. If you're not suggesting it happen and understand that doing it wouldn't be a good idea, what on earth is the point you're making? Because all I can see if that's the case is "making stuff cheaper means more people are likely to buy it" which is a statement so self evident one wonders why you bothered making it?

The ONLY reason GW hikes up its prices every year is because it is can not grow profits by increasing sustainable volume of sales .

No, there's such a thing as inflation, there's such a thing as overheads. There are many reasons beyond simply making more money that a company puts its prices up. There's also the fact that GW's growth would seem to be outstripping their % price increase, suggesting that your statement is objectively wrong, as the only reasonable way they could increase revenue faster than the rate of increasing prices is by increasing sales volume.

Because they have a very weak link in their product range .The rules.

Tom Kirby simple followed the easiest path for the corporate management .Higher returns of diminishing sales.(''Keep putting up the prices, the true fans will buy them at any price''.)

Rather than invest in developing good rule sets to grow interest and good will by providing better value for money for gamers. Thus increasing sales and profit, of higher volume sales .(Economies of scale is the reason they invested in the plastic manufacturing facilities in Nottingham, if you are old enough to remember the WD article explaining the lowering the barrier of cost of entry. )

GW plc is the ONLY company in their market that has a very costly chain of B&M stores.This is primarily to isolate GW customers from the rest of the market .

Which would not be needed if their rules were not as crap as they currently are.

Again, the evidence doesn't support your thinking. I agree that 7th 40K was a hot mess and I have little personal interest in AOS at this point, yet the improvement in financials corresponds more with model releases than it does rules (unless you want to include the vehicles they used alongside big box model releases like Prospero and Calth as "rules.")

Thankfully the change in thinking from GW seems to want to include exploiting the section of the customer base who care enough about the rules to be discouraged from spending if they're not at least reasonably engaging, because, believe me, the message we collectively sent them as customers was that Kirby was right all along, and a steaming gak of a system like 7th 40K pales into insignificance alongside the likes of new shinies like Magnus or GSC. It was, I've no doubt, these things that started the turnaround where it matters (actual cash in the tills) long before 8th started to make any impact. If you're GW, you're on your uppers, you then release a bunch of models without changing anything about either the rules or pricing structure and your financials start to significantly improve, what's the conclusion you're going to draw?

Sure, we're seeing an effort to improve the rules, but I can't see how GW can see this as an exercise in anything but mopping up the gravy, they've already eaten their steak.

If Roboute or Magnus hadn't sold a bajillion units, there'd be an argument for rules being the underlying issue, it may still be. But the remarkable lack of impulse control shown by many, many gamers, coupled with the not insignificant number of true believers who kept diligently buying the whole time anyway have been sufficient to turn things around for GW largely independently of any seismic change in rules.

I wish that weren't the case, and that collectively more wargamers had kept their powder dry for greater rules changes before dropping their wad, but it is what it is.

Warhammer fantasy died to make the game better. The thing is, how do we know that halving the prices wouldn't result in double the sales or more? Not saying that it would, but there would certainly be a number of potential customers that would consider buying if the prices weren't so crazy. Does NuGW still do not do market research?

I'm going to say it. I don't think GW is expensive. I'm sure you will get the usual "Compare like with like! Compare this model with that model!" blah blah blah I just don't think it's expense. A few hundred pounds gets you a lot of GW product. A few hundred pounds, in the scheme of things, is not a lot of money.

 Hollow wrote:
I'm going to say it. I don't think GW is expensive. I'm sure you will get the usual "Compare like with like! Compare this model with that model!" blah blah blah I just don't think it's expense. A few hundred pounds gets you a lot of GW product. A few hundred pounds, in the scheme of things, is not a lot of money.

Guess it depends where you live. Right now, google is telling me 1 pound equals 1.68 aud. Let's round that up to 2. I would happily spend several hundred pounds on a game (hell, it's cheaper than what i spend to keep my computer up to date). To buy a complete gw army here, would cost me a few thousand. That's a lot of money, in the scheme of things.

edit: lets say $2000 dollars. That's 1188 pounds. How's that sound now?

 Torga_DW wrote:
Warhammer fantasy died to make the game better. The thing is, how do we know that halving the prices wouldn't result in double the sales or more? Not saying that it would, but there would certainly be a number of potential customers that would consider buying if the prices weren't so crazy. Does NuGW still do not do market research?

We don't know, as I said, the only way you can know is to do it, and that's a pretty high risk manoeuvre. Plus it has to be more than double on a halving of prices otherwise you're simply working twice as hard for the same result, which makes no sense, especially considering you're putting twice the wear on your production facility.

I'm not convinced that GW has 50% or less market penetration, and I'm not convinced there's enough people staying way exclusively because of price to come back to increase the unit volume enough. I can't offer any proof, this is only opinion, but it's a difficult picture to accept from the largest player in the game. To put it in context though, they'd need to turn over more than a quarter of a billion pounds to maintain the same profitability as they've recorded in 2016/17, assuming all their costs are linear, if they halved their prices.

As to market research, you're unlikely to know unless you're involved, but there's no doubt that opening up social media is giving them a direct channel into what's popular or not, and there's no shortage of people on pretty much every post that's made telling them what they want to see made, so they're probably good in that regard. As to ex-customers, they're probably not worth the expense chasing, better off pleasing your existing base, looking for new people and if what you do as a consequence of that attracts people back, then that's a bonus.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Torga_DW wrote:
Warhammer fantasy died to make the game better. The thing is, how do we know that halving the prices wouldn't result in double the sales or more? Not saying that it would, but there would certainly be a number of potential customers that would consider buying if the prices weren't so crazy. Does NuGW still do not do market research?

We don't know, as I said, the only way you can know is to do it, and that's a pretty high risk manoeuvre. Plus it has to be more than double on a halving of prices otherwise you're simply working twice as hard for the same result, which makes no sense, especially considering you're putting twice the wear on your production facility.

I'm not convinced that GW has 50% or less market penetration, and I'm not convinced there's enough people staying way exclusively because of price to come back to increase the unit volume enough. I can't offer any proof, this is only opinion, but it's a difficult picture to accept from the largest player in the game. To put it in context though, they'd need to turn over more than a quarter of a billion pounds to maintain the same profitability as they've recorded in 2016/17, assuming all their costs are linear, if they halved their prices.

As to market research, you're unlikely to know unless you're involved, but there's no doubt that opening up social media is giving them a direct channel into what's popular or not, and there's no shortage of people on pretty much every post that's made telling them what they want to see made, so they're probably good in that regard. As to ex-customers, they're probably not worth the expense chasing, better off pleasing your existing base, looking for new people and if what you do as a consequence of that attracts people back, then that's a bonus.

I've been told in the past (i've never really worked in retail) that it's easier/cheaper to maintain existing customers than it is to find new ones. Ex players are former existing customers who have been driven away for some reason (let's say price in this example). Trying to re-connect with former customers may not be as problematic as chasing new customers, assuming the reason they left is 'fixed'. A friend described the costs with GW as buying the 'brand name'. Sure, there are cheaper alternatives, but that's not the draw for some people. You paint an interesting picture, i'd be interested in knowing exactly where the line is on prices vs customers. I'll probably never know, but my gut feeling is that a reduction (not necessarily 50%), would see an increase. Based on personal experience with other people's reactions to the product and then the prices. This is where market research comes in handy. Is social media really that informative in this case? My experience with them was they delete the negative posts, and create an echo chamber around them. Not necessarily useful feedback (assuming they disregard the negatives).

 Torga_DW wrote:

 Hollow wrote:
I'm going to say it. I don't think GW is expensive. I'm sure you will get the usual "Compare like with like! Compare this model with that model!" blah blah blah I just don't think it's expense. A few hundred pounds gets you a lot of GW product. A few hundred pounds, in the scheme of things, is not a lot of money.

Guess it depends where you live. Right now, google is telling me 1 pound equals 1.68 aud. Let's round that up to 2. I would happily spend several hundred pounds on a game (hell, it's cheaper than what i spend to keep my computer up to date). To buy a complete gw army here, would cost me a few thousand. That's a lot of money, in the scheme of things.

edit: lets say $2000 dollars. That's 1188 pounds. How's that sound now?

Really? I just quickly ran through a 2000 point T'au list on the Aus website....

x2 Start Collecting
x1 Fire Warrior Team
x1 Commander
x1 Ghost
x1 Stormsurge
x2 Broadsides

(Which is actually closer to 2500 if you use all 6 XV8's)

That came to a total of 973 Dollars. Full RRP.

 Hollow wrote:

 Torga_DW wrote:

 Hollow wrote:
I'm going to say it. I don't think GW is expensive. I'm sure you will get the usual "Compare like with like! Compare this model with that model!" blah blah blah I just don't think it's expense. A few hundred pounds gets you a lot of GW product. A few hundred pounds, in the scheme of things, is not a lot of money.

Guess it depends where you live. Right now, google is telling me 1 pound equals 1.68 aud. Let's round that up to 2. I would happily spend several hundred pounds on a game (hell, it's cheaper than what i spend to keep my computer up to date). To buy a complete gw army here, would cost me a few thousand. That's a lot of money, in the scheme of things.

edit: lets say $2000 dollars. That's 1188 pounds. How's that sound now?

Really? I just quickly ran through a 2000 point T'au list on the Aus website....

x2 Start Collecting
x1 Fire Warrior Team
x1 Commander
x1 Ghost
x1 Stormsurge
x2 Broadsides

(Which is actually closer to 2500 if you use all 6 XV8's)

That came to a total of 973 Dollars. Full RRP.

In good faith, I'll give you the prices/power i've got in my excel spreadsheet for looking at the armies that were interesting to me. Keep in mind that in points (which is what i'd be playing), 'value' will go down. I'm using the rough estimate that 100 power = 2000 points (roughly).
Primaris marines (not a full army, and not optimized) - $878 aud for 73 power points (excluding all other items, such as rules, paint, codexes, etc).
marine dreadnoughts - $963 aud for 56 points (lacking the power level of the forgeworld stuff, ironically forgeworld isn't that expensive compared to 'normal' prices) (again, exluding other items).

Yeah, there are 'discounts' to be had if you buy the 'get started' boxes. But those boxes aren't necessarily worth buying if you want a competitive army. And once you start adding the other stuff, it goes up. Paint costs ~6.5 pounds per tiny bottle. $2000 aud isn't an unreasonable figure. And that's assuming you buy a single optimized list and don't want to have alternatives available in your army.

edit: So 594 pounds for the most expensive version i've got listed so far, which isn't complete, is calculated in power, and is excluding other items. 1188 pounds isn't that far away.

Well yeah... If you buy more stuff, it will cost more money and if you factor in paints, those also cost more money. That's not what you originally said though. You originally stated that it costs $2000 to buy a GW army. Which is not really true.

 Hollow wrote:
Well yeah... If you buy more stuff, it will cost more money and if you factor in paints, those also cost more money. That's not what you originally said though. You originally stated that it costs $2000 to buy a GW army. Which is not really true.

If you factor in paints? That was all i factored in, there's still plenty more to go. Paints alone will run you a significant figure. Half the people on this forum will categorically deny you a game if you don't have your army painted with at least 3 paint colours per model. $2000 (1188) is a good ball-park figure for buying in to 40k in australia. It may cost me $100 less..... yay? It's expensive. If i could spend 600 pounds ($1000 aud) and be fully self-contained, it wouldn't be an issue. The next video card i'm looking at costs ~$1000. But gw lives in 'next car' territory.

Some people are just going to keep buying because they are in too deep to stop.

The fools.

Mitochondria wrote:
Some people are just going to keep buying because they are in too deep to stop.

The fools.

Well, if they're having fun then why not? The question is more of - could gw do better? Both in regards to their customer base, and their profits.

 Torga_DW wrote:

Mitochondria wrote:
Some people are just going to keep buying because they are in too deep to stop.

The fools.

Well, if they're having fun then why not? The question is more of - could gw do better? Both in regards to their customer base, and their profits.

because they are having the wrong kind of fun and the intertubes won't stand for that, and remember the more you denigrate some random strangers the better the world gets....

given the uneven mess 8th currently appears to be I'm leaning towards GW only having learnt how to make newer and better mistakes, although there's a narrow chance it'll even out I'm not holding my breath

Is this going to become one of those threads where we compare the miniatures hobby to random, more expensive hobbies and pretend that GW is cheap?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Is this going to become one of those threads where we compare the miniatures hobby to random, more expensive hobbies and pretend that GW is cheap?

You say that, but is because you dont know how expensive is collecting illegal Albino Rhino's Horn-Made Chess Pieces. Dayum, for the cost of one pawn I could have two full GW armies!

 Galas wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Is this going to become one of those threads where we compare the miniatures hobby to random, more expensive hobbies and pretend that GW is cheap?

You say that, but is because you dont know how expensive is collecting illegal Albino Rhino's Horn-Made Chess Pieces. Dayum, for the cost of one pawn I could have two full GW armies!

Only one side of the chess board needs to come from an albino rhino, silly.

I seriously just ran the numbers on weekly visits to the local* sex dungeon and compared them to finishing one GW army per year, and the results might surprise you.


*Well, local as in 100 miles away. Never go to the actual local sex dungeon.

 Galas wrote:
You say that, but is because you dont know how expensive is collecting illegal Albino Rhino's Horn-Made Chess Pieces. Dayum, for the cost of one pawn I could have two full GW armies!

You say that like you can play Chess without albino rhino horn pieces. That doesn't sound civilised at all.

@Azreal13.
''The ONLY reason GW hikes up its prices every year is because it is can not grow profits by increasing sustainable volume of sales . ''
I meant this statement to reference historical performance of GW plc.
(Nearly)every time a new edition of a GW game drops , and or GW do a 'sales drive', revenue increases in the short term.

However, when you look at the performance in the long term, is it apparent GW may be toddling a long nicely now.But it does not mean they are effective or efficient as they could be.

For example IF GW plc had kept their sales volumes from their highest, (2003-2004).At the current retail prices GW plc should have a turn over of £320M to 380M.

Yes GW plc are going to continue selling toy soldier to collectors, and will be in business for a while yet.
Carried along by veterans that believe in sunk cost fallacy.And new customers that are not aware of the wider war gaming market in general.

But if they had a great rule set to drive positive word of mouth, (like other companies in the same market.)The expensive B&M chain would not be needed, and prices could be lowered, and GW could make larger profits of the same turn over.

GW have learned how to get by , by appealing to the easiest to please.And not a great deal else.

I'd started to write a more detailed reply, but then realised the reasons I was finding your arguments familiar was because they're largely my arguments from about 4 or 5 years ago. I'm not accusing you of plagiarism, but you really need to update your thinking. Some things are still valid, but much has changed.

Plus comparing GW at peak LotR to any other period in their history, or likely any other period in their future, is almost akin to comparing two different companies for the purposes of a valid comparison. I'm also interested in your working on that one, how did you come up with the figure of "today's retail prices" or are you simply quoting the turnover adjusted for inflation, which isn't the same thing?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
[
Only one side of the chess board needs to come from an albino rhino, silly.

Nope, both sides have to be albino rhino horn. You just stain the black side to imitate mahogany.

Yeah, they could half their prices.

But would that offset the lost profit margin in increased sales? Likely not. Whilst I'm very much price elastic, I still only need/want to buy so much in a given financial year.

So whilst I may buy more, it's just as likely I'd spend less overall. And that cuts into the profit margin, unless they can somehow also half their overheads into the bargain.

And the deeper the discount, the more that's biting into their actual profits. So they'd need to sell far more than double the volume to maintain their profit margins.

Here's a rough example. I understand that GW's wholesale price is around 60% of retail. So a £100 boxed set would cost a FLGS £60 to buy in.

Now, if they halved the retail, they'd have to reduce their wholesale price as well. Would it be the same 60%? Well, who knows? If it did remain the same, that £100 boxed set retailing now for 50%, would have a wholesale price of £30, yes? Wholesale wise (one of their most profitable sale avenues) they'd need to flog double just to maintain the current level of income. And that does the same for the FLGS margins as well.

I dare say that in the long term they'd see an upswing in sales, possibly over and above the double needed to take in the same cash. But, in the short term? Until they increase the player base? Could they survive on such self inflicted drops in profit? How about FLGS? When they go from making £40 on a sale to £20 (not allowing for discounts, as not all B&M offer that), can they stay in business in the short to mid term? I mean, it's not as if they can magically halve their overheads to get the breathing space either, is it?

Would GW's own stores turn enough of a profit at half price to keep them open? You can't simply slash a single staff members wage in half after all. If they don't, they're a cash sink in danger of closing.

That reduces your number of available sales channels, be it GW stores or FLGS (including those FLGS who no longer turn enough profit on GW to keep stocking it).

It's.....it's almost as if you've not actually thought this through.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It gets even mor unfeasible to reduce their prices by a decent percentage when you look at their financials.

Whlist simpletons might point to a given sprue costing pennies to make, their actual profit margin shows not insignificant overheads.

Yes, they could close down all their stores just to save you a few quid, but there goes their main source of new blood. So that's going to reduce potential sales as well, and all but kill new blood, which is going to put a dent in the whole 'half price is the solution' argument, as they'd inherently lose sales volumes that way too.

Or you could just accept that clearly their price strategy is working out for them. They now offer varying price points, from relative bargains to three figure centrepiece models. Takings are up. Sales are up. Profits are up.

It's almost as if they know what they're doing better than you do

People can only paint so many miniatures in any given amount of time. It can take months or years to finish an army, during which the player may not buy anything else at all. That in itself is a severe limiting factor in volume sales for a company like GW.