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.

Psychology Matters…which is why customers will quit buying product at all if they feel ripped off, and even a slight loss of discount that doesn’t add up to much actual money can have an outsize impact, because many customers are fed up.

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:

It's not a false equivalency because I never said they were equal. The point is to establish the existence of a parasite that is still almost universally acknowledged to be a parasite

Hey there, still waiting for your data on how people are introduced into the hobby.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:

It's not a false equivalency because I never said they were equal. The point is to establish the existence of a parasite that is still almost universally acknowledged to be a parasite

Hey there, still waiting for your data on how people are introduced into the hobby.

Just as soon as you post yours.

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:
Just as soon as you post yours.

You made the claim first, the onus is on you.

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:

Just as soon as you post yours.

I'm not the one making sweeping claims, you are.

My stated position is I don't know how important GW stores are. I'm eager to find out.

Enlighten me.

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Sooo, your argument is gamers don't know mathematics?

If someone buys online to get a 20% discount vs a 15% discount in store, they're still going to buy online to get a 5% discount vs a 0% discount in store.... or maybe they just stop buying altogether, because the price has gotten too high.

Contrary to the beliefs of economists and libertarians people aren't perfectly rational data points in a mathematical model. Psychology matters, and 20% is a much bigger number than 5%. "Save 20%" gets way more people to change their behavior than "save 5%". At a mere 5% discount many, if not most, people won't bother chasing it and will just buy locally at MSRP.

I'm getting tired of you only answering only half of someones replies to you.

What about the

.... or maybe they just stop buying altogether, because the price has gotten too high.

Did you forget that most people buy GW from discounters because the price is too high otherwise?

 McDougall Designs wrote:


I'm getting tired of you only answering only half of someones replies to you.

Almost like they only have answers for questions that the answers to wouldn't challenge their convictions. It's why they avoid anything to do with people that don't need or don't have physical stores to play at.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 McDougall Designs wrote:


I'm getting tired of you only answering only half of someones replies to you.

Almost like they only have answers for questions that the answers to wouldn't challenge their convictions. It's why they avoid anything to do with people that don't need or don't have physical stores to play at.

That too.

Ah well. I'm going to ignore him unless he actually answers.

GW is going to hit a point where the market can't bear thier continuous price increases with or without discount resellers.

At that point, they either reduce prices, up quantity for price, or suffer loss of customer base.

 Smokestack wrote:
My niece is (really my 3rd cousin? My cousin's daughter) 13.

She's your first cousin, once removed. Your kids would be her second cousins.

 Scottywan82 wrote:

 Smokestack wrote:
My niece is (really my 3rd cousin? My cousin's daughter) 13.

She's your first cousin, once removed. Your kids would be her second cousins.

Thank you.

Tyel wrote:

TauEmissary wrote:
Scalpers and Online Sellers are a false equivalency, because Scalpers take away products away from the paying consumers, by buying them from the company itself like a regular consumer would (except through the use of bots), and then re-selling them at a higher price against the company's wishes, while Online Sellers literally just resell the stock that Games Workshop directly assigned to them through a trade agreement both parties agreed on with the explict goal of the Online Seller selling the product.

Assuming Scalpers sell their products (which, given a reasonable cost burden seems likely), the products end up with paying consumers in the end.

Scalpers ultimately just exploit the issue of products having one price - when people value them differently. Which we've seen in this thread.
What price will you pay for the new GW hotness? 75% RRP? 80% RRP? 100% RRP? 150% RRP? 200% RRP if it comes in its own special cardboard box?

Uuuh...flat no. One price isn't what scalpers exploit(different stores have different prices so one price isn't even true).

Scalpers exploit _limited availability to force higher prices_,

They aim to have remaining supply so that as per supply and demand they can up the price.

In a world of infinent supply scalping couldn't exist because their business　plan depends on limited supply.

I hope nobody here tried to equal online discount stores to scalping? Because that's just flat out wrong. For one obvious difference by nature discount store sells under rrp while scalper above. Onlin stores also aren't aiming to monopolize supply. You don't have wayland getting every box of be'lakor/flamer/morathi/whatever gw produces do you?

what we have now:
scalpers are those selling above MSRP and are therefore bad because they are too expensive and make profit on people not knowing better or cannot get items otherwise

those selling below MSRP are parasites, making profit because of high volume of sales and are bad because they force other stores who cannot afford going low out of the market

and last there are those selling at MSRP, which are mostly GW stores, those are the good guys because they keep the (GW) hobby alive and people need to support them

this is one of the best (4d underwater chess) white knighting I have seen so far

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

My stated position is I don't know how important GW stores are. I'm eager to find out.

I mean, in a lot of the world GW stores aren't particularly accessible, so certainly aren't doing much to grow the hobby. When I bought my first 40K starter set (through independent mail order, before internet shopping was a thing), the nearest GW store was over 2000kms away.

Over the past several decades, GW have opened a number of stores in capital cities here in Oz, but they're still not particularly relevant to most gamers. And independent sellers here, historically, have mostly been newsagents and toy stores with no gaming space. Without the discounter posting me the product, I likely would never have progressed past Herequest (also bought at a discount, from a toy store that had no other GW related product in their range).

There's certainly a case to be made for physical stores being important for their local communities where they provide a useful service to those communities. But the further away a customer is from that community (whether geographically or simply because they don't participate in that community) the less relevant that is to them.

Some FLGS are also big online sellers, my local one is element games that does a brilliant bricks and mortar experience with a gaming club and bar and all sorts. But is a big online player in the uk. They can be both.

And it isn’t so much that buying from GW is too expensive, it’s about why would you pay full price when you can pay 20% as easily??

Andykp wrote:
Some FLGS are also big online sellers, my local one is element games that does a brilliant bricks and mortar experience with a gaming club and bar and all sorts. But is a big online player in the uk. They can be both.

And it isn’t so much that buying from GW is too expensive, it’s about why would you pay full price when you can pay 20% as easily??

According to one person in this thread, you would be supporting the growth of the hobby by giving sales to your local store, over a faceless online shop that does (allegedly) little for the hobby.

meanwhile I offered prize support to a tourney in a different state last month. If I'm not supporting the growth of the hobby, I'd like to know how I could do so more effectively other than shutter my doors.

 kodos wrote:
what we have now:
scalpers are those selling above MSRP and are therefore bad because they are too expensive and make profit on people not knowing better or cannot get items otherwise

those selling below MSRP are parasites, making profit because of high volume of sales and are bad because they force other stores who cannot afford going low out of the market

and last there are those selling at MSRP, which are mostly GW stores, those are the good guys because they keep the (GW) hobby alive and people need to support them

this is one of the best (4d underwater chess) white knighting I have seen so far

Do you know how funny wrong that is?
I buy mostly online because not much time to go out of my way to a store.
But the times I managed to pop in into an official GW store and ready to spend cash I found that errrr there was no stock instore for what I was after and they suggested me to order online
I cant paint a mini I dont have so yeah the Hobby experience was ruined and I just wasted time. Thats my main problem with physical stores (even official ones), the time to get there and the limited space they have to hold stock.

Honestly I think what they are overlooking is that wargames are a niche market. Heck card games are a niche market (though they have spurts of being THE game for school playgrounds every so often).

You don't really get the likes of Tescos buying out a bunch of Warhammer stock to then put on the shelf at below warehouse prices as a loss leader to get people in the store. Heck you don't even get warhammer being sold in supermarkets.


Wargames are not a huge market, so you don't get "predatory" discount stores. Also Warhammer products by and large retain value over the years so there isn't old-outdated stock to sell at steep discounts just to clear warehouses for the next wave of new shinies for the new edition/season/whatever. So again no steep discount stores buying up old stock to sell on.


Instead most of the stores you see getting into Wargaming, and indeed most geek markets, are those who have an interest in the hobby on some level. And with an interest in it they also tend to have a desire to grow it. So money gets re-invested.
This might be in the form of a local shop that provides gaming space; or a big online retailer using a corner of the warehouse for games. It might be an online store that opens a game manufacturer end - eg Troll Trader grew by trading second hand on ebay and now operates a game production firm. Wayland Games also opened their own game firm too.

So you don't get the same predatory marketing movers because there just isn't the vast market and product cycling and other elements that many other product lines have.






As for the impact GW stores have I'd say that varies the world over. In the UK I'd say they have a big impact in drawing people into the wargaming hobby. Heck I'd argue that GW are the biggest firm in drawing totally fresh, totally new people into the hobby in many markets. Many others rely heavily upon drawing warhammer players out of warhammer and into their game system. GW has bigger resources and uses them to help draw a lot of new people into wargaming all the time. Which is a huge and very important resource that would be a huge blow to the market to lose .Sure you'd not feel it initially - heck if GW folded the other firms would have a massive boom in sales (possibly outstripping some on their ability to supply enough product). The real damage would be if long term, no one rose to replace GW's recruitment and that wouldn't be felt for a decade or more really.

The thing is every GW store recruits only ofr wargaming; whilst your average hobby store recruits for all things they stock and likely has more of a marketing focus on their higher profit items such as cardgames. IT doesn't mean they discourage wargames, just that they might not have as many game nights, tables, events, stock display etc... That staff might not push the wargames as heavily unless they really love them too.

 NAVARRO wrote:
Do you know how funny wrong that is?

hence 4D underwater chess
the level of copium to get that argument going to defend GW and blaming someone else is a new high

I can kind of follow how that one is going, but it is wrong on so many levels I am just missing the claim that people are playing 40k because those are the best wargaming rules out there and not because of the models or setting

 Platuan4th wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:
But this price increase applies to both sellers and the closer everyone gets to MSRP the better. If the online seller is offering a 20% discount and the real store can only afford a 15% discount a 5% increase moves the new discounts to 15% and 10%. And the closer you get to "it's not worth buying online, I'll just buy it at full price locally" the more online discounters and their lack of value are pushed out of the market.

Sooo, your argument is gamers don't know mathematics?

If someone buys online to get a 20% discount vs a 15% discount in store, they're still going to buy online to get a 5% discount vs a 0% discount in store.... or maybe they just stop buying altogether, because the price has gotten too high.

There's also people who will simply buy online to guarantee they get a specific product instead of waste time driving to a physical store and risk said product not being in stock. I see it all the time in the Transformers collecting community. Collectors will pay slightly more in shipping to make sure they get what they want and not waste time or gas going to a local store just for possible immediate gratification and possible disappointment.

Yeah, I almost never order stuff in stores any more. Why would I drive 15 minutes to a store, wasting a couple of bucks of petrol, order something, only to have to go back to the store later to pick it up. And half the time when they get it in I'm not actually free to go pick it up anyway so it ends up sitting at the store for a week.

I only really buy from stores if they have what I want in stock, if I have to order it then I might as well order it online and have it shipped to my door. One benefit of covid has been that delivery services that used to force you to be home now just leave packages So it's even more convenient.

I do buy plenty of stuff from physical stores, but it's not models, certainly not GW models, it's when I see an interesting item and want it now, or other hobby products like paints, glues, etc. I've had several store owners tell me they make sweet feck all from GW kits anyway, and now they're either going to raise their prices by 5% or be in a position where it's even harder for them to make money off it, yeah nah, that's not going to encourage me to buy more from physical stores.

 Overread wrote:


You don't really get the likes of Tescos buying out a bunch of Warhammer stock to then put on the shelf at below warehouse prices as a loss leader to get people in the store. Heck you don't even get warhammer being sold in supermarkets.

As an aside. GW would have to provide 'marketing support' to Tesco in order for the supermarket to stock their lines. In effect paying for the Supermarket to discount their product.

It is likely that a major has at some-point had a conversation with Lenton.

GW launched “Build & Paint” kits in 2016 aimed at supermarkets & toy/game stores, and they largely flopped.



EDIT: There was also the Battle For Vedros stuff, but I can't remember when that was released.

I never really know if those things flop or if GW uses them as short term market advertisements. Ergo something that they put out in a large quantity to scattershot at different retailers iwth the hope that some of them will translate into new long term customers. However without the intention of keeping in them in stock in the market long term.

Which might well simply reflect that trying to mass sell to supermarkets starts to put pressure on GW's production capacity when they already have healthy sales to their established market to maintain.

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:

It's not a false equivalency because I never said they were equal. The point is to establish the existence of a parasite that is still almost universally acknowledged to be a parasite even though they are acting as a rational profit seeker and within the scope of the law. Once we agree that such a thing is possible we can move on to establishing that online discount sellers have much more in common with scalpers and drop shippers than with real stores.

To be honest if scalpers sold all their tickets at 20% discount I'd buy from them and so would most people.
(Indeed, I have in the past when they've wrongly estimated demand for an event and ended up selling tickets at a loss the day before)
You only have to look at the success of sites like Quidco and TopCashback to see that people will happily do whatever for just a few percentages in savings.

I'm curious to know if the Hachette partworks make them a parasite as they're selling far cheaper than the discount stores.

deano2099 wrote:

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:

It's not a false equivalency because I never said they were equal. The point is to establish the existence of a parasite that is still almost universally acknowledged to be a parasite even though they are acting as a rational profit seeker and within the scope of the law. Once we agree that such a thing is possible we can move on to establishing that online discount sellers have much more in common with scalpers and drop shippers than with real stores.

To be honest if scalpers sold all their tickets at 20% discount I'd buy from them and so would most people.
(Indeed, I have in the past when they've wrongly estimated demand for an event and ended up selling tickets at a loss the day before)
You only have to look at the success of sites like Quidco and TopCashback to see that people will happily do whatever for just a few percentages in savings.

Don't forget scalpers don't buy from the manufacturer at wholesale prices*. They buy from the retail market at retail prices. As a result the retail price is the scalpers wholesale price. So their prices are always going to be higher than the retail market for something. The only time that will change is if the item they are selling has a limited window of sales and when it gets close to the end of that window, they might well drop prices to retail value (so the scalper makes 0 profit on the sale) to just get rid of whatever stock they've got so that they money can be released to be spent on something else to generate profit.

Heck since scalpers are operating on pure greed, if they've scalped enough of the market that they are holding a significant percentage they use that control to raise the prices they charge and hit a higher market band than the retailers. Relying on desperation and lack of stock to drive the price people are willing to pay higher.




* although I'm sure there are professional scalpers who do attempt to do this by posing as legitimate stores to secure deals, secure stock and then drive the prices higher. In the end it means more potential profit for them

 Overread wrote:
Don't forget scalpers don't buy from the manufacturer at wholesale prices*. They buy from the retail market at retail prices. As a result the retail price is the scalpers wholesale price. So their prices are always going to be higher than the retail market for something. The only time that will change is if the item they are selling has a limited window of sales and when it gets close to the end of that window, they might well drop prices to retail value (so the scalper makes 0 profit on the sale) to just get rid of whatever stock they've got so that they money can be released to be spent on something else to generate profit.

Heck since scalpers are operating on pure greed, if they've scalped enough of the market that they are holding a significant percentage they use that control to raise the prices they charge and hit a higher market band than the retailers. Relying on desperation and lack of stock to drive the price people are willing to pay higher.

But if they don't sell then then Scalper ends up holding the bag. There's not an obvious point ending up with 100 tickets to a music festival or sports event that will become worthless after its happened.
And while, theoretically, you could hope to hold on to GW minis for years to make money, that's quite a different business plan. You would want to sell stock in order to get cash to buy more stock. Like a shop.

Ultimately Scalping is exploiting the law of one price. Within reason GW or FLGS have to sell to everyone at one price. But as we see in this thread, the value people assign to such things is all over the place. There will be some people who really want certain things. So if you can buy that stock and find those people, you can make the profit on the difference. But if those people can get the product at the regular price, they will do that and not buy from you.

So yes, there's scope for some manipulation - i.e. you buy 10, 100, whatever kits (I think many stores will no longer let you do this) and then hope to release them over ebay over 6 months or whatever. But there's a real risk you end up with 10,100 etc kits sitting in your house, and no one's interested. Or at least not interested in paying more than 80%~ RRP with free shipping, because that's what they can get from Dark Sphere, Wayland, Elemental, the list in the UK goes on and on. It only really works if demand far exceeds supply - which means there's probably someone out there who would pay 200%, 500% RRP etc but can't get the product.

Beyond that you see a lot of stock breaking. I.E. buy a big kit at £100. Split it into components and sell them on individually for say £120. That has its risks as well - especially with the bits no one wants. But is meeting a demand from people who want bits of a big box but not the whole thing. (Looks at Necron half of Indomitus that's mostly still on the sprews he got for about £40~) - even if it's an irrational demand.

Andykp wrote:
Some FLGS are also big online sellers, my local one is element games that does a brilliant bricks and mortar experience with a gaming club and bar and all sorts. But is a big online player in the uk. They can be both.

And it isn’t so much that buying from GW is too expensive, it’s about why would you pay full price when you can pay 20% as easily??

This reasoning is also flawed in GW’s favor. Instead of thinking of it as paying 20% less, we should think of the discount as what we want to pay, and GW’s price being 25% higher. (100 is 125% of 80.). That puts the pricing difference into a customer-friendly perspective.


Instead of saying, “I bought it for 20% off”, we should say, “I refused to buy it at 25% over.”

Scalping isn't risk-free and yes if they are tickets for an event the scalpers price will lower nearer to the time until the start time. Even then they will likely sell whilst the event is live if people can still get inside the venue (or even just because they are scalpers and don't care if someone ends up holding a worthless ticket).

Thing is the scalper only has to backpaddle to the RRP to break even on the deal. If they go under that then yes they've taken a loss.


So there is risk attached to it.
However the rewards are great and those pro scalpers will monitor what is and isn't popular and will go for the popular stuff.



It's 100% a system that predates on a popular product line with limited supply. That's why GW's "made to order" was a move against scalpers because the supply was suddenly infinite and the scalpers couldn't rely on limited supply driving up demand and driving up the prices people would be willing to pay.


And yes you are right people will pay more for things than RRP. Some just have more money than others and can justify the cost; some might require something for work and have to pay (eg graphics cards and graphic jobs, you had to soak that big price increase from a scalper if your pc went down or if you needed that equipment to continue to work). Others might have no sense of the market and think that the scalper price is the rrp etc....

The point is that the scalper is purely inflating the product price as much as they can to get away with it. There's no reinvestment in the market; no increased local support. The venue/manufacturer/whatever isn't getting more profits and more chance to invest into the firm for better things in the future (yes more profit means more for their pocket, but it also means more for re-investment).

 Overread wrote:
I never really know if those things flop or if GW uses them as short term market advertisements. Ergo something that they put out in a large quantity to scattershot at different retailers iwth the hope that some of them will translate into new long term customers. However without the intention of keeping in them in stock in the market long term.

Which might well simply reflect that trying to mass sell to supermarkets starts to put pressure on GW's production capacity when they already have healthy sales to their established market to maintain.

I never saw any of that stuff in the wild. The closest I got was someone saw some Vedros boxes at a store an hour away from me. I’ve been closer to Bigfoot.

The only place I have seen GW product at an otherwise non-game related store was Yodobashi Camera in Kyoto. They had a relatively decent if random selection of currently available stuff, but actually a better selection than the local GW supplier (Game Shop Bricks).

 McDougall Designs wrote:
GW is going to hit a point where the market can't bear thier continuous price increases with or without discount resellers.

At that point, they either reduce prices, up quantity for price, or suffer loss of customer base.

I can't help but get the impression GW believes themselves to be there already, at least temporarily.

We got our annual price increase at the end of February, then there was at least the summer Warcry box that was already more expensive than the standard set by the price increase, and now they're increasing wholesale price over MSRP in the same year that already saw increases to MSRP more than once.

To me that suggests they want to squeeze as much money out of the current market as they can before economic pressure sees an increasingly large portion of their customer base leave, so as to weather the economic downturn with as much of a cash buffer as they can get. No matter how much scorched earth that leaves behind. I think GW is confident in their ability to rebuild as long as they are still around afterwards, even if a lot of stores drop Warhammer stuff or go out of business because of it.

There's not a lot of sense in risking a whole sales channel over disgruntling a few more customers when their customer base is historically quite stoic about price increases unless they actually think they can't get away with putting any more pressure on their customers.