The Evil Empire (Games Workshop) (Why so much guys)

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**brettz123**

Rogueyopants wrote:Why does Games Workshop i.e. "Evil Empire" charge so much money for their models (If you ask them, they will rant on about how it is some sort of special plastic WHICH i know is bloody horse crap, and they say they ship it from Europe and all this other bull i don't want to here (I never buy from games workshop cause of that reason which makes me buy from Maelstrom and other discount online stores)-a lot of their main player base is kids under 18, and their blowing their money away because simply they haven't herd of any other tabletop modeling game like DBMM or DBR, or Flames of war and etc. And they just plain rip them off (You know 1 Space marine will cost around $4.20 NZD which is flipping outrageous. If you go to Warlord games they charge a box of 24 hard-plastic models for only around $22 NZD (which is like a dollar per model) where as a box of 10 space marines or 10 orks cost $45 NZD

Its really a shame cause i like the Sie-fie idea and i love playing this game with these Skirmish based rules (I mean i have a alot of models but it has cost me over Thousands of dollars to get them (I have a job so its not to hard to come by but still...)

What do you guys think?

They charge so much because they need to cover non miniature costs with miniature sales. So all of those stores they have all over the UK cost them a lot of money to maintain so they need to raise the cost of their miniatures as compared to other companies to keep this type of business model going. You can see from their end of year business reports that they take in a lot of revenue but their profit margin is pretty small compared to the total revenue. Hopefully they change their business model soon because it doesn't look good for the long term.

**brettz123**

Asuron wrote:
agnosto wrote:If that's the only reason prices are high, then GW should close the stores. I would think that lower product prices will do just as much to increase sales as a red-shirt trying to hardsell a 12 year old on a box of marines...

You see there lies the issue
Its those stores that help them become successful, its what gave them the edge over competitors
Its now impossible to get rid of them because of how much theyre intergrated into how the company operates, regardless of whether or not its profitable

In fact does anyone know if even the more popular stores manage to break even on sales?

It is an interesting question. I don't know what would happen if they closed the stores. It might be a bad idea and it might be a good idea. In the UK it seems the problem would be that there really isn't an infrastructure of private stores to pick up the slack. I think in some ways GW has created this huge problem for themselves and they really dont know how to fix it other than to raise prices.