Games Workshop free shipping change in US...

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**Revarien**

Heya... I just noticed that Games Workshop's 'Free Shipping' has been changed from 'free with $30 purchase' to 'free with $50 purchase'. I know for fact it was $30 before, because my Immolators were free to ship with a single purchase...

Here is the link if you're interested: http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?catId=&categoryId=§ion=community&pIndex=3&aId=4500001&start=4&multiPageMode=

Just thought folks would like to know...

We believe in great customer service and want you to be completely happy shopping with us. That's why we give you the option to have your order despatched free of charge. Here's how you can take advantage of our free shipping offer:

• Place an order with a value over $50 if ordering from our US site or $75 if ordering from our Canadian site.
• Place an order of any value and choose to pick it up from your local Games Workshop store.

Placing an order with a value over $50US or $75CA
1. Place $50.01US/$75.01CA or more of items in your Shopping Basket.
2. Proceed to checkout.
3. Make sure your items are being delivered to a single US or Canadian address.
4. Place your order.

Place an order of any value and choose to pick it up from your local Games Workshop store.
1. Place any value of items into your Shopping Basket.
2. Proceed to checkout.
3. In the shipping area of checkout select the option Ship to Store.
4. Place your order.

Please note: Our free shipping offer is only available for Standard shipping orders shipped to addresses within the continental United States or Canada.

**AegisGrimm**

I really wish they wouldn't constantly change the price break for shipping. Just leave it at one price.

**Nvs**

Presume it's still free ship to store? I can't get to the page at work.

**Revarien**

Nvs wrote:Presume it's still free ship to store? I can't get to the page at work.

I copied the text for ya Nvs... it is in the first post.

**spiralingcadaver**

Lame :/

Well, with the exception of their store-only stuff, I would never consider buying from their store, anyways, since I'd either get a better deal online, or support the FLGS

**The Dark Saga**

I only buy hard to find models/units from the GW store when I've exhausted all other options, so this won't affect me too much. Even then, buying a unit or two would already put you over $50 most likely, not that hard to stretch it out further.

**Jackal**

Weird, still the usual £10 from the UK site, which is pretty much something you allways get if you buy any model.

**silent25**

With gas peaking right now, might be getting hit with extra shipping charges from their transportation company. Or might be they saw the majority of orders were just above $30 and decide the push people $20 more. Either way, haven't done an order with GW in years and when I did, it was for limited stuff that already exceeded $50+.

**Bat Manuel**

The $50 mark aint too hard to hit when ordering from GW.

**SoloFalcon1138**

AegisGrimm wrote:I really wish they wouldn't constantly change the price break for shipping. Just leave it at one price.

And I'd like the price of gas to stop affecting things like this, but look around, it's happening.

**kronk**

The free shipping price has gone up and down over the last three years. It was $50 before. For a while, there wasn't one(No free shipping, IIRC). Then it was $30. Now it's back to $50.

**fire4effekt**

Bat Manuel wrote:The $50 mark aint too hard to hit when ordering from GW.

3 paints and a Finecast space marine should do it.

**NoBaconz4You**

In the UK it's been for orders over £10 (~15USD I think) for as long as I can remember them doing the offer for.

**Chowderhead**

It used to be orders over $100 around 5 years ago.

Damn kids and their low GW free shipping prices...

**Ouze**

Wasn't it $15 or maybe $20 around a year ago, or so?

Sad that it's $50 now, but ah well.

**DarknessEternal**

Chowderhead wrote:It used to be orders over $100 around 5 years ago.

Damn kids and their low GW free shipping prices...

Even further back it used to be no free shipping at all, ever.

Damn kids and their misplaced sense of entitlement.

**ph34r**

Ouze wrote:Wasn't it $15 or maybe $20 around a year ago, or so?

Sad that it's $50 now, but ah well.

Opposite. It used to be like $100 or possibly $75, then I guess it was $30 for a time, now it's back to $50. I don't ever remember it being 15-20 dollar low, when was that?

**Ma55ter_fett**

Ouze wrote:Wasn't it $15 or maybe $20 around a year ago, or so?

Sad that it's $50 now, but ah well.

The only time I came close to ordering off of the website it was 15$ for free shiping

**xxvaderxx**

Wait, there are people that still order directly from GW?.

**Rayvon**

xxvaderxx wrote:Wait, there are people that still order directly from GW?.

+1
I always assumed that anyone ordering GW stuff online would order from one of the plethora of cheaper suppliers myself.

**MadCowCrazy**

Why would you buy from GW anyway when there are discount stores out there from whom it'd be cheaper to buy, free postage or not?

Direct only is the only thing I ever buy from GW and that happens very rarely nowdays as there are cheaper options out there from other manufacturers.

**McNinja**

MadCowCrazy wrote:Why would you buy from GW anyway when there are discount stores out there from whom it'd be cheaper to buy, free postage or not?

Direct only is the only thing I ever buy from GW and that happens very rarely nowdays as there are cheaper options out there from other manufacturers.

This. Why buy retail when you can buy the same stuff at a 20-25% discount? It is ridiculous how GW is undercut by every single website that sells their product, yet they never think to lower their prices.

**MadCowCrazy**

McNinja wrote:yet they never think to lower their prices.

They can't lower their prices because they are a manufacturer, if they lower their prices they have to lower the prices retailers buy from them. This is one of the reasons they have some of the worst price policies regarding independent sellers. A normal manufacturer normally sells their products for 50% of RRP to retailers, GWs is based on how much product you buy from them, this determines how much you buy retail.
Miniwargaming in Canada had a video about this, basically some of the biggest customers of GW can sell their stock for cheaper than MWG actually pays retail from GW. How can you compete with that?

Flames of War has a similar system where any retailer is not allowed to sell their product for more than 20% (I think it was that) off, they cut their contract with Maelstrom because Maelstrom was selling for 10% off and every now and then had a sales coupon code they sent to newsletter subscribers that allowed you to buy for cheaper than the FoW allowed rate. This turned out to be not true so they got the sales contract again if I'm not mistaken.

The problem is that GW sells to retailers at all since they themselves are a manufacturer and retailer at the same time, this is however something they have to do if they want to stay in business as they can't open stores everywhere. They have however on many occasions opened stores right next to local stores that seems to be selling well, trying to win over all customers to get more sales. This is why you often hear to support your FLGS, the FLGS can go out of business if they lose too many customers but they have something GW does not, they sell other products than GWs, they often sell GW product for 10-15% cheaper and they often have gaming tables you are actually allowed to play on.

So in short, GW can't lower their prices because then they would have to lower the prices for independent retailers as well. GW can't hold sales either where they sell product for cheaper than RRP, I believe there are some trade laws that prevent this because GW is the manfacturer as well and this would undercut competing retailers that sell their products.

Got a bit out of hand so putting spoiler tags so I dont eat up half a page.

Spoiler:

If I remember correctly about 50% of GWs sales are to independent stockists so they wont stop selling to them any time soon, for themselves they have started moving to the 1 person stores to cut costs which has saved them money (which they claim as increased profits instead of lower costs in the financial report, I also remember them stating lower sales was due to incompetent sales people in their own stores).
I'm interested in this years financial report as for the last 2 years they have lost 20% of their market sales in Australia (10% last year (this was before last years price rise happened) and 10% the year before that if I'm not mistaken). I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they've lost another 10-20% retail sales in Australia simply because their prices there are abysmal, especially with the embargo they enforced as well which prevents independent stores from outside Oz to ship there.

Either way, this was off topic but I hope it explains to you why they can't simply lower their prices, GW also believes this is what they can charge for their products and they will continue on increasing their prices until they hit "Breaking Point"/"Sweet Spot", where they charge as much as is financially viable for them to do. This is one of the reasons there is a secondary bits and miniature market aimed at Fantasy and 40K, GWs prices are simply so high that it allows smaller manufacturers to cut into their business sales. Conversion bits is a huge market that GW basically spawned when they themselves stopped selling bits (yes, they used to do this).

So in the end GW will continue to raise their prices, dont be surprised if we see another 10-25% price increase again this year. GW will continue to lose market shares (especially in Australia) but they wont go out of business for a while yet. I think GW might be in business for max 10 more years, after this they might go from miniatures manufacturer to rules and model schematics seller having no stores and being 100% web based. 3D printing will be the death of miniature manufacturing at GWs scale but will be the rebirth of the hobby as you will be able to pose your models however you want them and when you print them they come out at better than Golden Daemon winning painting. This will probably be shortlived as the next step after this will be holographic gaming meaning you have small base markers on your table and trough either optical lenses or projection of some sort your models actually come alive and perform the actions you give them which is also animated. We have this technology today but it's a bit clunky at the moment, the death of this will be when you simply dont need anything but a board to play on, you configure the army you want and it shows up on the table, basically a video game tabletop game where the minis fight and die as you, their god, watch over them and order them around. After this? The singularity will have happened and you can now replace pretty much everything in your body with cybernetics and can live in a cyber world where you can do everything I just described with anyone in the world that is connected.

**McNinja**

MadCowCrazy wrote:
McNinja wrote:yet they never think to lower their prices.

They can't lower their prices because they are a manufacturer, if they lower their prices they have to lower the prices retailers buy from them. This is one of the reasons they have some of the worst price policies regarding independent sellers. A normal manufacturer normally sells their products for 50% of RRP to retailers, GWs is based on how much product you buy from them, this determines how much you buy retail.
Miniwargaming in Canada had a video about this, basically some of the biggest customers of GW can sell their stock for cheaper than MWG actually pays retail from GW. How can you compete with that?

Flames of War has a similar system where any retailer is not allowed to sell their product for more than 20% (I think it was that) off, they cut their contract with Maelstrom because Maelstrom was selling for 10% off and every now and then had a sales coupon code they sent to newsletter subscribers that allowed you to buy for cheaper than the FoW allowed rate. This turned out to be not true so they got the sales contract again if I'm not mistaken.

The problem is that GW sells to retailers at all since they themselves are a manufacturer and retailer at the same time, this is however something they have to do if they want to stay in business as they can't open stores everywhere. They have however on many occasions opened stores right next to local stores that seems to be selling well, trying to win over all customers to get more sales. This is why you often hear to support your FLGS, the FLGS can go out of business if they lose too many customers but they have something GW does not, they sell other products than GWs, they often sell GW product for 10-15% cheaper and they often have gaming tables you are actually allowed to play on.

So in short, GW can't lower their prices because then they would have to lower the prices for independent retailers as well. GW can't hold sales either where they sell product for cheaper than RRP, I believe there are some trade laws that prevent this because GW is the manfacturer as well and this would undercut competing retailers that sell their products.

Got a bit out of hand so putting spoiler tags so I dont eat up half a page.

Spoiler:

If I remember correctly about 50% of GWs sales are to independent stockists so they wont stop selling to them any time soon, for themselves they have started moving to the 1 person stores to cut costs which has saved them money (which they claim as increased profits instead of lower costs in the financial report, I also remember them stating lower sales was due to incompetent sales people in their own stores).
I'm interested in this years financial report as for the last 2 years they have lost 20% of their market sales in Australia (10% last year (this was before last years price rise happened) and 10% the year before that if I'm not mistaken). I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they've lost another 10-20% retail sales in Australia simply because their prices there are abysmal, especially with the embargo they enforced as well which prevents independent stores from outside Oz to ship there.

Either way, this was off topic but I hope it explains to you why they can't simply lower their prices, GW also believes this is what they can charge for their products and they will continue on increasing their prices until they hit "Breaking Point"/"Sweet Spot", where they charge as much as is financially viable for them to do. This is one of the reasons there is a secondary bits and miniature market aimed at Fantasy and 40K, GWs prices are simply so high that it allows smaller manufacturers to cut into their business sales. Conversion bits is a huge market that GW basically spawned when they themselves stopped selling bits (yes, they used to do this).

So in the end GW will continue to raise their prices, dont be surprised if we see another 10-25% price increase again this year. GW will continue to lose market shares (especially in Australia) but they wont go out of business for a while yet. I think GW might be in business for max 10 more years, after this they might go from miniatures manufacturer to rules and model schematics seller having no stores and being 100% web based. 3D printing will be the death of miniature manufacturing at GWs scale but will be the rebirth of the hobby as you will be able to pose your models however you want them and when you print them they come out at better than Golden Daemon winning painting. This will probably be shortlived as the next step after this will be holographic gaming meaning you have small base markers on your table and trough either optical lenses or projection of some sort your models actually come alive and perform the actions you give them which is also animated. We have this technology today but it's a bit clunky at the moment, the death of this will be when you simply dont need anything but a board to play on, you configure the army you want and it shows up on the table, basically a video game tabletop game where the minis fight and die as you, their god, watch over them and order them around. After this? The singularity will have happened and you can now replace pretty much everything in your body with cybernetics and can live in a cyber world where you can do everything I just described with anyone in the world that is connected.

See, that's one of GW's problems; rather than lowering costs, they raise prices. raising prices also loses sales slightly, so eventually they have to make up for that with another price increase.

And to reply to the spoiler bit, I think that eventually, it will all become just a tabletop hologram version of the Dawn of War games, basically a tabletop RTS, if you will.

**Vetric**

Heywaitaminute.... The jump for Canada went from $40 to $75. *Insert rant on Canadian/US dollar parity*

**Hyd**

MadCowCrazy, I'm struggling to get your point.
Why would they "have" to lower their B2B prices if they want to lower their B2C prices ?

A manufacturer usually sells at an inferior cost than that of retailers ; it can afford doing that since it skips a step in the value chain. From the start, it holds an advantage over retailers.
If anything, I'd say their error is not to sell to retailers but to set up stores of their own. There are other ways to gain and maintain visibility without increasing operating costs the way brick-and-mortar outlets do, and I don't see any other convincing argument in favour of maintaining such a presence.

**Ouze**

ph34r wrote:
Ouze wrote:Wasn't it $15 or maybe $20 around a year ago, or so?

Sad that it's $50 now, but ah well.
Opposite. It used to be like $100 or possibly $75, then I guess it was $30 for a time, now it's back to $50. I don't ever remember it being 15-20 dollar low, when was that?

You know, I was so sure about that, I checked my post history, and in fact I did post about it. It was locked for being a dupe.

Yes, it was $15 slightly over a year ago.

**ph34r**

McNinja wrote:
MadCowCrazy wrote:Why would you buy from GW anyway when there are discount stores out there from whom it'd be cheaper to buy, free postage or not?

Direct only is the only thing I ever buy from GW and that happens very rarely nowdays as there are cheaper options out there from other manufacturers.
This. Why buy retail when you can buy the same stuff at a 20-25% discount? It is ridiculous how GW is undercut by every single website that sells their product, yet they never think to lower their prices.

Because there are some items that you can only get on the GW website, and doing so can in fact be cheaper than driving out of your way to a GW store to order it in?

**Theduke07**

Guess shipping out single units in those huge boxes caught up to them.

**puma713**

Ouze wrote:
ph34r wrote:
Ouze wrote:Wasn't it $15 or maybe $20 around a year ago, or so?

Sad that it's $50 now, but ah well.
Opposite. It used to be like $100 or possibly $75, then I guess it was $30 for a time, now it's back to $50. I don't ever remember it being 15-20 dollar low, when was that?

You know, I was so sure about that, I checked my post history, and in fact I did post about it. It was locked for being a dupe.

Yes, it was $15 slightly over a year ago.

Yes, I remember fondly the days that I could order a Phoenix Lord and he would show up with Free Shipping. I imagine people like me are the reason they ditched that: If we force them to purchase $30 for free shipping, then they'll simply bump up their order with 2 Phoenix Lords!

Tsk tsk - or they may just stop ordering altogether.