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Hmmm maybe? What's your thoughts? Why by something for retail when you can get cheaper or 20% off which is a lot of opinions and mine mostly. Is this actually hurting us?

There are others that wouldn't even deal with GW if the price after discount didn't make the prices more tolerable. It evens out.

Besides, GW's price inflation already made discounted price redundant.

i don't think so, mainly because 50% of the hobby is assembling and painting your figures, and most of us would rather assemble and paint our own. Of course, i don't think GW likes it one bit, but -have- to deal with it, its not like they can take them off ebay... can they?

No.

When a retailer (LGS, online store, ebay seller, etc) or distributor (who sells to the retailers) buys a product from GW they pay a "wholesale price" to GW. The price they then sell the product for doesnt effect GW much, as GW has already been paid for the product when the seller bought it.

The amount of product GW sells directly to customers via their own stores and website is just a portion of their overall sales, so the places selling for 20-25% off dont effect them much.


It should also be noted that GW sets a minimum price for retailers as part of their contract to sell the products. About 12 years ago I worked at a games store, and the allowed discount was only 5%. It would seem they have loosed this up quite a bit.

I don't think so, no. But it might well have been one of the considerations of changing to resin rather than metal, the former being a material much harder to strip paint from successfully.

I will say though as prices continue to rise, a good deal on ebay will become harder and harder to find as more and more customers flock to that avenue of purchasing minis. Going back even 3 or 4 years you can't find anything like the good deals you used to be able to get, it has definitely become more of a sellers market.

Definately not, I think its totally the opposite.

Before the price hikes started I would buy everything off GW unless it was stupidly priced or hard to get, when the metal blisters started getting silly I would only buy boxed sets off them, now that the prices are stupidly high, finecast is about, and plastic kits are half the squad for twice the price (or more!) I only tend to buy my paints, brushes, and that sorta stuff from GW. I now buy almost all my stuff off eBay or occasionally independant retailers. Although I do occasionally buy Forge world stuff. My brother and friends are in the exact same situation.

No. The cause of the price hikes is the slow loss of sales volume seen at GW.

The reason the prices are so high in the first place is that GW runs a whole network of GW-exclusive stores, the maintenance of which take a full 50% of the price of every mini sold. If they closed the stores, they could cut their prices in half and still make the same profit margin per unit sold... and I bet they'd sell a TON more than they do now, thus making a much larger profit.

Of course, that would require being willing to support third-party sellers to maintain the same level of exposure... in a similar model to what Privateer Press does with their Press Gang.

If they did that, they could TOTALLY undercut Privateer Press, as then a new GW army would be around the same price as a new Warmahorde force, but available for purchase in cheaper increments. They would still be more expensive than Mantic and Perry, but would be on a par with or even cheaper than many other competetors like AoW and the like.

In short... corporate short-sightnedness is the cause. Buying models cheaper off e-bay is the result.

Pacific wrote:I don't think so, no. But it might well have been one of the considerations of changing to resin rather than metal, the former being a material much harder to strip paint from successfully.

I will say though as prices continue to rise, a good deal on ebay will become harder and harder to find as more and more customers flock to that avenue of purchasing minis. Going back even 3 or 4 years you can't find anything like the good deals you used to be able to get, it has definitely become more of a sellers market.

Yup, ebay for the most part isnt any better than the online retailers 20-25% discount. The advantage it offers (for US customers at least) is being able to do the full purchase online. GW doesnt allow "shopping cart" systems to sell their products, so online stores are forced to take GW orders by phone (inconvenient) or email (unsecure)...neither of which I like, so I do my GW purchasing on ebay.

@OP: You got it backwards. Continuous price hikes are the cause of buying used models off ebay.
eBay sellers have relatively fixed costs. The higher GW's prices go, the more profit they make.

As Mad4Minis says above, eBay also gives a shopping-cart-esque view for purchasing models online, which people have come to expect from online stores.

Huh?

The laws of supply and demand say that say that the less demand there is for GWs product, the more supply they have, and hence the lower the price they should be forced to sell at.

e.g. buying from alternative retailers/game systems/buying on the secondhand market should force a price reduction, whereas continually buying off the GW store should encourage further price increases.

I dunno. I just recently bought a set of 5 Eldar Dark Reapers (metal) off Ebay for 20 dollars. They had been partially painted, but all that took was a 2-day soak in Simple Green.

As opposed to the more than $41.25(us) that they are in Finecast now, I call that a great friggin' deal.

Until I got a set of Gift Certificates from the Mom and Fiancee, I was absolutely planning on getting a squad of Wraithguard from Ebay, too. As opposed to 15 dollars apiece from GW, you can usually get them for about $50 for 5-6 models.

Vulcan wrote:No. The cause of the price hikes is the slow loss of sales volume seen at GW.

The reason the prices are so high in the first place is that GW runs a whole network of GW-exclusive stores, the maintenance of which take a full 50% of the price of every mini sold. If they closed the stores, they could cut their prices in half and still make the same profit margin per unit sold... and I bet they'd sell a TON more than they do now, thus making a much larger profit.

Of course, that would require being willing to support third-party sellers to maintain the same level of exposure... in a similar model to what Privateer Press does with their Press Gang.

If they did that, they could TOTALLY undercut Privateer Press, as then a new GW army would be around the same price as a new Warmahorde force, but available for purchase in cheaper increments. They would still be more expensive than Mantic and Perry, but would be on a par with or even cheaper than many other competetors like AoW and the like.

In short... corporate short-sightnedness is the cause. Buying models cheaper off e-bay is the result.

^ This is your answer, right here.

GW is a public company, meaning nothing matters except for the current fiscal quarter. And that means anything requiring a heavy investment that will not yield increases in the following quarter -at the latest- will not get done.

The OP has already been answered but I will say that I simply won't buy any GW products if it wasn't for Ebay. Even the prices from discounters are far too high.

Closing all the GW stores is an absolutely terrible idea.

You need high sales volumes to make the production and tooling of hard plastic sprues worthwhile.

Without its stores, GW would not be able to generate enough sales to maintain its current release schedule.

Things like the plastic characters would be just plain not economical.

Lots of armchair businessmen on the internet!

As for the OP, second-hand market is largely restricted to metals - plastics, once assembled and poorly painted are next to worthless. Finecast lacks resale value, too, unless it remains unpainted and you have a good cast.

Second hand sales are a small factor which will become increasingly smaller as metal production is phased out almost entirely.

GW raised the prices because GW wanted to generate higher dividend yields in the short term for its shareholders, the primary shareholder of which is the chairman of the company who clearly wants an extremely wealthy retirement in a few years time.

There is zero chance of any policy change from GW until Kirby is out, having sold off his shares and bought a private island somewhere.

There will be a couple of small sales boosts soon, with the release of 50k 6th, and The Hobbit movies which will see GW making good profits for the next 3-4 years.

There's no need to worry, GW are still making good profit despite the doom-sayers and will continue to do so.

scarletsquig wrote:Closing all the GW stores is an absolutely terrible idea.

You need high sales volumes to make the production and tooling of hard plastic sprues worthwhile.

Without its stores, GW would not be able to generate enough sales to maintain its current release schedule.

Things like the plastic characters would be just plain not economical.

Thats not necessarily true. Certainly GW would have to radically change the way it does business ( advertise!) and they would need to invigorate the rather patchy LGS coverage in the UK in some way, possibly through franchises. It would take some time, effort and flexability on GW's part but it could be done. Dropping the entire network wouldn't be a good idea but it could certainly be considerably downsized; when I lived in Middlesbrough there were 7 GW's within an hours drive, there should have been 2, maybe 3.

Other companies manage to produce hard plastic sprues with lower sales volumes.

If the GW stores were closed, where would little Timmy and his parents wielding mountains of cash go?

You have to remember, GW is primarily in the business of selling plastic toy soldiers to small children, their entire business structure is geared towards this end. Not crusty old veterans whining about prices, they've already bought their large armies and are unlikely to buy much more other than the odd little thing for their army, they are a poor choice to market to. Rich parents don't care if the new space mans tank is £41 or £35, their kids come first.

They'd have to change a *lot* about their company to move towards being an online sales business primarily appealing to an older market.

Smaller companies do make plastic sprues, but often struggle to do so within the sci-fi and fantasy genre.

Mantic is only releasing one sprue this year (goblins), and AoW has stopped making them. Defiance ran into production issues, and WGF is mainly focusing on the historical market these days, where there is a much larger profit to be made than sci-fi/ fantasy.

GW releases 3-6 per month, and often releases extremely niche stuff like monsters and characters that would be very hard to monetize effectively as plastic sprues if they didn't have the sales volumes generated by their large store network.

scarletsquig wrote:stuff

GW have to change a lot, they can't survive if they continue as they are.

Little Timmy can buy his stuff online, from LGS or from flagship GW stores in large commerical centres, just like he does in the US. I would argue that chasing after little Timmy and his parents cash is what brought GW into their current position in the first place.

The Plastic Solder Company is putting out a new hard plastic kit once a month on average. Genre isn't particulary relevent.

Palindrome wrote:

scarletsquig wrote:stuff

GW have to change a lot, they can't survive if they continue as they are.

I cannot agree, I think they will go on and on, the prices have been on the rise, since the 90s.

Yet their sales have been declining for 7 (IIRC) years now. that is unsustainable.

HI Rayvon.
Yes all companies raise retail prices to cover increased costs, and usualy raise prices at the rate of inflation.

Back in the 1990s, GW had a range of games suiteable for a wide range of gamers of all ages and ability.

Space Crusade,Advanced Space Crusade, Space Hulk,(Confrontation) Necromundia,40k 2nd ed, Epic Space Marine, (Space Fleet)BFG, just in the 40k universe!

So gamers could hapily migreate across game types while keeping withing GW sphere of influence.
Each game was focused on its own game play.

As a result of this raft of great games GW became very popular and had to expand its retail chain to cope with demand.(Turn over doubled every 3 years from 1987 to 1997!)

GW plc didnt double prices every 3 years , so this was actual growth in customer base.

Since 2004 , GW plc have increased prices over infaltion year on year, resulting in a near doubling of prices over the rate of inflation.

Yet they have lost over 30% of turn over EXCLUDING the price increases.

All the price rises have done over the last 8 years is compensate for falling sales volumes.(Eg fewer customers and/or customers buying less.)

So basicaly GW plc is selling half the amount of stuff at twice the price it used to be.

And as the prices get higher the more people will fail to start/or quit .So the price rises get steeper , and the turn over declines as the sales volumes fail to compensate..(Like last years report showed.)

So GW plc will be around for a bit longer.As long as those parents of little 'Timmy' dont have internet acess to see the wide variety of alternative games that cost loads less....

Good ebay deals are still around. I rarely pay more than 75% of RRP for a BNIB item. It's just a question of patience.

Palindrome wrote:

scarletsquig wrote:stuff

GW have to change a lot, they can't survive if they continue as they are.

Little Timmy can buy his stuff online, from LGS or from flagship GW stores in large commerical centres, just like he does in the US. I would argue that chasing after little Timmy and his parents cash is what brought GW into their current position in the first place.

The Plastic Solder Company is putting out a new hard plastic kit once a month on average. Genre isn't particulary relevent.

But it is. Even though it isn't as large as it once was, there is still a massive plastic model kit industry. It dipped spectacularly in the early 90's thanks to video games and some appalling quality of product that Airfix amongst others were releasing (selling the same antiquated 15-20yr old designs for an increasingly higher price - sound familiar? ) but the change in the market forced them to get their ass into gear, admittedly after they went bust and got bought out eventually by Hornby who have been much more astute. Companies such as Tamiya, Dragon, Hasigawa and others brought a new level of quality to the industry - Dakka only focuses on the fantasy/sci-fi side of wargaming, but there is a much larger market out there for plastic kits, even though at the same time it is much more competitive.

GW is in a unique position within the Industry, especially in the UK, where most FLGS received a 'coup de grace' from GW stores opening in the same area throughout the 90's. Things are starting to change a little now, where despite the poor economic climate a raft of new local stores have opened over the last 5 years or so. But, the chances are the first thing that a kid sees in the world of wargaming will be a GW shop and minis, and they are designed and marketed towards that end. The "this is better for your kid than computer games, it teaches them something" salesman line is a very powerful one - these price increases hurt the conscientious veteran collector, but a lot of parents will think nothing of shelling out $50-100 once in a while (with the splurge at Xmas) if it means their kid will be doing something constructive. If that changes - and the only access a parent has to those games is alongside others on the shelf of a FLGS, and those other games are far more reasonably priced, what is going to keep them from choosing that other alternative? The problem in relying on attracting fresh customers is that they will have no brand loyalty - GW enjoys its position as head of the market because of its stores, the moment that form of access is removed they will be in serious trouble. It's part of why I think they are playing a very dangerous game by keeping stores down to 1 man and being closed seemingly half the time - the stores are 'loss leaders' if you like, but they are a vital part of what made GW the large company it is today.

scarletsquig wrote:As for the OP, second-hand market is largely restricted to metals - plastics, once assembled and poorly painted are next to worthless. Finecast lacks resale value, too, unless it remains unpainted and you have a good cast.
.

I don't know much about finecast and haven't bought any used but your comment about plastic is way off the target. Plastic is easy to strip and usually easy to get apart without damaging anything. It is one of the best deals to look for on Ebay, especially if it is painted poorly. I got three land raiders for $105 because of this.......

I think that the used market is one factor in the price hikes.

having available used models reduces the demand for new product, but only among the most price concious consumers. The remaining retail customers are less price concious, and are more willing to pay higher prices.

All in all though, I think that this is small part of it. I think that GW thinks (and history supports) the idea that their product is largely price inelastic. Something to consider: if GW were more elastic, you would see the cost of used models rise to near the price of new, as people sought cheaper alternatives. Instead, used figures however around 50% of retail, with some higher and some lower.

Where I think the secondary market has had more impact has been the other decision by GW, all of which make buying used models more difficult:
- Selling bases in "grab bags" only, so you can't replace solely the bases you need.
- Elimination of the bitz service, which allowed for rehab of mostly complete models.
- The switch to finecast, which is less durable than metal and allows for more fragile parts, and thus can't be stripped as easily.
- While a minor factor, the switch to plastic makes the secondary market less viable. Metal models can be stripped and returned to 95%+ of new. Plastics can't be disassembled easily.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

brettz123 wrote:

scarletsquig wrote:As for the OP, second-hand market is largely restricted to metals - plastics, once assembled and poorly painted are next to worthless. Finecast lacks resale value, too, unless it remains unpainted and you have a good cast.
.

I don't know much about finecast and haven't bought any used but your comment about plastic is way off the target. Plastic is easy to strip and usually easy to get apart without damaging anything. It is one of the best deals to look for on Ebay, especially if it is painted poorly. I got three land raiders for $105 because of this.......

Vehicles are the major exception.

I wouldn't say that plastics are "worthless," but they do hold resale value much less than comparable metals.

No, I think the continuous price hikes is the partial cause of people buying used models off eBay.

AegisGrimm wrote:Until I got a set of Gift Certificates from the Mom and Fiancee, I was absolutely planning on getting a squad of Wraithguard from Ebay, too. As opposed to 15 dollars apiece from GW, you can usually get them for about $50 for 5-6 models.

Good luck with getting them off eBay for less than $15 each. I've been looking for 6 months and they seem to sell for full price or higher. This is one of the few items buying from GW directly (with enough for free shipping) makes sense. If you really want Wraithguard. I've gotten some great deals on Aspect warriors to complete my collection off of eBay though. I hadn't purchased much GW at all over the last few years so I have to give "Finecast" credit as that crap move motivated me to set a finish line and purchase what I need for my Eldar army. But almost all of it was off of eBay. I will admit some of it was direct from GW though for the "direct only" stuff.

Pacific wrote:

But it is. Even though it isn't as large as it once was, there is still a massive plastic model kit industry. It dipped spectacularly in the early 90's thanks to video games and some appalling quality of product that Airfix amongst others were releasing (selling the same antiquated 15-20yr old designs for an increasingly higher price - sound familiar? ) but the change in the market forced them to get their ass into gear, admittedly after they went bust and got bought out eventually by Hornby who have been much more astute. Companies such as Tamiya, Dragon, Hasigawa and others brought a new level of quality to the industry - Dakka only focuses on the fantasy/sci-fi side of wargaming, but there is a much larger market out there for plastic kits, even though at the same time it is much more competitive.

GW is in a unique position within the Industry, especially in the UK, where most FLGS received a 'coup de grace' from GW stores opening in the same area throughout the 90's. Things are starting to change a little now, where despite the poor economic climate a raft of new local stores have opened over the last 5 years or so. But, the chances are the first thing that a kid sees in the world of wargaming will be a GW shop and minis, and they are designed and marketed towards that end. The "this is better for your kid than computer games, it teaches them something" salesman line is a very powerful one - these price increases hurt the conscientious veteran collector, but a lot of parents will think nothing of shelling out $50-100 once in a while (with the splurge at Xmas) if it means their kid will be doing something constructive. If that changes - and the only access a parent has to those games is alongside others on the shelf of a FLGS, and those other games are far more reasonably priced, what is going to keep them from choosing that other alternative? The problem in relying on attracting fresh customers is that they will have no brand loyalty - GW enjoys its position as head of the market because of its stores, the moment that form of access is removed they will be in serious trouble. It's part of why I think they are playing a very dangerous game by keeping stores down to 1 man and being closed seemingly half the time - the stores are 'loss leaders' if you like, but they are a vital part of what made GW the large company it is today.

Wargaming, rather than modelling, kits such as those produced by PSC are obviously sufficently profitably to fund their rapidly expanding range. If a company were to produce high quality kit hard plastic kits for common fantasy and Sci Fi races they would likely do well, Mantic try but their sculpting quality is often sub par which puts people off (including me). On the other hand if the Perrys ever felt the need to make a 'Space Knight' kit it would fly off the shelves. That is what I meant by the genre being irrelevant.

Little timmy's parents are not price insensitive. The last time I was in a GW there was a wee boy who was very excited about getting his first models and his parents were happy to get them for him, until they saw the price. Flagship stores are fine but the little 1 man shops in small towns are a false economy and GW really needs to find more avenues to attract potential customers (and keep the ones it already has).

Kal-El wrote:Hmmm maybe? What's your thoughts? Why by something for retail when you can get cheaper or 20% off which is a lot of opinions and mine mostly. Is this actually hurting us?

GW's been pulling this crap longer then Feebey has been in around. Just saying...


Anywhere you can get cheaper GW stuff, go for it. After what they have started, peeing in the face of the players- They deserve it.

scarletsquig wrote:Lots of armchair businessmen on the internet!

This phrase doesn't really have the effect that you think it does.

scarletsquig wrote:There's no need to worry, GW are still making good profit despite the doom-sayers and will continue to do so.

"Good profit" that does not equate to "exponential profit" or "profit growth" is something that publicly-traded companies are afraid of. It's not enough to merely make a profit; they have to constantly expand the business, or else investors will see that their investment is not accumulating capital gains, and thus sell off the stock, which will in turn decrease the value of the stock, and harm the company.

However, I feel that none of this matters to you, as you appear to be under the impression that production companies consider first-party brick-and-mortar retail locations to be anything but unwelcome burdens in an increasingly-digital marketplace. However, if you look carefully, you will see that this is a business model that NOBODY uses, if it can be avoided, because the overhead on brick & mortar locations is a massive drain on the gross revenues generated by a product that can easily be sold online with a minimal overhead.

Kal-El wrote:Do you think buying used models off eBay is the partial cause of continuous price hikes?

No.