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So I kinda like the Arbites.

By which I mean I have a few 100 Arbites in an IG counts as army, plus a fortress precinct.

I was ready to drop $600 on YET ANOTHER Arbites force with the Kill Team set.

It sold out in minutes and has not been back in stock.

Talking to staff and independent retailers they think the inventory warehouse management system is screwed, with comments to that effect to investors.

It is killing the wider adoption of some game lines. Necromunda for example comes up with retailers who now just don't bother because why try and promote a game where most of the components are out of stock.

It’s a problem when people are leaving money unspent.

It really isn't.

As a publicly traded company, it is way more important to hit your projections for the quarter which you have baked in. Under performing is the worst, but over-performing is not better. Then shareholders start to lean on you for higher dividends and other concessions.

If you hit what you project, everyone shrugs and moves on. By selling out, they are always hitting their projections for both cost and sales. It is one of those strange paradoxes of the Western Capitalist system we have had since the 80s.

exceeding your target by too much raises questions about growing too faster and not being able to absorb the growth, ie becoming a "victim of your own success". There are legitimate concerns there, companies have failed because they aren't able to scale up to meet demand and their blundering ruins public confidence or just causes them substantial amounts of money, etc.

So, its not unfounded - BUUUUT, its still kind of ridiculous that being too successful is seen as being bad.

It's the public trading problem. It's the same thing that caused GW's stock to tank after the Pandemic. They were super successful during the early pandemic - insanely so. Which of course meant their stock went up up up -- then when they stopped being the most profitable thing in the UK and started easing back into more regular stable sales the bubble burst and investors sold up for the next high-flying money maker and the stock tanked as a result.



The other side of being too successful is what the exercise bike+tv screen firm hit - which is where they were super successful during the 1st lockdown in the UK so they invested heavily into bulking up only to get hit with people being allowed outside again and sales went back to pre-pandemic levels. Only they'd just banked on their success and got investors, money, loans, big investments into new factories and more stock.

So that's the other side of the coin - investing heavily into producing more only to find that what you had was a short term sales boost which the market didn't sustain even with ample stock.




And yep the other one of being so far behind on production that the market moves on. I don't think GW are honestly there yet, I think they are far from it. I do think its a rising concern for some segments of the population, but I don't think enough are moving on that its costing GW. Or if people are moving on its being replaced with new customers moving in at a greater rate.
I do think if they got a better handle on their warhousing they could likely improve supplies to the point where at least some "regularly out of stock" items are more regularly stocked so that the things out of stock rotate around a bit more.

I think the failure to supply enough for their side games is stopping them diversifying into new customers and not making the most of their tooling costs. But then again if it is meant to supress competition maybe it is enough.

That is the goal, to suppress competition and maintain market share.

In fairness most of the games GW are now producing were games they produced before and just kind of let go over the years. If anything its them taking back market that they let go years ago.

But yes GW broadening their market interests is also about management realising that hyper focusing on hyper profitable marines was leaving them abandoning huge areas of the market to the competition who were getting stronger and stronger. So from a purely making money side it also makes sense for them to use good affluent times to spread out a bit and tackle more than one game type and such.