Retailers ban Death from the Skies

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.

**Ouze**

800 copies sounds absolutely impossible.

**nkelsch**

cincydooley wrote:

I guess I'm fortunate my electronic versions of the codeces have the rules auto updated. Huh.

How did you get an auto update? I own the Ork Flyers Digital iBook but I am not really sure 'how' to tell if there is an update or how to get it or confirm I have it. So any help you can provide for the other ipad peeps would be helpful.

I have to say tho, 800 seeeeeems amazingly low. Our company had a professional print shop which did high end publications for the Government and even low-run productions were way more than 800. And we did the same binding techniques. Seems odd.

**cincydooley**

nkelsch wrote:
cincydooley wrote:

I guess I'm fortunate my electronic versions of the codeces have the rules auto updated. Huh.

How did you get an auto update? I own the Ork Flyers Digital iBook but I am not really sure 'how' to tell if there is an update or how to get it or confirm I have it. So any help you can provide for the other ipad peeps would be helpful.

I have to say tho, 800 seeeeeems amazingly low. Our company had a professional print shop which did high end publications for the Government and even low-run productions were way more than 800. And we did the same binding techniques. Seems odd.

I meant for the storm talon, etc. My bad on the lack of specificity. I think I may have purchased the Ork Flyers iBook as well.

**nkelsch**

cincydooley wrote:
nkelsch wrote:
cincydooley wrote:

I guess I'm fortunate my electronic versions of the codeces have the rules auto updated. Huh.

How did you get an auto update? I own the Ork Flyers Digital iBook but I am not really sure 'how' to tell if there is an update or how to get it or confirm I have it. So any help you can provide for the other ipad peeps would be helpful.

I have to say tho, 800 seeeeeems amazingly low. Our company had a professional print shop which did high end publications for the Government and even low-run productions were way more than 800. And we did the same binding techniques. Seems odd.

I meant for the storm talon, etc. My bad on the lack of specificity. I think I may have purchased the Ork Flyers iBook as well.

I see the codex SM update... No update to the ork flyers. Either they are not updating it or nothing changed.

**Adam LongWalker**

paulson games wrote:
They greatly limited the copies of space hulk that independant retailers could get, yet had ample supply for their GW stores.

One of the FLGS stores in my area was taking pre-orders for it and had ordered well over 30 copies of the game, they got in 4. Their distributor got roughly 10% of their total requests from GW. GW at the time claimed to have sold through all of their stock and couldn't provide independant retailers with more. But if you went to the local GW stores not only did they have to cover all the GW pre-orders in store they had well over an additional 100 copies PER STORE in stock. They had it in stock and on the shelf for 4-5 months after supposedly being sold out.

They intentionally shorted non GW stores to pad their numbers and drive customers to buy it at GW outlets and not at FLGS stores.

Yup I can verify this as I've seen this first hand when this occurred in my areas that I travel too.. As far as 800 copies? Yes I can believe that as well as this looks good for when they report their financials. Seen this done in other companies. This is nothing new in padding their reports to make everything look rosy for investment purposes on how well they sold their recent product. . Investors like hearing about sell outs and increased product demand. They do not care about what sold, what did not sell and so forth. Only profit levels that are met on a yearly basis. Nothing wrong with that either as long as this company does not become another Enron then all is good.

The other reason is amount of investment in creating this content. Very small investment turning out a product with a small print run like this. They are going to make a lot of money (amount of profit per unit) on this product by cutting out the retailers via their direct only sales.

**xraytango**

800 copies × $33 = $26400.00

- 800 × 5 (printing cost) = $4000.00

Total $20400.00

That's base per unit, I am sure that there are shipping / warehousing / distribution costs to take into consideration.

If they use UPS to send it to your door that's another $8.xx +/- that is deducted per unit = -$13.xx from the cover price, not counting other associated costs..

Brings us to -$10400

Total $10000.00

Hourly wages for warehouse personnel to unpack, pick, label, and ship and you are losing even more off the cover price.

That's not even one week's wage for good 'ol Mr. Kirby.

I fail to see how GW could possibly benefit their investors with what could be considered chump change.

**Lobokai**

Hello there,

Thanks for writing into us. Sorry for any confusion there may have been. Independent Retailers will be able to order this product just like any other Direct items. I also wanted to clarify that Death From the Skies is a compendium not a rules book. It reprints things previously printed in other books. If you have any other questions please contact us at 1-800-394-4263.

Games Workshop
North America Customer Services

Here's what I got back today.

**Breotan**

Did they put the Storm Eagle into the electronic C:SM?

**Quintinus**

Breotan wrote:
Did they put the Storm Eagle into the electronic C:SM?

Yep! I would know, I've seen the scans.

**nolzur**

silent25 wrote:
The Hobbit game likely did not meet the numbers GW expected and now they are scrambling to increase revenues before the half. If they don't meet their expectations, their stock will be punished.

There's an understatement.
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?prodId=prod1820008a

They still have not sold out of the limited edition copies of the hobbit.

*edited to fix quote error

**SentientFrog**

I still think that if I were in a store that banned me from using the game I wanted to play, it would be my turn to boycott them. It all sounds a little petty to me.

**Goliath**

steve2112 wrote:
i buy printing a lot where i work. i do everything from copy shop stuff to 400,000 runs in china. I find it highly unlikely they print that few. the cost per piece would be astronomical. I mean even at 1000 copies it would not be cost effective to do. per unit. I mean printing 5000 maybe i would think as a preliminary order and then 5000 in 2 months for inventory. I can not believe a multi million dollar company would only order 800-1000 of a book.

Unless you want it to sell out and you most likely have a plan to get it back in stock in a week or two. that way you do a few things. You can tell you shareholder "our books always sell out" and you create a artificial need for people to urgently but the NEXT book that comes out because all the preorders constantly sell out.

The other thing my company does is order say 5000 units of something. The supplier rushes the first 1000 to us so we can get it listed and start selling them while they finish the rest of the order. Sometimes we have small quanitites flewn over from china or taiwan and the remainder of the order is shipped over by boat for cost saving. I could understand that approach for say 5000 books.

I am not saying this is what they did though. It is GW and they also seem to do things backwards.

Our products are constantly getting ripped off by chinese vendors and copy cats but you know how we combat it, we make a better product. Hell people in china order from us because we supply quality and have a strong warranty even though they might be made in there own freaking country.

Now GW has the, for the most part, the quality there. I just dont get why they make it so inaccessible. Seriously i dont understand why they don't have sales to move items or multiple unit discounts.Or even direct to the FLGS specials.

They aren't allowed to run sales due to the fact that they manufacture the products, and sell them, and sell them to other shops to be sold by them. If they ran a sale it would be disadvantaging the FLGSs, with nothing they could do, which is illegal due to competition laws. (I believe, I heard this from a lawyer who specifically worked in that area, but there is a possibility that it may be incorrect)

**cadbren**

I don't have time to read through 15 pages so sorry if this has been said:

A more appropriate response from the store would have been to provide free copies of Death from the Skies for use in their tournaments. Anyone wanting to use the rules could also go into the store and look at one of the store copies and take notes from it.
It denies sales to GW, is totally legal, and makes everyone happy except a handful of suits at GWHQ.

**xraytango**

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. Will there be a secondary release, how soon will new codecii be released, will we receive updated rules in the meantime?

Stay tuned true believers!

**hotsauceman1**

Im more curious. how did they change the it? Did they just get rid of the "Supersonic" part of the models and named it a flyer?

**xraytango**

I find it interesting to note that a group of high speed offset presses could do the whole run of signatures needed for this publication in about 15 minutes.

FYI, a signature is the layout of a certain number of pages front and back that are then folded over and processed through a casemaking/bindery operation to become a finished book.

**Ravenous D**

MasterSlowPoke wrote:
Aren't direct order items still orderable by independent stores, just at not as good a discount?

You can, but there is a delay on orders and its a huge pain in the ass for the retailer most times. Most "direct only" things take 4 to 6 weeks last time I checked, while its only 2 weeks for a GW store/website.

**silent25**

Goliath wrote:

They aren't allowed to run sales due to the fact that they manufacture the products, and sell them, and sell them to other shops to be sold by them. If they ran a sale it would be disadvantaging the FLGSs, with nothing they could do, which is illegal due to competition laws. (I believe, I heard this from a lawyer who specifically worked in that area, but there is a possibility that it may be incorrect)

Nothing stopping them from doing sales. Know PP, Mantic, and Spartan have all done sales within the last year. Pretty sure others have as well. Spartan currently has one going on Uncharted Seas. My local stores doesn't carry Mantic because of Mantic's frequent sales. Sometimes below wholesale.

GW probably doesn't because it would "cheapen" their product.

**AllSeeingSkink**

Goliath wrote:
They aren't allowed to run sales due to the fact that they manufacture the products, and sell them, and sell them to other shops to be sold by them. If they ran a sale it would be disadvantaging the FLGSs, with nothing they could do, which is illegal due to competition laws. (I believe, I heard this from a lawyer who specifically worked in that area, but there is a possibility that it may be incorrect)

They used to have sales. From memory I've seen 4 or 5, just individual GW stores having sales.

**GBL**

More likely is that 800 copies were allocated to that region or state.

**marv335**

Vladsimpaler wrote:
Breotan wrote:
Did they put the Storm Eagle into the electronic C:SM?

Yep! I would know, I've seen the scans.

It's certainly in my iCodex.

Let the argument over whether an Ironclad is a dreadnought commence!

**battlematt**

Wow, I am just so pissed. I have never bought anything direct order from GW. My FLGS is the only place my 20 to 30 friends play 40k. We have 18 4x6 tables and do tourneys all the time. We all support our shop for the ability to play,paint and talk. With this move GW just makes it harder for me to buy anything from them. REALLY, how can they think that this will not piss off those of us who play at a large scale. My group of players are 25 thru 45 and we are the folks that teach the younger players to play, paint and what to BUY!!! I am all for any ban that will send a message to GW to support stores where their damn game is played.
edit by Reds8n

**Goliath**

silent25 wrote:
Goliath wrote:

They aren't allowed to run sales due to the fact that they manufacture the products, and sell them, and sell them to other shops to be sold by them. If they ran a sale it would be disadvantaging the FLGSs, with nothing they could do, which is illegal due to competition laws. (I believe, I heard this from a lawyer who specifically worked in that area, but there is a possibility that it may be incorrect)

Nothing stopping them from doing sales. Know PP, Mantic, and Spartan have all done sales within the last year. Pretty sure others have as well. Spartan currently has one going on Uncharted Seas. My local stores doesn't carry Mantic because of Mantic's frequent sales. Sometimes below wholesale.

GW probably doesn't because it would "cheapen" their product.

Yes, but do PP, Mantic et al. have their own chain of shops which also sells their models? IIRC Internet shopping isn't affected, only when a company that produces something both for it to sell and for others to sell, but giving themselves a discount.

**Marrak**

marv335 wrote:
Vladsimpaler wrote:
Breotan wrote:
Did they put the Storm Eagle into the electronic C:SM?

Yep! I would know, I've seen the scans.

It's certainly in my iCodex.

Let the argument over whether an Ironclad is a dreadnought commence!

*passes through thread... sees this and nearly trips over himself* woah woah, wait a second... the Storm EAGLE? Not just the Raven and Talon... but the Eagle is in the Codex now?

**Enceladus**

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Goliath wrote:
They aren't allowed to run sales due to the fact that they manufacture the products, and sell them, and sell them to other shops to be sold by them. If they ran a sale it would be disadvantaging the FLGSs, with nothing they could do, which is illegal due to competition laws. (I believe, I heard this from a lawyer who specifically worked in that area, but there is a possibility that it may be incorrect)
They used to have sales. From memory I've seen 4 or 5, just individual GW stores having sales.

I remember my local GW having a sale of sorts on bulk purchases of IG Tanks and Armageddon models like the Baneblade, Stompa, and assorted other stuff a couple of years back. The reason I remember it so well is because one of the more eccentric members of my local gaming group spent his entire wedding fund on tanks in one transaction - £7,500. It was such a large transaction that the till wouldn't accept it, as it thought it was a store stock request.

Needless to say his marriage never went ahead. He is now very much single.

**Enceladus**

So much for a mass boycott, the official GW website already claims that it's run out of stock!

**Fenrir Kitsune**

Enceladus wrote:
So much for a mass boycott, the official GW website already claims that it's run out of stock!

They've run out of stock of a rules update that is only available from thier store? So much for easily available rules to play the game with.

Its good here.

**AlmightyWalrus**

Isn't it a bit hypocritical blasting GW for this though? I mean, every time GW does anything to make more money they're the Devil, but when FLGSs do something to make more money they're the saviousr of humanity.

**Ugavine**

I've just been into my local GW, and even they didn't have any shelf copies. So I really can't see the issue at all.

**cincydooley**

battlematt wrote:
Wow, I am just so pissed. I have never bought anything direct order from GW. My FLGS is the only place my 20 to 30 friends play 40k. We have 18 4x6 tables and do tourneys all the time. We all support our shop for the ability to play,paint and talk. With this move GW just makes it harder for me to buy anything from them. REALLY, how can they think that this will not piss off those of us who play at a large scale. My group of players are 25 thru 45 and we are the folks that teach the younger players to play, paint and what to BUY!!! I am all for any ban that will send a message to GW to support stores where their damn game is played.
edit by Reds8n

Yes..Because that 3-click shopping with free shipping online is so, so very hard.