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I've created this analysis of postage costs in a new thread here - http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/512418.page#5363166

To continue this thread however, has anyone who's dealt with GW in Canada experienced this shutdown action my distributor mentioned? Curious to know the finer details of what's gone on.

H.B.M.C. wrote:I had 3 GW's within reasonable distance from me. One was literally up the road from me - less than a 5min drive, including the time to find a park. One was near to where I used to live. And I walked past the other one every time I went to get a hair cut. Two of those stores no longer exist and the one that's near where I used to live is no longer in the shopping mall but is instead two blocks away, on a side street, ...

The exact same thing has happened across Canada. Cities with 2, 3 or even 5 GW's within a reasonable distance of one another closed and the ones that were inside real shopping malls or other high traffic areas moved to nowhereville.

Morachi wrote:
Would love to hear more from anyone regarding the Canada fiasco. Sounds like something they will indeed do here given the outrage they've caused this past two years.

Basically the Canadian dollar strengthened against the US dollar until it hit nearly parity. GW did nothing to adjust prices (sound familiar?) and then when GW had those string of bad years and issued their profit warning and whatnot, they closed GW Canada as part of their cost savings. They also rolled reporting Canadian sales into "North America" in their annual reports, so who knows if the decline continued. Since then GW has been going on a slash and burn mission when it comes to corporate expenses. Every annual report they post about protecting their margins (raising prices) and cutting expenses (getting rid of staff). Even to the point that the bragged about how replaceable their employees were in their annual shareholder report.

So if they're still on the same path of jacking up prices and reducing costs, imagine if they could get rid of the offices of GW Australia and replace them with a couple travelling area managers and maybe one trade sales guy. Better yet, maybe they can find someone to do trade sales for all of Australia from Memphis, TN, USA.

Right now they actually fly staff to Memphis occasionally for training and stuff, so perhaps Australia will be where they start testing telecommuting for the training times. If it works to train Australian store staff without them attending HQ, maybe they can extend that to GW North America and then save more money not bringing in people for training events.

I see lots of potential for saving money by shutting down as many regional GW offices as possible. After all, if they were established during the sales heights of the LOTR boom, and sales are nowhere near those same levels and there's no "Hobbit boom" then why do they need them? They've shrunk in size to the point their sales just can't support them.

Thanks Agustin, that was pretty insightful actually - and appreciated

Frankly given the fact that GW have removed all incentives to visit their stores I can see this happening here as well (no real hobby support, being told to go elsewhere if you want a game over 1500 points... etc etc).

Their training is somewhat concerning as i've read threads in other forums about how they conduct themselves - and it shows quite irritatingly when you so much as pop your head around the door of their stores.

If they shut down their GW stores here, that could only be a good thing as it protects their profits (by reducing rent overheads) and puts that back into the Australian LGS - that is if they've not annoyed them to the point of dropping their products as well.

Most of the people I know have/are currently buying from the US or UK as the discounts are between 50-65% off, inclusive of shipping, through distributors or even mail forwarders.

If indeed we have our materials shipped to a warehouse here in Australia from Memphis or Nottingham, i'm hoping there is a pricing change involved with that as well - hopefully for the better.

agustin wrote:
Basically the Canadian dollar strengthened against the US dollar until it hit nearly parity. GW did nothing to adjust prices (sound familiar?)...

No I'm sure it was more to do with your minimum wage!!!

Morachi wrote:
If they shut down their GW stores here,

There are still GW stores in Canada. They just shut down their regional office after many of the GW stores were closed and they didn't need a regional office. Instead everything is handled through their US HQ.

Most of the people I know have/are currently buying from the US or UK as the discounts are between 50-65% off, inclusive of shipping, through distributors or even mail forwarders.

And GW wants to stop that as much as they possibly can. They want every Australian and Canadian who buys GW product to pay their local retail price and not ever save anything.

If indeed we have our materials shipped to a warehouse here in Australia from Memphis or Nottingham, i'm hoping there is a pricing change involved with that as well - hopefully for the better.

That's what they do know (ship toa warehouse in Australia, who then passes it along to local stores). If they close GW Australia, then they will ship directly to the stores themselves.

Just think about it this way, if the average guy can buy GW stuff from the US or UK and save 50% off and still have it shipped directly to the door, then GW can ship directly to each store and the store will still have the margin it needs to sell at Australian retail price.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

agustin wrote:
Basically the Canadian dollar strengthened against the US dollar until it hit nearly parity. GW did nothing to adjust prices (sound familiar?)...

No I'm sure it was more to do with your minimum wage!!!

LOL.

Nafarious over in the Dakka Discussions forum has apparently been told by Wayland Games that they aren't allowed to ship GW out of the EU (into the US) any more.

Sadly that's been the case since the UK embargo back in May 2011.

I was under the impression that one only applied to Australia but the US were still able to get stuff at a discount.

The most I know about this is that I tried to order from wayland games and they weren't allowed to ship to me in the US.

The embargo prevented any UK distributor from shipping outside the European Union - this was in effect for retailers as well. The only exception was GW itself, who have now gone and shifted their shipping practices to discourage outside countries from purchasing from their UK online store.

Have you actually emailed GW, Morachi? Or just gone straight to the status of 'Outraged Of Oz' and complained to random Australian bodies?

Seriously dude, try contacting GW first calmly and politely. Don't go straight to Defcon 1 and unleash the Complaint Missiles and Butthurt Cannon...

Can you tell us the name of the distributor who's telling you this?

(then maybe those with connections to different ones may be able to ask them if they have had the same change in T&C)

otherwise it is a bit of a 'random anonamous source' stuff

As mentioned, he told me this as a rumour only (thus the title).

I've also just spoken with another distributor, who suspects the contract being released on the 15th will prohibit them selling as a distributor or retailer outside the USA.

We won't know for absolute certain until the 15th, at which point I'll know more - and after updating this post, request it be moved to discussions.

EDIT - At the request of the persons who passed this on, I have removed their respective names/company names to protect their business.

As someone who witnessed the fall of GW in Canada, it doesn't mean much unless you were reliant on an actual GW store.

The short version is that shipping costs from direct orders from GW's site will go up, as will the time involved in shipping, and many GW stores will close, especially battle bunkers or other big establishments. Those stores that remain will be in cheap locations, and usually not very well located.

Otherwise, you still pay inflated prices, but there's less corporate interest in the region. Thankfully, the gouging in Canada is only 20%, on average, and most independent stores can offer a discount close or equal to that, but with Australian markup from GW, I don't know how well independent's profit margin can endure equalizing GW prices.

Just thinking out loud, but if they close the Aussie warehouse and they only recieve orders from the UK wont that absolutely murder FLGSs in shipping? GWs own stores would be fine because they obviously have an account with their shipping company, but indys would pretty much be screwed.

Did/are GW shut/shutting down in Canada? If anyone knows what this means exactly, i'd love to hear it.

GW did shut down their Canadian offices and combine them with their US offices to create a single HQ for all of North America in Memphis, TN. So yes they closed their Canadian offices, but they still have stores and sell product in Canada. They just no longer have a separate Canadian HQ. The only loss to the end customers was losing the HQ store there.

As for shipping to Australia, GW has not allowed cross-market intercontinental shipping for a couple years now. This was to done to prevent people in one market from buying from another because of pricing differences. For example, a lot of people in Australia used to buy product from discounters in the UK. North America no longer sells to South America and vice versa, etc.

None of this means that GW will stop selling product in Australia. If they have administrative offices in Australia and they do close them down it will be largely invisible to the end customers.

 Ravenous D wrote:
Just thinking out loud, but if they close the Aussie warehouse and they only recieve orders from the UK wont that absolutely murder FLGSs in shipping? GWs own stores would be fine because they obviously have an account with their shipping company, but indys would pretty much be screwed.

Maybe that's the point?

More then likely, its forcing people to buy locally at GWs historical exchange rates. I dont see this being good in the long run. Clearly there is a problem with pricing and instead of fixing it they are making it worse.

I re-read my 2nd ED Angels of Death codex and there indeed was an address for GW HQ. Well now without a Canada HQ, we still have GW stores and have GW products from FLGS. We get inflated prices and I suspect if I order anything it will come from the US wareshouse.

What I do think changed is that given Canada is now under US HQ. Its hobby growth will be neglicted becuase it is not part of the US. There is no delicated team to manage Canada's market to ensure long term growth.

my friends tell me that in terms of profits to be made. Canada's market is roughly equal to a mediem size US state.

If Australia loses it HQ I think things will stay the same, but don't expect anymore hobby growth from GW. It will be left to gamers and FLGS to determine the fate of GW games in the future.

 Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:
using UPS

Having worked at UPS I can only say that I really hope not. Do you know what the warehouse workers do to those boxes?

@Morachi, I think the only way that you'd get definitive answers would be to contact the British Trading Standards. Email them and see what they say.

Does anyone in Aus still buy GW stuff? I mean people in the UK have turned away from GW stuff because of its price compared to other wargame manufacturers - how the hell is it possible to reconcile when their stuff costs 2 or 3 times the amount of their rivals like for like?

 Morachi wrote:
Sadly that's been the case since the UK embargo back in May 2011.

Something that came as a consequence of this is that it has virtually killed GW in countries outside of the ones which have official GW stores or other FLGS. I was shocked with that bit of news when it came into effect when I was living in South Korea, remember having a laugh with the guy from the store where I used to get my stuff posted international from with a conversation along the lines of "how the hell is this legal"? Living in a country with a single store (which was a 10 hour round trip away on a good day) having to mail order something else forced me to try other games - up until that point, I had only ever looked at or played GW stuff.

Swiss guys were really hit by the embargo back then. Since Switzerland is non-EU noone was allowed to ship products to Switzerland. Problem was: There is no GW store in Switzerland and at that time swiss LGS had to order their stuff from EU-countries. And since EU had the embargo....

 BrassScorpion wrote:
As for shipping to Australia, GW has not allowed cross-market intercontinental shipping for a couple years now. This was to done to prevent people in one market from buying from another because of pricing differences. For example, a lot of people in Australia used to buy product from discounters in the UK. North America no longer sells to South America and vice versa, etc.

This is not entirely true. Once again, the US has so far had no restriction on selling overseas. It's just made difficult by the 'no webcart' policy.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the embargo only affects direct store actions; there's nothing stopping someone from ordering something from ebay or such, so you can still, I'd imagine, get around inflated GW prices or lack of GW stores. The only problem then is a location to play; if your LGS can't carry the stock, or is saddled with enormous costs, your own to find somewhere to play. Not good for the hobby, but not insurmountable.

Of course, that in of itself indicated how buggered GW's policies are, where they make it intentionally difficult or prohibitive to acquire their product.

 MajorStoffer wrote:
The only problem then is a location to play; if your LGS can't carry the stock, or is saddled with enormous costs, your own to find somewhere to play. Not good for the hobby, but not insurmountable.

The vast majority of gaming in Oz doesn't happen in stores anyway. Not enough of them for that to be viable.

 Duncan_Idaho wrote:
Swiss guys were really hit by the embargo back then. Since Switzerland is non-EU noone was allowed to ship products to Switzerland. Problem was: There is no GW store in Switzerland and at that time swiss LGS had to order their stuff from EU-countries. And since EU had the embargo....

About what time do you speak? Switzerland is part of the German distribution system for many years. They call their GW contact person in Düsseldorf like any store in Germany. In premium store times (until last year), FLGS in Switzerland have been invited to central training in Düsseldorf.

In theory yes, but last year things really heated up when swiss LGS realized that they had been dowgraded to non-EU status with all the troble involved.

If this were to happen and i mean a big IF, do you think i could order online from the us or uk have it sent to my gw here on the gold coast - if it;s still open and pick up in store for cheaper?

 insaniak wrote:

 MajorStoffer wrote:
The only problem then is a location to play; if your LGS can't carry the stock, or is saddled with enormous costs, your own to find somewhere to play. Not good for the hobby, but not insurmountable.

The vast majority of gaming in Oz doesn't happen in stores anyway. Not enough of them for that to be viable.

I can concur. While there are and have been game stores that also double as gaming venues, much more of the scene here is at clubs and in people's homes.