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 Harriticus wrote:
A major win for GW I bet they're happy about getting rid of loyal enthusiasts like this.

Nothing really feels as good as driving other people out of business with your short-sighted and anti-competitive business practices.

*raises glass*

Here’s to another embargo!

I like MWG's videos and what not, but it all seemed very self righteous.

The truth is, not many stores mark a huge difference in their business via online - Yes, MWG provide lots of good insightful videos, but no more than any body else could do.

Their store was an office, clearly something they're going to keep, and by the sound of it they've managed to forge themselves a career out of the hobby via videos, good for them, but if you watch their videos, they clearly have a very small face to face customer base (proven by the limited amount of opponents in their batreps). In reality, if they continue doing their good videos, its no difference to anyone.

Given that Neal (TheWarStore) and MiniatureMarket.com stay in business and sell GW product well enough, I'm not sure why MWG is doing this.

Maybe watch the video and find out?

I can't believe how calm he was. I watched all of it and he was just like, well, here's where we are, and here's how we got here - if it was me i'd be all red-faced and furious.

But I guess that's the Canadian way, eh?

 Breotan wrote:
Given that Neal (TheWarStore) and MiniatureMarket.com stay in business and sell GW product well enough, I'm not sure why MWG is doing this.

I suspect because they did a sizable amount of foreign trade that is soon going to be prohibited. The numbers on solely Canadian buyers obviously showed that it was not worth the effort to maintain, so they're getting out before they start losing money on the deal (I.e. - smart business). Could they be like Neal and effectively become a distributor of everything? Sure, but there's a lot of money going into a "maybe we can compete" and putting what sounds like many people's livelihoods at risk hoping to sell someone else's stuff.

In the end, they decided to bet on themselves making a product people will want. Best of luck to them on that.

 Breotan wrote:
Given that Neal (TheWarStore) and MiniatureMarket.com stay in business and sell GW product well enough, I'm not sure why MWG is doing this.

TheWarStore and MiniatureMarket.com seem to stock a huge array of product lines besides GW so they are a very robust online retailer regardless of GW.

It looks like MWG stocks 2 product lines, GW and PP (and some 3rd one they said they will continue to support). And he said GW was like 60%+ of his online business. He would either need to do the work to expand into loads of other products to have a more substantial base of products to justify continued s online store, or just 'not bother' being an online retailer and stick to focusing on being a FLGS and an online podcast group.

It made sense to me. I thought he explained it pretty well.

 Ouze wrote:
I can't believe how calm he was. I watched all of it and he was just like, well, here's where we are, and here's how we got here - if it was me i'd be all red-faced and furious.

But I guess that's the Canadian way, eh?

To me it seems that he's tired. It could be the shadows, but I think I spy some circles under his eyes.

 Surtur wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
I can't believe how calm he was. I watched all of it and he was just like, well, here's where we are, and here's how we got here - if it was me i'd be all red-faced and furious.

But I guess that's the Canadian way, eh?

To me it seems that he's tired. It could be the shadows, but I think I spy some circles under his eyes.

That would be the fading evidence of two black eyes courtesy of GW.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
The DVD givaway is a 'trial' for which you have to provide a CC/Paypal account, and will roll into a subscription if you don't cancel in time

http://www.miniwargaming.com/freedvds

not something I'm interested in, but if you're on the ball enough to record the content and cancel in time....

(I've no idea how easy it will be to cancel, some 'trials' make it difficult/impossible. I've no evidence that this is the case here, but it is a potential concern)

I've signed with MWG's offer before, first time I used the 7 day free trial and have no problem cancelling after I grabbed my free goodies. afterwards they continue to produce intertested DVD subjects so I became a permenat member.

The DVD themsevles are great. They go beyond the tabletop quality (not golden deamon) but does get the new painter/modeller great tips on improving their skills.

*Sigh*
I've never been a big fan of Miniwargameing's self righousness they could boast at times. But truth be told they are right here.

GW has just been acting agiest the interest of their fan base, consumers, and partners and this is just another step in that direction.

 Lockark wrote:
*Sigh*
I've never been a big fan of Miniwargameing's self righousness they could boast at times. But truth be told they are right here.

GW has just been acting agiest the interest of their fan base, consumers, and partners and this is just another step in that direction.

I completely agree with you on both things.

I would like to add more to the conversation, but I couldnt sit through the entire video. I know that they have said how important the online store was to their profits and so on, and while they could use the same tactics as the warstore I think they dont want to risk going under since alot of their orders go to the U.S. which they now cannot ship to.

Online sales must really be a huge part of their business if this asinine decision by GW is closing both their online as well as physical store.

Online sales of GW product apparently were...

And direct sales only.

wufai wrote:

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
The DVD givaway is a 'trial' for which you have to provide a CC/Paypal account, and will roll into a subscription if you don't cancel in time

http://www.miniwargaming.com/freedvds

not something I'm interested in, but if you're on the ball enough to record the content and cancel in time....

(I've no idea how easy it will be to cancel, some 'trials' make it difficult/impossible. I've no evidence that this is the case here, but it is a potential concern)

I've signed with MWG's offer before, first time I used the 7 day free trial and have no problem cancelling after I grabbed my free goodies. afterwards they continue to produce intertested DVD subjects so I became a permenat member.

The DVD themsevles are great. They go beyond the tabletop quality (not golden deamon) but does get the new painter/modeller great tips on improving their skills.

Yeah, frankly I intended to just pull a smash&grab to download all the free stuff and then cancel, because I was expecting them to make it as difficult as possible to take advantage of the offer, but; all the files are DRM-free, they're not imposing artificial caps on my download speed(I'll likely be able to grab their whole library in the next couple of hours, gotta love 50meg cable), and cancelling looks simple enough. I'll likely let the membership run for at least a few months purely because they were honest when they said "free", which is rare these days.

Really sad to see these guys shut down their store...

Hopefully their vault continues to grow.

F*** you GW.

Shame, seemed like nice blokes.

Will this be enough of a catalyst for a retailer/distributor boycott. We can only hope.

In this thread:
"GW is evil for forcing this game store owner to shut down!"
Also
"How can I manipulate this show of good faith by the game store so I don't have to pay them to get stuff that otherwise they'd make money from?"

Yeah.

I live near the warstore and phsyically go there to buy stuff. He has a LARGE amount of everything. He has a huge inventory. It is freaking awesome. The largest amount of stuff for any one system goes to GW with PP being second. So unless things are drop shipping from somewhere he might be able to weather it.

I have to convince my FLGS to stock mantic

nkelsch wrote:

 Breotan wrote:
Given that Neal (TheWarStore) and MiniatureMarket.com stay in business and sell GW product well enough, I'm not sure why MWG is doing this.

TheWarStore and MiniatureMarket.com seem to stock a huge array of product lines besides GW so they are a very robust online retailer regardless of GW.

It looks like MWG stocks 2 product lines, GW and PP (and some 3rd one they said they will continue to support). And he said GW was like 60%+ of his online business. He would either need to do the work to expand into loads of other products to have a more substantial base of products to justify continued s online store, or just 'not bother' being an online retailer and stick to focusing on being a FLGS and an online podcast group.

It made sense to me. I thought he explained it pretty well.

 Goliath wrote:
"How can we stop this from further damaging our hobby.

ftfy

welp.... this is just sad. Filling up an MWG e-shopping cart with War Machine now. :(

I would say boycott GW, but getting everyone on board with that is the very definition of the word "futile"

Ok, that really pisses me off...GW is like a ex-wife, you loved her once but now all she does is make you angry with stupid decisions..but there is still something there to love.

The GW online store would not ship to our APO overseas, so we had to go through a alternate store that got what we wanted to us, and now unless they change that policy service members will have to have family ship them or just go cold turkey on deployment.

I hate to see a good site like MWG close due ( inpart or whatever) to GW's asinine shortsighted, corporate stuffed suit, trained (barely)chimp execs ideas on how to make more money in the short term, I have always been pretty forgiving about companies calls on how they do bussines but this is kinda my last straw..I will have to think about any future purchases.

 Goliath wrote:
In this thread:
"GW is evil for forcing this game store owner to shut down!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

 Eldarain wrote:
This is odd. They still carry other company's products. As well as their own Dark Potential game.

Watch the video, with Direct only items alone they were doing $5000 a month, the new trade agreement knocked it down to a limit of $500, thats a big chunk of money. Thats the difference of doing alright and being non profitable.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Eldarain wrote:
Online sales must really be a huge part of their business if this asinine decision by GW is closing both their online as well as physical store.

As said in the video GW seems to think that the thousands of people using Miniwargaming and the Warstore will all go straight to GW online. Which is insane, instead they probably just lost 70% of those customers. Word of mouth is a big deal and GW will hopefully find that out soon.

My two cents here.

I like mwg for the most part some stuff is cool other stuff is well lame. The fact they are shutting down cause games workshop is enforcing a rule that has been in effect in the US for years. Sounds like either A) bad money management poor economy and using gw as a good dramatic way out or B) they had no real shop it was all online which is totally against gw policy( I know I tried). Or there could be another reason but to stop sales on all products screams there is more going on here.

Now with that said the warstore has been selling online(ish) for years. I buy a good amount from them but I always try to buy from my local store for a number of reasons biggest is that it helps the local economy.

Will I stop buying gw product due to their changes? No
Do I think their policy is right? No I think it's odd not sure I fully understand it but I can see their point of not wanting a single guy flooding the market with cheap gw product. It hurts business all over the world.

Or it could just be that the new terms effectively cut the 15% or so off the top of their business which would kill pretty much any store...even if it were running fairly strong in the local economy.

The internet is a great thing for companies who are able to properly leverage it and create a larger market for themselves beyond their local customers. It has allowed a lot of businesses to continue and grow.

The stronger Canadian dollar compared to the US dollar has likely encouraged more of their potential customers to order from a US based supplier like The Warstore. I know more than a few companies (outside of gaming) in Canada who have seen their online sales drop a good bit in the past 5 years largely attributed to exchange rates.

GW's actions are a definite nail in the coffin though for a lot of companies. When you develop a business plan, you assume that certain activities will be part of your business. They built their business with online sales as a large part of it. This isn't unusual at all, and up until these new terms - it was perfectly allowed under the retail trade terms for Canadian businesses (just as it is still allowed for UK/EU businesses).

Assuming that the store has to close down because of mismanagement or that they had no retail presence (the store that is in the background of their videos is bigger than a few B&M only stores that I have been in) is not really a valid leap.

That said, I am pretty sure the new terms violate the Competition Act - so they could probably stick with it if they wanted to fight with GW for a bit.

nkelsch wrote:
(and some 3rd one they said they will continue to support)

You mean Dark Potential? The game MWG is producing?

 cgage00 wrote:
My two cents here.

I like mwg for the most part some stuff is cool other stuff is well lame. The fact they are shutting down cause games workshop is enforcing a rule that has been in effect in the US for years. Sounds like either A) bad money management poor economy and using gw as a good dramatic way out or B) they had no real shop it was all online which is totally against gw policy( I know I tried). Or there could be another reason but to stop sales on all products screams there is more going on here.

Now with that said the warstore has been selling online(ish) for years. I buy a good amount from them but I always try to buy from my local store for a number of reasons biggest is that it helps the local economy.

Will I stop buying gw product due to their changes? No
Do I think their policy is right? No I think it's odd not sure I fully understand it but I can see their point of not wanting a single guy flooding the market with cheap gw product. It hurts business all over the world.

There were multiple issues at hand. Their direct order to GW took a $4.5k hit per month alone. Direct orders constituting things they don't normally carry like most blisters. Making online shopping to say the least a great hassle and an oxymoron also hits their sales as people are disincentivized from purchases. Phone ordering things died out a long time ago and handing your credit card info over in that manner makes people uneasy.

As for their policy, the market functions under survival of the fittest. GW is attempting to cut out the middle man and take full revenue from it's retail prices through policies that hurt everyone and remove competition of it's good with its distributors. Meaning, they don't want to compete in a market at all. Ever. Their list of horrific policies shows this time and again. There is no such thing as someone person flooding the market with cheap GW stuff. GW still gets a cut and the store that sells it takes it's cut. By giving discounts retailers hurt their own profit in hopes to attract more customers to make up for the loss of revenue per product. The retailers have been functioning as capitalistic ventures, GW has not. If you don't mind GW bullying small businesses, which is the ONLY thing these policies target, then go ahead and keep supporting them.