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If anyone has jumped over to the GW site they will have seen there are two new army bundles. The Nid one is £538.50 and I'm positive the is a Euro and USD mark up. I'm terrified to check the Oz version. I know there will be a "Oh look, this thread again" at some point and normally I hate this type of thread, my god! Nearly £600 for models? With no saving? This is a joke right?

I can't wait for bundles that will actually cost more than separate models.

 ergotoxin wrote:
I can't wait for bundles that will actually cost more than separate models.

They'll come with a special letter.

It's really worth the extra 20 pounds and so on.

They've been doing these "one click bundles" for awhile now and I don't see any end in the future. I suppose they're intended for parents and those sorts of people that don't know any better.

Isn't it supposed to bundle whatever featured in the battle report that month? As if you'd want a battle report army, often they are sub par so as to lose.

The idea of offering a bundle to make the battle report army isn't new, they used to do it many years ago. The difference then was that you got a discount...

 leetbeef wrote:
They've been doing these "one click bundles" for awhile now and I don't see any end in the future. I suppose they're intended for parents and those sorts of people that don't know any better.

If my son came to me showing me a "one click bundle" for 500+€, I'd just laugh at his face

 Sigvatr wrote:

 leetbeef wrote:
They've been doing these "one click bundles" for awhile now and I don't see any end in the future. I suppose they're intended for parents and those sorts of people that don't know any better.

If my son came to me showing me a "one click bundle" for 500+€, I'd just laugh at his face

This is just it. If I came to.my parents when I started playing and asked for a £100 Megaforce, I could argue my that it is a full army and cheaper than buying seperate. Even a ROB could be talked up as an all purpose gaming area and a good size.

If I tried to ask for THAT, my hobby would never seen. No more untill I earn my own money. Ever!

 ergotoxin wrote:
I can't wait for bundles that will actually cost more than separate models.

We've already had them from time to time over the years.

If you're getting what's in the picture then the Australian one is $250 more expensive then buying them separately on the Aus GWS site...

 Zande4 wrote:
If you're getting what's in the picture then the Australian one is $250 more expensive then buying them separately on the Aus GWS site...

See they help!

There's nothing saying the bundles are SUPPOSED to be cheaper, or even implying it, than buying separately. People have come to EXPECT a retailer to discount for no reason. It's clear that GW is setting this up, as has been said, as a convenience (albeit not a great one), to having to go through their site and add each individual item to the cart.

Having been unfortunate enough to have worked in retail, I don't understand the mentality that retailers should always provide a discount. I can understand the confusion over these bundles, as with the battleforce bundles we're used to there being a small discount. I certainly wouldn't drop that much on my kid at once, since I can't. I'd be happy if they were that into this hobby and saw the value in it that I do though. I'd help them save up for it and earn it for sure, but I'd also probably take them over to Ebay

Badger_Bhoy has it right, there's no reason a retailer HAS to include a discount on volume.

While there is no value added to the customer (convenience sort of, if clicking "add to cart" 10 times is really THAT hard), but at the same time there is no drawback for GW to set this up on their site.

From a consumer's perspective you can say there is a drawback to this, it shows us just how much we'd really be spending on what amount to approx a 2000 pt force? It's a bit sobering to see all that added up in one go really.

A discount may not be mandatory but a $58 markup on the product in the US over retail price, let alone the markup on the Aussie product as mentioned earlier, is unwarranted and a bad business choice.

But, then again, I have become accustomed to GW making horrible business moves blindly chasing a profit.

Well there is a reason for it and it's usually with all bundles which is what leads to people thinking it should be in all bundles; as an incentive to sell a higher volume quicker or to sell it instead of the competition.

They could probably get away with it easier if they did these bundles for longer with an exclusive miniature included in them. But, it's more for the lazy types who can't be bothered dragging out the WD and going down the list there and adding it to the cart.

If it were something that took physical space in the store, it'd very likely have a discount to it or it'd probably not move for years. As it doesn't, it doesn't need it whatsoever.

What kind of parent buys a $600 toy set for their kid without knowing anything about it though?

The reason to offer a discount on bulk purchases is actually quite simple. Profit depends on two things - your profit margin and your turnover. If you can increase turnover by a lot whilst reducing your profit margin by a little, you will make more profit. Whether reducing margins will actually result in increased turnover is another question, but the underlying logic is quite basic. It works in somemarket sectors better than others.

Another reason for discounts that does not apply to GW so much is to undercut your competitors and increase market share. That is less applicable to GW, but it is exactly how independents are able to function at all.

Worse than that Harriticus, £538.50 - not dollars but pound sterling. Having worked for Games Workshop in the, thankfully, distant past, you did occasionally get the parents with more money than sense who come in and spend £200 on little John's hobby because it keeps him quiet - they often didn't know anything about the hobby, just that it was like plastic Airfix planes.

 Harriticus wrote:
What kind of patent buys a $600 toy set for their kid without knowing anything about it though?

The same types that walk into a GW asking for the latest Wii games?

That happened too. Also board games, craft sets, Scaletrix was quite common and there were many others.

 Kej wrote:
A discount may not be mandatory but a $58 markup on the product in the US over retail price, let alone the markup on the Aussie product as mentioned earlier, is unwarranted and a bad business choice.

But, then again, I have become accustomed to GW making horrible business moves blindly chasing a profit.

I do agree that a markup, especially the AUS/NZ mark up, is ridiculous on items that are sold online and thus require no extra import, transport, or other logistical cost to GW.

 Fifty wrote:
The reason to offer a discount on bulk purchases is actually quite simple. Profit depends on two things - your profit margin and your turnover. If you can increase turnover by a lot whilst reducing your profit margin by a little, you will make more profit. Whether reducing margins will actually result in increased turnover is another question, but the underlying logic is quite basic. It works in somemarket sectors better than others.

Another reason for discounts that does not apply to GW so much is to undercut your competitors and increase market share. That is less applicable to GW, but it is exactly how independents are able to function at all.

If we're going to start getting into marketing then let's be upfront and say GW has no major competitors. There are substitute products made for other game systems, but the market GW has created is its own (40K, WHFB etc). Other companies make substitute products, but there are very very few that compete directly.

Forgeworld and the few 3rd party companies like Chapter House etc are the only direct competitors, and GW has the vast majority share for its product.

They have no reason to compete on price with other companies and so they just won't. Of course in the long run price will hurt their bottom line, but right now it's actually part of their marketing mix (we're the best therefore we charge the most is interchangeable we charge the most therefore we are the best)

To be clear I'm not an apologist for their strategies. Just pointing out why they do what they do.

Seems a bit ruthless, and maybe it is. I think a lot of people take it overboard though.

More Dakka is right. They are the only producer really. FW is barely a separate company anyway. GW isn't really any different than any other company. It is just more obvious because of the fact they have no real competitors.

In my opinion, I kinda feel like GW is setting these up so that people who don't know any better buy it thinking they are getting a discount. It's pretty common in less-renowned business practices, trying to slip stuff like that past consumers

 Fifty wrote:
The reason to offer a discount on bulk purchases is actually quite simple. Profit depends on two things - your profit margin and your turnover. If you can increase turnover by a lot whilst reducing your profit margin by a little, you will make more profit. Whether reducing margins will actually result in increased turnover is another question, but the underlying logic is quite basic. It works in somemarket sectors better than others.

Another reason for discounts that does not apply to GW so much is to undercut your competitors and increase market share. That is less applicable to GW, but it is exactly how independents are able to function at all.

Implying GW actually gives a damn about smart business sense.

 washout77 wrote:
In my opinion, I kinda feel like GW is setting these up so that people who don't know any better buy it thinking they are getting a discount. It's pretty common in less-renowned business practices, trying to slip stuff like that past consumers

 Fifty wrote:
The reason to offer a discount on bulk purchases is actually quite simple. Profit depends on two things - your profit margin and your turnover. If you can increase turnover by a lot whilst reducing your profit margin by a little, you will make more profit. Whether reducing margins will actually result in increased turnover is another question, but the underlying logic is quite basic. It works in somemarket sectors better than others.

Another reason for discounts that does not apply to GW so much is to undercut your competitors and increase market share. That is less applicable to GW, but it is exactly how independents are able to function at all.

Implying GW actually gives a damn about smart business sense.

I'm going to argue that as a publicly traded company they do. Share price is everything to them, so if profits are up then share price is up.

A lot of people make the mistake of assuming that what is good for the consumer is good for the supplier, but this just isn't the case 100% of the time.

When there is little to no competition on the supply side there is no reason to offer discounts on volume.

Now, I do suspect that the current majority shareholder(s) are looking to get out of the industry and sell their shares off soon, which is why they're making so many business decisions that will only net short-term gains over long term sustainability.

Arguing that they don't need to give discounts for the bulk sets is just playing devil's advocate. Everyone knows that the best and smartest way for a retailer to get people to buy more is to give them a discount.n what gw is doing is taking that idea, stripping away the discount, and hoping people either won't pay attention, or won't care once they realize there is no discount.

The problem is that they're doing this simultaneously with an all out assaulting their third party retail channels. Of gw had any sense, they'd would entice customers to buy directly from them, rather than making it harder for others to sell their products. They haven't learned that this hobby isn't like gasoline. People will eventually be priced out of the hobby and look elsewhere for their modeling needs. The fact is that war machine/hordes has shown exponential grow lately and gw has shown almost none. This isn't an accident. I haven't purchased from gw directly in years because eBay gets me an automatic 20% discount....why on earth would I pay more for the same products? These one click bundles are intended to dupe people, and it's pretty obvious that that's the case.

 More Dakka wrote:

I'm going to argue that as a publicly traded company they do. Share price is everything to them, so if profits are up then share price is up.

People keep saying that, but working for a publicly traded company I can say that long term investments are seen as a good thing, even if profits dip temporarily.

Do the math again. In the US it's the same as buying the kits separately, for a total of $880.25. Still pretty ridiculous; does make you wonder how many of these sets they sell.

I agree that while GW is under no ethical obligation to provide a discount for bulk purchases, the "One-Click Bundles" reek of the intent to deceive.

Consider
1) For the last 5 years or so the only bundles they offered were the Battle Forces, and occasionally the Mega Forces. The duration and commonness of this practice has lead people to, whether fairly or unfairly, expect a discount discount on bundled purchases, purchased from GW .

2) Games workshop has CHANGED the descriptions of the battle force so that they give you no hint that its a discount. Of course if you look at the Chaos Daemons Battle Force, and total it up separately, you end up saving about 30 dollars, but this is NOT advertised, people are expected to know because that was the previous deals. This serves to make their descriptions almost indistinguishable from the non discounted bundles, which are differentiated only by a single line saying "this one click collection...", and not having "Battle Force" in the title.

3) Then Games Workshop has put all of the "One-Click Bundles" into the Army Essentials section, which have, for the last 5 years, contained only the Codex, and box sets which had all contained built in discounts (Edition Starter Sets, Battle Forces, Mega Forces). So now in certain army listings, Space Marines especially, the Battle Force with the discount is buried in a mass of one click collections, which intentionally has the effect of making people think that they are a similar thing!

4) All of this combined just reeks of games workshop trying to pull a fast one on people who have become complacent. A lot of people are so frustrated because we feel like we have been trained to expect a discount on the battle force, and then similar products were released with no discount, and it was made harder to distinguish unless we know exactly what to look for!

 ergotoxin wrote:
I can't wait for bundles that will actually cost more than separate models.

Or they'll just leave the price points the same and eliminate separate model purchases. Or they could leave the bundle prices the same and then hike the separate model kits.

There's a lot of places where they could go with this, none of them good for the customer.

I for one found it kind of odd.

Tau tau tau tau tau BIG $800 NID HIVE FLEET tau tau tau

Sure that book came out, but...are they even expecting people to buy this? The price alone has to be some sort of a bluff. Unless they come painted or some insanity like that. Let alone coming out with it during Tau Month.

Wait...do you think they're trying to test Tau? See if people would rather spend $800 USD on a crappy nid army than buy new Tau?