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So my jungle drums have thrown up this minor tidbit.

Not sure how "public" this is, so won't go further than to say it isn't very many steps in the chain from me to a member of staff over there.

GW has labled New Zealand a dying market for several years and i have been told that eventually New Zealand wont have a single GW left.

Sad to see that happen.

Given the rip-off prices we pay (e.g. Tyranid codex is NZD$98), it's not surprising that sales aren't great.

Although I do have some sympathy for GW - from talking to a staff member, freight and insurance costs here to NZ are horrendous, so their local profit margin isn't actually great.

 Achaylus72 wrote:
GW has labled New Zealand a dying market for several years and i have been told that eventually New Zealand wont have a single GW left.

Sad to see that happen.

I actually thought we had a respectable size player base given the size of the country. Then again with gw prices over here I dont think many buy direct from a gw store so I guess thats why.

They had to charge really high in NZ, the only method of delivery was a guy on a peddle-cart! Unfortunately GWs bigger and bigger kits put too much strain on his heart and he died.
I want credit for that in the rumour thread too!

Achaylus72 wrote:GW has labled New Zealand a dying market for several years and i have been told that eventually New Zealand wont have a single GW left.

Sad to see that happen.

Just wait a few years and we'll probably be saying the same thing about Australia :(

Clang wrote:Given the rip-off prices we pay (e.g. Tyranid codex is NZD$98), it's not surprising that sales aren't great.

Although I do have some sympathy for GW - from talking to a staff member, freight and insurance costs here to NZ are horrendous, so their local profit margin isn't actually great.

Do you think this staff member would actually know? I'd imagine the TRUE costs are hidden from anyone at a store level, possibly even regional managers. I struggle to believe that it would cost $33USD to ship and sell a book in NZ (that's the price difference between US and NZ at the moment).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Joyboozer wrote:
They had to charge really high in NZ, the only method of delivery was a guy on a peddle-cart! Unfortunately GWs bigger and bigger kits put too much strain on his heart and he died.
I want credit for that in the rumour thread too!

Pfft, you clearly know nothing about NZ. All deliveries are made by sheep-drawn cart.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Achaylus72 wrote:GW has labled New Zealand a dying market for several years and i have been told that eventually New Zealand wont have a single GW left.

Sad to see that happen.

Just wait a few years and we'll probably be saying the same thing about Australia :(

Hardly a bad thing. More room for independants to open up. When GW and a store like this are walking distance from each other, there's never much reason to go to GW.

 -Loki- wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Achaylus72 wrote:GW has labled New Zealand a dying market for several years and i have been told that eventually New Zealand wont have a single GW left.

Sad to see that happen.

Just wait a few years and we'll probably be saying the same thing about Australia :(

Hardly a bad thing. More room for independants to open up. When GW and a store like this are walking distance from each other, there's never much reason to go to GW.

These days I only have 1 wargaming shop within 30 minutes drive of me and it's a GW :( Sometimes I buy stuff from GW simply because of the cost of fuel to drive to the next shop, lol.

This is Great News (TM)!

I wonder how large a market NZ was, anyway, and if they just plan on having GW Australia handle it now. Or perhaps GW Aus is next.

Well if GWNZ shuts down maybe GWOZ will take over and NZ will get Aussie prices rather than the inflated... sorry... I can't even finish writing that sentence without laughing.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I struggle to believe that it would cost $33USD to ship and sell a book in NZ (that's the price difference between US and NZ at the moment).

Explain the difference in price of digital e-books in each currency then.

It is a shame that GW is leaving, but its a bigger shame that NZ seems intent on staying a 99% 40k playing country - no one even seems to want anything different, even with the rip-off prices we pay.

Many electrons are lost avoiding the Great Sheep Wall. Plus all those hobbits don't want to help.

M.

Alabaster.clown wrote:
Explain the difference in price of digital e-books in each currency then.

Shipping costs on 1's and 0's are pretty high these days.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Alabaster.clown wrote:
Explain the difference in price of digital e-books in each currency then.

Shipping costs on 1's and 0's are pretty high these days.

It's probably Heisenbergs Fault, Quantum mechanics is messing with our digital prices again!

Maybe doubling GW prices will help reviving the NZ market

 Achaylus72 wrote:
GW has labled New Zealand a dying market for several years and i have been told that eventually New Zealand wont have a single GW left.

Sad to see that happen.

Not sure if this is true or not, it wouldn't surprise me but tbh I can't see GW pulling out of NZ that quickly (its more likely the company is brought or collapses and all the stores all over the world close first imo).

There is actually a bit of a story to this and its not a surprise for anyone who is involved with GW in Auckland. Just to clarify there is still a store in Auckland at St Lukes (which I expect will get renamed to the Auckland GW). The Downtown store moved to the largest mall in NZ a few years back, partly to get in on the big mall exposure but also to move out of the CBD and away from several competing FLGS (which weren't bound by GW's stupid pricing/no sales rules so could always undercut them). By my understanding that mall store was actually one of highest selling GW outlets in the world, the issue was that it still wasn't enough for them to cover the rent. So last year (I think, might have been two years ago now) they closed that store and moved back to a different location Downtown as a one man store (walking straight back into the same area where they were getting undercut by FLGS to start with....). The location for that store was an absolute screwup, it would be a decent location but it has zero street frontage and doesn't even have a display window. I understand that the Australia and NZ Regional Manager/s were shocked at how bad the store was when them came over from Aus for a visit. As such it got almost no business, without the walk ins GW's don't survive and its even more important in NZ/AUS because of the pricing imbalances (the vets all buy from discount retailers so GW stores rely completely on pulling in new players).

On top of that the St Lukes store has had some interesting staff issues the last few months. The old manager quit and for some bizarre reason upper GW management decided to hire an 18 year old kid (straight out of high school with no experience at all) as the Store manager (over the two other existing non full time staff). By all accounts he is useless and folding under the pressure of actually doing work. I'm not sure if he has been fired/leaving to start university or what but it seems like they are killing two birds with one store here as they are closing the completely dead downtown GW and the manager moving to the St Lukes store to solve that issue as well.

@clang. That's complete bs. Before the Regional pricing restriction were enforced by GW you could buy from the UK or US for 50-60% of the NZ price INCLUDING SHIPPING. I had one order which was big enough to get hit by GST when it came in and even then it was still a good 30% discount. There was even one point where GW did a price rise which effected the rest of the world before NZ, and it was STILL 30% cheaper to buy from overseas. That is for individual shipping as well, larger scale stuff would be even cheaper. NZ prices aren't even based off of an exchange rate, all they do is take the Australian prices (which are a mess to start with) and scale everything up one price bracket.

@Alabaster.clown. Plenty of people play other systems in NZ. Oddly Fantasy is still pretty big in Wellington/south of the Nth Island despite it dying all over the world. Warmachine is growing pretty quickly as well and is probably pushing Fantasy for the second largest system. Flames of War is also huge here (not surprising since it was designed here), most popular in the central Nth Island. I've also seen Infinity, Malifaux and a range of other games been played. Just remember that everything here is on a smaller scale since we are a smaller country, so you do have to look a bit to find any gamers for any system. Recently I think its been board games that have been growing the fastest.

 Clang wrote:
Given the rip-off prices we pay (e.g. Tyranid codex is NZD$98), it's not surprising that sales aren't great.

Although I do have some sympathy for GW - from talking to a staff member, freight and insurance costs here to NZ are horrendous, so their local profit margin isn't actually great.

Holy crap that's expensive. £50 for a codex is insane, there's no way i could afford gw over there.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jehan-reznor wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Alabaster.clown wrote:
Explain the difference in price of digital e-books in each currency then.

Shipping costs on 1's and 0's are pretty high these days.

It's probably Heisenbergs Fault, Quantum mechanics is messing with our digital prices again!

You can know the price of a GW product, or you can know the quality of a GW product. But you cannot know both

The way that they screw over their customers it always amazes me the title of the thread is not GW closing down. Instead they roll in cash from people who are willing to pay exorbitant prices for bad codex rehashes.

 Clang wrote:
Given the rip-off prices we pay (e.g. Tyranid codex is NZD$98), it's not surprising that sales aren't great.

Although I do have some sympathy for GW - from talking to a staff member, freight and insurance costs here to NZ are horrendous, so their local profit margin isn't actually great.

You've been lied to.

Before GW enforced its oversees sales embargo you guys could get things bought and shipped there from the US for allot less than what they costed if you bought them from your local GW store.

 Clang wrote:
Although I do have some sympathy for GW - from talking to a staff member, freight and insurance costs here to NZ are horrendous, so their local profit margin isn't actually great.

They are lying to you. Last year they were blaming it on a tax that doesn't even exist.

GW staff aren't always the best place to find accurate, unbiased information on why GW's policies work the way they do...

What i have been told by a very good source is that eventually that GW will freeze out all Indies in Australia and the only place you'll get GW product is by visiting GW stores or go online.

They have released their new trade agreement which states that current or new Indies negotiating to become Indies must sell all the entire shelf range as a GW would, making them tacit GW stores, not only that they have to sell all the B&M stuff, they have to carry a minimum number of each product and they have a minumum monthly sales. If for any reason that any Indie fails in this GW has the contractual right to cancel the contract immediately and confiscate stock.

That is GW playing hardball with Indies.

 Achaylus72 wrote:
What i have been told by a very good source is that eventually that GW will freeze out all Indies in Australia and the only place you'll get GW product is by visiting GW stores or go online.

They have released their new trade agreement which states that current or new Indies negotiating to become Indies must sell all the entire shelf range as a GW would, making them tacit GW stores, not only that they have to sell all the B&M stuff, they have to carry a minimum number of each product and they have a minumum monthly sales. If for any reason that any Indie fails in this GW has the contractual right to cancel the contract immediately and confiscate stock.

That is GW playing hardball with Indies.

GW have been on the warpath against the flgs stocking their stuff all over the world for at least a year now so none of that surprises me really.
What does surprise me is that this seems more like a final charge to try and secure the Australian market when it seems they should be in a (fighting) retreat.

GW aren't the first company where hubris seems to overrule good sense in some fairly key areas of decision making, but they do seem to be the best.

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Achaylus72 wrote:
What i have been told by a very good source is that eventually that GW will freeze out all Indies in Australia and the only place you'll get GW product is by visiting GW stores or go online.

They have released their new trade agreement which states that current or new Indies negotiating to become Indies must sell all the entire shelf range as a GW would, making them tacit GW stores, not only that they have to sell all the B&M stuff, they have to carry a minimum number of each product and they have a minumum monthly sales. If for any reason that any Indie fails in this GW has the contractual right to cancel the contract immediately and confiscate stock.

That is GW playing hardball with Indies.

GW have been on the warpath against the flgs stocking their stuff all over the world for at least a year now so none of that surprises me really.
What does surprise me is that this seems more like a final charge to try and secure the Australian market when it seems they should be in a (fighting) retreat.

Bloody Hell. Seems like a massive boon for China. I've been poking around on WAU a little and seems like using recast stuff is becoming more and more "normal". Since I mostly play at home (and rarely at that, due to no dedicated table until now) I hadn't noticed the changes.

This ties in to an extent with the 25% drop stuff that's just come out, but I got this as part of an email from The Combat Company (a local retailer/etailer)

The Combat Company wrote:
Regarding the Tyranids new release, it's really disappointing to have to share bad news with you so early in the new year. Nevertheless, we need to let you know what is happening.

We have yet again been undersupplied with Tyranid new releases, and this is the reason we don't promote their products through emails or give them a release date any more. We were allocated up to a quarter of what we ordered originally, without any notice that there was short supply. In the last few months after a new release date, GW have been sending us our full orders when they realise they can't sell it themselves - examples being the Megaforces, such as the Tau Firebase Cadre, Adaptus Astartes Stormwing, etc, we were only allocated 1 set pre-release. Post-release, we were provided with 10-20 sets of each, without hesitation.

In the instance of Tyranids, we have ordered again after the release date (Tuesday 14 Jan 2014) and have still received nothing. The main reason we are writing this is to apologise for the inconvenience to our customers, but we have a suspicion you are growing used to the uncertain supply.

That said, we'd like to give Games Workshop LLC a slow clap for their 30% drop in overall sales over the last six months, as documented in their Half Yearly Report, and share their elation in the 24% share price drop at announcement of the Report. This may be a reflection of their poor* treatment of wholesale and, of course, you the customer.

Which shows how hard they're fething the FLGS retailers at this point. They did this with both the Tau and Eldar releases here in Aust...

Well it's good to see this sort of behaviour isn't being rewarded, what with that 22% drop in sales in the AU market in the last 6 months.

 Achaylus72 wrote:
What i have been told by a very good source is that eventually that GW will freeze out all Indies in Australia and the only place you'll get GW product is by visiting GW stores or go online.

They have released their new trade agreement which states that current or new Indies negotiating to become Indies must sell all the entire shelf range as a GW would, making them tacit GW stores, not only that they have to sell all the B&M stuff, they have to carry a minimum number of each product and they have a minumum monthly sales. If for any reason that any Indie fails in this GW has the contractual right to cancel the contract immediately and confiscate stock.

That is GW playing hardball with Indies.

I can't believe that something like this is legal. Esp. as I thought that GW trade agreements are the same globally.
But then again, I can believe that GW legal thinks it is legal.

xruslanx wrote:

 Clang wrote:
Given the rip-off prices we pay (e.g. Tyranid codex is NZD$98), it's not surprising that sales aren't great.

Although I do have some sympathy for GW - from talking to a staff member, freight and insurance costs here to NZ are horrendous, so their local profit margin isn't actually great.

Holy crap that's expensive. £50 for a codex is insane, there's no way i could afford gw over there.

MarsNZ and I both bought our Codices from the other side of the world, paid almost the same price in shipping as we had for the book, and it was still cheaper than going in to a GW or even a FLGS that might have tried to give a discount...

I get the feeling that "digital" codices are becoming more popular in our part of the world. If you catch my drift...