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 Zywus wrote:

They can't legally sell FW in GW stores without offering FW products to independent retailers. FW simply do not have the production capability to offer thier products to that quantity of retailers. Increasing the production capability is hard because resin casting is manual labour intensive compared to injection moulding.
!

Why do they have to sell to 3rd parties? Lots of retail chains have their own brand products that they only sell at their brand stores and don't sell to 3rd parties. There's no reason that GW can't sell Forgeworld models in their own stores and not to 3rd parties. Sure 3rd party stores might not like it, but GW already restricts a lot of their bigger (esp fantasy) lines to direct ordering only so FW wouldn't be a huge shock for that to happen as well.

 Lockark wrote:

DaemonJellybaby wrote:

 Zywus wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
People aren't even asking to order FW through stores or have them stock FW though, they just want to have the same option you get on the main GW site - deliver to a GW store with no shipping charge.

That would certainly increase FW sales I think, but not to the stage it would cripple their production line.

And even if it would, that's a supremely stupid reason to not do it. "Yea, we could do this one thing that would increase our sales (and thus profits) to above what we can currently produce so lets limit our sales instead of increasing our production capabilities"..

If GW is worried FW sales would cannibalize sales in GW stores, that's first of all a rather uncharacteristic concern for their store owners considering the increasing amount of stuff that gets put into Web-only, (presumably to ensure bigger profit margins for GW). The store managers would likely benefit from some impulse buys from the people picking up their FW purchases anyway, which would mitigate, cover or even overtake any loss from cannibalizing. The only reason for me to ever visit a GW store nowadays for example, would be if they had a FW-pickup point.

If they really cared for that cannibalizing issue however, they could just have the store where it's picked up get a small cut of the FW sale.

They can't legally sell FW in GW stores without offering FW products to independent retailers. FW simply do not have the production capability to offer thier products to that quantity of retailers. Increasing the production capability is hard because resin casting is manual labour intensive compared to injection moulding.

Regarding the topic at hand though, I like the new sicarian variant and it's rules are pretty cool. Its nice to see a FW model without a face for a change - no painting disasters here!

Didn't the battle bunkers use to stock forge world when they were a thing....

Stores in the UK briefly stocked the IA books until one day a large independent put an order in for the IA books. GW told them they could not have them, the independent said if your selling them in your stores you legally have to supply me. GW said no we don't but we will humour you and double check. All GW stores were sent returns orders for all FW books shortly after and the independent was told we were right we don't have to supply you as we don't carry stock in store.

Incompetence or hubris in legal matters who would have thunk it.

Not sure on the law outside the UK but there is a strong possibility they could still have the same issue in the UK selling outside the UK and they seemingly did not want to risk it.

But despite that they still would not do it because even with a 90+% margin they still make a hefty profit on the postage from mugs in the UK and vat incorrectly charged from anyone outside the EU.

Also the suggestion was that Forge World offer shipping to a GW store as a "free" shipping option on their normal web sales, not sell directly through GW stores.
This is even less legally ambiguous as pretty much every shipping service now has deals with local retailers to act as drop off points if you want, from Amazon to UPS.

SeanDrake - honestly that sounds more like GW possibly had a contact deal with Independent stores that bound them, at the time, to supply independents with identical stock as their retail stores; rather than it being UK law. There are loads of chain stores that have their own brand stores that sell items not sold outside even though they stock other stores with products

 Overread wrote:

 Zywus wrote:

They can't legally sell FW in GW stores without offering FW products to independent retailers. FW simply do not have the production capability to offer thier products to that quantity of retailers. Increasing the production capability is hard because resin casting is manual labour intensive compared to injection moulding.
!

Why do they have to sell to 3rd parties? Lots of retail chains have their own brand products that they only sell at their brand stores and don't sell to 3rd parties. There's no reason that GW can't sell Forgeworld models in their own stores and not to 3rd parties. Sure 3rd party stores might not like it, but GW already restricts a lot of their bigger (esp fantasy) lines to direct ordering only so FW wouldn't be a huge shock for that to happen as well.

UK competition law states if your are a manufacture, the distributor and have your own retail stores (which is a pretty rare occurance)
then you cannot supply goods too your own stores that you do not offer to the 3rd parties as that would be an unfair advantage.

They can get round this with the webstore which is classed as a direct sales channel and it is why a lot of GW only kits went on to web only kits.

There is also a grey area where they can make you jump through hoops to get exclusive models and with the FW Ltd editions in store(by the time a 3rd party complains there is no stock left poops our bad)

 Overread wrote:

 Zywus wrote:

They can't legally sell FW in GW stores without offering FW products to independent retailers. FW simply do not have the production capability to offer thier products to that quantity of retailers. Increasing the production capability is hard because resin casting is manual labour intensive compared to injection moulding.
!

Why do they have to sell to 3rd parties? Lots of retail chains have their own brand products that they only sell at their brand stores and don't sell to 3rd parties. There's no reason that GW can't sell Forgeworld models in their own stores and not to 3rd parties. Sure 3rd party stores might not like it, but GW already restricts a lot of their bigger (esp fantasy) lines to direct ordering only so FW wouldn't be a huge shock for that to happen as well.

There's some error in your quotes there Overread. I didn't say that. DaemonJellybabyMade did.

As mentioned, it's not about selling through GW stores, and even less keeping FW stuff in stock in them.

However: there seem to be no good reason for GW to not offer for people to order from the FW homepage as normal, and pick those FW orders up in a GW store of their choice. They're likely leaving quite a lot of money on the table since The shipping for the consumer is horrendous unless you either go over the 250£ line or order something like, a single pack of shoulderpads. And as GW already are regularly shipping loads of stuff from more or less the same warehouse in the same city, to every store, it would not incur any extra shipping expenses to speak of.

 Zywus wrote:

 Overread wrote:

 Zywus wrote:

They can't legally sell FW in GW stores without offering FW products to independent retailers. FW simply do not have the production capability to offer thier products to that quantity of retailers. Increasing the production capability is hard because resin casting is manual labour intensive compared to injection moulding.
!

Why do they have to sell to 3rd parties? Lots of retail chains have their own brand products that they only sell at their brand stores and don't sell to 3rd parties. There's no reason that GW can't sell Forgeworld models in their own stores and not to 3rd parties. Sure 3rd party stores might not like it, but GW already restricts a lot of their bigger (esp fantasy) lines to direct ordering only so FW wouldn't be a huge shock for that to happen as well.

There's some error in your quotes there Overread. I didn't say that. DaemonJellybabyMade did.

As mentioned, it's not about selling through GW stores, and even less keeping FW stuff in stock in them.

However: there seem to be no good reason for GW to not offer for people to order from the FW homepage as normal, and pick those FW orders up in a GW store of their choice. They're likely leaving quite a lot of money on the table since The shipping for the consumer is horrendous unless you either go over the 250£ line or order something like, a single pack of shoulderpads. And as GW already are regularly shipping loads of stuff from more or less the same warehouse in the same city, to every store, it would not incur any extra shipping expenses to speak of.

I can give you 2 good reasons from there point of view.

1. If not making an out right profit on the 15% flat postage then at the very least UK and EU customers are subsidizing the RoW customers postage.

2. Gw charge 20% VAT regardless of whether it is due or not and I strongly suspect they don't over pay there VAT bill if you get what I am saying.(Not that I think there outright doing anything illegal but GW's dark lord was an account with the Inland Revenue, so as well as never being invited to parties he knows his way round a loop hole)

Actually I'm pretty sure that if the sale occurs within the EU then VAT should be charged, if the purchaser is a non-EU resident, the onus is on them to apply for a refund.

If the purchaser doesn't, then that isn't GW's fault, neither do they get to keep the VAT they charged, that goes to HMRC, who would then be the ones who issued the refund.

About the only way to "keep" VAT is on cash sales, which FW will handle very little of, and even then if you were to attract the attentions of HMRC they could very quickly spot any significant disparities between inventory and sales.

A tank destroyer that sucks at killing tanks? well done FW, well done.

 Formosa wrote:
A tank destroyer that sucks at killing tanks? well done FW, well done.

Yeah ontop of it being terrible at its intended role this new sicaran proves yet again they dont understand power levels at all. 16 power level equates to roughly 320 points, but this is 170 points-220 pts? By their own printed explanation the power level should be 9-10. I really don't understand these vehicles they keep pumping out with weapons that fail in such epic ways. At this rate FW will just be banned in match play and unusable in narrative play due to wildly inconsistent design rules between them and GW.

SeanDrake wrote:

I can give you 2 good reasons from there point of view.

1. If not making an out right profit on the 15% flat postage then at the very least UK and EU customers are subsidizing the RoW customers postage.

2. Gw charge 20% VAT regardless of whether it is due or not and I strongly suspect they don't over pay there VAT bill if you get what I am saying.(Not that I think there outright doing anything illegal but GW's dark lord was an account with the Inland Revenue, so as well as never being invited to parties he knows his way round a loop hole)

1 does make some sense at first clance, but ultimately not. The weird 10-15% shipping costs does come to more than what shipping reasonably cost for the company to send out the stuff so that's money gained.
However, there's a reason why no other company in the world that I'm aware of charge shipping that way.

If people would buy the same amount regardless, then some extra garnishing by overcharging shipping is a nice little bonus. But people does not.
Almost every seller of consumer goods charge either a flat rate or charge in weight bands. FW's shipping discourages adding more stuff unless it's to reach 250£. So they'll get some extra sales there, but there'll be a lot of lost sales from people that are not prepared to buy that much in one go. The consumer saves the money thinking they'll do a big order later or find someone to co-order with. Then life gets in the way and those funds get spent on something else. (like miniatures from a company with a shipping scheme that encourages impulse buys). Never encourage your customers to buy stuff later rather than right now. A sale delayed is often a sale lost.

As for 2. I fail to see how shipping to someones door or shipping it to a GW store near said door and having a customer pick it up there would make any difference as regards VAT payments or taxes.

The Ta'unar with its Heavy Rail Cannon Array meant for taking down titan's and tanks is statistically inferior against both targets. The pulse ordinance array and the anti-horde giant missile. The pulse is once again the best gun. It's better than any other option at all targets.

Now the real kicker? the heavy rail cannon array is 5 points more expensive than the default gun lol. -_- Even the Ta'unar was way too over nered this edition just like everything else Tau and it will lose in a fight against any other super heavy in the game. It even dies easy to grav spam.

The only good FW units now is the Tigershark and Y'vahrah. All the other are so bad they are worse than our already crappy codex units and even more expensive. Someone had a massive hate boner for Tau going into 8th for sure. Absolute trashed.

FW sucking at designing things is not new.

Another week another bunch of spam about FW...

I'm off to go bash my head against a concrete wall.

Honestly, even the marine players are complaining about marine releases.

Complaints, and complaints about complaints?

Against RULE #2.

Last warning!

Any news on Fires of Cyraxus?

Oh dear god.

On the one hand, I hope the prerequisite 40k codices (Tau, perhaps guard) get done in short order so that FoC comes out soon. I waited along time for Inferno, so I feel for those who have FoC as a higher priority than I do.

On the other hand, it's not a huge personal priority for me, as I still have a few armies ahead of Ryza in the queue to be painted, so I can wait a bit to get the FW goodies for the army.

On the gripping hand, I'm tired of eternal complaints that get a fresh outpouring of keyboard bashing every week that something NOT FoC comes out.



*This post formatted with wistful sadness. RIP, Jerry Pournelle.

This thread is gonna get locked...

I for one am holding out hope that FoC will involve somegow finding Dorn in Stasis (opening him for use in 40k, because you KNOW Dorn is gonna be the one loyalist they never port to plastic cor... Reasons?) AND the triumphant entrance of hoise Vyronii tonsave the day.

Maybe Dorn can ride on the back of one of the knights like the rodeo star he was born to be.

Exciting Blood Bowl preview from Forgeworld – Pro Elves are on the horizon. Really love the aesthetic of these; a dynamic update of classic 1st/2nd ed. Blood Bowl elves.

Gender-diverse and everything – a nice addition.

They are gonna sell a ton of them jusy because of the conversion potential

Although the throwers kinda look like they're doing some sort of 80s disco dance.

 EmberlordofFire8 wrote:
Although the throwers kinda look like they're doing some sort of 80s disco dance.

Well, they are elves......

Sweet looking team, I need to find more hobby time for Blood Bowl.

Chaos marines today, which is at least some diversity:

Hope we get actual proper Chaos humans soon. I mean, the above definitely works as a stop-gap, but it's not the same.

Was the Nurgle Daemon prince not already available or had it gone oop recently?

Loopstah wrote:
Was the Nurgle Daemon prince not already available or had it gone oop recently?

He was unavailable for a while.

He had recently gone OOP.
Only in the last few months though, iirc.

Maybe the Plague hulk will return now as well.