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Well, we know that GW stores have stuff first. If you want it right away, the GW store is a better bet than your FLGS. If you're looking for less common retail units, the GW store is a better bet to find the item because they stock more GW product than your FLGS. The GW store is quicker to re-stock, especially on the less common units. The GW store probably has the full range of paints on hand. The GW store can order stuff and get it in quicker than the FLGS can. The GW store guy probably knows more about painting and building minis if you need advice.

Maybe you play at the GW store regularly. Should you support the store with your purchases? Some people feel this way. It's not all about just cold hard cash mathematics for everyone. Maybe they've had bad experiences in that NotSoFLGS across the street and they wouldn't drop a dime there no matter what the discount. Maybe they only want to go to one store and go home, rather than trolling several stores for the best possible discount. Time is valuable too, especially if the shops are NOT literally across the street from each other.

So yeah, I can see reasons to just go to GW and ignore the possible discounts elsewhere. If you're tight on cash and free on time, it's the wrong decision, but chasing the lowest possible price on things can also be the wrong decision in some respects as well. I try to do one-stop shopping for groceries when I can, because I don't want to spend hours running around town. That means going to where the best combinations of discounts can be had, though figuring that out takes valuable time too.

Are the GW stores in the Great White North of a decent size ?

Because the ones in the UK, for the most part, are kind of cupboard-like, meaning they usually can't fit a wide range and are borderline impractical for gaming, maybe I'm a tad biased as both my local indies are far better spaces and the one that stocks GW has a range on par with my nearst GW

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
Are the GW stores in the Great White North of a decent size ?

Because the ones in the UK, for the most part, are kind of cupboard-like, meaning they usually can't fit a wide range and are borderline impractical for gaming, maybe I'm a tad biased as both my local indies are far better spaces and the one that stocks GW has a range on par with my nearst GW

Not so large as to carry everything, but far more than your FLGS will devote space/stock money towards. Of the two that I've visited, one is maybe 5m wide and 20m deep, while the other is maybe 5m x 30m. The first is somewhat impractical for gaming - 2 tables, while the other is okay for casual gaming, but you're not holding events there or anything. I don't think we have any FLGS in the area with comparable stocking, though I haven't been to all of the stores either.

How do GW stores hold events anyway? Do they rent out space? I know baaack in the day when they still did grand tournaments they would rent a convention space for it, I loved going to those.

I think even large GW stores are intentionally under stocked to force people to buy online. The local GW is quite large floor area wise and still only carries a fraction of the range, they stock their shelves very inefficiently. The FLGS down the road has a similar range to the GW but packs it in to a small space where only the new release stuff gets the front of boxes facing the customer and everything else is packed so the side of the box faces the customer.

dosiere wrote:
How do GW stores hold events anyway? Do they rent out space? I know baaack in the day when they still did grand tournaments they would rent a convention space for it, I loved going to those.

My local GW holds small events, it has I guess the capacity for four 4x4 tables. There's probably enough space for up to eight of them if the painting table was pushed in to the corner and the tables butted up against each other, but I don't know if the manager actually has that many tables. I've never actually been to an event there, but I know they have them.

 John Prins wrote:

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
Are the GW stores in the Great White North of a decent size ?

Because the ones in the UK, for the most part, are kind of cupboard-like, meaning they usually can't fit a wide range and are borderline impractical for gaming, maybe I'm a tad biased as both my local indies are far better spaces and the one that stocks GW has a range on par with my nearst GW

Not so large as to carry everything, but far more than your FLGS will devote space/stock money towards. Of the two that I've visited, one is maybe 5m wide and 20m deep, while the other is maybe 5m x 30m. The first is somewhat impractical for gaming - 2 tables, while the other is okay for casual gaming, but you're not holding events there or anything. I don't think we have any FLGS in the area with comparable stocking, though I haven't been to all of the stores either.

5mx30m?
150square meters?
1600square feet?
That is a large area.
Families of 5 live in spaces smaller than that.
Our current apartment is only about 100square meters, maybe a bit more.
2 baths, and families of four are normal in this complex.

 jeff white wrote:

5mx30m?
150square meters?
1600square feet?
That is a large area.

I'm guesstimating, I have not actually taken a tape measure to the store. It might be 4x25, Still decently large, it's a 'main street' retail store in a 30+ year old building in Toronto, but nowhere near downtown. I found a picture of the middle 3rd of the store:


Apparently it has six tables? I usually go to the closer, smaller one.

Well a 6'x4' table requires about 4 x 3.2m of space if you want 1m of clearance around it, you might want more like 1.5m if you want people to be able to walk past each other around the sides of the table.

So you could probably comfortably fit 6 and maybe squeeze 7 tables in to a store that was 5m wide and 30m deep.

A couple of GW stores I visited in the US were in absurdly narrow but very long shops, it seems to be a thing in North America, though the ones I visited were probably more like 15 metres deep.

Mostly got no issues with their prices, the local GW has to pay for rent which would be about $300-500 a week plus utilities then the managers wages like $50-55K and to be really profitable, you can't compare GW to other game companies until they have their own brick and mortar stores, if it wasn't for the stores i'd drop the hobby, so for me i'll spend as much as they need to keep the company alive and thriving because i know i have somewhere i can go to relax or find a game, not go to some random club and hope people bring warhammer and possibly waste a whole day watching people play games i'm not interested in. That said some models are so expensive i will never buy them, like the stormcast dragon or a bloodthirster, sorry but no, that 1 model is a whole fortnight of rent, i'd rather be two weeks ahead in rent that pay that much for 1 model, i'd rather drip feed my hobby each fortnight with a new box or blister pack.

iron_within88 wrote:
Mostly got no issues with their prices, the local GW has to pay for rent which would be about $300-500 a week...

And the rest.

That said some models are so expensive i will never buy them, like the stormcast dragon or a bloodthirster, sorry but no, that 1 model is a whole fortnight of rent, i'd rather be two weeks ahead in rent that pay that much for 1 model

You only pay $170 a fortnight for rent? Lucky bastard I'm trying to find a place to live in Melbourne and I'm more than likely going to end up paying more than that *per week*.

Chamberlain wrote:GW seems to believe that the stores do the recruiting. I have no reason to doubt them as continuing them and expanding them when they are the least efficient way to sell things makes no sense if GW is not getting some larger benefit from having them.

Maybe it's a tax wright off thing? Stores loose money but you save on taxes. I don't get it but that's what I keep reading about other companies doing things like this. What I don't get is if it's to recruit, why are lots of stores in the middle of no where? Basically these stores have customers because they know where to go to, so that means they are not new recruits/fresh blood.

iron_within88 wrote:Mostly got no issues with their prices, the local GW has to pay for rent which would be about $300-500 a week plus utilities then the managers wages like $50-55K and to be really profitable

Rent is that cheap? Wow I thought it would be double that.

That said, finding out other people's hobbies now, GW doesn't seem so insane anymore. Is it still too expensive? Well for me it is. That said it is still worth it if I am enjoying it. In the end it doesn't matter. By that I mean, what I save from getting cheaper, my wife just spends, so in the end I still end up with ZERO money in the end.

Davor wrote:

Chamberlain wrote:GW seems to believe that the stores do the recruiting. I have no reason to doubt them as continuing them and expanding them when they are the least efficient way to sell things makes no sense if GW is not getting some larger benefit from having them.

Maybe it's a tax wright off thing? Stores loose money but you save on taxes. I don't get it but that's what I keep reading about other companies doing things like this. What I don't get is if it's to recruit, why are lots of stores in the middle of no where? Basically these stores have customers because they know where to go to, so that means they are not new recruits/fresh blood.

iron_within88 wrote:Mostly got no issues with their prices, the local GW has to pay for rent which would be about $300-500 a week plus utilities then the managers wages like $50-55K and to be really profitable

Rent is that cheap? Wow I thought it would be double that.

That said, finding out other people's hobbies now, GW doesn't seem so insane anymore. Is it still too expensive? Well for me it is. That said it is still worth it if I am enjoying it. In the end it doesn't matter. By that I mean, what I save from getting cheaper, my wife just spends, so in the end I still end up with ZERO money in the end.

I think it's more the stores are really the main advertising GW does but like you say GW appears to be of the thinking that as a specialist niche store people will go out of their way to visit, which before the Internet was a valid and reasonable strategy, and whilst the stores (overall) more or less break even its not that efficient but as has been previously mentioned the stores are too bedded into the GW way of doing things to be tampered with

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
As a Brit, and a younger one at that, I think I largely agree with Mad Doc - in my own experience.

I don't pretend to know the money they take in, both in the UK and US, and I'm not really thinking about "per capita" stuff either, but I can certainly say that in my own anecdotal experience, GW brick and mortar stores seem pretty solid to me.

Knowing that in practically every large town or city there's a GW, with people in, stock, somewhere just to go in and have a chat, and there's a degree of consistency between each store is comforting, I guess. I've not felt that in any non-GW gaming store, at all - possibly because there isn't really any single other chain of stores that match them for high street presence. Whereas a GW can nearly always be seen somewhere, and if it can be seen, I'm going in there, damn it!

By having this chain where only their own product is sold, they have some security in that fact. And by having that high street presence, they benefit from recognisability. I doubt I'd be so much in the hobby if not for GW stores being so omnipresent for me.

I don't have solid concrete facts or statistics, but I can personally say that I feel them having stores in the UK at the very least is good.

What you're not allowing for is that if GW hadn't done what they've done, the retail landscape for nerd gaming would be a completely different place. There would then absolutely be space in the market for a chain of independents who sold not only GW but lots of other games and product from other associated niches like RPGs, CCGs and board games too. As it stands, an Indy in the U.K. is often going to be limited in where it's viable to areas where there's enough population to support a store without GW product, otherwise it's immediately setting itself in competition with the manufacturer of the most popular brands. I know from conversations with the owner of one of my nearest indies (almost 50 miles away, case in point) that even offering discount doesn't even necessarily work, people are illogical and there's a percentage who will go to the GW store regardless. Anecdotally, there was apparently an independent that opened exactly opposite a GW, advertising the discount in the window, and even then couldn't make it work.

TLDR The assumption that the gaming shop landscape in the U.K. would be worse without GW stores is quite possibly a faulty one, but we'll never know.

I think you're right on that. It's a massive hypothetical, and it's very true that, even with the discount, people still don't buy from there.

I can speak on experience on that. I currently live on a street where there was both a GW and a LGS opposite over the road. Whenever I went for purchases (which wasn't that often, and usually in between my study hours), I'd go to the GW because of familiarity of knowing GW, and knowing they'd probably have what I wanted, and if they didn't I could order in store, and get free delivery.
I considered going into the LGS, but never did - not enough time, and I didn't feel like going in for something that may-or-may-not be in there, which may-or-may-not be cheaper than the GW stuff. I ended up going in there once, on a whim very late at night, when I found out that, A, they had a 25% discount (might have been 20%), and B, were closing down that very night.

I ended up impulse buying about £80 worth of models that night, and my student budget wept for the rest of that term, but by and large, I hadn't ever gone in that store because I simply didn't know it. I had no idea they'd be cheaper, didn't know they'd have what I wanted, and didn't feel I had a relation to them. GW, on the other had, does, and that is a considerable factor in the current situation.

However, yes, I do agree that we'd never know what the GW situation would be like if they closed their stores down.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

iron_within88 wrote:
Mostly got no issues with their prices, the local GW has to pay for rent which would be about $300-500 a week...

And the rest.

That said some models are so expensive i will never buy them, like the stormcast dragon or a bloodthirster, sorry but no, that 1 model is a whole fortnight of rent, i'd rather be two weeks ahead in rent that pay that much for 1 model

You only pay $170 a fortnight for rent? Lucky bastard I'm trying to find a place to live in Melbourne and I'm more than likely going to end up paying more than that *per week*.

Yeah i actually take that back, that was a pretty bad guesstimate, i had a look at alot of commerical building plots are being rented out for $28,000-$45,000 per year, i know that when the local GW moved into their new location a while back the entire street was being offered periods of rent free access because the area was very dead and they wanted to bring it back to life as a local hotspot, that was a while ago so i doubt they are still getting free rent so really think the local GW very minimum expenses would be $100k a year, privateer press models are almost as expensive as warhammer without those expenses so makes me wonder why people don't question their prices but question GW.

trust me us WMH players are quite engrumped with the ever increasing costs, personal tinfoil theory is PP got it into their heads they could charge near GW prices because their game is 'better', this may have backfired as anecdotally I've heard a few recasters have started doing PP stuff and morals / legal / etc issues aside that wouldnt happen without demand as £55ish for a 12 person unit trumps even GW, personally nearly all my Hordes stuff has been from Ebay for the last few years

May be a bit late to chime in on this, but I have some exp with plastics through a similar company.

The biggest expense is of course the mold. 10-60k to have them made cheaply in china depending on the size (with no guarantee they won't make their own) and you can drastically increase that cost to have it made domestically.

Molds have a long lifespan, and if you're making say plastic spoons, you'll likely use it enough to even wear out the mold. However, miniature production is lower volume. Molds can be expected to survive 500k - 1mil uses. However, with high detail minis, half or 1/4 that lifespan. Eventually the corners will lose their detail through repeated friction. While that may easily pay off for really popular models like space marines, It probably won't pay off for 1-model-per-army things like the Assassins or Eldar characters. That's why the prices are so stupid for things like the Primaris Librarians. Not every SM player even has one.

So with 250k uses for a 30k mold comes out to about 6 cents per use. These also the cost for the plastic, but it's negligible. Probably 3-4 cents per space marine.

However, if you only use that mold 5k times, your cost goes up to 6 dollars per use + plastic cost. In the long run, the investment will pay off as they can keep using that same mold, but the company doesn't want to invest in the mold, artists, and production costs for something that will take 3-4 years to turn a profit, especially when other items are in demand.


In cases with the less popular armies they are probably doing simple math to determine whether or not to make something in plastic. If the Eldar SuperElf only sold 500 models per year for 5 years, 30k/500 = 60 dollars cost per model sold, just for the mold. Even if adjusted for expected sales jump due to a new model and it being in plastic - that may still cost them $20-30 per use.

Also, the price tags for the molds i mentioned above doesn't include 'redos'. Plastic engineers are able to use software to test where the plastic will flow and to make sure the mold won't produce miscasts. Downside is that the software isn't always 100% accurate and the first test-runs may still come out with flaws. Now you've got a sold hunk of expensive metal that is spitting out flaws. They either have to go in and manually correct the mold or go back to the engineers/artists, get it corrected, and make a whole new mold.

With miniatures, that 2nd part is a lot more problematic than with things like spoons or plastic drawers or kids toys. A certain level of flaws are expected in cheap consumer goods. With detailed miniatures, you can't have a divot or abscess because it will either destroy details or just cause an ugly spot on the model.

So when explaining this to the mold manufacturer, they will likely increase their price estimate as the production time could easily double or triple and they'll end up having to scrap a mold or two.

TLDR: Molds cost a lot. Molds from outside of China cost a lot more. Molds that need to be flawless cost even more. Characters and one-off models cost more because you don't buy 20-30 of them for an army. Fewer presses = higher cost per press.

Basically - GW isn't really ripping people off. The production cost is a lot higher and involves more risk than just 4-5 cents worth of plastic in it.

 Azreal13 wrote:
What you're not allowing for is that if GW hadn't done what they've done, the retail landscape for nerd gaming would be a completely different place. There would then absolutely be space in the market for a chain of independents who sold not only GW but lots of other games and product from other associated niches like RPGs, CCGs and board games too. As it stands, an Indy in the U.K. is often going to be limited in where it's viable to areas where there's enough population to support a store without GW product, otherwise it's immediately setting itself in competition with the manufacturer of the most popular brands. I know from conversations with the owner of one of my nearest indies (almost 50 miles away, case in point) that even offering discount doesn't even necessarily work, people are illogical and there's a percentage who will go to the GW store regardless. Anecdotally, there was apparently an independent that opened exactly opposite a GW, advertising the discount in the window, and even then couldn't make it work.

TLDR The assumption that the gaming shop landscape in the U.K. would be worse without GW stores is quite possibly a faulty one, but we'll never know.

Of course that scenario isn't that good for GW so...

Price for GUO during 2nd: 30 DM (ca. 15 Euro).
Price for new GUO: 110 Euro.

That´s really quite insane.I am so glad that I purchased the old model.

@SirWeeble - that's all true on a standalone basis; however, GW prices on a network basis, covering ALL of the things they sell. GW can afford to have Orks or Nids break even after 4 or 5 years once you understand that they exist as something for SMs to fight - basically a really big SM accessory sprue, or a really big Primaris Librarian.

The only thing GW can't have is things that sell so poorly that they never recoup their tooling cost. Like, say, Sisters of Battle. Cue both SoB players jumping in to defend the indefensible...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Strg Alt wrote:
Price for GUO during 2nd: 30 DM (ca. 15 Euro).
Price for new GUO: 110 Euro.

That´s really quite insane.I am so glad that I purchased the old model.

Yeah, but the original GUO looks like ass.


Even at DM30, you overpaid!

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
The only thing GW can't have is things that sell so poorly that they never recoup their tooling cost. Like, say, Sisters of Battle. Cue both SoB players jumping in to defend the indefensible...

Or you know, asking you to back up inane arguments with hard data. One or the other. And I don't even play Sisters.

@JohnHwangDD:

Yeah, but the original GUO looks like ass.


Even at DM30, you overpaid!

 Albertorius wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
The only thing GW can't have is things that sell so poorly that they never recoup their tooling cost. Like, say, Sisters of Battle. Cue both SoB players jumping in to defend the indefensible...

Or you know, asking you to back up inane arguments with hard data. One or the other. And I don't even play Sisters.

The very fact that GW cannot make a business case to produce plastics Sisters of Battle (nor Eldar Aspects) is evidence enough, despite the production of other items that we know cannot possibly sell in any significant volumes (e.g. Primaris Librarians).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Strg Alt wrote:
@JohnHwangDD:

Yeah, but the original GUO looks like ass.

Spoiler:

Even at DM30, you overpaid!

We can agree to disagree. The new model is not only bad because of it´s enormous price tag but also it´s size has been increased beyond a reasonable scale. It hardly fits on any terrain that I have built for my 40K collection.

Price for GUO during 2nd: 30 DM (ca. 15 Euro).

That dude fits into the new one about 5 times. I've got one of every generation of GUO (I really like GUOs, always have) , but that old dude is smaller than a spawn. It's barely bigger than a 2nd edition beast of nurgle.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:


It sounds to me like the real problem is that you didn't buy Official GW Terrain.

So tell me, how is Nathan Poe?

I don't play 40k like I used to. I don't go looking for games very often either, and do not play competitively. I have enough for me and a friend to play small games with a variety of armies if we ever want. I usually only buy bitz these days,just to add a little variety for what I already do have.

What I do buy more than anything else, is their terrain. I do admit can be pretty expensive, but I don't make my own, and well, they have the best around. I can justify buying the nice stuff because it will always look good.

I would be feeling pretty down if I was just getting into the game today, and trying to play competitively. I don't know how much more expensive the game is since Rogue Trader, as it and Epic were expensive for me back then, and I don't know what inflation has done, but what is worse for me is how over time armies lose models or become stronger or weaker depending on what version of the rules are out. That's a killer to me.

I feel like my smaller 2nd/3rd edition games went further with fewer minis than the modern versions do. I felt the same about Epic as it evolved over the years too.

Can't complain about GW's prices if you never buy from GW

 Grimtuff wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:


It sounds to me like the real problem is that you didn't buy Official GW Terrain.

So tell me, how is Nathan Poe?

Shhh...

tneva82 wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
What you're not allowing for is that if GW hadn't done what they've done, the retail landscape for nerd gaming would be a completely different place. There would then absolutely be space in the market for a chain of independents who sold not only GW but lots of other games and product from other associated niches like RPGs, CCGs and board games too. As it stands, an Indy in the U.K. is often going to be limited in where it's viable to areas where there's enough population to support a store without GW product, otherwise it's immediately setting itself in competition with the manufacturer of the most popular brands. I know from conversations with the owner of one of my nearest indies (almost 50 miles away, case in point) that even offering discount doesn't even necessarily work, people are illogical and there's a percentage who will go to the GW store regardless. Anecdotally, there was apparently an independent that opened exactly opposite a GW, advertising the discount in the window, and even then couldn't make it work.

TLDR The assumption that the gaming shop landscape in the U.K. would be worse without GW stores is quite possibly a faulty one, but we'll never know.

Of course that scenario isn't that good for GW so...

Why not?

At the moment their obligations in terms of costs roughly equal the income they generate from their stores. There's absolutely no reason that in a parallel universe somewhere there's no such thing as GW Retail, yet GW is as profitable while being more nimble and reactive because it has a smaller cost base to cover.

The assumption that GW Retail was vital the the success of GW is very much a symptom of the Kerbett era, and Rountree really has no choice but to run with it now, but it isn't precisely that, an assumption because the alternative was never tried, and now we'll never find out.

In the last report thingy they do mention a project to recruit new customers through the internet. I don't know how quickly it could work (if it ever does) but if it does end up that they can get new customers without the stores, I think they'll embrace it. It's supposed to launch later in the year. I wonder what it'll be like.

On GW prices, I think in the previous report they talk about new releases being a third of their sales and a targeted average price increase of 3%. So new releases need to be 9-10% more expensive than the average price of the previous year. Compare the Agressors with the new Custodes Allarus Terminators. Compare First Strike with Storm of Sigmar.

Anyone who wants to not pay 9-10% more can just stick to not getting the new shiny thing. The start collecting sets and all the kits that came out in previous years might be a better place to look.

 Chamberlain wrote:
In the last report thingy they do mention a project to recruit new customers through the internet. I don't know how quickly it could work (if it ever does) but if it does end up that they can get new customers without the stores, I think they'll embrace it. It's supposed to launch later in the year. I wonder what it'll be like.

Good luck to them, but I don't see this being fruitful.

Brick and mortar stores are an anchor for the customer. They know that's where they get GW products, they're not exposed to better pricing in the store or competitors products, and they know that's where they can go to get a game. To see a competitors products you need to travel to another store - if there's one in the local area.

Recruiting online means they're recruiting people with instant access to competitors products and prices, with no incentive to actually visit a GW store other than to game. When they want to venture out to find a store to play in and meet the local gamers, the chances of them finding an independent retailer instead of a GW store is, depending on the area, quite good, which means they're also seeing people in the store playing competitors products.

It's good they want to finally embrace the online aspects of the hobby, but as a recruitment tool they're going to be careful otherwise they'll get people interested in the hobby, but not their product.