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How do!

First, I get this may seem contentious. But, I ask you to read this OP, in full, before commenting. Because I promise you my conclusion is not “therefore GW’s prices are great and justified”. And I’ve been wanting to do this thread for a while, but have always struggled with my wording.

Anyways, here goes.

GW stuff is expensive. And GW is the biggest fish in its pond by quite some degree. And it absolutely is the benchmark by which all others are judged. But, are those high prices enabling competitors to be profitable in turn?

See, you can go the Mantic route (or at least its earlier route) of Being Cheaper. The sculpts were never as good as GW’s, but they were a good deal cheaper. That gave them a place in the wider market.

And for smaller, garage style studios? You can do gorgeous sculpts, come in under GW’s prices, and be seen as good value, even though you’re still making a decent per-model profit margin.

It’s that skewing of the consumer’s perception. Now I’m not saying anyone is ripping anyone off here. But, GW prices are high, therefore any competitor or imitator being of lower per-unit price is therefore better value, regardless that ultimately, both are pay pennies in materials, and selling for pounds.

Quick example? Once upon a time, a GW character model was maybe £12 as a blister. Now, they’re upwards of £20. When they were £12, competitors had it come in under that to be seen as good value. Say, £8. But, now the GW price is higher? Your price can be higher, and still be seen as good/better value.

If GW’s own prices (and margins) were lower, then the competitors would have to squeeze their own margins, to the point that for smaller ones, it just wouldn’t be initially profitable, therefore reducing the amount of competition. And competition is a good thing, as it keeps everyone on their toes and pushing the industry forward.

So. Yeah. I think I’ve l got what I’ve been pondering.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Quick example? Once upon a time, a GW character model was maybe £12 as a blister. Now, they’re upwards of £20. When they were £12, competitors had it come in under that to be seen as good value. Say, £8. But, now the GW price is higher? Your price can be higher, and still be seen as good/better value.

When GW's price was £12, everyone's (including GW's) costs were lower.

So... yes, GW charging more than they did a decade ago means that smaller companies can also charge more than they were a decade ago, but that doesn't actually mean that they have better margins as a result.

GW are ripping us off, easy to see that from the amount of profit they make every year. Not that GW are forcing anyone to buy their products.

I think the main issue for the competition is volume. GW are very profitable because the money they spend on tooling, design, overheads, etc… is offset by the high volume of product they sell. The same isn’t true (at least not to the same extent) for GW’s competition.

I think it’s also true that if GW lowered their prices this would make life a bit tougher for the competition. There isn’t a price war and race to the bottom though. If GW has showed us anything it’s that demand for their product is elastic.

El Torro wrote:
GW are ripping us off,...

They're really not.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no more a fan of high prices than the next person, but they have a product, they can choose the price they want to sell it for, and you as the consumer see that price before making a decision to purchase, or not. Nobody is being 'ripped off' there.

Yes, they make good profits. That's ultimately what a business is supposed to do.

I think the main issue for the competition is volume. GW are very profitable because the money they spend on tooling, design, overheads, etc… is offset by the high volume of product they sell. The same isn’t true (at least not to the same extent) for GW’s competition.

This is indeed the case.

I think it’s also true that if GW lowered their prices this would make life a bit tougher for the competition. There isn’t a price war and race to the bottom though. If GW has showed us anything it’s that demand for their product is elastic.

GW also have no interest in selling the lowest priced product, because they view their range as a premium offering, to be sold at a premium price.

And, at the end of the day, they don't actually need to make life tougher for the competition, because their current competition is a bunch of much, much smaller fish in a pond that GW still dominates fairly comfortably.

 insaniak wrote:

El Torro wrote:
GW are ripping us off,...

They're really not.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no more a fan of high prices than the next person, but they have a product, they can choose the price they want to sell it for, and you as the consumer see that price before making a decision to purchase, or not. Nobody is being 'ripped off' there.
.

Absolutely. You can actually say consumers are ripping themselves off.

By voting with their wallets consumers basically tell companies "what you are doing is right, please continue".

In the context of GW this applies not just to prices but also to other questionable practices like selling paper rules that are outdated weeks after release. And what do GW customers do? They open their wallets and inform GW "what you are doing is right, please continue".

And still, so much of the product is never even used, just bought for a short shot of FOMO/marketing induced dopamine and dumped in the closet to be forgotten. If it is so expensive and if it turns out later it's useless, why buy it? Slaanesh (and behavioral neuropsychology/behavioral economics) only knows.


It is not really a matter of a company abusing the system, it's the lack of consumer awareness/education/introspection/discipline/whatever. This applies to other brands/industries, where consumers just willingly bend over and then complain their anuses hurt. And is a driver of blind, mindless consummerism the world over.

Cyel wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

El Torro wrote:
GW are ripping us off,...

They're really not.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no more a fan of high prices than the next person, but they have a product, they can choose the price they want to sell it for, and you as the consumer see that price before making a decision to purchase, or not. Nobody is being 'ripped off' there.
.

Absolutely. You can actually say consumers are ripping themselves off.

By voting with their wallets consumers basically tell companies "what you are doing is right, please continue".

In the context of GW this applies not just to prices but also to other questionable practices like selling paper rules that are outdated weeks after release. And what do GW customers do? They open their wallets and inform GW "what you are doing is right, please continue".

And still, so much of the product is never even used, just bought for a short shot of FOMO/marketing induced dopamine and dumped in the closet to be forgotten. If it is so expensive and if it turns out later it's useless, why buy it? Slaanesh (and behavioral neuropsychology/behavioral economics) only knows.


It is not really a matter of a company abusing the system, it's the lack of consumer awareness/education/introspection/discipline/whatever. This applies to other brands/industries, where consumers just willingly bend over and then complain their anuses hurt. And is a driver of blind, mindless consummerism the world over.

We seem to have different definitions of what "ripping off" means. Which is fine, I have no interest in arguing semantics. The fact remains that if GW reduced their prices by 20% they would still make a very healthy profit, even assuming that sales don't increase as a result. This is clear from reading GW's financial reports, which are in the public domain.

I'm not saying that GW's business practices don't make sense, or that they are illegal. Immoral maybe, though that is a subjective argument. Just because GW are in a position to make above average profits doesn't mean they have to.



Back to the original question: I think we're all agreed that GW's prices make it easier for competitors to thrive and compete on price. What we've seen so far is that competitors are unable to take full advantage of this, for whatever reason, since GW are far bigger than any of their competitors.

Geting 'ripped off' would generally involve some form of dishonesty in the deal, so you don't wind up with what you thought you were paying for. While some people do use the expression for a price they view as unjustified, it's not what the term actually means... And that's not even touching the argument about why prices for non-essential good should need to be justified to begin with.

And for what it's worth, it seems unlikely that a price reduction would actually result in increased sales, given that GW doesn't seem to be currently able to actually keep up with demand to begin with. Product that sells out at the current price is still likely to sell out for 20% less... But there's no incentive for GW to do that.

 insaniak wrote:
And for what it's worth, it seems unlikely that a price reduction would actually result in increased sales, given that GW doesn't seem to be currently able to actually keep up with demand to begin with. Product that sells out at the current price is still likely to sell out for 20% less... But there's no incentive for GW to do that.

Very true. One option open to GW is to keep their prices as they are (including regular price rises) and use some of the profits to invest in increasing capacity. New production lines, maybe even new factories, more staff, increased distribution network, etc... The bigger the business the more necessity there is to keep growing sales though so this might be considered risky as a long term strategy.

I know that GW have invested in production and distribution over the years. Considering how much money they have they could do more though.

Remember folks, this discussion isn’t framed as an attempt to justify GW’s pricing, and so isn’t framed as an attempt to justify their takings and profits.

Instead, we’re meant to be exploring whether, and how, it benefits competitors, from relatively big boys (Asmodee and its Marvel / Star Wars games) down to tiny wee boutique makers, and everyone in between.

The point was raised about economy of scale. That is, GW churns out a lot of models, and does stuff like own its own production facilities, giving them finer control over production costs, in exchange for an initial investment their competition can’t necessarily afford.

And they do have a healthy profit margin. But, and here’s the rub I should’ve included in my OP? That’s a profit margin competitors, of all scales, and play around in.

Roughly eyeballing it based on their 2023/2024 6 months results published 9 Jan 2024? On a total revenue of £237m, their pre-tax profit was £95. Source

So that’s around 40% or so, helped by the relatively “phree Munneh” £12m coming from licensing, where it would otherwise be close to around 33%ish.

That’s a fair old amount, and a pretty healthy margin by anyone’s standards.

It also shows that, should it choose to? GW could cut prices and remain profitable. As a Ltd co it is of course more complicated than that, but it is possible. Certainly not illegal.

If they did? And ran on slimmer margins, how might that impact the smaller manufacturers and competitors? If you’ve pegged your prices to say, 20% lower than GW, and they cut their prices by 15%? What happens to your profit margin?

Your running costs are certain to be a fraction of GW’s just in staffing costs alone. Because as well as their stores, GW employs more than 350 people at the head office/foundry in Nottingham. But, you don’t have the same market penetration and dominance, and so let’s face it, you’re just not gonna get their sales volumes, making production costs relative. No matter how low your own production costs, you still need to make a living after all, and in this theory, you’ll have to do that from units sold.

Would the buying public see you’re still a lower price than GW regardless of the exact percentage and perceive you as better value still? I honestly don’t know, but I dare say there’s some kind of economics study about such things.

But if the answer is no? Can you cut your profit margin to reclaim the difference, and still have it a worthwhile endeavour? Would you be able to afford to expand? Pay for external advertising in mags and websites and that? Again, I honestly don’t know, and unless a smaller manufacturer/boutique chimes in, I don’t think any of us can do more than speculate.


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El Torro wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
And for what it's worth, it seems unlikely that a price reduction would actually result in increased sales, given that GW doesn't seem to be currently able to actually keep up with demand to begin with. Product that sells out at the current price is still likely to sell out for 20% less... But there's no incentive for GW to do that.

Very true. One option open to GW is to keep their prices as they are (including regular price rises) and use some of the profits to invest in increasing capacity. New production lines, maybe even new factories, more staff, increased distribution network, etc... The bigger the business the more necessity there is to keep growing sales though so this might be considered risky as a long term strategy.

I know that GW have invested in production and distribution over the years. Considering how much money they have they could do more though.

They are further development is going on at Lenton to expand manufacturing capacity. Last time around it required a reworking of the energy network, which feels a bonkers thing to say,

It's definitely helpful for competitors. GW basically explores the price ceiling, and everyone else can let them take the risk of overpricing and not moving stock, and just price underneath their ceiling and look like they're good value.

GW have benefited the wargaming industry in a lot of ways, just by introducing people to the hobby as a whole and creating demand for alternative miniatures with their high prices or strong and polarizing aesthetic choices.

I don't buy much from them myself any more, because I find the value is not there for me compared with the competition, and my tastes have moved away from their aesthetic choices in the last ten years. But obviously I'm in a serious minority in the hobby!

On the buying stuff even when it's too costly - when I reflect back on the last 20 years for me, I always did that when I was unhappy in my life in some way. I'd be slogging through work, very limited free time, and daydreaming about having time to play with my toys was keeping me going. But when you don't have time to build, paint or play, you do have time to buy, and to me at least I think it was like buying the potential for fun in the future. It's stupid though, because hobby time has not magically increased in my future and all I have is a big pile of stuff that I have to move with me if I want to move house.

I go longer and longer stretches with no purchases at all now, and I'm glad for that. I think I'm gonna need more discipline in the future. First, I stopped backing Kickstarters, next I stopped buying things on limited release. Now, I just need to limit the scope of my projects and accept that things don't need to be "complete" to play.

I'm not sure it's that simple because of GWs IP's.
For example, today Victrix easily makes superior plastic kits to GWs new lotr Rohirrim, which are monopose again like they were 20 years ago, but unlike then today they sell these for the same proces as their warhammer stuff. But, and that's important, there's the movie licence behind so these Rohirrim will look exactly like in the movies while some victrix celts or vikings will be pretty similar, have more options and more poses but they're not the exact fantasy miniature.
It's even more obvious if you look at the Warhammers. Even mantic stuff won't look exactly like GWs models for obvious reasons, so they don’t really compete. With Star Wars stuff it's the other way around, no matter how good a new BFG would be, it wouldn't bring in former Armada or X-Wing players because it's just not Star Wars.
Not sure if this goes anywhere, but I'd say GW merely shows how high you can go with a set of 10 plastic miniatures, but overall Wargaming is a pretty strange market outside of the historicals where you actually have several producers doing the same french infantry for example.
Similar to Lego, really. Every other producer of plastic bricks has superior kits these days, but Lego has all the cool IPs.

Yes. It is. As Doc says, it gives competitors more "wiggle room".

Remember too that competitor success means different things to different people. Not everyone will be aiming to be "as big as GW". For some, putting food on the table while doing something they love will be more than enough.

This is some serious grasping at straws my dude.

There would be plenty of scope for competitors to be able to exist without GW's price gouging.

It is tricky

GW isn't just the biggest fish in the ocean, GW is the ocean where everyone else swims in

So being cheaper isn't enough for a lot of people any more, as they demand cheaper and better while "better" being more of a meme here already
like better quality often means "similar in design" with anything not being as close to GW in design as possible is labeled as "bad quality"
Like we have seen with TOW were praise the old GW models for their simplicity, easy to build and paint, as an advantage for R&F while at the same time calling other models that also make R&F models "bad quality" because the design doesn't fit TOW.
(and if we talk about better quality for cheaper price, Gunpla is the best quality SciFi plastic on the market, which might be the reason why GW still advertise with the best Fantasy plastic even for 40k)


For the headline question, GWs pricing is the main reason we saw and see the spike in 3D printing.
Like not just buying a printer because one likes printing, but as cheaper alternative to source models.
Printers are cheap now, but when things started it still would not have been interesting for people if the full 40k army costs 300€ to buy a 500€ printer to make one
But if even the Skirmish games are in the range of 500-600€ an a "collection" can reach >1000€ without being excessive buying a printer is a bargain

and this adds in the above point, cheaper and better without changing the design
people can get a Space Marine army that still looks like the original, but cheaper and better (as there is kitbash is much easier)
and because of that, people trying to make quick money by selling digital files making everything a race to the bottom as only those that are as close as possible sell well, and only feature that is left is being cheaper or selling carbon copies


this development wouldn't be there without GWs prices
take the historical market, it is there but hardy anyone really buys a printer + files instead of plastic models for 28mm or metal models for smaller scale
digital and printed here is a niche for models that are not available otherwise and while you can get files for a full 40k army for ~20-50€, a good historical one is 70-100€ in files alone

GW are the massive gorilla in the corner of the room.

Their high prices definitely allow more wiggle room for the smaller players in the market.

But they other players still have to compete with each other.

It would definitely hurt the smaller players if GW suddenly pivoted to offering cheaper models and rules. But I suspect GW are well aware of what price point is most profitable for them.

I'd argue the spike in 3D printing wasn't GW prices; it was GW being shut down for several months and having insane stocking issues during the Pandemic which also saw a LOT of people with money and time on their hands looking for a new related hobby.

GW prices have not come down since the Pandemic, but 3D printer prices most certainly have - and yet I'd say the uptake of new people into 3D printing has certainly fallen dramatically since the Pandemic.

It's still growing, but not at the same rate and its still a superniche where one or two in a club might have a printer they use rather than everyone.

There are also other issues too like material safety and so forth; but in general I'd say that whilst there's a very loud group online who shout about how "3d printing is cheaper" and how they got into it for "cheaper GW models"; its not the be-all and end-all of that market and that honestly many people are more than happy to pay Gw prices for GW product.






In the end I'd say GW benefits the market greatly. As noted above they are a gateway brand for the whole fantasy/scifi market. For many if not most of us its GW where we started. A store on the highstreet; video games; heck we are soon to get TV shows on ,major streaming services. These are things no other firm in the market can even envision touching unless they get insanely lucky. Even on the highstreet they don't have their own stores they have to sit on the shelf next to all the other brands whilst the shopowner is likely more interested in pushing MTG as a regular bread and butter earner.

Sure GW are not advertising other brands; they are 100% focused on themselves; but they 100% also grow the market with fresh blood whilst many others rely on people who are already gamers branching out and exploring within the market.

That's insanely valuable in any market looking to grow and thrive and its a big area that some established brands often fall down on when they rely on established markets and don't focus on growth of newblood.



And yes if GW are at the upper end of the payscale then that does give wriggling room for smaller brands to compete; sure they have to compete with each other; but they can compete. If GW were to slash prices that would remove that buffer significantly.

Another aspect, and you can see this in the UK very readily, is that GW also grows skills. There's a good number of game firms and sculptors who start out working for GW in some capacity. Being a large, well known stable firm gives that opportunity for many to consider this an actual line of work to go into and by the number of firms that grow up around them that surely has a net gain. Sure there's some losses there too in terms of creative ideas that catch on (a good number of games copy GW in some fashion); but in general you also see growth.



Could the market exist without them - 100% it could. IT could even be healthy without them; but I don't see them being unhealthy for the market. It would be nice to see a competing brand rise up to be a bit of a middle to larger weight against GW to encourage competition and its a shame that PP fell from that slot and no longer competes. But we are seeing firms like Warcradle, Corvus and others steadily growing and building names for themselves and getting larger and larger. Heck CB is actually getting an animation of their own at some point (yeah I said that earlier no other firm could unless they got lucky - well ^^).



The biggest fear is that GW gets investors/shareholes/soldout to pure Capitalist driven firms. Or gains managers of that ilk- we've all seen how Hasbro has managed both MTG and DnD in ways that are detrimental to the community and market.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 General Kroll wrote:
GW are the massive gorilla in the corner of the room.

I don't think they are in the corner; they are in the middle of the room at least so far as fantasy and scifi wargaming is concerned in the western market.

With the cost of living I think small companies just simply cannot compete in any shape or form regardless what the GW prices are.

Someone once said is all about margins... well its so expensive to produce minis and ship them that the margins never been so small.

Im looking into producing my own line so I got some quotes. Believe me most companies are charging bare minimums already and margins rely on huge volumes of sales that are not happening atm and actually shrinking according to some people in biz that have companies.

Dont want to be a party pooper but yeah not a wise line of biz if you want to grow independent.

 NAVARRO wrote:
Im looking into producing my own line so I got some quotes. Believe me most companies are charging bare minimums already and margins rely on huge volumes of sales that are not happening atm and actually shrinking according to some people in biz that have companies.

Yeah. I feel GW is making good profits - but not so sure everyone else is.

Its probably a good thing that GW pushes the envelope so some studios can just about keep going - as if GW genuinely attempted a price war (or the long prophesied miniature recession occured) they'd likely soon be pushed to the wall.

I don't really know about 3-D printing, as the concept of buying a printer and making models "because you might spend €1000 on an army" strikes me as a bit mad.
But I don't know if more people go in with this view of "its 2k or nothing, plan out the 2k points, buy it, build it, maybe even paint it and play." Its a very different mentality to buying say a combat patrol box, building/painting that, and then adding a couple of boxes to the army to get there over a fair period of time.

Most of this comes down to economy of scale. GW's plastics are a pretty high risk manufacturing process. You pay a ton of money upfront to make a ton of copies very cheaply. As long as you sell a lot, its very profitable, but something that flops is potentially ruinous. GW's prices are in no small part, a matter of risk management. They make money hand over fist on marines, but some of it goes to pay off the duds. They theoretically could lower their prices, but they'd have to take fewer risks and basically just sell us marines.

Smaller companies using resins and other materials have better control over their upfront costs but those costs are pretty consistent no matter how many copies they sell. It gives them the flexibility to come in under GW prices, but they see little return on sales and mostly just set their prices where they can to get by.

The longstanding problem is just that there's not a great process for midsize company sales. Small companies hit a ceiling where higher sales is actually a detriment. Meeting demand simply costs more than its worth and the expansion of production is more likely to bankrupt them than see growth continue. Every PVC/Resin/Siocast miracle material has been trying to solve this, but just realistically can't. For a lot of companies its actually better to keep their head down and stay small.

True or they spread themselves too thin over too many product lines - Spartan Games fell into that trap along with taking on a big franchise (Halo).

What I have seen working is when companies bolt themselves onto large stores. Wayland, Troll Trade and I suspect one or two others (I think Firestorm has had a go too but I think they are more focused on expanding shops than games). The benefit there is that you've a big store generating income from multiple revenue sources which can help pay for big upgrade costs without having to take on investors or loans. Sure the game itself still has to be profitable; but it can seriously help having the backing of a larger firm that can ride out the slow periods; push marketing; pay for big upgrades with reduced risk and so forth

I'll just say that the inherent forces of the free market are not working here because innovation in production should be reducing the cost to make said miniatures, allowing for more market competition of lower prices for the same or better quality. If anything, GW's prices only ever going up shows just how flawed their business is, or how captured their market is.

The thing is the market isn't big enough to allow for true vast mass production to bring costs down.

At the same time its also a market where high quality is really important. A good many "mass market brought the price down" situations often come with a steady compromise on build quality/materials or other elements.

You can't easily achieve that with miniatures because the type of customer drawn to them is demanding on quality results.

Otherwise everyone would be running around with PVC models. Even new innovations like Siocast have had issues with quality.

That said we have seen this happening - firms like Warcradle have access to plastics. Something that wasn't really on the cards for anyone that wasn't GW or wasn't willing to work through factories in China (which comes with its own list of pitfalls and troubles).


So it has happened; its just not insanely rapid. Plus alongside it we've had market growth but also pandemics, recessions, rising material costs, brexit and more. I suspect if we'd not had many of them we'd have seen more potential price reduction or at least lower rises. Instead its likely meant that innovation has allowed the market to stay afloat.

Even GW only have limited control over the necessary overheads.

The UK Government has control over minimum wage and corporate taxes. Local Government over business rates. Energy companies over, well, energy. Global Markets on oil, and thus plastic.

All costs any company has to contend with, and can exert only limited control over.

What GW has done is invest in solar panels for its HQ. Given the new factory needed additional infrastructure installed by the energy companies, we can reasonably say whilst those will help, GW isn’t (and arguably can’t be, roof space being finite) entirely self sufficient on energy. But the initial investment will, with proper maintenance, be a net gain over time.

On Minimum Wage? Last time I was near that was 2012, immediately before I got my current job. And I earned £13,200 per annum, before tax. The hourly Minimum Wage then was around £6.00. Today? It’s £11.44.

We know from the thread about GW’s recent performance they employ over 350 folk at Lenton (shop staff, Bugman’s staff, Foundry staff, Design Studio, Office, Big Wigs etc). Even if all of those were on Minimum Wage, you can see the increase is significant applied over that, just on Minimum Wage.

Energy prices have been ridiculous, especially since a lunatic detonated the economy, seemingly for political lols, in 2022.

So, lots and lots of moving parts, with strictly limited direct control over them.

So, most free market economic theory just doesn't work the way its taught anymore. It's reliant on minimal start up costs, limited production throughput and sales area that, as a game theory, we've mostly just completely broken through automation and transportation advancements.

It's hard to understate just how big of an advantage it is that GW manufacturers their own stuff. One HIPS machine alone is probably worth more than the entire value of most of their competing companies combined. Any company capable of buying one is probably better off taking that money to the bank and calling it a successful venture over risking it on growing to GW's size. You're also not going to see regular process upgrades to this kind of production, just do to how much has to be sold to pay it off.

It's also important to realize that GW does innovate their processes quite regularly. The few companies making HIPS are often making kits on a quality closer to what GW was doing a decade ago, with either excessive cuts and small parts, or thick flat models with heavy mold lines. You see things like how characters are increasingly bundled in box sets as a way to mix their production in with other models to reduce the risk on them as well, which is why they're essentially "free" for customers when purchased in the bundle they're produced alongside.

Beyond that though, they're a public company; and without real competition that stands to benefit from beating them on price (which they don't as it lets them charge more themselves), any production savings are simply not going to go to the consumer. That's.... just not how any of this works. Honestly, its not how it ever REALLY worked in the first place.

The free market is a terrible model anyway, and it's only favoured because it's easy to explain and understand in politics.

It's hardly as rigorous as something like the theory of relativity, and it's predictions are regularly wrong because it makes assumptions which are also obviously wrong.

But that's the humanities all over I suppose.

I think you're right, the higher prices of GW are good for competition.

I'm confident that if GW could kill most of them off pretty quickly if they were to try and compete on price because they'd almost certainly be able to undercut everyone. I'm not sure what'd happen to GW sales if they cut prices by 50% across the board. I'm assuming impulse buying would go right up and they'd still make a tidy profit, but suddenly no-one else would become 'cheap warhammers'

I don't think there's much wrong with the free market - but GW aren't selling some basic commodity. Its a luxury good, where a lot (most, all?) of the value is in the prestige of the product.

I mean you can play 40k with pieces of scrap paper if you want. Kind of lame, but perfectly do-able.

And that's arguably the rub of competition. There's physical cost - but the real issue is marketing/brand awareness. GW have had decades building a brand which seemingly becomes ever more mainstream.

They've got a customer base whose demand now typically exceeds the supply of any product they can produce. That results in high profits.

GW can't very easily produce a lot more - so if they charged half the price they couldn't sell over twice as much.

Frankly when GW has faced competition (say 2012-2017, X-Wing and Warmachine) its usually been a function of their games not commanding that prestige, rather than the models being bad (although I feel there were some...). It wasn't, from memory, that X-Wing or Warmachine (or the range of other smaller games that followed) were especially cheap.

Per-model Warmachine wasn't all that much cheaper, at least in the UK.

The main difference was Warmachine was a skirmisher game whilst GW was an army level game. This was also at the time when Killteam was in the back of the main rulebook and wasn't marketed as its own format. So in general there was an expectation that you'd build up to a 1K-2K force of models to "play the game properly".

Meanwhile Warmachine you could by 1 starter box and have a fully functional army that worked right out of the box.

Even if they could, it gets weird unless they can reduce production costs.

And the amount of sales increase needed to break even on any price reduction will depend on your overall profit margin.

Quick example for example’s sake, figures not intended to be particularly representative.

Let’s say I sell at £10, and that includes taxes. Of that, my profit margin is £4, or 40%.

If I start selling those items at 20% off, so £8? I’m reducing my profit margin to £2, or 50% of what it was.

So I don’t need a 20% increase in sales, but a 50% increase, just to maintain the same profits I enjoyed before. Anything less, and I’m losing money.

The real maths is of course considerable more complex, with tax typically being based on your selling price rather than a set, intrinsic value. But hopefully that simple example will give some food for thought,

It's one thing to say that the free market doesn't apply much to luxury goods. But miniatures production on the scale GW is doing is more like industrial rather than boutique, high end, luxury miniatures. They tried spinning finecast as a luxury miniature process and its been a crapshoot ever since they introduced it. I guess they're not pumping out minis as much as those cheap plastic dinosaur and animal toys, but they could if they wanted to.
And the free market tends to solve a lot more problems when the government doesn't get in the way, present health care problems in the USA primarily being caused by government tax incentives and onerous regulations. And if GW wants to grow their customer base and sales, they can't keep catering their miniatures as luxury hobby items, there's a maximum amount of the market that luxury goods can go out to, they will max out at some point and stop their growth, at which point they will either decide to stay where they are, or have to provide options that are not luxury.

In general I would say innovations in manufacturing of the miniatures (3d printing, SioCast), and in the sculpting/design of miniatures (3d scanning, 3d/CAD design and sculpting), are what help other miniatures makers more than GW's pricing.