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Ugh.  Not really adding anything new, but I just wanted to blow off a little steam.  So -finally- after about 3 years, I've got the GW bug back.  Still... mindful of my own modelling habits, I don't want to charge headlong into this... since I'm thinking about starting Fantasy... with little-to-no infrastructure backing me...

Normally, pricing isn't too much of a problem, since I've spent huge wads of cash on PP stuff recently (in the magnitudes of 1000's of points of models)... and price increases are like death and taxes in the miniature wargaming world...

The thing is I want to help my FLGS but I can't help but feel like an idiot whenever I look at the Canadian MSRPs of the three basic things needed to start - since discounts of the non-trivial variety can be attained by ordering at MSRP from the adjacent US region... (and when I say adjacent, I mean within driving distance!)

Skull Pass - $75 CAD ($67.96 USD - 51% more than US MSRP)
Battalion Box - $130 CAD ($117.80 USD or 31% more than US MSRP)
Army Book - $35 CAD ($31.71 USD or 59% more than US MSRP)

I can realize even more of a savings if I order from a US discounter...  Heck!  I wouldn't be surprised if US MSRP is better than what GW wholesale price on some items to Canadian retailers.  I'd like to support the locals, but I'm finding it awfully hard to ignore that I'd be paying anywhere from 50-70% more for the privellege.

Does this make me a bad person? 

(In other news, I think I'll just buy a regiment box and paint it to start... there's not much difference in price there).

No, no it doesn't.  It makes Games Workshop a bad company!  I'd buy a little bit from your FLGS, but get the rest from us!

That's absolutely ridiculous. 

Kinda sad because one used to be able to get steep discounts from canadia. But I recently (1&1/2 years ago) bought some stuff from great canadian miniatures. I should have bought it from warstore, as it cost the same after conversion/shipping, and I would have gotten it faster from neal. (2 months is far to long to wait for an order).

Youre not a bad person, but then again, this is the reason why places are going under. Too much internet buying of products. its amazing how some places are even still in business.

There is a new shop in burnsville MN that has the biggest gaming area I have ever seen. Literally 2500 square feet dedcated to nothing more than gaming space for tables. The place dwarfs any place I have ever seen.

He holds MtG tourneys as his main bread and butter, but is still a game shop, in taht he caters a huge margin of his shop space to selling miniatures games. He hates GW because it takes up the most space, and he makes the least off of GW than he does any other gaming product.

The GW bug is a nice thing to get bitten by, but IMO, it is destined to fall because it doesnt support the retailers with enough of the cut of profit. If youre gonna pay full retail, you should be assured that the store youre buying it from is making enough profit from it to warrant the space it is taking to keep the place in business. With GW, this just isnt happening. Small wonder why many places refuse to dedicate shelf space to it, other than special orders.

will be honest, i have a feeling this isn't so much a GW price issue as an import/tax issue. remember if you mail order from the US you could get smaked with some import taxes if the order is large enough, i know this happens alot with euro's who order stuff  from the states.   Im not sure what canadas import laws are but i suspect you guys have a higher sales tax than the average us city, which will add to the over all cost of an item since  the end consumer eats the sale taxes the manufacteror and wholesaler are ment to be paying.

Narlix hit it on the money. It isn't really GW's fault as this is the case for lots of manufacturers with Canadian distribution. You as a Canadian pay more as GW has to ship the products into Canada (not cheap) and pay import duties on those items. So your MSRP is higher even taking exchange rates into account. GW could get around it by having a factory in Canada (like they do in the US), but the market probably isn't strong enough to support that.

I work in ecommerce and get to see mfg's creating separate price points for US and Canadian consumers and so this is a problem not isolated with GW.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Posted By Ozymandias on 05/16/2007 11:48 AM
Narlix hit it on the money. It isn't really GW's fault as this is the case for lots of manufacturers with Canadian distribution. You as a Canadian pay more as GW has to ship the products into Canada (not cheap) and pay import duties on those items. So your MSRP is higher even taking exchange rates into account. GW could get around it by having a factory in Canada (like they do in the US), but the market probably isn't strong enough to support that.

I work in ecommerce and get to see mfg's creating separate price points for US and Canadian consumers and so this is a problem not isolated with GW.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

I admit that I had not considered import duties, and while this might make sense for a company based in America selling for a higher price in Canada to offset this hit, it is doubtful that duties would cause a more than a 10% spike in MSRP - especially when lots of other products - i.e. video games, DVDs, consoles... etc. have comparable prices.

Let's look at some other GW price breakdowns...

Terminator Squad - $50 USD - $55 CAD ($50.15 USD - Woo!  We're 15 cents US cheaper!)
Assault Squad - $25 USD - $40 CAD ($36.25 USD - Well.  We get cheap terminators... so I guess its fair game that we pay 45% more for Assault Marines)
Squad or Regiment - $35 USD - $45 CAD ($40.78USD - only 17% more expensive in Canada)Typical character model - $12 USD - $16CAD (only 21% more expensive)

OK.  So there's a bit of variance... Strangely... if you head over to LOTR...

Easterling Army - $90 USD - $110 CAD ($99.67 USD - or 11% )
Plastic Squad - $25 USD - $30 ($27.18 USD - or 9% more expensive in Canada)

Hmm.  That's interesting.

While I accept higher prices from tarifs and duty, I do not accept the range of MSRP increases (Terminators aside...) ranging anywhere from 9% to 45%  (-edit- I guess GW Canada must have lowered the price on Assault Marines... I could've sworn they were $45 when they first were recut.)

Don't forget we have a helpful 14% tax on everything!  Happy shopping!

Wait, are you saying to blame Canada?

Shame that there's no song about that.

Posted By Iorek on 05/16/2007 12:26 PM
Wait, are you saying to blame Canada?

Shame that there's no song about that.

yeah no kidding......

Contrary to popular belief... despite what might have been shown on TV... the tops of our heads do not separate from the rest of our bodies!

Thats too bad, I would've been impressed with something from Canada finally

Don't all those taxes you pay go to, like, health care and social welfare
type of things?

This isn't surprising. I order everything from the US rather than buying it here in Australia. Bought a huge lot of Tyranid models (including 3 Battleforces) and after shipping I was still effectivley paying for 2 BF's and getting the third for free.

Why would I buy locally unless it's something I need right away when the prices in the US are so (comparativley) cheap.

BYE

Posted By Ozymandias on 05/16/2007 11:48 AM
Narlix hit it on the money. It isn't really GW's fault as this is the case for lots of manufacturers with Canadian distribution. You as a Canadian pay more as GW has to ship the products into Canada (not cheap) and pay import duties on those items. So your MSRP is higher even taking exchange rates into account. GW could get around it by having a factory in Canada (like they do in the US), but the market probably isn't strong enough to support that.

I work in ecommerce and get to see mfg's creating separate price points for US and Canadian consumers and so this is a problem not isolated with GW.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Well, NAFTA should help in theory.

A 15% mark-up I would believe, but not a 51% mark-up.

I don't have the time now, but I'm fairly certain if you looked at other items in the same toy segment as GW (Legos, Barbies, D&D Miniatures, etc.) you wouldn't see the prices being 51% higher.

Posted By H.B.M.C. on 05/16/2007 2:24 PM
This isn't surprising. I order everything from the US rather than buying it here in Australia. Bought a huge lot of Tyranid models (including 3 Battleforces) and after shipping I was still effectivley paying for 2 BF's and getting the third for free.

Why would I buy locally unless it's something I need right away when the prices in the US are so (comparativley) cheap.

BYE

And we wonder why local games stores go out of business...

I don't know enough about import duties and regional pricing strategies to comment on why GW sets the price it does, I was just trying to offer one possible explanation from my experiences.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

I wonder what redshirts tell the kids in Canada/Oz. Over here they say the prices pay for the store and the artists and the high-quality sculpts (whee!), so I guess over there they add an import tax explanation/excuse too?



If you're trying to give him a guilt trip, I guess you're opposed to practicality? Few are stupid enough to buy things at 40+% markup out of the kindness of their hearts. Markets change. Of course, with this comment you also imply internet sellers, who force brick-and-mortars to adapt to the internet and its prices or fail.

The fact that the US$ is currently weaker than my 3 year olds army list probably plays it's part too

(for those that are curious, he doodled on an army roster the other day and came up with a list that included one of every unit in the IG codex, undercosted it though - little cheater!)

We pay higher in euros for products than the conversion from pounds sterling would make you think.
The primary reason is because Irish people are stupidly happy to spend their money on crap.
Everything luxury goods wise gets marked up randomly here.

Posted By Asmodai on 05/16/2007 8:04 PM

Posted By Ozymandias on 05/16/2007 11:48 AM
Narlix hit it on the money. It isn't really GW's fault as this is the case for lots of manufacturers with Canadian distribution. You as a Canadian pay more as GW has to ship the products into Canada (not cheap) and pay import duties on those items. So your MSRP is higher even taking exchange rates into account. GW could get around it by having a factory in Canada (like they do in the US), but the market probably isn't strong enough to support that.

I work in ecommerce and get to see mfg's creating separate price points for US and Canadian consumers and so this is a problem not isolated with GW.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Well, NAFTA should help in theory.

A 15% mark-up I would believe, but not a 51% mark-up.

I don't have the time now, but I'm fairly certain if you looked at other items in the same toy segment as GW (Legos, Barbies, D&D Miniatures, etc.) you wouldn't see the prices being 51% higher.

I have a feeling NAFTA  plays  little to none in the price. its a british company , even if they are pulling product out of the american factory ( i would for god sakes hope so) its still an import from a non-north american company. well unless they are exporting it under the GW-US sub sid but even then im not entirly sure they would fall under NAFTA since the parent company is not north american based. If they are sending product from the british factories ( they are a commonwealth country) NAFTA would not apply either and full import would  apply.

I have a feeling legos show a similar price increase to GW product, but I think it might be more normalized across the board, such as 20% on all boxes, the minor issue here is that GW is not normalizing the price across the whole product line.  and is puting more of the tax/tariffs cost on some boxes while leaveing other boxes un-touched. i have a feeling they are sending the high % mark up to boxes that are cheaper. this explains why termies got very little mark up. This isn;t a bad  nor a good thing its just one way to look at handling the increase in price that selling product out of country causes.

lets look at it this way, lets take a product that costs 100 dollars and a product that cost 20 dollars, there is a 20% import cost on both. the average person is going to be iffy on buying something for 100 dollars you make it 120 dollars and they will normally balk at the price, a 20 dollar product would only go up to 24 dollars.  now you know your consumer will by 5 times more of the 20 dollar box than the 100 dollar box, so take the 20% increase in cost of the 100 dollar box and add it to the 20 dollar boxes. so the 20 dollar  boxes go up to 28 dollars, and the 100 dollar box is still around 100 dollars. the increase in cost is greater for the 20 dollar box but most people won't really balk at paying 28 as compared to 20 dollars since they are both smaller portions of  weekly income that 100 dollars.

Posted By Ozymandias on 05/17/2007 12:00 AM
And we wonder why local games stores go out of business...

I don't have any local game stores. What I do have, assuming a good run in the traffic, is a Games Workshop store about 10 minutes away from my house. The only other gaming store that stocks GW stuff that I know of is in the mall near my work which is no where near as close as the GW.

So I don't buy from FLGS's anyway. I once almost ordered from an online retailer, Greater Canadian Miniatures, but the shipping costs would have made the saving irrelevent, plus their ye olde method of dealing with credit cards/not accepting PayPal from overseas, not to mention that they send their packages via wingless carrier pidgeon meant it would've been quicker to drive to the opposite end of my continent to get it. And that's not an exageration.

I've only ever bought GW products from GW (except when I was in Singapore at the beginning of the year), and it just seems stupid to me that buying from the GW US Website is cheaper than me driving 10 mins to my local GW.

BYE

I was not trying to guilt him. I rarely buy anything from my local games-store too. I really do think that companies like the Warstore are bad for the hobby as a whole, why would I buy anywhere else? To date, the only time I ever purchased Warmachine stuff in a store was when the store was going out of business and I got it 50% off.

As I said earlier, I work for an e-commerce company, I know all about channel conflict and the competition between traditional and online retailers. The company I work for though, has a retailer friendly solution that supports the retailer rather than compete with them. We haven't made it to the game industry yet (or out the US), but there is a real problem right now with price competition online.

And @ HBMC, that is a little wierd that ordering from US GW is cheaper than AUS GW. I guess if you ever need anything 'right now' you can always go to the store.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Well, the last time I did a bits order through GW Canada (almost a year ago), they said that they were having problems with the US end of their system, and had gone back to getting stuff from the UK.  Not sure if he meant bits only, or everything... but knowing their practices, I would not be surprised if it was all product again.

As for the FLGS/Internet ordering debate of things, I currently live about 2 and 1/2 hours from my nearest FLGS (the downside of living waaay up North).  This store hosts an annual 40K tourney every Nov. and a Fantasy tourney in April.  It houses leagues (not that I've participated in those for years), one off events, etc.  As such, I try to support it by purchasing goodies whenever I am there.  I figure if it ever goes under, the next nearest (decent) store is a mere 12+ hours away... so paying full price never really bothers me.

That being said, if they don't have what I'm looking for (and ordering stuff is a problem at times), I order through Sentry Box (in Calgary, Alberta).  Usually we wait to do a big order ($150.00 +), so we get free shipping, and only pay 7% tax rather than 13%... so it's a little savings. 

But, we get excellent service from them, they phone back if something isn't in, and have gone out of our way in the past to order product in for us.  So in the end, I don't mind paying full price for excellent service and support.

-Vilegrimm

Keezus. GW prices are largely irrelevant. Buy smart, buy from our Swap Shop, or an internet auction.

I have a low income healthy, financial state, and LOTS of GW miniatures. I am sensible with monety in general but with my hobbies doubly so. ALL my armies are swaps or auction bids. Honestly it is the way to go. Literally only about 2% of the miniatures I can put on a table were bought from a GW store or a mail order company, including GW trolls.