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I just talked to Nate from Bit Kingdom. I got an email from him regarding a "Inner Circle Membership"

Here is the gist of this inner circle membership:

Cost: $50/month
Minimum Membership Time: None
Benefit: Able to buy GW products at 42% off
Maximum Order amount: TBD - Nate has not set a number yet, but it might be $2,000 or so (I don't know if this is per month/year per person per membership)
Ways to get out of the Inner Circle:
1) Can trade/sell membership to someone else. For example, I pay $50 for membership and buy $1,000 worth of stuff. I don't plan on anything else for the next 20 years. I sell my member ship for $25 to Jimbo. He has ownership of the membership and can buy GW products at 42% retail. After he uses the membership, he also has the option to trade/sell. And so on...
2) Can be the "buyer" for your gaming group. If you are part of a large gaming group, you can have everyone buy from you. They can either help pay for the membership or potentially only get a 35% discount while you keep the 7% as your fee for doing all the processing.
Shipping Costs: Will be at actual cost. No free shipping for orders over $66 like Bitkingdom's normal orders.
Number of Memberships available: 50
Available: Dec. 10 (this wednesday) at 11:00am EST.

Obviously this inncer circle membership is for people buying in bulk. Nate regularly sells products at around 30% off. With the 42% off benefit, that 12% difference would have to equal $50. That means you would have to buy $416.67 of GW products to break even (assuming you didn't sell the membership).

What do you all think of this idea? It only makes sense if you were part of a large gaming group and buying a lot of product, but it seems like a great discount.

Sounds great from a pocketbook perspective. Sounds terrible if you have an FLGS you actually enjoy playing at. Sounds to be outside of what I have, admittedly anecdotally and fourth hand, heard of GW's selling policies.

Now, if it included Forge World, I would be all over it like flies on a turd. A big resin turd. Because my FLGS sells exactly the square root of feth all FW product, so no loss to him.

It seems like a great deal. I myself would be wary for BK's ability to keep up with demand, having had a 3 month ordeal which finally was finally but poorly resolved.

VermGho5t wrote:It seems like a great deal. I myself would be wary for BK's ability to keep up with demand, having had a 3 month ordeal which finally was finally but poorly resolved.

I see I wasn't the only one then. I had placed an order in August that was finally resolved just a few weeks ago. While I might order again from him in the future, it won't be for a long time, and I'd need some firm time frame of when items were going to shipped out rather than a simple "oh we should get it next week and it'll be shipped then" run around.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like paying MSRP on GW's stuff anymore than the next guy. But it's this kind of thing that is crippling the FLGS. We just had the only store in town selling GW stuff to close up shop. The next FLGS is over an hour away. So not only would I have to leave town to buy something, if I wanted to look at it first, but I lost the only place I could regularly go and have a game of WH40k.

For the record, the other stores I can go to an hour away have all relocated and have 25% of the stock they had in their old stores. Worse than that, they both now have zero space for actual games to be played.

I've ordered two shipments from Bitkingdom. I think they were relatively early on when it was first starting and I got everything within a week with no problems. However, I have heard of a couple of people having delays in their shipments.

Is anyone going to participate in this Inner circle? Fortunately for me, a FLGS just opened up in Chicago (finally) and although it would be a lot of savings, I would like to support the FLGS as much as possible. Plus $400 of GW stuff is a lot of stuff! This really is targeted for gaming groups.

Also, has anyone else notice how many bitz/discount GW sites have opened up in the past 6-months to a year? I just got back into the hobby after starting it in 1996ish, but it seems like after Battlewagon bitz went down, a lot of other sites (besides the Warstore) sprang up to provide bitz and discount GW.

I'm sure they are making money, but at some point, you would think margins would decline significantly if everyone starts providing a higher and higher discount.

I worked briefly in a hobby shop selling some GW stuff a few years ago. Until the store owner decided to drop hobbies/gaming and only sell cheap toys. I saw the list cost from GW on what the store bought it for. In most all cases it was 50% of the MSRP. Now, thinking about that, you know GW is going to make a profit, so you can almost safely assume that the cost of making a GW item is at least 25% of MSRP or less. It really made me gag when I saw this. So given the 42% discount the OP is mentioning, the store/buyer is still making profit. Not enough to keep the lights on but profit none the less.

So let me understand. I pay $50 a month so I can get a discount on other things I buy that month? I have to spend over $400 a month to break even?

No thanks.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

If you're that desperate to buy all your army men wholesale, it's it shouldn't be that difficult to file for your own Tax ID # and set up your own account with a distributor. I doubt they would charge you $50 a month, but they would probably have minimum orders.. I can't imagine that minimum would be too bad. I did that very thing about 15 years ago, me and a friend wanted to buy our MTG cards wholesale then we started selling them online and eventually got a GW account too. It was kinda before there was such a thing as online stores so it didn't really work out too well, but GW would have ended up screwing us anyway when they decreed that no one else was allowed to sell online, so at least we quit while we were kinda ahead. And I got a pretty big eldar army for 50% off in the process

The only way to stop paying 50$ a month is to sell it!?

Wow, if that is not a scam, I don't know what is.

I didn't know that you could just set up a company and work with a distributor to get products at 50% off. Well, this membership allows you to do this with less hassle and benefit from a 42% discount.

Oz, you only have to hold the membership. You can buy the original membership at $50, or buy it from somone else for less than $50. Remember, you can sell it again after you purchase whatever products you want. Yes, you do have to purchase a lot of stuff, but if you were in the market to buy $500 worth of GW stuff and you don't have a local FLGS, why wouldn't you do this?

And if the market is not liquid, you can always not pay the $50 the following month and the membership would go back to Bitkingdom.

This makes perfect sense for a gaming group. Lets say a gaming group has 10 people. Each of them wants a new army at $250 each. That's $2,500. They each pay $5 for the membership and pay $145 for the models, for a total cost of $150. That's $100 savings per person verson the $250 at a FLGS (not including tax savings and shipping costs). You can then potentially sell the membership (lets say $25) and get $2.50 back per person.

I just don't know how many large gaming groups there are that don't support a FLGS.

Hey guys it looks like Nate just sent out some more details through the email list and updated the website.

http://www.bkinnercircle.com/

Take a look it might clear up some questions. I know it did for me.

Think of it as the Sam's Club or COSTCO business model.

Upfront membership to get a larger discount when buying in bulk. Its worked very well for those companies (obviously larger market). I wonder if it will work well for GW products?

And the benefit is you can sell/trade your membership and there is no minimum membership period.

it was 50% off 15 years ago when I did it, no idea what it's like at GW now. I can't remember what the discount at Chessex was, they sold GW stuff at first but stopped soon after I think probably because GW was agressively going after stores themselves instead of letting distributors be the middle men. Cheesex came in handy though since they were within driving distance

ll I really needed at the time was a tax ID # to buy from GW US. I may have had to give them the URL to our web store too, but that was also back when they liked other mail order companies

Anyway I can see the value in this plan too, but it would really only be worthwhile for a large group or maybe someone else getting started with their own mail order service or something like that.

Definately a large group would benefit the most in this sort of membership. I'm not knocking the idea at all. For me it'd be useless given there are only about 4 other guys I can even play w/ and since our local FLGS shut down, I've only had 3 games. That's about 1 per month btw.

Also keep in mind you're paying actual shipping costs. On a big order (which is the primary purpose of this, I imagine), that could be pretty significant.

Or hire a reputable painting company that convey's their wholesale price-structure to their clients as a thank you...



I'd love to see the contract that BK has people sign that they'd have to enforce to continue charging a monthly membership.

I have a monthly membership in a wholesale club, it's called the internet.

bluedevil27 wrote:Think of it as the Sam's Club or COSTCO business model.

Upfront membership to get a larger discount when buying in bulk. Its worked very well for those companies (obviously larger market). I wonder if it will work well for GW products?

And the benefit is you can sell/trade your membership and there is no minimum membership period.

Yeah but I pay $60 per YEAR for Costco. $50 per month is pretty silly.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Yes its $50/month. But remember: If you don't want it for the second month, don't pay the $50 to renew. You are not stuck with the $50/month fee. In addition, the membership has value and there is a potential for a secondary market. You can sell/trade your membership as well. You can't sell/trade your COSTCO membership to someone else each time they shop (though you can get two names per membership).

The $50/month does seem weird. At first I thought this was going to be a limit thing kind of like the whole NY 'Taxi medallion' thing where it might increase in value as no more would be sold. However, as-is, it sounds like the way to use it would be to spend the $50 if there's a month you plan on spending a fortune then let it lapse.

I'm not following this...

OK. lets say Fred buys membership in January for $50. He then sells it to Joe for $25, as he doesn't want anymore stuff.

In February, does Fred pay another $50, or does Joe now pay it, making his investment $75 for first month?

$75 for first month

Fred would pay $50 and receive $25 from Joe. Fred's net payment for the month of January is $25. ($50-$25).

Joe pays $25 for the membership. Joe's net payment for the month of January is $25.

Now its February. Fred doesn't have the membership so he doesn't owe anything else. If Joe decides to renew the membership to allow him to purchase additional goods in the month of February he would pay $50 (with the option to sell to someone else after his purchase). If Joe does not want anything else he does not renew and does not have to pay the $50 membership fee.

Your fee per month never is higher than $50. It should be lower if you are able to trade/sell your membership.

You're absolutely right in the way to use this membership:

This is not meant to be held for a long period of time. The typical user will hold the membership for a month (or part of 1 month). Purchase the goods they want at the 42% discount and then sell/trade the membership.

Worst case scenario: You spend $50 on the membership
Standard case scenario: You spend $1-$49 on the membership as you can sell the membership to someone else.
Best Case Scenario: You spend $0 on membership because you sell the membership to someone else at $50.

There is no obligation by anyone to purchase the membership for the second month.

How in the hell is he doing this and GW not shutting his supply down faster than a crack whore jumping on a fresh rock?

grizgrin wrote:How in the hell is he doing this and GW not shutting his supply down faster than a crack whore jumping on a fresh rock?

Good question

I've had good dealings with Nate in the past, but I will be passing on this. As has been pointed out, it's great for a group making a large order, but isn't quite worth it for a solo buyer...atleast not IMHO.

It seems pretty straight forward and I'm confident a few people will find a use for the membership. Good luck to them.

Just a heads up about the membership being open at the moment for anyone who was interested.

http://www.bitkingdom.com/

I'm going to join the membership because I need a lot and many of my friends and I are going to pool our money together and buy a lot.

I'll let everyone know how it goes.

Cheers!

Why can't FLGS set up online stores to compete as well? Just order more products so you can sell both online and at the storefront?

I agree however that you should try to buy from your local store whenever possible

I think FLGS should sell online as well.

However GW has special restrictions on onilne sites (such as no shopping carts). Also some FLGS may have inventory space issues when selling online as well as in the storefront.

But I think it makes a lot of sense to expand your market versus just to local gamers.