GW: Why do they do it?

[pagan8thParticipant 11218xp 1]

@wurzzel Seems they have dropped it. All sorts of rumours out there. Have a google.

First it was not a limited print run, then it was. Expansions mentioned in the rules. GW editing their antisocial media to remove mentions of expansions and extra print runs.

It would help if GW would make a statement on the matter, but they are like politicians… prefer to avoid answering tricky questions… or answering ones they weren’t asked.

[wurzzelParticipant 2734xp 1]

@jamescutts I’m pretty much in the same boat as you, I have little or no interest in 40k or AoS as games although I do still read some of the Black Library novels and even now after almost 30yrs of playing with toysoldiers a good space marine picture excites me.  I have to say for me the biggest problem isn’t what GW are doing, they’re a business for crying out loud. I don’t even really scalpers, the real problem is the people who buy into the hype. I’m not blaming one we’ve all been guilty of it but because we succumb to the desire for the “shiny” GW will continue to do it.

@pagan8th in that case I completely understand your frustration

[slayerofworldsParticipant 3449xp 2]

Technically its not really about FOMO, and using that for a tactic to make sales.   It is kinda, but not really.  Atleast not in my head.

GW is publicly traded company, that is the real root of the “problem”.

Stock companies are all about optics.  What looks good on paper is all that matters.   Meeting demand and looking good are not the same things.  Selling out of a production run looks really good on paper.  I mean really good.   Honestly people think that meeting customer demand is the way to go in order to make money.  Which is true to an extent, unless your a publicly traded stock company.  Then you have to factor in making things look even better on paper.

Lets say for example you run production in groups of 10k units.   You estimate demand to be roughly 96k for a product.  So normal people might think you would run 100k units so they meet the estimated demand.   However that leaves units in the warehouse.  That looks bad on paper, as you overproduced.  Second, that is an estimate of demand.   So a company would perhaps only produce 90k,  or maybe even go as far as producing only 80k units.   Then the can better guarantee they sell out of product,  which looks great to investors.

Logic says that you are just leaving money on the table by not meeting demand, and that doesnt make sense.  However, when you factor in stock pricing, and keeping your price high,  companies do a lot of things that dont always seem to make alot of sense.

Just my opinion.  I have no real way of backing any of this up.

[oathsworn 6528xp 5]

Honestly, I don’t think this is about FOMO, or profiteering, or trying to look good for the shareholders. I think it’s purely a logistical issue.

GW moved to their current site in 1997; they had yearly revenue of 74 million in the year 2000. Now they’re looking at nearly 300 million a year. The site had room for growth, but not that much room…

Simply getting trucks in and out, loading and unloading stock, it all takes time. And there’s a realistic limit to how much of that time you give over to Cursed City, when it’s shifting Space Marines that pays the bills.

GW have been chasing nearby warehouse space for ages, and they’re currently building more warehouses themselves. As an example of how little space GW had to spare, when their trade show team was doing events like Salute and the UKGE, they had all the show stand furniture and racks delivered to the show by the manufacturer, then dumped it all at the end, and purchased entirely new stuff for the next show, because they didn’t have warehouse space to store it!

This is just my opinion of course, but I don’t seriously believe GW would be turning away sales if they had the ability to handle them. They want our money, after all!

[bubbles15Participant 2308xp 0]

limburger, Games Workshop are a company. They want to sell you things. They don’t, deliberately; not make enough so you lose out. That would be… what’s the word? Oh yes. Stupid.

No, they are not your friends however the same principle applies – you choose to shop with them, or not. You are NOT entitled to something just because you want it. However, if you have completed checkout then they are required, by law to provide it to you (sale of goods act – which is why I dislike Kickstarter). If there is a stock issue you can have the choice to wait, or a refund.

This sense of entitlement is childish and petty. Jamescutts you – and lots of others whinge and whine about the models, the rules, the fluff and yet never before have we had such opportunity to design our own models through 3d printing, BoW themselves offering to promote rules. A truly global audience for our work. Plenty of people like 40K and Warhammer Fantasy will probably return with the Old World project they’re planning. Stop complaining, start doing.

And no, I am not a ‘fan boy’, however much that might salve I do not defend Workshop, I am tired of petulance.

Carlospicter – if Workshop could give everyone what they wanted they would leap at it, thrice over. However supply, resources and scale limit that ability. Write to their customer services and ask them when the items might be in stock again (or buy from others… store dot… something… crop top… something?) and yes, support the little guys.

They don’t hate you heck, they don’t even know you. I’d imagine they’re operating a just in time print and release to minimise the stock held during these weird times.

Workshop have screwed up plenty of times for me and will likely do so again. 6th ed. Codex Chaos Daemons, springs to mind – a direct copy and paste of the 5th ed. At that point I stopped buying the codices. It’s a choice I exercise and the only one Workshop notice.

[jamescutts 6932xp 4]

@bubbles15 i wasnt being childish, whinging, whining or complaining at all simply stating some reasons i lost intrerest in their games and minatures,  how I took that as an chance to explore to the broader hobby rather than be limited, discovered beasts of war and how that is also an opportunity for others to do so if they are “unhappy”.

 

[limburger 21775xp 0]

@oathsworn you’d be surprised how ineficient certain processes are within companies … such things can also hinder the amount of products they could shift in their old magazine location.
That isn’t to say that a bigger location was obviously needed given the volume.

@bubbles15  Problem is that we’re not ordering from GW direct, but from 3rd parties … which allows them to use ‘supply issues’ as an escape. And as has been mentioned … they force shops to pre-order stuff. Those shops don’t have the consumer protection laws that helps us when an order is not fullfilled.  It’s them who have to face the angry customers, not GW …

And as @slayerofworlds says … deliberately under-producing so they can sell ‘everything’ is a very profitable strategy.

[redscopeParticipant 2718xp 1]

I think the honest answer is GW is just selling more than the production level can handle at the moment. It is easy for people to be bitter about GW because they are the big boys and make an easy target. The reality is they shift product by the millions and they are releasing new models pretty much every week of the year. They have a production schedule which is working 18 months in advance turning out new models weekly. No other company does this to the same level it is a complex process  making enough of the new items, plus keeping all the other ranges in stock.

If you are not aware GW are going through a lot of changes on top of COVID at the moment which is reducing production levels. To make matter worse sales are up by 25% in the last year. People think it is simple to just expanded production but building a new factory takes years. GW second factory is due to come online fully in the next few months and that was 5 years in the planning.

I am not saying GW dont have their faults and it is annoying when things want are out of stock. However I do understand at the moment things are difficult for all companies big and small. We have come to expect GW being able release models weekly and keep up with demand to created an expectation that at the moment the company cannot match.

I think we might have to accept that products in some cases may just take a little longer to arrive. I am sure like most people we have enough plastic to paint to keep us going until it does.

[berger15Participant 2357xp 1]

Let’s be honest, it will only change if everyone stops buying everything. And that will never happen.

Once my AT stuff has sold, I’m done with GW because I’m sick of the business model they use. I thought it had changed, but it was just a ruse, and I fell for it.

Unfortunately a large number of gamers will support GW no matter what they do.

[limburger 21775xp 0]

Building a new factory is ‘easy’ …

Getting the production process up to the same level as the existing one is hard.
Especially if you don’t really know what you are doing because all of the tricks the operators used to make it work don’t work any more.
And that is just assuming the tooling and machinery is exactly the same.

However … other than reducing the amount of updates (which they did announced) GW has yet to explain what the heck happened to Cursed City.

 

[phaidknott 7027xp 0]

Redscope I’d take most of what you say as good sense if it wasn’t for the fact these “issues” haven’t suddenly cropped up during CoVid.

 

In fact this has been going on for at the very least the past five or six years (although it’s has certainly gotten worse during CoVid). In those five to six years GW have had more than enough time to sort out production issues and/or perhaps become better at predicting demand.

 

I think part of the problem is GW have branched out to doing cards (with rules on), special dice (because the game no-longer uses “normal” dice), and an over production (design wise) of rulebooks and Codex books (making the rules for each game a jumbled mess). Rather than selling just a few books and concentrating on their “core” products of miniatures and paint they now have a bloated inventory.

 

Problem is if you raise demand with your customers (with all the sneak peeks and new rules for “uber” units to make toy space marines even MOAR overpowered vs Xenos armies), then the customer are going to “want” those products. And for YEARS now GW have “underestimated” demand?

 

As a large multi-national, with high street stores across the world it seems strange that GW can not “estimate demand” for years now. All I can think of i s the fact that perhaps they like things this way. So it must be working for GW (but alas no so good for the FLGS stockists and the lowly customers).

[crazyredcoatParticipant 13642xp 2]

@bubbles15 I understand your frustration with a lot of the pettiness on the internet surrounding some of the GW stuff, and I get how upsetting it is to read over and over again, but I think you may have chosen the wrong people to snap (for want of a better word) at. There is a lot of that kind of thing floating around, and it does happen, but here this is a friendly debate about a subject.

I reckon most of us here started with a GW game at whatever edition it was, and a lot of us here have subsequently found a new thing we like through the hobby. Some of us went lower in scale, some of us when ridiculously lower in scale, I swear SOMEONE went higher in scale, but people branched out. Here is an opportunity for people to give their view on the matter.

I doubt @carlospictor really wanted to winge and complain that things aren’t being handed to them that they want, they just noticed a pattern of occurrences and wanted to ask some opinions from the community. Similarly with @jamescutts it was more a matter of ‘I lost interest because…’ than ‘they wouldn’t give me what I wanted’. We’re a community of people who love playing with/painting/collecting tiny fighting men and we like to share what we’re getting up to from time to time or to ask opinions. Personally I kind of like the notion of being able to ask some fellow hobbyists these kinds of questions to see what the general feel of a subject is. I once asked ‘why the hate for the Ultramarines?’ and I got a very pleasant conversation going through various people’s opinions on the subject.

On the other side, I know that there are places out there where the ‘GW hate’ gets out of hand, frustrating, and often downright upsetting. I’ve had those moments myself and sometimes I’ve lashed out a bit with it; it happens. You also have to consider that not everyone here has in depth knowledge of certain business practices (hell most of us work in IT apparently, and I’m in Geology), or other related subjects. Many of us aren’t even from the same country so have different rules or different viewpoints on things. I get the frustration, mate, but we’re not trying to attack something here, just debate what is happening in our favourite hobby.

[limburger 21775xp 0]

@phaidknott I’d argue that pre-Covid GW was very predictable. Everything they shipped to stores was available, preorders worked and weren’t ridiculously limited (spacehulk being the one exception … and even that was predictable).

And they definitely were better than FFG ever was at delivering product … (not a high bar I admit)

The boxed games have always been kind of special and of limited availability, because you never knew if/when support would stop. I think this is because it simply isn’t part of their main line production so they don’t feel the need to be as consistent.
I wouldn’t be surprised if office politics played a huge part in this.

Now we get Covid, lots of people working remote, communications becoming a mess and kind of tricky.
I suspect this has exposed any problems with processes within their own company.
And because they keep making profit there hasn’t been any reason for them to change a single bit.
What’s the point of trying to sell X number of boxes, when the stuff you can produce fly of the virtual shelves in a matter of hours after setting up preorders ?
Do you waste time and resources trying to optimize production and supply chains when shipping is expensive and tricky at best just to make a bit more profit ?
Or do you simply stick to selling whatever makes it out of the factory because you can barely keep up with the increased demand as is ?

It sucks to be us, because we can’t force them to change anything.
We could try hitting them where it hurts, but that would mean that even newbies would have to stop buying into this hobby at a time when the competition is barely visible to them …

Like it or not, but GW provide products of a known quality that people want.
It’s like telling people that Apple sucks and that brand X is better … they still buy because overall the product are good enough for them.
And that is the advantage GW has … it is ‘good enough’ for people that don’t have high demands (in part because they don’t know any better and in part because they just don’t care enough).

It’s why all those fastfood restaurants get customers … telling them to eat at a proper restaurant that has much better quality product isn’t going to change the fact that a simple slab of meat on a bun is good enough for most. Are you really going to drive to the next town over just to spend the same amount of money on a better product when you can fill your tummy with cheap ass crap that is good enough right here and now ?

tl;dr;

I think we underestimate the need people have for a ‘better’ product.
Most will settle for ‘good enough’ if it can be bought when they want/need it.
That extra energy just isn’t worth the effort to them … which is why GW & co can continue to do what they do.

[holly 12048xp 3]

Thank you @crazyredcoat – that’s pretty spot on.

I don’t want to buy into the FOMO and I certainly don’t have a sense of entitlement – I just don’t understand why they bother with a week lead-in of pre-orders if everything gets sold out in 30minutes.

My thinking has been that a pre-order is usually an advance order and (in many cases) a company will then print/make to fulfil orders. If everything is made and will never (warscroll cards, novel) be reprinted, then there’s no point doing a week lead in of “pre-orders” – just release and let it sell out. That’s effectively what they do, so why bother promoting “pre-orders” for products that will now never really hit retail as they’ve all been snapped up.

I totally get limited editions (deluxe codexes, “special” dice), and try not to get sucked into those, but I think that being able to place a pre-order on standard stock should be an option, even if delivery is delayed to a second print run – for example.

I understand I’m probably being simplistic as factory/warehousing/logistics is not my wheelhouse!

[captainventanusParticipant 4936xp 1]

GW’s business culture is conservative averse to taking major risks, making sure there is a continuous pipeline of releases and making sure they are globally at the same time. They clearly had production and storage issues well before the pandemic made issues worse. I wouldn’t think they are going out of their way to use FOMO as a tool to drive first-day sales that is counterproductive in the long-term.  When something sells out in hours or minutes its fair to say that demand was underestimated and in some cases obviously so. They though seem to want/need to value limited production on some items above all else perhaps because of the long-term planning, distribution and storage limitations.

They have been vigorous in purging the catalogue of older and less well selling items. That in turn allows them to put out new stuff too. Removing reasonably core components of a game like for Aeronautica or Necromunda is hardly helpful to their growth. Taking away core small bits from the 30k line which can’t have been major logistical burdens is what got me the most.

All that being said about GW from personal experience, as annoying as missing the odd item has been, I don’t see them as the worst or even a bad company in this regard.

FFG – as others have said the of components for the core SW games has been patchy for years now and only getting worse. I’ve given up trying to play Legion as whenever I wanted a new unit in the past few year its been hard to track down if not impossible. I don’t need the things delivered the next day. Waiting more than 6 months starts to push things.

CMON/ASOIAF – as far as European distribution goes forget it, new units come out maybe 6-12 months late. Getting older units is tricky at times.

PSC – Mortem et Gloriam. Where I currently am in the 9 months its been out I haven’t even been able to get a core box. All my usual stores are supplied with a couple randomly every few months that sell out immediately. And its not ‘just’ a Brexit issue either. Fundamentally the availability of the products is patchy at best. That’s not going to get new people into the game. I’d put TTCombat in the same boat here as the availability of DFC/DZC bits has been patchy years after the actual takeover.

Warlord – pumps out a new game and after the hype recedes leaves ranges half finished. And we went through a patch of beta-testing rule books.

These are just examples of companies, intentionally or unintentionally, putting up barriers that have prevented me for getting into those games more. So I don’t just see it as a GW issue.

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