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When did TOW drop? Months later, still no bases. I got an email notifying me that the 40mm squares were back in stock. Not by the time I saw the email, they must have been gone in a matter of hours. Do better, GW!

Depending on the base surely you can get bases from 3rd parties easily enough? There are loads of options on that front on the market; many cheaper than GW and just as good.

 march10k wrote:
When did TOW drop? Months later, still no bases. I got an email notifying me that the 40mm squares were back in stock. Not by the time I saw the email, they must have been gone in a matter of hours. Do better, GW!

Your thread title is objectively wrong. GW is a business. You might think they're a bad business, or an incompetent business, but they are, in fact, a business.

 march10k wrote:
When did TOW drop? Months later, still no bases. I got an email notifying me that the 40mm squares were back in stock. Not by the time I saw the email, they must have been gone in a matter of hours. Do better, GW!

Sorry, that's on you for not keeping a better eye on your email....

Gotta be quick to nab those official bases.

 march10k wrote:
When did TOW drop? Months later, still no bases. I got an email notifying me that the 40mm squares were back in stock. Not by the time I saw the email, they must have been gone in a matter of hours. Do better, GW!

I got the email for 30x60mm cavalry bases being available and they were sold our when I looked 28 minutes after the email arrived.

Every time I order directly from GW, I am terrified that I will get an email a week later saying that they can not fulfill my order.
The manufacturer of the product should never have to email a customer saying they didn't produce enough that they sold.

 Genoside07 wrote:
Every time I order directly from GW, I am terrified that I will get an email a week later saying that they can not fulfill my order.
The manufacturer of the product should never have to email a customer saying they didn't produce enough that they sold.

GW seems to have a policy of flooding the zone with every game in every scale at once and they just cannot keep up with demand.

So yeah, I think "GW is an objectively badly run business" is the right way to look at. They make money, lots apparently, but still cannot perform basic business functions well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and bases:

https://www.wargamebaseworld.com/

And bases:

http://www.proxiemodels.com/

Makes me think that the last time I bought something from games workshop was like 4 or maybe 5 years ago, bought a monolith for my starting crons that I couldn't find second hand.

While I had no problems myself, and I would not have suspected GW would run out of stuff like bases.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

GW seems to have a policy of flooding the zone with every game in every scale at once and they just cannot keep up with demand.

So yeah, I think "GW is an objectively badly run business" is the right way to look at. They make money, lots apparently, but still cannot perform basic business functions well.

GW is HUGE. Its marketing (inc. pricing) strategy is international, complex, multilayered, undeniably successful and I think that anyone pretending to see all the strings being pulled is doing exactly that - pretending.

For example this lack of product may well be just artificial scarcity to eliminate cheap second hand market. Many people say it's because of production bottlenecks, but is it really? Do you remember when big boxes were actually abundant and second hand markets were flooded by models whose true value, as determined by the invisible hand of the free market () was "pennies"? This doesn't exist anymore. Everything is scarce, runs out to be replaced by another limited run thing and everything in the GW brand keeps value over time, instead of losing it with market saturation. When I last played wh40k you could easily build an army or at least a solid base of one just out of dirt-cheap leftovers from big boxes GW flooded the market with. Nowadays such leftovers are rare items, sold for more than they were bought for. You get more incentive to buy instantly, buy everything you can, not let go of it easily...

Too many times (more than a quarter of a century already) I see people online explaining how GW does things wrong and should do differently, but somehow it's GW that always comes on top, with extraordinary financial performance.

I just think the entire GW strategy is too complex a thing to explain simply, using layman's terms and also without insider knowledge (and by "insider" I mean their top marketing exectutives not contractors or shop managers). Experience with this company has taught me one thing - even if I don't understand what they are doing, someone up there knows it very well and leaves nothing to chance.

Guys, as a business you WANT your product to sell out.

That way you did not create the waste of overproduction. It is better to avoid that waste, and have to make more later; than to overproduce and have tons sitting in the warehouse. That costs the waste of Inventory, Transport, and Waiting. The goal is to make it "Just in Time" not before and not too far after.

GW learned this lesson.... again..... thanks to Leviathan.

If you think this is bad business, I suggest you take a look at what they are teaching business people now-a-days.

Actually, not being versed at all in marketing, I didn't even start to think about it and only saw it from the potentially frustrated consumer viewpoint. But that makes sense.

GWs only goal is to sell, they don't care if the players are happy or if there are players at all as long as free advertising etc. happens

and frustrated consumers are of no concern as long as it does not affects the sales

problem is that in those niches there can be a tipping point, that sales are not decreasing slowly but stop over night doing the wrong thing
which GW also learned the hard way with AoS

But couldn't they also have learned, on the other hand, that they are able to tank such a brutal drop in sales and thus can afford some leeway regarding their practices?

Kind of the empty glass thought I'm aware.

 Easy E wrote:
Guys, as a business you WANT your product to sell out.

That way you did not create the waste of overproduction. It is better to avoid that waste, and have to make more later; than to overproduce and have tons sitting in the warehouse. That costs the waste of Inventory, Transport, and Waiting. The goal is to make it "Just in Time" not before and not too far after.

GW learned this lesson.... again..... thanks to Leviathan.

If you think this is bad business, I suggest you take a look at what they are teaching business people now-a-days.

My understanding might be well out of date, but I was under the impression you don't want to completely sell out - you want to *almost* sell out. If you have one or two of [product] left, then you know you've sold as many as you could given any other variables - demand, how much marketing you've done etc. Patting yourself on the back for completely selling out of X products is all well and good, but if the demand was there for 4X products then you've frustrated a lot of potential customers and could have made a gakload more money... I think GW might do a fair bit of that.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
but as we all know, market research is otiose in a niche market or something...

yes and no, for GW that is now focused on the current release and have a fixed timetable for the next releases, using hype and fomo it does not really matter if they sell out or almost sell out as the product is forgotten by the majority with the next release anyway

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
But couldn't they also have learned, on the other hand, that they are able to tank such a brutal drop in sales and thus can afford some leeway regarding their practices?
Kind of the empty glass thought I'm aware.

well, we don't know
there is a good chance that GW itself does not know why they are selling well so just keep doing what they have always done

It's true that while I don't look closely, I repeatedly end up buried with articles or YouTube recommendations on GW stuff due to browsing 40k Lore and painting. Looks like they really are aboard the hype train. Every new thing gets loud advertisement all over the internet and I find it exhausting. Harkens back to that edition churn/fatigue thread where this was amply emphasised by a fair few people, but the overwhelming nature of the GW unstoppable hype train deserves yet another mention here I feel.

 Easy E wrote:
Guys, as a business you WANT your product to sell out.

That way you did not create the waste of overproduction. It is better to avoid that waste, and have to make more later; than to overproduce and have tons sitting in the warehouse. That costs the waste of Inventory, Transport, and Waiting. The goal is to make it "Just in Time" not before and not too far after.

GW learned this lesson.... again..... thanks to Leviathan.

If you think this is bad business, I suggest you take a look at what they are teaching business people now-a-days.

It is bad business. Because the last thing you want is for your customer whom pays a premium on your products to look elsewhere because you never have any.
When a customer looks elsewhere for one thing, pretty soon they’ll stop looking to your business for other things.
But regardless of what GW does, gamers will lap it up and buy it NOW!!
They’ve captured the market so completely they can really do no wrong no matter how badly they screw it up. They limit product so that the FOMO hype train keeps running onto the next big thing.
I honestly don’t know how anyone can keep up with the churn. Or even why customers bother.

Macca just rambled about this

Hmm we seem to have switched to a less hyperbolic but less fun thread title, ah well.

So is this poor demand planning or an artificial scarcity as part of a fear of missing out/FOMO strategy?

My guess is a bit of both. And they both have issues.

As others have pointed out you can't see products you don't actually have, and you don't want people know there are other producers out there. This thread kicked off with concerns about getting bases, as basic a war gaming commodity as you can ask for. One of the sites I linked to sells bases by the 100 for just a few bucks.

GW can get away with selling them at a premium for convenience (I'm already on their site/in their shop) and that feeling of being a purist, but NOT IF THEY DON'T HAVE THEM IN STOCK.

The same for any of the TOW factions that won't come out for years (or ever). The same for any model or vehicle that's chronically sold out or unavailable.

I loved the Cities of Death and Planet Strike terrain, but it takes years to use up a supply and I liked the feeling it was always there when I needed more. It was replaced by terrain the appears and vanishes like cherry blossoms, never to be seen again. So I buy none of it.

While FOMO is appropriate for say New Space Marine (with hat!), it's hardly appropriate for basic things like terrain or bases to vanish for months at a time and leave us wondering if it will ever return.

That leads folks to look elsewhere and that's money lost.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, IIRC there have been stories about GW wanting to expand its Nottingham warehouse and factory but unable to do so due to local land use issues.

Alas, Nottingham Zoning Laws are not among my areas of expertise so if anyone has anything to add...

if you want to be a luxury brand, being sold out is part of the plan
And GW once said they want to become the Porsche of plastic models

their focus is not on gaming models but display models
their model kits are not easy to build not easy to paint, not easy to transport and have their troubles with gaming (looking at the new Chaos Lord with jump pack as prime example here)

at the same time they are way overpriced and something people can use as "status" (like the perfect grade Gundam)
that it is cheaper to buy a 3D printer and print an army than buying an army of plastic models shows how far off the pricing is

In addition, going with a luxury product that people want to show off, GW can increase prices even more because people buy them because & despite the price

and also why 3D printing is popular as you can pretend to haven an original GW army but paid way less (while using alternative models people will see that those are cheap alternatives made for gaming ) and the majority of the gaming part is only growing because you can pirate GW models and rules
if people would need to pay original GW prices for models and rules to play this would look very different

A couple of social media posts from an interesting chap I follow who discusses the games trade. (Gary Ray, Author - on facebook)

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Here's an analysis of a how Games Workshop ordering works. I'll use an example of an order placed earlier this month that will actually arrive this week.

Here are the categories:
1. Things they have for trade accounts. They will ship these to you, in about a month.
2. Things they don't have for trade accounts. These will not be ordered by the sales reps. You will be told when you submit the order.
3. Things submitted for an order but are listed as not available. It took weeks to process the order, and things that were once available are now not available. Some things weren't available even then (War Dogs). These will be noted as ordered but not shipped.
4. Things submitted for an order but are NOT listed as not available. Newer things submitted for an order, not available, but the code has been pulled for lack of availability. They just disappear from orders. Why this can't be in category three, I have no idea. These items are ghosts, not even available to be listed on the invoice as not available.
5. Things that are not available on the trade side of the account, but are available via direct sales on the website.
6. Things that are not available on the trade side of the account, but are available via direct sales on the website, but are out of stock.
7. Things that are not available on the trade side that are also not available direct, but somehow still exist. Schrodinger's Space Marines. These items are in the catalog. In the case below, it's 5% of the initial request.

Here's an example of how this works from one order placed at the beginning of this month:

A. I email my sales rep an order on March 3rd that includes 85 lines. My sales rep, Allison, is very good.

B. My sales rep places the order on March 6th that now includes 74 lines. 11 line items are out of stock.

C. The order ships on March 20th. but it now contains 59 lines. It is scheduled to arrive on March 22nd.
--C1: 10 additional lines are listed as out of stock and not shipping.
--C2: 5 lines are not listed at all. Ghosts. Did you sales rep submit them or are the codes removed? We assume the latter.

D. We go to the online store. Here we can look up the 5 lines not listed (ghosts), and the 11 lines initially out of stock from our sales rep. 16 items we desire.
--D1: Half those items don't exist at all in the online store. This is the older stuff. We are carrying the full line using their spreadsheet, so these really should appear somewhere.
--D2: Of those that exist, about 80% are in stock. Overall about 10% of the value of the initial order request is available direct. Some of this is junk, some of this is highly desirable.

Looking at fill rates:
1. The rep sees an 88% fill rate. This looks pretty good to them.
2. The system provides a 69% fill rate. Does the rep think they have an 88% fill rate or do they know it's 69%? The sales reps can't see invoices.
3. Supplementing with direct sales, at a lower margin, brings the fill rate back up to 79%.

This is just one order, and Games Workshop at their new best.

The fill rate and timing is far better than it has been, but it's such a convoluted system. Imagine how popular this game has to be to tolerate this as a retailer (and I didn't mention billing!).

I wrote this because number four, the ghost items, were irritating me and I had to figure it out.

>>>>>>>>>>>

This is a post about achieving one of my goals this year. That goal was stocking the entire Warhammer 40K line. I've stocked the entire line before. You can do it at the press of a button. This was a desire that wasn't backed by capital.

What happened was, I started treating 40K like any other line in the store and it dwindled down to maybe 20% of the line. It was the amount of product my community "deserved," it just wasn't the amount of product to be viable. As the game trade found its footing coming out of a massive bubble, Games Workshop was the safest harbor. That should scare you right there.

The new strategy is my "Flight to Quality" plan, where top product lines in each category are exempt from metrics. You know, like early D&D 5E adventures that should really be retired. We carry the full D&D line, so we suffer along with those adventures, which is one reason why I dread the "D&D 5.5" decision.

Long tails are shaggy, smell bad and I'm allergic. Making 40K the top line in miniature games means I carry the full line and ignore inventory performance metrics. Right now, already, a dozen 40K items should be clearanced, but they won't be. This full line strategy is also not new for me, it's what I do in hard times.

I started this project in January with no money. That's right, this wasn't an astroturf one and done order with holiday cash. That would have been too easy. Instead, I liquidated CCG product, notably Magic the Gathering. We dumped a lot of Magic, including one customer who dropped $7,200 in one transaction on a bunch of dead booster boxes. We "lost" $20 a box and I would do it again in a heartbeat. That $20 was his potential profit when he goes to flip it.

Each week I would take the liquidation money and go a little deeper on the 40K line. This took months of placing weekly orders in the $3,000-5,000 range. Worse, Games Workshop would come at me with every order for a credit card, as my credit line was exceeded, something that hasn't let up. I might get 70% of the order, but they would want enough to cover the entire potential order. The cash flow situation was pretty awful.

What we have now is the full line, but not quite. That's because Games Workshop remains a month behind on restocks, so if you can imagine $3K a week for a month, there's $12K of 40K that's never in the store. That's about 40% of my 40K stock. So yeah, we have everything, except the 40% that's out of stock, while Games Workshop catches up. This gak show is a reason why the line does so well. Their incompetence or crisis (your pick, they blame ME for THEIR problems) is my opportunity.

If that in stock number sounds too small, it's because it is. Our inventory lacks depth. Step two is to deepen the inventory based on current demand. I have at one time sold every 40K item into clearance oblivion, so I have sales numbers on each product. That doesn't mean I'll sell that amount now, but it's a starting point for determining depth. I have each item listed in my POS system with a dollar sign for every 10 times I've sold an item. There's also a notation if it's a required item (not an issue at the moment).

So has this been successful? Yes and no. Yes, it has very much increased our sales of 40K. It has pleased our 40K community. They are often the bastions of hope in any crisis, saving me through COVID. No in that there is likely a ton of dead product brought in for this "top of mind," top brand strategy. It's also not top of mind, until I solve the 40% restock problem.

My store inventory has lost significant book value by dumping a bunch of Magic. I wasn't willing to take the actual cost of goods of dead Magic product and reinvest the full amount. I accepted an inventory book value reduction until I can build it up again. It's really just accepting the value was never there in the first place for dead Magic product. Taking any amount of money for dead inventory now is better than waiting the years for a potential market rebound. It's math. Usually my math doesn't suck so much.

Finally, the store looks great. Dead Magic hides in dark corners in its shrink wrapped shame. New 40K is bulging on the shelves in its deathgrim glory. Or is it grimdark?



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

Also, IIRC there have been stories about GW wanting to expand its Nottingham warehouse and factory but unable to do so due to local land use issues.

Alas, Nottingham Zoning Laws are not among my areas of expertise so if anyone has anything to add...

Grid draw. For the factory they had they wanted to draw too much power, so have added solar cells to get more overall and had to get another site (though I can't remember if it is next to/part of the current one) to increase the amount of power they can draw, even if they don't need the space per see.

So a 69% fulfillment rate for retail orders, and your money is still tied up.

That's not FOMO, that's inability to meet orders.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
A couple of social media posts from an interesting chap I follow who discusses the games trade. (Gary Ray, Author - on facebook)

Spoiler:

Here's an analysis of a how Games Workshop ordering works. I'll use an example of an order placed earlier this month that will actually arrive this week.

Here are the categories:
1. Things they have for trade accounts. They will ship these to you, in about a month.
2. Things they don't have for trade accounts. These will not be ordered by the sales reps. You will be told when you submit the order.
3. Things submitted for an order but are listed as not available. It took weeks to process the order, and things that were once available are now not available. Some things weren't available even then (War Dogs). These will be noted as ordered but not shipped.
4. Things submitted for an order but are NOT listed as not available. Newer things submitted for an order, not available, but the code has been pulled for lack of availability. They just disappear from orders. Why this can't be in category three, I have no idea. These items are ghosts, not even available to be listed on the invoice as not available.
5. Things that are not available on the trade side of the account, but are available via direct sales on the website.
6. Things that are not available on the trade side of the account, but are available via direct sales on the website, but are out of stock.
7. Things that are not available on the trade side that are also not available direct, but somehow still exist. Schrodinger's Space Marines. These items are in the catalog. In the case below, it's 5% of the initial request.

Here's an example of how this works from one order placed at the beginning of this month:

A. I email my sales rep an order on March 3rd that includes 85 lines. My sales rep, Allison, is very good.

B. My sales rep places the order on March 6th that now includes 74 lines. 11 line items are out of stock.

C. The order ships on March 20th. but it now contains 59 lines. It is scheduled to arrive on March 22nd.
--C1: 10 additional lines are listed as out of stock and not shipping.
--C2: 5 lines are not listed at all. Ghosts. Did you sales rep submit them or are the codes removed? We assume the latter.

D. We go to the online store. Here we can look up the 5 lines not listed (ghosts), and the 11 lines initially out of stock from our sales rep. 16 items we desire.
--D1: Half those items don't exist at all in the online store. This is the older stuff. We are carrying the full line using their spreadsheet, so these really should appear somewhere.
--D2: Of those that exist, about 80% are in stock. Overall about 10% of the value of the initial order request is available direct. Some of this is junk, some of this is highly desirable.

Looking at fill rates:
1. The rep sees an 88% fill rate. This looks pretty good to them.
2. The system provides a 69% fill rate. Does the rep think they have an 88% fill rate or do they know it's 69%? The sales reps can't see invoices.
3. Supplementing with direct sales, at a lower margin, brings the fill rate back up to 79%.

This is just one order, and Games Workshop at their new best.

The fill rate and timing is far better than it has been, but it's such a convoluted system. Imagine how popular this game has to be to tolerate this as a retailer (and I didn't mention billing!).

I wrote this because number four, the ghost items, were irritating me and I had to figure it out.

That is utterly, utterly bonkers to me, infuriatingly so. I've been out of FLGS retail since 2009, but I still do basically the same thing for ordering automotive parts, and everything in that post is giving me hives. Back in 2003~2009 we (as a direct trade account with a GW sales account and sales rep) used a printed sales catalogue that would be updated quarterly-ish as new armies released. They listed the SKU for every book, box set and blisterpack for WHFB, 40K, LotR, and any Specialist games that were available. If it was listed you could order it, if it wasn't listed you couldn't. You called your sales rep on a Monday and ordered everything over the phone for the week, order was processed and shipped out and received Thursday or Friday. Happened every week. Very occasionally have stuff backordered, usually for a few weeks and then it came back in stock, but the sales rep would know instantly if it was out of stock as they ordered and they'd tell you it was on backorder right then and there, no surprise missing items, no allocations. You placed your weekly order and what you ordered came in later that week. If the shop had slow sales so you didn't have enough for free shipping then maybe skipped a week, or maybe you ordered some extra Chaos Black and Tactical Squads to reach free shipping. It would and SHOULD only be easier doing that over email or via a trade account webcart. And it should never EVER take 20 fething days to process an order, that is insane.

I certainly understand the issues with backorders and supply lines STILL being broken from Covid, I deal with that every day. But orders not being process for 3 weeks? And not having real-time updated stock levels for orders placed as they're placed over those 3 weeks? Hidden items and dissappearing lines? That's just unforgivably bad warehousing. That's GW cheaping out on warhouse labor knowing stores can't do anything about it, while knowingly letting those same exact stores bear all of the customer ill-will.

All this technology in the last 15 years should be making order processing easier and faster and MORE reliable, instead GW has misused it to make the process worse, and it sure sounds like it was deliberately made worse for the shop just to save money on GW's end. I had no idea gaming retail had gotten so bad, it sounds like a nightmare. Ripley had it right, maybe the Xenomorphs are the superior species, you don't see them screwing each other over for a fething percentage.

I had an enraging experience just the other week.

I saw that Cyclops Demolition Vehicles were back in stock with several other vehicles that have been out of stock for ages (Basilisks etc).
I ordered a Cyclops because i needed to fill out the last 25 points of my guard list. Placed the order on April 29th. Paid using paypal.
After a few days I noticed that my name was incorrect in the mailing address (one letter off).
I email GW asking if the name would be an issue. They responded and said it would NOT be a problem.
A few more days pass and I dont get any updates on shipping. I email them asking for an update.
They respond and say they have no record of my order and they last item they see i ordered was back in Dec of 2023.
I tell them that i have the confirmation email and paypal payment from April 29th.
A few days later I get an email (well after 13 business days) that my order can not be filled and it was an issue with the name on the mailing address.

Yeah this does not sound like a company that's playing 4D Chess with the market.

For what it's worth you can make a nice Cyclops out of the tracks for the Tauros which no one uses because they're ugly.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Yeah this does not sound like a company that's playing 4D Chess with the market.

For what it's worth you can make a nice Cyclops out of the tracks for the Tauros which no one uses because they're ugly.

I just changed my list around and got an email that Basilisks were back in stock so I ordered two of them. They arrive in about 9 hours.

I have been on this forum for some years and that post relayed by The_Real_Chris is possibly the worst thing I have ever read here.

This is the problem with (relative) monopolies folks. It allows companies to carry out appalling business practices, to be crap, and still make tons of money.

 Kalamadea wrote:

All this technology in the last 15 years should be making order processing easier and faster and MORE reliable, instead GW has misused it to make the process worse, and it sure sounds like it was deliberately made worse for the shop just to save money on GW's end. I had no idea gaming retail had gotten so bad, it sounds like a nightmare.

Keep in mind that GW started in 2018 updating their ERP System to have a unified shop+warehouse system with an robot operated automated warehouse

the post above just tells me that this is still not done and the only reason GW is surviving that (many other companies did not) is their unique market position were the usual rules/laws of economy do not apply

PS: I just know from the local store that they tell the sales rep how many items they want and than are told how many they will get and never get the amount they ask for
yet it happened recently that they received "sold out" items without ordering (as they were sold out) telling me combined with the above that the ERP system change is still not done and/or the problems coming with it being still not solved

 Easy E wrote:
Guys, as a business you WANT your product to sell out.

You want it to sell out and no more.

If you make 1000 and sell 999 you've lost the cost of making 1.
if you make 1000 and could have sold 1001 you've lost the revenue on making 1.

If you're selling something hugely generic like bases and selling out in under 28 minutes, then you're just not making enough. It's unlikely having a stock of bases is a problem since you can use them for any minis that have that base size.

Herzlos wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
Guys, as a business you WANT your product to sell out.

You want it to sell out and no more.

If you make 1000 and sell 999 you've lost the cost of making 1.
if you make 1000 and could have sold 1001 you've lost the revenue on making 1.

If you're selling something hugely generic like bases and selling out in under 28 minutes, then you're just not making enough. It's unlikely having a stock of bases is a problem since you can use them for any minis that have that base size.

They don't operate in a vacuum though. Manufacturing capacity is finite, so they may well end up ahead by making fewer bases and instead making more of their best-selling/highest margin kits. And there are some products they likely just don't want taking up space in their warehouse...which also costs them money.

Note that I'm not saying that GW is necessarily making all the right calculations here. But it's more complicated than people are making it out to be.