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What is up with their inventory management? Everything I want is always sold out. Am I the only customer who is unable to find their products?

GW underwent a vast market expansion during the Pandemic which was coupled to a prolonged period of production shutdown and limited production capacity. Then throw on top global shipping issues which took even longer to sort of settledown-ish.


Basically they grew vastly beyond their expected capacity in an insanely short span of time. They'd only just completed a multimillion construction of a new factory and the Pandemic market expansion basically ate all of that up.

So GW are having issues keeping things in stock. I believe that their warehousing system also underwent big changes and updates and had some issues too.



Another layer is that because this expansion was so abnormal they can't just build another factory to cope super fast. Not to mention that they could still have a market contraction at some stage and thus fast investment into more factory production could end up being a wasted investment. Though at least one boon is GW don't expand with loans so they would't be left with debt.


I belive overseas do have it worse, though even in the UK some products are trickier to get now and then.

I suppose I'd be annoyed:
●Were I not a veteran player with plenty of stuff to use while I wait on any re-stocks.
●Or if I were a retailer depending upon them for my income....

I'm more annoyed that they still have not added my original Las/plas Razorback to Legends.

 Overread wrote:
Basically they grew vastly beyond their expected capacity in an insanely short span of time.

I also remember seeing something not too long ago, on here i'm pretty sure, about how GW had allowed Amazon to rent some unused warehouse space over covid, but they were reluctant to give it back when GW asked for it.

Haven't seen it mentioned again any where so I don't know how true it ended up being, but I'd imagine that that could have impacted on their storage capacity if they don't have access to a chunk of their warehouse space.

They have the capacity to stock core games and new releases.

But with the old world coming, new epic, underworlds, and the 40K and FB skirmish games having new stuff every couple months they seem spread too thin.

Then the Christmas boxes are being made now for sale in a couple months.

Horus heresy is outselling AOS in parts of the world, so that would be another huge chunk.


They have had a year to sort inventory, maufacturing etc out. They could rent a warehouse to run new machines to increase capacity if lack of space was the issue. Its not like they are short of money.

Here in Australia half of the tyranid inventory is not in stock. They dis get some in a few weeks ago but it has all disappeared again.

Then randomly, last week, the Underhive Market - missing for so long many of us thought it had been discontinued - suddenly appeared back in stock.

And, to make it weirder, the item has never gone out of stock in Germany.

At least for me personally, it is a little bit annoying in terms of specialist games like titanicus not being stocked regularly but that's more due to the impending Legiones Imperialis launch.

In the mean time, the lack of availability means I'm cutting through my pile of shame!

It is frustrating, and it will be costing them sales, as not everyone who wanted to buy X will buy Y instead.

We know that pre-pandemic they’d hit production capacity. And so they went for a second factory. Which was a development of such scale, the electric company had to install new mains power cables to supply it.

Then the Pandemic hit, with its obvious impact. By that point I think the second factory was up and running, but due to maintaining social distancing and having to clean stations after shifts, time was taken up. Though keep in mind this is info from a GW Manager, so salt at the ready, and to taste.

But as others have said, the pandemic brought a lot of people back into the hobby, causing an unexpected and unplanned for rise in demand.

So it’s not a great situation, but I don’t think we can put it down to wilful acts or incompetence.

Yeah, the situation isn't great. Understandable, but not great. Earlier in the year I made sure to buy a thing or two I saw in stock on release day even knowing it would be months before I'd find time to work on any of the models simply because I was sure I wouldn't have another chance to get the box for the next six to twelve months.

That's not a very satisfying experience, that's for sure.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Then randomly, last week, the Underhive Market - missing for so long many of us thought it had been discontinued - suddenly appeared back in stock.

And, to make it weirder, the item has never gone out of stock in Germany.

Germany is a bad place to sell a bazaar. We don't haggle.

Some of the issues are the result of lean business practices backfiring and blowing up in GWs face as well. GW doesn't want to overproduce kits and sit on piles of inventory, it wants to have just enough to fulfill current demand for that product, plus enough extra to give them a buffer stock that will last them long enough to rotate production back into replenishing that inventory to fulfill new demand. That generally works well when your demand is stable, but when you're going through an accelerated growth phase that approach doesn't really work because getting an accurate assessment of demand becomes significantly more difficult and if you miss on your forecast then you will run through your buffer stock faster than you can rotate production to replenish your inventory.

Add to that that GW is focused on an aggressive release schedule that requires them to produce and pump out new products at a probably slightly too-fast pace and that GW probably has too many SKUs as it is, even before all the new releases they are putting out, and you have a recipe for a bit of a disaster.

From what I understand of GWs manufacturing operation, most of its production capacity is dedicated to new releases, with only a small fraction of it dedicated to restock. I don't know what that breakdown looks like, but lets called it 80/20. So 80% of GWs production capacity at any given time is being used to produce new releases, while 20% is being used to replenish old product. A lot of the old product is already sold out, and then a lot of new products are selling out on or shortly after release, so they are actually building a backlog of kits that need restocking, rather than burning down the backlog and managing their demand.

I think there are signs that the situation is impoving/GW is starting to turn the ship around. I've noticed over the past couple months that the new releases are not selling out as quickly, whether thats because GW is producing to demand or theres less demand I cant say.

I would wager its customers belts being tightened up a bit. Even though hobbies do well in a crisis the cost-of-living is hitting a lot of people in their wallets and that means making choices on what gets spent.

Time will tell. Certainly a hobby like this isn’t cheap. But, our purchases are lasting.

I mean, once you’ve assembled and painted an army? Actually playing the game itself is free, or a few quid if your FLGS rents its tables out.

I expect there will be a hit, because those who had a hobby budget of say £100 a month, may have seen that squeezed to £50. But that will vary person to person, and how badly the individual has been squeezed.

Me? I’m lucky. Yes my bills went up, but I got a solid payrise this year, and have no pets or dependants. And my income, even pre-payrise, was plenty enough to absorb the increased cost of living, so I’m not in the position of having to choose. Choose wiser? Yes. But actually choose? No.

 CKO wrote:
What is up with their inventory management? Everything I want is always sold out. Am I the only customer who is unable to find their products?

Well yeah it's irritating but what are they to do here? Demand exceeds supply but it's not neccessarily stable exceed. You don't press button and hey presto instant production doubling. It takes time. What quarantees GW would have that when investement is completed the demand is still there?

The demand increased artificially during covid. How much of that demand stays for how long?

Expanding too much due to demand NOW can result in oversupply with expensive equipment sitting unused later. Then what?

You are certainly not the only one, and it is frustrating as hell. I was looking for several old Space Marine kits for several months before they discontinued it.

It's a pretty common complaint. I think it's frustrating to see them continue their breakneck release schedule while huge chunks of the range are unavailable. Tyranids was the worst: sure, the new stuff was available, but hardly anything else, especially the stuff that's stronger in game, is not.

I think that GW, like a lot of hobby gaming companies, makes the bulk of the money off of most products on launch week, so that's what they prioritize.

It's actually a good thing you cant find all that you want at GW. Makes you rethink and replan and in many cases not spend the money at all and move to something else.

So from what I've been led to believe by finance people (and in the past was able to find some supporting documentation on ye olde google), hobby expenditures tend to be rather resilient through economic downturns, even when people are tightening their belts they find ways to make room for their core hobbies and interests. In part its because hobbies spark joy and serve as a coping mechanism for these issues, but its also because hobby expenditures for many are treated as a separate category from luxuries (high end clothes and cars, dinner at restaurants, trips to the movies, foreign travel, etc.) or essentials (groceries, basic clothes and toiletries, housing, utilities). Luxuries are the first things to get cut, essentials are the last (and in large part aren't entirely cuttable), hobbies sit somewhere in between for many and often individuals dont tighten their belts so severely that they need to start cutting their hobby budget if they are able to manage by cutting other expenses.

Note - in this context hobby doesn't necessarily mean miniatures and models and tabletop gaming, it can refer to a wide range of activities, though the stuff I was able to find re financial research and industry axioms was mostly focused on things like craftwork, model railroading,and collecting (stamps, comics, etc.) - this is going back 50-100 years here. I think "the GW hobby" could reasonably fit into a similar category.

From GW's perspective and financial planning, there is very little incentive to over-supply.

Over-supplying is much worse than under-supplying, as Over-supplying comes with a lot of costs.

There is no real market incentive to overproduce.

GW has one bonus with over-supplying which is that their product has zero devaluation over time and in many cases can even increase in value.

So on that front they breach a lot of market theories on stocking because a lot of products these days are built around fast sales and fast devaluing because they are going to release something new next week/month/year to replace it.

That said GW does want to avoid overstocking from the simple angle that stock costs to store and they don't want to be sitting there with stock that's selling far too slowly and costing them the whole time its sitting there not selling.

Under supply is just as bad, it's money you're leaving in the table and thats industrial inefficiency. Chronic undersuplly and extreme undersupply also drives customers away over the long term. There's a "sweet spot" you want to be in where you're fulfilling x% of the demand - ideally that x is 100%, but realistically you're shooting for like 95% or whatever your margin of error in your forecasts and risk tolerance is.

In the case of GWs particular industry, undersupply is also particularly bad when it prevents new players from entering the game. There's a growing number of core kits that are in short supply, these are fundamental building blocks for their respective armies. If you can't get the bare minimum you need to play, why play at all?

True, however at the same time GW are hitting their max production output. Money left on the table would be a very valid argument if GW's finances were in a bad state or if they were under-producing.

Right now they are producing at maximum capacity and I'd argue that the greater issue for them now is the risk of over-expansion at time when building costs are high and where the market is fragile.

At the same time a gamer could argue that GW being at its max makes it better for other firms to get a slice of the market. Of course the flipside is that GW is often the gateway game to wargaming for fantasy/scifi for many - so if those new people aren't getting into GW they might not get into anything else .

 Easy E wrote:
From GW's perspective and financial planning, there is very little incentive to over-supply.

Over-supplying is much worse than under-supplying, as Over-supplying comes with a lot of costs.

There is no real market incentive to overproduce.

For most businesses this makes sense, but with GW the logic reminds me of the Electrical Ties analogy. By creating a regular association between shopping at GW and disappointment, they’ll train customers to look elsewhere for hobby needs.

The "operating at maximum capacity bit is a bit of an inaccuracy. Typical GW kits are shot out of injection molds at a rate of 2-5 seconds per copy. if they are using a 4-chamber system, thats 2-5 seconds per 4 copies. Keeping a set of molds in production for just an hour longer could produce an extra 720-7200 kits depending on the variables there.

Will that make a difference in terms of meeting demand? It might or might not, only GW really knows, but say an extra 4-5k war dogs in the wild may have filled demand for a few hundred more customers, and lord knows the demand is there.

 Easy E wrote:
There is no real market incentive to overproduce.

And thus they massively underproduce?

HH Jetbikes were released, sold out instantly, and have come back into stock once in Australia since then. They're practically hens teeth.

How is that good for GW?

There is no magic button that doubles production overnight.

Underproduction means there is opportunity to expand production, but that will still take time and investment.

Also leaving money on the table is still infinitely better than actually losing money, so ultimately you still aim to slightly underproduce just to be safe.

Thing is that they are unlikely to actually ever *lose* money by overproducing. The cost dynamics just aren't there, the cost of production per kit is insignificant, they would have to overproduce by an order of magnitude for it to be a problem. Beyond that, this is a product range that doesn't really have a shelf-life per se. I doubt theres very many SKUs that have been such stinkers that GW ended up having to sit on and destroy inventory because it just didn't sell in the span of time before the SKU had outlived its product lifecycle. The only thing I can really think of are CSM mutilators. Otherwise, GW has a number of outlets by which they can push leftover product out to retailers, the annual "package" that retailers are obligated to take on as part of their restocks, for example, are usually advertised as being the core essentials and best selling kits, but in my experience (and in my opinion) some of the kits that they force into retailers inventory is stuff that doesn't actually sell too well.

Having tons of stock in your warehouse is a tax liability, and they obviously want to avoid that, but I don't see how the opposite of that is "Products out of stock for quarters of a year or more at a time".

I have not seen an argument yet why this is a problem for GW?
Did people stop buying or playing the games because certain units are not available?

It is a big problem for the players, but for GW?

And "they would have sold much more" is not a problem, a "maybe more sales" is a chance with risk involved and someone in the management makes the decision to play it save or not.

In addition, more kits does not only mean an 1 hour more factory time, but ordering more boxes (external cost) more shipping cost, longer distribution.

As oversimplified example:
GW produces numbers to fill containers, because a container has a fixed cost no matter if full or not (and those have risen from 2.000 to 20.000 in the last years)
So a container full of cardboard for the upcoming releases, and a container full of new releases to ship to the hubs.
Just producing 1000 more boxes means another container that is not filled for the cardboard, another production run for the cardboard and another container to the hubs.

It is not producing a 1000 more in an hour, the question is, is there demand for another full container, with the risk to to run out of space in the warehouse (and space is the expensive part, not the product in there but the space it takes by being there) if not.
Is a manager going to risk not having enough space in the warehouses to stock the numbers expected for a 40k core set and need to rent extra space somewhere else, because of a "maybe we sell a 1000 more jetbikes"?

so stuff being out of stock until the combined out of stick niche products fill another container and there is a free slot in production and space in the warehouse
it is not that easy to say jetbikes are out of stock so lets produce 1000 more this just takes 2 hours factory time

PS: another point is that units have a value for the players because of the rules in the game
And GW does not make that connection, and stated that they don't want to. The want people to buy the models because people like the models and rules not influence sales.
Which was given as the main reason why there are no rules released before the models are available, as people not liking the rules influences sales too much.

Which means the other way around, the numbers of models produced is not calculated based on how good the rules are and if everyone wants 3 units.

Just note the reason GW doesn't put model rules in books without the models being released very close to the book coming out has nothing to do with GW wanting people to "buy models because of looks not rules".

IT has everything to do with the fact that they cannot stop 3rd parties making proxies and that over the last decade or so the 3rd party market has grown very big and there's a very active group making things for GW games.

GW thus doesn't want people to know that a model is coming until GW is close to releasing it themselve;s thus meaning that most people should buy their model; see their model around the net and in shops advertising it and basically protect their own income.

Specialist games seem to lag on this system, which might be a reflection of their lower priority and more spread out production slots; or perhaps not being considered as critical to protect etc...

But basically its everything to do with the fact that if GW add "Super Hero Spacemarine" in a codex and don't release the model for 2 years; the 3rd party market will fill that void very fast (even faster with 3d printing) and now that 3rd party model is getting people interested in stuff that isn't GW.




There's also a slightly more recent move toward GW releasing lots of expansion books so instead of 1 codex you need 1 codex and 4 expansion books to build your army. I'm getting the impression GW milked that for a while and "might" be pulling that in a little. I think they got the measure that people were enjoying campaign books, but at the same time were starting to chafe with the workload of keeping up with their army during games and what was generating GW money in sales; was also starting to harm their player retention.


I hope its something they've realised and make steps toward changing. Heck who knows perhaps the super simple unit cards and no upgrades they've gone for this edition is GW considering moving toward a "cards in box" approach for new models. Which would mean they can not put things in a codex and then release them later without "having" to have a big book purchase. Simpler units with few upgrades means the cards would stay valid for much longer even with errata updates

 Overread wrote:
Just note the reason GW doesn't put model rules in books without the models being released very close to the book coming out has nothing to do with GW wanting people to "buy models because of looks not rules".

this is not the "no models no rules" thing
but in the past we got the 2 week releases with the Codex being on the first week and the 2nd patch of models on another and they stated that they don't want to do that anymore because people should buy models because of the models and not because of the rules released (or leaked) before (and that the rules had a negative impact in sales of new models)