"Rant against GW" Topic

How original! I can hear you saying. After all, GW is the Evil Empire, isn't it?

Moreover, my rant is related to its price policies.

But there is a twist, because what it is ing me off is not how expensive their miniatures are. No. What irks me is that for the new The Hobbit line they have decided to charge the costs of the licence on the retailers!

Well, as far as I know that is a first.

According the guy that manages my account (I have a miniatures shop), the commercial margin that will be implemented to retailers will be not the usual 33% (which, by the way, is the bare minimum to get some benefit from your investment) but it will be 28%. The excuse is that the licence is too expensive, and the company won't assume it in full.

I don't know if they think we are idiots. Honest. With a 28% margin, it doesn't compensate to sell their products. At least not when you have not that many clients that consume GW products.

Oh, well… I guess that I will bring the bare minimum and afterwards I will get rid of all GW product in my shop. The return I get from GW products doesn't compensate the efforts (financial and otherwise); and most of my clients are action figures and boardgames consumers anyway.

End of rant. I feel better now.

I was one of their first (probaly THE first) trade customer (classic wargames shop)in continental Europe, in days long gone. I kicked them out 4 or 5 years later, when neither the end customer nor the independant trader were of interest to them any longer. Do the same and you'll feel better. At least, I did.

Yep. That's what I will do, as soon as Christmas sale season is over.

You could just say "NO", especially right before Christmas.

That's sure to please them, and send the proper message to the GW Execs.

Perhaps then, they'll have to go on a discount, post Holiday Season vacation, instead of the normal, more expensive one.

I hear the Congo can be quite nice this time of year.

:D That could be an idea!

It sounds like you wouldn't be disadvanaging yourself if you didn't stock them since most of your clients are action figures and boardgames consumers, so just don't stock them.

You should be grateful, I had a shop at the time of the release of the LotR movies and the mark-up on that product was only 25%.

I remember ranting against GW in the early 90's.

Nice to see nothing has changed.

Who is only getting 33% as a GW account? That's pretty low to start with.

28%? That's better than we got in the nineties.

We still had carry it, seeing that miniatures was a good deal of our sales, even if they stiffed us.

That's pretty low to start with

It's not that bad, compared with the usual 30% that most companies applies. At least, in Europe they do.

Yup, standard trade account discount here in the UK is between 30% and 40%.

Capitalism. Get over it or move to a communist country where state planners decide which miniatures to manufacture. :)

Seriously, get over it.

Wow. Here in the US discounts START at 40%. Now my suppliers have always said GW come sin less because they want you to go direct, but it was 35% off. At 25% you're lucky to break even on those dollars anyway.

Yep, have a post-Christmas sale and what you don't sell put up here or on E-bay…

Crazy…
What are they thinking?

Ah. UK vs US discounts. Got it.

GW will sell a bunch regardless of who does or doesn't stock them.

I would guess they are fine with handling those additional sales direct with customers as they are already doing it. As long as their system can scale with the increased volume they wont have issues.

BOHICA

You can Google that ;-)

@Extra Crispy

Back in the day, certain large US distributors gave better than 55% discounts. I remember the hell that was unleashed when this dropped to 50%. This was less than 20 years ago.

As costs increase beyond what price increases can cover, margins decrease.

Wait until we get our own VAT…. :(

Heck, they just pulled a major with the new hobbit release that's now got all the lotr players REALLY ed off. The mini rulebook in the new starter set doesn't have any FULL profiles for any of the new models. It has basic profiles for the minis in the box WITHOUT point values. In order to fully use the models in the box you MUST buy the 85 dollar rulebook as well.

The excuse is that the licence is too expensive, and the company won't assume it in full.

So GW is having a cry because some megalomaniacal corporation wants to charge them obscene amounts of money for generic fantasy tropes because they are a trendy example thereof.

Rwphillipsstl, why don't you tell GW to get over it? "Seriously."