GW downsizes metal stock - new info

[Denzark]

OK, as: a). I didn't think people could be bothered to wade through the entire thread and: b.) Mr B Scorpion is on his definaterly wrong spelling vibe at the end, I thought I would post a new take I haven't read before here.

I spoke to my local Blackshirt. She is very disingenuous and doesn't seem to dissemble - when she doesn't know about the party line she just says she doesn't know and I don't feel any deceit from her.

Asked about a possible change to resin. She told me she had not heard this. She thought the reduction in metal stock was an intended move to make the metal pieces MOSTLY Direct Order only.

She described that there is an insurance premium against stock levels. They are trying to reduce stock levels (as per the recent company statement). When an item is on the shelf in the shop it is face RRP value, and this is what it charges to the insurance company in case of loss for whatever reason. Recently shops have apparently skirted the levels at which the loss is insured to, running huge costs for claiming over this.

Metal is more costly and prone to shoplift. However, if on the shelf in stores at GWHQ it counts as the exact cost of producing, not the RRP including shipping to the shop, costs abraded against bricks and mortar etc. Hence cheaper to insure. So your metal one off army centre-pieces people will go to Mail Order for. An all plastic shop is cheaper to insure.

No change to resin.

Of course, YMMV.

[lobster-overlord]

Why then would they limit what is being offered through their Trade Sales group to independent retailers, as their stock levels and insurance costs are up to the indy owner, not GW? I can understand that from a corp pov, but they then limit their revenue coming from indies and the product they carry.

Now to just say that they're moving it all to direct to keep it all in house, so they maximize profit on metal as well would be a reasonable thing to say as well, but then that doesn't cover why it would be pulled from the shelf at the GW stores.

Pulling from GW stores could also be due to costs of freight. It is certainly cheaper to ship a plastic Steam Tanks then it was to send a dozen old metal ones, so that also is a big reason to switch certain models if they sell well enough in plastic.

I think no one answer/reason is going to be right. THey all just add up in GW's mind to be better off for the shareholder.

John M.

[TheBitzBarn]

Never suspected a change to resin due to the Carcinogenic aspect of the material worse than Lead for you.

I would agree with you seems they will be changing packaging too

"Now to just say that they're moving it all to direct to keep it all in house, so they maximize profit on metal as well would be a reasonable thing to say as well, but then that doesn't cover why it would be pulled from the shelf at the GW stores."

I think he explained that insurance cost due to shoplifting. They can move this and charge a higher wholesale price and get cash up front as Direct has no trade terms

[MaltonNecromancer]

Metal is more costly and prone to shoplift. However, if on the shelf in stores at GWHQ it counts as the exact cost of producing, not the RRP including shipping to the shop, costs abraded against bricks and mortar etc. Hence cheaper to insure. So your metal one off army centre-pieces people will go to Mail Order for. An all plastic shop is cheaper to insure.

Sounds eminently logical and good business, especially when the vast majority of businesses in the Western world are moving to a larger online presence.Apart from groceries and pertol, I don't think I actually buy anything from shops any more!

Thought the idea of a "move to resin" sounded a bit like a load of old cobblers.

[AngelsofDeath]

Sounds eminently logical and good business, especially when the vast majority of businesses in the Western world are moving to a larger online presence.Apart from groceries and pertol, I don't think I actually buy anything from shops any more!

Thought the idea of a "move to resin" sounded a bit like a load of old cobblers.

Yea sound advice. Dont buy anything from a shop anymore. And when the shop closes and you do not have a place to play and hang out with your friends just remember you dont buy anything from a shop anymore.

I hear my local shop owner on the phone asking the GW reps about the metal. Then if they try to order any metal anymore it sounds like the Inquisition drilling them over what model they are ordering, who for, and why? When the owner asks the GW rep about what is going on the reply is "Just trust me"...lol really WTF is that? Like some kind of National Secret.

For now on when I play a person and they have to proxy bottle caps for Wraith Guard I will be ok with it.

[EasyC]

Oh the days I could buy metal by the gram :cool: .

[StraightSilver]

This to me makes far more sense than the rumoured change from metal to resin.

As well as insurance premiums there is also the impact of Stock Turn, which is something all retail companies are having to look very closely at in the current economic climate.

Stock Turn is the number of times a shop sells the monetary equivalent of its stockholding in a given period.

The reason this is important is that as has been mentioned if you have a lot of stock sitting on your shelves you want to make sure it sells quickly.

Shelf space comes at a premium these days, especially with the increase in rents and rates that many stores now have to pay.

It is no longer economically viable for stores to carry a full range of products if some of these aren't regular sellers. If you go into most bookstores now you will see that they no longer carry any where near as many titles as they used to, you have to order them in.

GW would be mad not to follow this trend, as it is going on everywhere right now and makes very good business sense.

It is better for them to have products which sell regaularly and consistently, and to have these in quantity. It isn't viable for them to have shelf space taken up by slow sellers, like blister packs.

There is also the logistical issue of blisters. When a store orders blister packs they come in in sleeves, normally of about 12 packs per sleeve.

These are expensive to ship out, and the majority of the sleeve will no doubt sit in the store's stock room in any case.

I don't doubt that alomost all metal blisters will go direct only to free up space in store. This also means that in the future if this business model works they can open much smaller, one man stores to replace their larger ones, which again has a cost benefit.

And I wouldn't be surprised if GW made all metals strictly direct only via their own website, and either not available at all at independents, or sold at a premium.

GW's retail sales are down by a significant margin right now, whereas their sales to independents are up.

It doesn't take a genius to work out that this is because most people buy their figures online from places like wayland or Darksphere because they are cheaper.

If you can't buy blisters from these type of stores and have to order direct from GW chances are you will buy your plastics from them too to save on postage.

In the long run this means that GW's margins increase which is what the shareholders are desperate for right now.

[Wildeybeast]

Yea sound advice. Dont buy anything from a shop anymore. And when the shop closes and you do not have a place to play and hang out with your friends just remember you dont buy anything from a shop anymore.

People will still and go buy stuff from shops because they like the experience of shopping and for those who are out at work all week, getting packages delivered can be a pain in the arse so its easy to go and pick it up in store. Also little kids don't have credit cards so can't buy stuff online. And lastly, the shops act as a 'gateway drug' for those who don't already play and they make a fair bit from upselling.

So don't worry, your local GW store ain't going anywhere, no matter how much people order online.

[Skragger]

Its an interesting cunundrum, thats for sure. One one hand, GW saves a bundle not having to ship a goodly weight in metal models to their independants, and not having to worry about product being lost or stolen.

On the other glove, the retailers (like myself in the next year or two) may be losing out because the range of what they can offer immediately is cut back (so no buying that blister as an impulse buy), and now have to offer it as something they'll order for the customer, which offers two problems. The first, as was previously mentioned, GW grills the retailer a new one as to "why do you want to order this? huh?! HUH?!" (I asked my rep about blisters and she very quickly said "don't order them."), and the other danger of ordering something: the customer never coming to pick the item up. So now the store is stuck with a single blister that will probably not move.

So I can see where GW is trying to go with this, and its hard to tell just how it'll impact the FLGS, but sometimes I look at GW's business ideas and raise an eyebrow. Then again, they're professionals, so maybe they know what they're doing. Only time will tell!

[StraightSilver]

I must admit when stock turn and core range initiatives were first introduced I baulked at the idea of them, feeling that a full range of products would be more appealing to the customer than having to order things.

I for one would rather go into a store and buy everything in one hit rather than making several trips,and having to wait for ordered items but that isn't the case for everybody.

However the days of any store, even specialist ones being able to carry an entire range of products is sadly long gone.

It isn't so much a problem for smaller independent stores as their overheads are comparably low, but for large chain stores it really is an issue.

Having enormous amounts of cash invested in surplus stock really irks both bank mangers and shareholders alike, and has been a problem for GW for many years.

This is one of the primary reasons the bits service was scrapped.

Moving slow sellers to direct only makes perfect business sense, and almost all high street retailers do this now, GW is in fact years behind.

But then it has taken them far too long to introduce EPOS tills which give them a much more accurate stock turn analysis, and I'm sure it's for that reason that the move away from blister packs is happening.

They are literally dead weight and massively bring down both average transaction values and stock turn figures, which looks bad on a company's profit and loss.

This way they get to massively decrease their stock holding, saving them money.

It may not be that great for the customer, but it is a sound business decision and I am surprised it has taken them this long to realise it.

[eldargal]

Will it aid low sellers do you think? If they are basically produced to order, less expensive stock lying around, metal going to waste etc. perhaps less incentive to downplay certain elements like SG games to avoid having to carry heaps of expensive kits people might not buy.

[StraightSilver]

It would be difficult to say for GW as they are an exceptional company, producing their own product and distributing it to their own stores gives them a huge advantage over other retail outlets.

Certainly the book industry was hit hard when major chains like Borders and Waterstone's introduced their Core Range policy.

They simply refused to stock niche books, or books from small publishers as they knew they wouldn't get the same advertising coverage as books from other publishers like Harper Collins or Penguin, and this put quite a number of smaller publishers out of business.

However GW is in a position to give as much suport to a product as it wishes, and to be able to produce product in whatever quantities it wishes.

The thing about metal minis is that they are very quick and easy to cast, and there isn't a minimum number you have to make at any one time like there is with plastics.

The problem with them is the amount of shelf space they take up, and their unpredictable cost due to the nature of the metals market price.

I suspect that going direct only might actually be a good thing for slow sellers, as they will pose a significantly lower risk now if they are simply cast and shipped to order.

GW would be able to offer more strategic support to certain systems too, and won't have money tied up in dead stock any more, which can prevent future projects based on previous sales.

I don't think blister packs are the impulse buy that everybody claims, and I don't see sales of metal models falling drastically as a result of this.

Let's face it, most of the models in an army will be plastic, it's generally (although admittedly not always) your HQ, Elites etc that are metal, and we will always want those.

Interestingly though to throw a spanner into my own works there was one thing I left out of my conversation with Jes Goodwin last year that I thought might be worth mentioning.

When I said it was really cool that the plastic arms fitted the Dark Eldar Archon model he said that was because the designers had been briefed when sculpting character models for that range to keep in mind converting the metal models into plastic at a later date. It didn't seem that significant at the time, but maybe now it does?

I still don't believe we will see an end to metal models though.

[Skragger]

I, for one, support a move over to plastics, but still want to see the blister system kept. I've noticed that once models move from a blister to a box (even single models) the price seems to jump. Boxes are better for advertising however, as they let you put a big splashy picture on the front rather than a 1/2 inch thick band with the models name in about nine different languages.

I have a personal hatred for the pewter models. I was so psyched about the Inquisitor range. I was thinking "awww sheet! This is going to be awesome! Warhammer 40K meets D&D. Awesome models, the rules allow for nearly any possible combination of gear and goods and weapons. Converting these models is going to be the most amazing thing ever!"

Then I realize that if I want to stick a nice bionic leg on say, my space marine, I get the joys of sawing through about an inch of solid pewter.

Its the same with the smaller minis as well, conversion is just a bugger, and the blisters invariably have the wrong weapons. I bought some Mega Armoured Nobz and I had no idea what I was getting because their weapon arms were convienantly hidden behind that little matt at the back of the pack.

I like the move to plastic, and I support it, but I'd like to see the convienance of blister packs stick around.

[wittdooley]

I'm fine with metal models, but only for characters. Ideally for me, everything else would be in something that was easy to convert. If it's realistic for someone to take more than one box of the mini, it should be in plastic. Dwarf Berzerkers, I'm looking at you.

I was surprised the DE Incubi were metal as well, though I admittedly don't know enough about their book to know if someone would want to take more than one box of them in an army.

Scraggers--- Keep in mind kits like the Chaos Lord and the High Elf Lord/Mage are in boxes, but aren't any more expensive than their blister counterpart!

[prowla]

So is there a chance that faster-moving blisters get changed to resin and possibly shipped as sets, and the slow-moving models remain in metal and are direct only?

[lattd]

What surprised me is some of the metals moving to direct order are brand new, Crowe the Jokereo are on that list already are know they are a small army but after a month? Incubi are also direct order which really confuses me.

[lobster-overlord]

@lattd, ALL metals are going Direct, so even the new ones are going to be coming out that way after their initial surge.

And I don't see why they would want to do this for indy retailers. At the store where I work I sold more metal today than plastic. A guy starting an Eldar army, bought $200+ in metal, and each of the other players in his group bought at least one unit of metal guys. We can't restock on them, so our Eldar shelf is going to be empty.

John M.

[Lane]

And I don't see why they would want to do this for indy retailers. At the store where I work I sold more metal today than plastic. A guy starting an Eldar army, bought $200+ in metal, and each of the other players in his group bought at least one unit of metal guys.

If people know metal minis will be hard to get soon they will rush out and buy more of them now.

As mentioned the GW fiscal year end is in the May-June time frame thus boosting sales the lats month or so of the fiscal year. After that sales of most metal minis will be direct only meaning that GW doubles their profits for those minis.

I swear someone at GW is trying to boost their stock value knowing it will have a negative effect on the company. Either a mid level executive that wants to boost his resume, someone with lots of stock options or they have been approached by a prospective buyer.

[Lane]

Will it aid low sellers do you think? If they are basically produced to order, less expensive stock lying around, metal going to waste etc. perhaps less incentive to downplay certain elements like SG games to avoid having to carry heaps of expensive kits people might not buy.

From what a local manager said after his tour of the US production facility.

They have huge amounts of storage space and it is not full, even with enough specialist game stuff to fill a store (ie the racks would fill his store).

The factory is operating at less than half capacity.

They recycle everything. They can shred plastic kits on site and reuse them. Metal can be remelted. There is little or no waste material.

[mulkers]

This is very interesting, and if true may contradict the switch to resin, which beg's the question, what now?

Will they go back to doing metals again, but as has been indicated, direct only?

[sergentzimm]

If people know metal minis will be hard to get soon they will rush out and buy more of them now.

As mentioned the GW fiscal year end is in the May-June time frame thus boosting sales the lats month or so of the fiscal year. After that sales of most metal minis will be direct only meaning that GW doubles their profits for those minis.

I swear someone at GW is trying to boost their stock value knowing it will have a negative effect on the company. Either a mid level executive that wants to boost his resume, someone with lots of stock options or they have been approached by a prospective buyer.

Wow I had not thought of that one. That would be about right. I think the worst thing they ever did was go public, but this could be worse. Just look at what it did to wizards...

[Lemt]

Wow I had not thought of that one. That would be about right. I think the worst thing they ever did was go public, but this could be worse. Just look at what it did to wizards...

What did it do to Wizards?

[DadExtraordinaire]

It would be difficult to say for GW as they are an exceptional company, producing their own product and distributing it to their own stores gives them a huge advantage over other retail outlets.

Certainly the book industry was hit hard when major chains like Borders and Waterstone's introduced their Core Range policy.

They simply refused to stock niche books, or books from small publishers as they knew they wouldn't get the same advertising coverage as books from other publishers like Harper Collins or Penguin, and this put quite a number of smaller publishers out of business.


You mean over other manufacturers....GW is not unique as there are a number of other manufacturers who sell only their products through their own stores and others.......What makes GW exceptional is doing this in the wargames and model hobby market......

Borders is in administration and probably not a good example.

For small publishers an example would be Pen and Sword a small niche military book publisher, IIRC is doing well and sells it products via Waterstones and other smaller outlets. In fact one of the contributing writers as done so well he has moved up and headed to Crete to set-up a wargames holiday center.

[sergentzimm]

What did it do to Wizards?

It turned them into a profit machine. You can see the results of this with the move from D&D 3.5 to 4. They are ruled by their overlords, Hasboro. It really does not create a good set up for the consumer and gamer.

[DadExtraordinaire]

If people know metal minis will be hard to get soon they will rush out and buy more of them now.

As mentioned the GW fiscal year end is in the May-June time frame thus boosting sales the lats month or so of the fiscal year. After that sales of most metal minis will be direct only meaning that GW doubles their profits for those minis.

I swear someone at GW is trying to boost their stock value knowing it will have a negative effect on the company. Either a mid level executive that wants to boost his resume, someone with lots of stock options or they have been approached by a prospective buyer.

Interesting analysis. In terms of boosting sales before end of year, all companies do this. When at Borroughs / Sperry-Vac then UNISYS in the late 80's and early 90's, AT&T mid 90's and Amdahl / Fujitsu beginning of the century I have seen all the above an many more like SUN, IBM, COMPAQ, HP, DELL etc to boost sales before end of year, several reasons why - sales reps get inflated bonuses, company prdouces great looking books (accounts), shareholders get a great golden hello - if company figures look good. This is not new or a strange phenomena. This more than likely and is typical of most mid to large organisations. (Top tip : if you buy from IT suppliers this is one of the best times to purchase products as you should be getting a discount).

A company does not have to wait for a buyer to approach them, a company can send out the signs letting others know they are for sale.....

However, GW is reducing stock holding and eliminating tail end products. This allows them to reduce costs and yet still allow them to sell those products - just more effectively in terms of stock management.

[Lemt]

It turned them into a profit machine. You can see the results of this with the move from D&D 3.5 to 4. They are ruled by their overlords, Hasboro. It really does not create a good set up for the consumer and gamer.

What can I say, I think 4th ed was a step in the right direction.

[Unzuul the Lascivious]

Do GW have rights to produce games and miniatures for The Hobbit film? Might be worth buying some shares before that film comes out and sell them again 4-6 months after film release?

[eldargal]

Yes they acquired the rights to the Hobbit recently (last few months).

[Corvus-Master-of-The-4th]

Do GW have rights to produce games and miniatures for The Hobbit film? Might be worth buying some shares before that film comes out and sell them again 4-6 months after film release?

They're actually going to make the film then xD? (I really should pay more attention to the film industry)