A good new GW retail policy

[eldargal]

Very exciting news for the world of retail.

If you meet certain criteria (Essentially the criteria is being a reasonably sized hobby store), you will now recieve the following:

£500 of stock per year for demoing to customers, placing terrain on the table, etc.

£100/200 (I forgot the given number) in stock to give prizes out for competitions.

Trophies. Made specially by GW to give out to winners. (Which presumably will be fairly cool.)



So yeah. GW move to give people free stuff for participating in organised play, and in stores. I think its a lovely move on their part. Long may it continue :)
Nice to see GW do something sensible like providing prize support to decent sized FLGS', not to mention demo stock.

[Wolfshade]

This I like. Investing in the next generation of gamers.

[GrenAcid]

Good move from GW??

RUN YOU FOOLS IST A TRAP!

[crazyredpraetorian]

That will mean no more monthly prize support for tournaments. 100/200 pounds will not go far. So, special tournaments only will get prize support and trophies the rest of the year. This will eliminate some of the plastic chasers. This is more in line with their old tournament support program. I hope getting tournament packs will be easier than in the past.

[gcsmith]

Good to see British stores finally getting support, Dunno if you get regular support crazyredpretorian, but british stores do not have much if any prize support usually so good to see some.

[SotonShades]

Question is, will the prize support also apply to GWs own stores? If not they could end up taking a lot of the gaming out of their control to some extent.

[eldargal]

My understanding is that this new policy is for third party retailers, it shan't have an impact on GW stores which are the only ones that get prize support (or so I've been told).

[AbusePuppy]

I know both my local FLGS would be really happy to see this; I'm curious what their definition of "reasonably-sized hobby store" is, though.

[gcsmith]

My understanding is that this new policy is for third party retailers, it shan't have an impact on GW stores which are the only ones that get prize support (or so I've been told).

You mean boxes of stuff that has been unsold since 1990?
I kid but GW could afford more to do more Prize support.

[plasticaddict]

Hmmm, don't know if it's a regional thing but we've gotten $150 a month in product from GW for prize support at our local stores for over a decade. Also with a phone call to our GW rep we can almost always get some additional goodies for store leagues and special events. If they haven't been doing that everywhere it's about time they got everybody on board.

[Wildeybeast]

My understanding is that this new policy is for third party retailers, it shan't have an impact on GW stores which are the only ones that get prize support (or so I've been told).

Makes sense, given GW's drive to have smaller, one-man stores, I can't see how they would qualify for the 'reasonable sized stores' criteria.

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

bloomin' eck! first GW allow The Lord Inquisitor, next they show praetorian guard on their website and now this? Have I just walked into a parallel universe? Well these are all good things! and makes me feel a little cautiously optimistic about GW's business practices. A little. Good on them - props where props due!

[crazyredpraetorian]

Hmmm, don't know if it's a regional thing but we've gotten $150 a month in product from GW for prize support at our local stores for over a decade. Also with a phone call to our GW rep we can almost always get some additional goodies for store leagues and special events. If they haven't been doing that everywhere it's about time they got everybody on board.

The Partner Program is what provides that level of support. If a store is not a Partner level account they do not get that support every month. If this new level of support replaces the Partner Program, we will see less prize support not more.

[Eldanesh]

Wow GW supplying trophies and demo stock.

Hmmm,..sounds kind of like,..uh GW circa 1998?

[Bigred]

From my understanding, there will be a new set of tiers any 3rd party store will fall into based on some GW-measured criteria.

The support is then handed out based on that.

This new program replaces the previous Partner Level support program. In general it looks to be an attempt to pull back from prize support, and the outlays from GW will go down in net.

Several FLGS' we've talked to have already indicated they will be receiving less than before. No one has mentioned getting more.

This looks like some penny pinching with a nice new sounding program to paper over the overall goal. Very similar to the annual "new improved" GT support packages offered by GW as they slowly backed away from the tournament scene (they are now out entirely).

[gannam]

yeah, my Local shop had prize support for almost every tourney that they did. Now they have a yearly budget? doesn't sound good at all to me.

Sounds like shops will be able to provide less prize support now which will probably mean less tourney's given that most of these shops run on razor thin margins heavily subsidized by holding magic tournaments.

Those guys smell bad too in case anyone hasn't noticed that.