Internet Companies going down the swanny - MAELSTROM GAMES

[Herzlos]

The Maelstrom gaming centre has existed for at least 18 months, though they have been doing it up. I think the expansion in question was getting a separate warehouse facility, which has been stalled for a while.

[gamesbluetiger]

I used to use Maelstrom alot, however their service became appalling! Just coincidence that this happens when forums are full of complaints about them? Hope that this is just a blip and Maelstrom come out the other end ok. Hate to see anyone go down and out of business.

[olberon]

doesnt GW have anything to do with the companies going belly up?? eg. changing tradepolicies or demanding payment on store credits and so??

[nomcruise]

doesnt GW have anything to do with the companies going belly up?? eg. changing tradepolicies or demanding payment on store credits and so??

Contrary to popular belief, GW doesn't cause every negative thing that happens to a gaming company or retailer. It seems that you don't have a very good grasp on economics and are just looking for a reason to start another "death to GW big evil toy company" chant so I'll spell it out for you:

step one: the company, maelstrom in this case, allows a customer to order a product that they do not currently have possession of.
step two: the company uses the money from the customer's order to acquire the product at their wholesale price
step thee: the company ships the customer their item.

Somewhere in between steps 1 and 2 the money gets used for something that doesn't involve acquiring that product for the customer and the company doesn't have enough cash on hand to get the items and cannot fulfill the order. It is entirely the responsibility of the retailer to have on hand the items that they are offering for sale or sufficient cash to get those items. From looking through maelstrom's website, they carry an immense range of products and (I'm not privy to volume numbers or anything of the like) most likely move as much if not more from these other manufacturers than they do from GW. If a retailer offers an irresponsible discount to the point that they don't make enough on their cut over the wholesaler price, its not the manufacturers fault. If a retailer continues to sell products that are not in stock when they don't have the cash flow to get those items, that's on them.

TLDR: I'm not a GW apologist, but I've worked in retail for close to 10 years now. Stop looking for a scapegoat in a regrettable situation where a retailer spent beyond their means and is close to folding over it. You take risks when you sell things for a discount off MSRP, and if you don't watch the margin closely, its on you.

[magickbk]

I believe what olberon was referring to is the rumors that surfaced a few weeks ago that GW was no longer allowing a few of the larger online retailers to order on credit. Many years ago, GW shut down online sales of GW product through third-parties. Most of the online stores currently order either through a comics distributor, or through GW by having a brick-and-mortar. The rumor was that GW had figured out which of the stores had online businesses and modified their credit rules for those retailers. Not sure there was any further news on that front.

Either way nomcruise, I agree with most of your points, but do understand that a lot of people in countries with absurd markups (AU!) need a place like Maelstrom to stay in the hobby.

[Mr Mystery]

Credit accounts may have been withdrawn. The question is why.

Remember folks, GW are here to make money. If a significant portion of debtors default, it would make good business sense to withdraw the credit. But as nobody but the debtor and the creditor would have the relevant information, this entire thread is just conjecture. Use it to bash GW if you must, but I reserve the right to smirking at the paranoid gibberings.

[Herzlos]

But reducing credit to reduce risk only applies if the debtor has become an increased risk. Even without a change in risk levels, if a debtor had a high enough turnover, a sudden reduction in credit could complete stall their business as they'd need to find a significant amount of capital in order to maintain the supply.

Not that I'm saying GW would necessarily do that, but as they don't have a history of being friendly towards competition (the overseas sales bans, suing bits companies out of existence), it wouldn't surprise me at all.

[eldargal]

Steve54 posted this on Warseer and I'm going to post it here because people need to get some perspective:

What is known
- there are some orders that are delayed
- they are doing a sale to move to a new business model
- the company is being split up into different parts (webstore, model line, events+B&M store)

Anything else is purely based on rumours generally started by newly registered posters or on unsubstantiated allegations by anonymous 'sources' with no evidence.

Anything about GW being barstudly, Maelstrom racking up significant debts etc. is just hearsay at this point.

[Herzlos]

They have also been shipping in stock items as normal, so there's no ponzi/pyramid scheme or anything as nefarious as that going on.

[walrusman999]

Dunno if you guys are aware of this site, [URL]http://www.spikeybits.com/servlet/StoreFront[/URL] , but they do alot of international trade and sell cheaper then GW. For those of you who are hit hard by Maelstrom's issues, you can try here.