Rumours on why certain specific, in demand models are unavailable?

[TheWillTheWay]

It has happened to every player before. That model kit, the new one that's just a few years old, is just not on shelves, or not even listed as for sale.

As a chaos players, chaos terminator kits were not to be found on store shelves for months after the codex dropped, even now I can't find them. My LGS speculated that it was the high demand for that kit early on, coupled with GWs continuing supply chain troubles. Likewise MoPs are currently not sold in any way by GW despite being in high demand, on it's own sprue, and presumably having a very high margin of profit for GW.

 

Has anyone heard any rumors to why this is? I know there was a rumor that the LandRaider mold had been destroyed and needed to be remade in the early aughts, resulting in that model not being sold for a long time. That was a long time before I entered the hobby, so I may have the details wrong. None the less it makes me wonder, did they break the MoP model? Is there some critical problem with manufacturing it?

Any perspectives, whether pure speculation, rumors, educated guesses, expertise in the manufacturing and distribution field, or known facts about GW would be appreciated.

Edited April 4, 2023 by TheWillTheWay
typo

[TrawlingCleaner]

=][= I've moved this over to the Amicus as it's not News or a Rumour =][=

[Xenith]

15 minutes ago, TheWillTheWay said:

My LGS speculated that it was the high demand for that kit early on, coupled with GWs continuing supply chain troubles.

 

Pretty much this. While it doesn't explain the MoP (Maybe they figured everyone would already have one from Shadowspear in 2018, then the start collecting?) but they will have been ramping up production of Age of Darkness, and now 10th edition models for a long time, and the CSM codex straddles this (released July 2022?) so they might be behind on production.

 

The best thing you can do is click the email me button so GW knows that there is demand for certain models, and then you trust their love of money to bump the highest demand ones up the schedule. 

[sairence]

I assume their warehouse situation is still in a state of :cuss:. My FLGS just had to cancel my order of two Dorns, because GW told them they're not getting any, with no indication of when they'll be back in stock 

[Craig]

May be coincidence and I have no inside knowledge but some of the units (like CSM terminators) go out of stock online prior to being included in a box set release (arks of omen). Maybe they are using stock that's already produced and just repackaging it in these boxes rather than making/shipping/storing more sprues?

[andes]

I imagine GW is using a fair amount of their manufacturing capacity to make the 10e box set contents. That'd slow things down considerably, they'll need a billion of them (give or take).

Edited April 5, 2023 by andes

[MegaVolt87]

I feel like we were in a similar situation with this in the lead up to 9th edition 40k. 

[Ahzek451]

Unfortunately my version comes from FW which is an even worse wait. The Necron Seraptek has been available for months, but the weapons for it? Never ever in stock. 

Insult to injury: The seraptek had 2 choices for ranged weapons. One is just flat gone from the website, the other is never is stock. But on the front page they show a seraptek with the weapon they removed. 

Edited April 7, 2023 by Ahzek451

[Halandaar]

On 4/5/2023 at 8:06 AM, Craig said:

May be coincidence and I have no inside knowledge but some of the units (like CSM terminators) go out of stock online prior to being included in a box set release (arks of omen). Maybe they are using stock that's already produced and just repackaging it in these boxes rather than making/shipping/storing more sprues?

 

I also have no inside knowledge but it happens so often across the entire range (all factions, both major systems) that it must be that production of new sprues is channelled into the bundles rather than standalone boxes.

 

@TheWillTheWay regarding Chaos Terminators specifically, there was definitely a period where they seemed to be out of stock everywhere, but then a while back (maybe as long as 6 months ago) suddenly everybody had them again, so I was able to pick up a couple of sets. I'm not sure whether it's really high demand, or just slightly higher than expected demand (sufficient that they sell out faster than expected, but not fast enough to justify bringing their next production run forward at the expense of something else)

[potatocrusader]

I don't think they are repackaging sprues. Some proof I would have is I bought the new Boarding Patrol : Knife Ears and the sprues for the corsairs were linked with the plastic runners, instead of being 3 separate sprues each, they were 2 sprues + 1 sprue and not even the same repeat.
 

The issues with supply and getting taken off the website as others have mentioned, might be issues with their new system and/or they are getting repackaged.

An alternative if you live in an area or region where some kits are impossible to get ahold of for months you could look into 3d printing and later down the line you could purchase the plastic model when there is a healthy stock about again. Of course if you want to go to a tournament, that isn't an option sadly.

[Timberley]

They seem to have a very bizarre logistics chain going on. As a case in point, I wanted to get the Farsight Boarding Patrol when it launched, but 20mins after it launched and I could get online, GW site had it as being "no longer available online". A few days later it went to "out of stock" (with the e-mail me button active), and on Wednesday this week I received an email to say it was in stock. Ordered it that day and got it yesterday. 

 

Contrast that with the new Kasrkin box, which I'm also waiting for. I've been hammering the email button whenever I'm on the GW site and so far nothing. 

 

I'm not complaining too much, as painting the T'au will take a while (I can see Farsight himself taking days), but the Kasrkin have been out longer. Incidentally, my Steel Legion arrived in double quick time too. 

 

My speculation is that the newer boxes are using pre-existing sprues, repackaged into the bigger box, with the bottleneck being box production. With 10ed on the way, I suspect that the smaller boxes are being shunted down the production queue as they make the big launch box for that. 

[Closet Skeleton]

I have two spare masters of possession on sprue so if you're in the UK I might be willing to part with one.

[MechaMan]

I would love to know what's going on with the Kasrkin box, sold out within five minutes on February 11th and hasn't come back since, which sucks.

[Matcap86]

18 hours ago, MechaMan said:

I would love to know what's going on with the Kasrkin box, sold out within five minutes on February 11th and hasn't come back since, which sucks.

 

Huh, that's weird. I've got several shops around here I can buy those from. 

[Robbienw]

I would like to get Sky Hunter jetbikes, but they appear to have been out of stock everywhere since 10 minutes after there initial release a couple of months ago!

[Bung]

Biggest Problem for years is that GW cant get it right with production and demand.

 

Look at the Indomitos Box at the start of 9th Edition and the last AoS Starter Box.

 

Thats not a new or a Warehouse issue, its GWs planing to do enough boxes for the initial launch but not producing to much that the leftovers take up touch warehouse space.

 

They :cuss: up their planing for nearly dvery release for years not even including the limited stuff.

 

Limited stuff is caped between 1250 and 2500 pieces worldwide, so you can see why there is not much chance to get something.

 

[bigtrouble]

Having worked in manufacturing for quite a while now, I think GW is limited by some pretty typical stuff: printed packaging supply, line capacity, mold availability, and tight product development timelines.

 

I haven't made a study of it by any means, but almost certainly they don't have enough production lines and copies of molds to keep everything they make in stock even on a normal basis, regardless of launches.

 

There's an extreme global difficulty in securing printed packaging materials right now. Lead times as long as 3 months. So unless they own packaging printing factories, which I doubt, they can only buy and store so much specialty packaging prior to a launch. All the big boxes look like they are not standard assembly either, so they don't have high speed machines to do it.

 

They would have only a limited time to make models between when the mold was made and when the launch date is. My guess would be the production ramp up for these things is less than 3 months from launch, and it could very possibly be scheduled down to the week before they are actually scheduled to ship.

 

No idea what their processing times are, but tooling is extremely expensive, and they wouldn't buy more copies of a mold unless the kit sold well enough to demand it, so imagine that they are planning a single line to run a 1 piece mold non-stop for a specific amount of time to consume all of the very expensive packaging. And you usually don't run that project on your top line, you run it on a slower one. 

 

They also don't want to be overstocked on anything that they can't ship out to stores on a regular basis, so they're artificially limiting that by planning short.

[Bung]

1 hour ago, bigtrouble said:

Having worked in manufacturing for quite a while now, I think GW is limited by some pretty typical stuff: printed packaging supply, line capacity, mold availability, and tight product development timelines.

 

I haven't made a study of it by any means, but almost certainly they don't have enough production lines and copies of molds to keep everything they make in stock even on a normal basis, regardless of launches.

 

There's an extreme global difficulty in securing printed packaging materials right now. Lead times as long as 3 months. So unless they own packaging printing factories, which I doubt, they can only buy and store so much specialty packaging prior to a launch. All the big boxes look like they are not standard assembly either, so they don't have high speed machines to do it.

 

They would have only a limited time to make models between when the mold was made and when the launch date is. My guess would be the production ramp up for these things is less than 3 months from launch, and it could very possibly be scheduled down to the week before they are actually scheduled to ship.

 

No idea what their processing times are, but tooling is extremely expensive, and they wouldn't buy more copies of a mold unless the kit sold well enough to demand it, so imagine that they are planning a single line to run a 1 piece mold non-stop for a specific amount of time to consume all of the very expensive packaging. And you usually don't run that project on your top line, you run it on a slower one. 

 

They also don't want to be overstocked on anything that they can't ship out to stores on a regular basis, so they're artificially limiting that by planning short.

 

Well, the one time they didnt plan short it backfired with the AoS Starter Box.

 

But they could plan better if they did some market research to see whats popular.

 

[MegaVolt87]

If I was GW, I would have anything ordered from their website ship in plain white boxes like FW. Save the normal packaging for bigger box releases, retail in their stores + LGS wholesale orders. That would help the packaging issues and save some packaging expenses. 

[Xenith]

On 4/18/2023 at 11:02 PM, Robbienw said:

I would like to get Sky Hunter jetbikes, but they appear to have been out of stock everywhere since 10 minutes after there initial release a couple of months ago!

 

They were back in stock a couple of weeks ago for about 12 hours then sold out again. Best way to let GW estimate demand is to hit the email me button! 

[Robbienw]

10 hours ago, Xenith said:

 

They were back in stock a couple of weeks ago for about 12 hours then sold out again. Best way to let GW estimate demand is to hit the email me button! 

Seriously, in the U.K.?!  I’ve did the email me button a while ago but never got a notification :(

[Matcap86]

1 hour ago, Robbienw said:

Seriously, in the U.K.?!  I’ve did the email me button a while ago but never got a notification :(

 

Those are hit and miss at best. I've got those on for some FW models and have seen them in stock while browsing and gotten emails days later. 

[Xenith]

11 hours ago, Robbienw said:

Seriously, in the U.K.?!  I’ve did the email me button a while ago but never got a notification :(

 

Oh, weird. Yea, I saw them one friday evening and by saturday when I came to add a set to a preorder they were gone. 

[Closet Skeleton]

Supply, demand and resource allocation is literally the core problem in economics. There's nothing strange about any organisation having issues with it.

On 4/20/2023 at 2:02 AM, Bung said:

 

But they could plan better if they did some market research to see whats popular.

 

 

Space marines, done.

 

You can work out which range is more popular easily but for individual kits you have to make your own market.

[Xenith]

On 4/20/2023 at 2:02 AM, Bung said:

But they could plan better if they did some market research to see whats popular.

 

They can't, really. Or not accurately anyway. Like, how do they do market research to see how popular something like Cursed city would be? Or how many people would buy a 40k lion model, without revealing that they'll release the lion in 12 months.