(Discussion) GW Half-Yearly Financial Report, Space Marine II launch, pricing update flags

[darkhorse0607]

On 1/17/2025 at 5:56 AM, TheArtilleryman said:

I get it about the discounts (all 4 of your great points), but I don’t get it about not returning the stock to the warehouse. They wouldn’t have to be all public about this at all, just quietly return it to the central stock pool and send it to stores that need it, or sell it online. Especially if it’s a whole store full of stock being written off like the Hong Kong example and not just a few random boxes.

 

I mean the problem is, to facilitate that you'd have to have a lot of confidence in your distribution and inventory systems, which given the amount of stuff that goes wrong on a routine basis (sending the wrong item which leads to leaks, over/under forecasting, etc), I don't think they have

 

I do wonder if they allow Store Managers to do back channel deals with each other though, to help their inventory levels

[N1SB]

On 1/17/2025 at 6:45 AM, Sky Potato said:

 

I would probably agree that - on the balance of probability - Imperium Magazine was made up of excess stock from the second run of the Indomitus boxset. Its probably worth mentioning that the original partworks magazine, Conquest, was definitely made to order for the magazine. The sprues were the regular off the shelf sprues, but in coloured plastic - blue for the Marines, green for the Death Guard, brown for the terrain. So the original plan for the partworks was not a method of coping with overstock.

 

On 1/17/2025 at 6:53 AM, ZeroWolf said:

It's been pointed out that the stock for all magazines (and army deals) are all printed to order rather than surplus stock as it really doesn't cost them much to do it and saves time rather than having someone manually unbox things (to say nothing about the probability that they'd need to still print some sprues to match shortfall).

 

The simple answer (and maybe most wasteful?) Is they simply print them.

 

You were totally right, lol.  So 8th ed, the tinted sprues, dead giveaway.  Wasn't so sure with 9th.

 

I fished out my 9th ed Recruit Edition and Imperium magazine with Necrons, seeking to prove you WRONG.

 

The Necron sprues in the Imperium magazine were clearly different.  Only had the single-barrel gauss guns.

 

You're totally right.  And manually reboxing stuff makes total sense IN CHINA or where labour's cheap.

 

So I dunno what's up anymore, mystery is not solved, case is re-opened.  But we still now know write-downs are a thing.

[N1SB]

On 1/17/2025 at 6:32 AM, TheArtilleryman said:

We recently took the trip to Warhammer World in Nottingham. My son had £100 of birthday money to spend but despite a long time browsing he didn’t buy anything because of the prices. Even being in actual Warhammer World with every model you can possibly think of in front of him, he was like “nah, I can get it cheaper online.”

 

This great.  The term is "fiscal discipline" but this is just proper respect for money.  Whether it's £100 or £100,000, same winning mindset.

 

Good job instilling this into your kids.  It's hard to teach, gotta lead by example.  Was it your eldest or your middle son?

Edited January 19 by N1SB

[N1SB]

3 hours ago, darkhorse0607 said:

I do wonder if they allow Store Managers to do back channel deals with each other though, to help their inventory levels

 

You're right, it might not be GW-wide policy, it might just be our region.  Ours absolutely does this, as his regional colleagues.

 

It might be a teamwork thing.  East Asians, very communal management style.  It's to a point where we're in Hong Kong, we got lots of Mainland Chinese tourists, our store manager might push business back to Mainland China instead of closing the sale himself.  Like we had a little Shanghainese business lady, we SO sold her on Warhammer for her son, but she's pretty petite and we didn't want to haul a YUGE box back, our redshirt literally gave her the business card for the Shanghai store...she still wanted to buy from him.

 

It might also be a turn-a-blind-eye thing.  It was the Middle Earth game's new edition, I put in an order for the Dead Men of Dunharrow (you know how Warhammer Stores don't stock much LotR stuff), our redshirt looked at the demo set that he was painting up that included those very Oathbreakers, turned to me and said, "Yo hol' up Imma get you a box."  He basically gave me the Dead Men sprues from the demo set, so I can paint them up right away, then he'd take my order and replenish his demo models.

 

(The best part, he actually found a LotR box, like he was recreating the entire experience.  All I missed was the baggie for the bases, lol.)

 

So with the Dead Men from the demo set, he probably violated all sorts of GW policy, not selling but giving an advance with the sacred demo models.  But it was to delight a customer AND it made no material difference, since he couldn't paint the demo set that fast, and then he got me to demo the game with him in front of other customers.

 

AND...you know, all successful salesperson do stuff they're not supposed to anyway.  Because if they followed every rule, that person would make zero sales.

[TheArtilleryman]

4 hours ago, N1SB said:

 

This great.  The term is "fiscal discipline" but this is just proper respect for money.  Whether it's £100 or £100,000, same winning mindset.

 

Good job instilling this into your kids.  It's hard to teach, gotta lead by example.  Was it your eldest or your middle son?

Middle son, 14. Can’t say it’s direct teaching but it’s the same thing I do so I guess I’ll take some credit :)

[ZeroWolf]

7 hours ago, N1SB said:

 

 

You were totally right, lol.  So 8th ed, the tinted sprues, dead giveaway.  Wasn't so sure with 9th.

 

I fished out my 9th ed Recruit Edition and Imperium magazine with Necrons, seeking to prove you WRONG.

 

The Necron sprues in the Imperium magazine were clearly different.  Only had the single-barrel gauss guns.

 

You're totally right.  And manually reboxing stuff makes total sense IN CHINA or where labour's cheap.

 

So I dunno what's up anymore, mystery is not solved, case is re-opened.  But we still now know write-downs are a thing.

It's a funny thing, looking at it from the outside, it makes sense to us that they would re-box product as it would clear out old stock and allow some money to be made. However turns out that businesses have a logic all their own.

 

Not that this should be a surprise, how many times have we been saying GW should take an obvious course of action (be it  businesses decision, a lore decision or game development decision) only for them to avoid it and do something completely different. The business world is like narina to me sometimes!

[The Praetorian of Inwit]

Competition and a terrible web store and big stock issues hurting them online. If people go elsewhere surely GW is aware that they will also then be exposed to other gaming systems, most of which are much cheaper?

 

Throwing away so much stock. So wasteful and just another example of how abhorrent capitalism really is. 

[Dark Shepherd]

23 hours ago, The Praetorian of Inwit said:

Competition and a terrible web store and big stock issues hurting them online. If people go elsewhere surely GW is aware that they will also then be exposed to other gaming systems, most of which are much cheaper?

 

Throwing away so much stock. So wasteful and just another example of how abhorrent capitalism really is. 

I tried to look at brown contrast paints on the webstore the other day. The site basically insisted I look at spray paints or bust, if I went via paint menu. If I searched contrast I got 6 random paints. Its :cuss:

[Dark Shepherd]

GW broke their share price record again last week, close to £143 per share, valueing company at almost £4.75 billion/$5.9 billion

 

From what I can tell, Directors and major.shareholders have been sitting on their stock since late 2023