September 2026 - Price Rises

[Joe]

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• UK Price Adjustment 09_26

 

Price rise was anticipated at some stage due to various cost-related reasons (thanks America). Worth checking now if you're planning on buying anything in the near future.

 

MKIV Tactical Squad is going from £54.50 to £57.00, for example.

[Lathe Biosas]

Ugh.

 

I used to joke that I should just buy the 50 dollar Dawn of War box set and simply play with Bladeguard Veterans, Eradicators with Melta Rifles, and Chaplains. Now that I hear about another price increase, that might be my only option. 

[phandaal]

 

Pay up! 

[RWJP]

For anyone who is interested, I edited the spreadsheets for the UK and Germany to get an idea of price increases and percentages: 
 

UK https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HT-Mzz2KfSjg-FOS7g6jurTFVll_Ze6o/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=100791033454102438652&rtpof=true&sd=true

 

Germany https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QilUzo1NqOfi1aj817mCr3xCyBO5yrFs/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=100791033454102438652&rtpof=true&sd=true

 

Price increase comes in at an average of about 4% overall, or a change of roughly £1-£3 on many products. There are of course some higher and some lower.

[Kenzaburo]

Thanks for the price lists. I think this might have been the first time in a number of years that I have looked at original GW prices. And hoo boy, was I shocked. A Land Raider Crusader is supposed to go up from 90 EUR to 95 EUR. But I did a double take: It is 90 EUR(!!!) right now? Checked the Warhammer Website and the price checks out. Are you kidding me? The last time I bought a Land Raider it was 65 EUR. 

 

Even worse, the Ork Battle Wagon is supposed to go 107.50 EUR from some price over 100 EUR. I bought that kit in a GW about 10-12 years ago for something between 55 to 60 EUR. We are close to doubling those prices now. But same goes for most of the vehicles - Devilfishes and Hammerheads are crazy now. Man, I miss the times when I could get a standarad transport for somewhere between 25 to 30 Euros - which is still more in line with the price that I think that kit is worth.

[lhg033]

These justify my more recent impulse purchases! (almost!)

 

I was clearly doing it to save money on thinks I want in the future.

I am particularly pleased I picked up an older baneblade with the weapons sprue as it is a saving of £5 plus the extra stealth tax of the £20 for the additional sprue they removed!

I am surprised i dont see the stompa on that list (or I am being blind!) - I am still waiting for stock for the one I ordered.

 

For remaining purchases I want to get, there are things I want to get and across the different kits it is likely to be around £10-20 extra which is rubbish but unlikely to make me rush out and buy things now to just dump them on the pile of shame for later.  If anythink it makes me think I'll wait for a bit to decide if I actually may change my mind on the models and get other things instead.

 

The biggest thing is It is making me rethink getting any more Imperial knights at any point - these would have purely been to round out my collection to have options or any more armigers. 

 

[Mazer Rackham]

*Sees outrageous prices*

 

*Stares at his Ebay bids*

 

My wallet:

 

 

 

[N1SB]

Having recently read their Full-Year Financial Report, I had previously felt they built enough of a buffer to avoid another pricing update.

 

We'll know for sure in 5 months' time, when they release their NEXT Half-Year Report, but for now I'm TOTALLY putting them On Watch.

 

As I think this is a neat graphic, reminder: the US tariffs on GW (and everyone) was like the biggest nerf to GW if it was a Balance Update:

 

 

(Actual figures, just dressed up to look like an old Field Munitorum Manual so you feel the same shock GW felt if it was your army list.)

[Jukkiz]

almost 70% cross margins and they´re still rising prices? 

Yeah... this is starting to smell

 

[Indy Techwisp]

I feel like people keep reacting to GW price increases like this isn't an issue present in nearly every category of market at the moment due to one very large market making selling anything to them prohibitively expensive for no reason.

[darkhorse0607]

52 minutes ago, N1SB said:

Having recently read their Full-Year Financial Report, I had previously felt they built enough of a buffer to avoid another pricing update.

 

 

 

 

You forgot the most important factor. GW execs get the same buzzy feeling upping their prices that we do when we all buy models even though we have backlogs.

 

Because at almost 70% cross gross margins, they could afford not to bump the prices this year (which they've already done this year on some stuff), but they don't want to. It's the same thing as every year. They just have a different reasoning, rather than upping to cover staff/new factories/whatever, they're using the tariffs. I am not saying that the tariffs aren't an issue, but, they aren't putting the trade gun to their heads and having to up costs or close. They're doing it to make sure their 70% profit margin is nice and padded. 

 

Now if you'll all excuse me, I'll be snorting plastic shavings off my $90USD MKIV squad.  

[N1SB]

59 minutes ago, Jukkiz said:

almost 70% cross margins and they´re still rising prices? 

 

So that was the Half-Year, GW was reacting to the US tariffs, which were struck down by their supreme court.  By the Full-Year:

 

 

You're right in that it went even beyond what they normally to, to 71.1%.  GW is in the process of reclaiming tariffs, but imho DO believe they'll be re-instated, as do I because it's to prevent "transshipping" or countries like China getting around tariffs meant for them by going through the UK, for example.

 

In the past, GW has gone even further up than that, but it's a blip, like they'll just let it settle a little below 70%.

 

59 minutes ago, Indy Techwisp said:

I feel like people keep reacting to GW price increases like this isn't an issue present in nearly every category of market at the moment due to one very large market making selling anything to them prohibitively expensive for no reason.

 

I've seen that too, like people saying how dare a certain company raise its prices when everything else in the world are getting more expensive.  It's like they forget such a company operates in the same world we all live in, so its costs are going up along with ours.  It's as if products are made in the Impossible City in the Webway that's in a different dimension.

 

It's VERY possible GW already sees increases in, say, carriage i.e. transport costs because of fuel prices, so THAT's what I'd scrutinise next report.

 

And to your point, I've always wondered why energy costs for manufacturing isn't listed here.  Materials, like plastic, have.  It's an odd duck.

 

57 minutes ago, darkhorse0607 said:

You forgot the most important factor. GW execs get the same buzzy feeling upping their prices that we do when we all buy models even though we have backlogs.

 

There's also an exec in charge of exactly this chart now, too.  That position was added a year ago, I think.

 

No sales or even marketing exec wants prices to increase.  It's not just bad press or upsetting customers, it's that it's a deal breaker, you already expect a sales, you change anything, a customer can pull out.  We hate it when some guy in finance is strategising by spreadsheet and screws up our deal.  And I think it's this new position here.

 

Man, whoever that exec is in charge of "core gross margin", he's got some juicy kompromat on other GW execs, Brother.

[Jings]

33 minutes ago, Jukkiz said:

almost 70% cross margins and they´re still rising prices? 

Yeah... this is starting to smell

 

 

I ain't like it but they're a plc. They're selling a product with such a high demand it's generating genuine scarcity of their products. They have literally no reason not to bump up prices when they can't produce to meet demand. 

 

Obviously not great for consumers, but it is what it is and I can't see it stopping. 

 

[MoriyaSchism]

This is getting out of hand. I strongly believe this price increase is completely unnecessary. They increased prices when the first tariffs were imposed and then that round of tariffs got shot down by the courts and now we're hearing reports of other multi-national companies getting tariff refunds from the US government because of it. This feels like another tax on the consumer to cover the losses caused by some flopped or underperforming products. We now have three price hikes Games Workshop has justified using outside factors that will probably end up becoming permanent: Covid lockdown, tariffs 1 and now tariffs 2. 

 

This is starting to remind me of things from the video games industry with the company cooking the books for the shareholders and trying to squeeze as much value out of every property they own or trying to tax the consumer to patch budgetary holes caused by released that didn't meet projected sales targets. This all just speculation on my part but all this feels eerily similar to what happened to Zenimax/Bethesda while they were looking for a private equity firm to sell to before Microsoft snapped all of it up. In the N1SB thread on the financial report there is a list of things Games Workshop has done to make up for missed targets or to try and make the products cheaper on their end while still selling them for quite a bit of money. 

On 8/7/2026 at 7:37 PM, N1SB said:

 

Tariffs Are the Biggest Nerf GW Faced

 

This section is shorter yet MUCH MORE significant, because I can illustrate my point well here.  Consider recently:

 

• New Drop Pod that NO ONE asked for
• Repackaged Baneblade that our astute Brothers and Sisters caught
• They ruined Agrax Earthshade, I can tell you that 1st hand, I'm still miffed
• A smaller...cheaper...edition of Necromunda than expected
• Keep an eye out on similar changes in the future

 

That's what's happening with GW and their products right now.  They're forced into these unhelpful cuts, like cutting out sprues or plastic where the Drop Pod still resembles a Drop Pod, a new edition of Necromunda without the famous multi-story terrain, and Agrax Earthshade is...brown water.  My secret sauce turned into sewage.

 

That tariff WAS overturned, but GW believes is its sudden yet inevitable return; they mentioned they do NOT consider it to be an "exceptional" i.e. one-off.  That belief is reasonable because the US is not out to tariff the UK per se, it's worldwide, to prevent countries it's targeting like China to "transship" through the UK, etc.

 

I remain optimistic of the good news of no more pricing updates until another shock, like oil runs out needed for plastic and electricity to melt them, the bad news is it's because GW already charged us for the pricing updates while modifying their products...and I'm sure more shocks will happen sooner or later.

 

In the meantime, I expect new products to be not exactly smaller, but more modular, like the new Necromunda is Necromunda: Skirmish.  Lighter products so they don't put all the eggs in a single big basket that they have to pay tariffs on, things a bit more piecemeal so GW can send it over to the US in a more Made To Order format.

On 8/8/2026 at 1:55 PM, MoriyaSchism said:

I think Kill Team can be added to that list. Boxes became smaller without much change in price, big terrain releases are limited to one per season and mechanisms were introduced to try to shift slightly less popular monster/light vehicle products from beyond the Kill Team range using new Kill Team rules. Maybe include some of the less popular sub-factions or models as NPOs in other boxes, the Beast Snaggas in the most recent box felt like that. 

 

As for examples of products that didn't do too well I'll bring up Warhammer Quest Dark Water which launched in a broken state with a hard lock on the final encounter of Act 1. Imagine that in modern video game turns. There's also signs that a couple of the big Age of Sigmar releases underperformed. The third edition of Heresy 3.0 having a launch that looked a bit bumpy, it having a mixed reception after one year and a few of the big products tied to the Heresy selling slower than usual. My guess is that the gaps in the predicted sales numbers and the tariff costs are being shifted to the already buying customers to patch a few holes until the next earnings report so they can tell their shareholders that Warhammer is doing better than ever. I'm going to bring up some things that aren't directly related to this post but I feel they are still signs of overall decline and probably have some parallels in the video games industry. 

Recently I've been working on the old plastic Grey Knights from nearly 15 years ago when CAD sculpts were still somewhat fresh. These models made me realized how little things have progressed in terms of miniature design with so many shortcuts taken on things such as limb positions, weapons placements and cuts to made to fit the parts on the sprue. You had assembled parts clipping into each other (Storm bolter and elbow armour). With a real physical sculpt and some sort of physical master there is no shortcut of merging a piece into another piece and having it clip into itself like a poorly rigged video game model. The CAD sculptors don't care. It's just another contract and there's no love or attention to detail. Even people like Maxime don't seem to care judging from his design notes on the new Noise Marines he designed, where they got reworked from their original concept to just Slaaneshi Havocs with big guns, regular pistol grips on the guns and heavy armour.

 

"Noise Marines are equivalents to Havocs: long-range support fighters who plant themselves in the ground with heavier poses, and armour that feels more substantial with raised gorgets. We put a lot of work into designing the screamer pistols, sonic blasters and blastmasters."

"These are weapons – not instruments – so they needed to feel threatening, with the instrumental elements there to add textures. The dials, levers, tuning parts and gargoyle muzzles lend them that sonic element, while the rest of the design is centered on being guns."

 

What gives? I thought he was THE Slaanesh guy. Since when are Noise Marines big time gun guys? Did he not read the Codex entries on the faction he was redesigning? 

 

At times it feels like there's no sculpting going on, just rigging of CAD dollies into poses with no care for real space when you consider all the clipping and smearing that happens to the models. Just gives off the impression of egoism and being lazy. Old styles are being dangled in front of us like a set of jingling keys or as a form of cheap fanservice to help swallow the bitter pill of what the current Space Marine range is like ("We put on this Mark VII helmet on the new rubbish Eradicators, remember devastators?") or the redesign of Krieg where they hardly look like any of the classic art. 

 

A few examples of this clipping and the shortcuts taken during design: 

• Most Guard kits that feature a shouldered rifle. I first noticed this when I bought the original Kill Team 2.0 starter with the Ork Kommandos and the Kriegers. Some of the Krieg infantry had their rifle stocks clipping into their biceps and chests. No account was taken for space when sculping these. A CAD doll of a Krieger and a rifle model were made and they were simply twisted into place using the software. Who cares if it looks good?
• Any kit which has a weapon with a rifle sling. I've encountered this on multiple kits but the first one I saw was Dark Imperium and the Plague Marine box. The plague Marines had miniatures where the sling was looped through the front sight of the weapon instead of the sling loop at the front. The Kill Team Krieg set had models with properly looped rifle slings, but it also had rifles where the sling was attached to the front sight (really sloppy). The newest intercessors from the Armageddon box set have one squad member who has the rifle sling attached to the top of the rifle while two of the other squad members have it attached to their proper sling points. 
• Any model that has a rifle being held in the off hand by the foregrip. The original Intercessor and Primaris Sternguard boxes were particularly bad with that, there's a whole chunk just eaten out of the rifle simply because the arm is clipping into it instead of being held properly. It's comical when you see the bit from the Sternguard kit. 
  
   
• The limited edition Terminator Chaplain with the Crozius that had its haft clipping through his hand, forearm and vambrace. 
• The legs of the Plague Marines from Dark Imperium and the Plague Marine reinforcements kit. If you own some of them do me a favour and look at their legs from the rear, you'll see what I mean. The armour was a smeary mess and if you wanted something that looked good you'd have to do your best to carve out the proper armour plates from the messed up and smeared CAD sculpt. 

This is a bit of an off topic digression but I feel like it was needed to prove a point. That there's some physical issues too, not just issues with the game mechanics of the published games. Not too different from video games that launch with glaring issues. 

 

5 hours ago, Kenzaburo said:

Thanks for the price lists. I think this might have been the first time in a number of years that I have looked at original GW prices. And hoo boy, was I shocked. A Land Raider Crusader is supposed to go up from 90 EUR to 95 EUR. But I did a double take: It is 90 EUR(!!!) right now? Checked the Warhammer Website and the price checks out. Are you kidding me? The last time I bought a Land Raider it was 65 EUR. 

 

Even worse, the Ork Battle Wagon is supposed to go 107.50 EUR from some price over 100 EUR. I bought that kit in a GW about 10-12 years ago for something between 55 to 60 EUR. We are close to doubling those prices now. But same goes for most of the vehicles - Devilfishes and Hammerheads are crazy now. Man, I miss the times when I could get a standarad transport for somewhere between 25 to 30 Euros - which is still more in line with the price that I think that kit is worth.

I remember not too long ago I bought an FW Grey Knights Land Raider for 80 Euro. It's crazy we're now paying Forge World prices for regular plastic kits without the bonus of getting spare vehicle bits from the entire sprues that were included with the upgrade kit and FW existing to expand on the universe with things that aren't exactly needed but made the setting feel more lived in and special. Now everything is geared towards becoming a tabletop equivalent of an e-sport, a focus that simply doesn't fit Warhammer 40,000 in my mind. Instead of creating multiple formats to separate tournament play from the narrative aspect of Warhammer everyone is getting funneled into tournament play. Such decisions are making Warhammer feel cramped and are making the setting feel smaller. The loss of passion with the closure of Forge World is evident in the products we get and I believe that the so-called Specialist Games Studio that came after is staffed mostly by people who don't really care or those who think they know better than the teams who made Imperial Armour and Heresy what they were in the past. The rest are uncaring contractors who come and go as is evident by some of the instagram profiles and posts of ex-GW contractors who pulled double duty as Necromunda and Heresy sculptors. Games Workshop in general seems afraid of its own legacy because the scans of old books available on Warhammer Plus lack the rules sections which harms the digitized versions of the Imperial Armour books because even the rules sections in those had flavour text next to the data sheets. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Emperor Ming]

Gw: Do you know how expensive the gold plated toilet rolls are for the executive bathroom! of course we have to rise the prices!

 

[phandaal]

42 minutes ago, N1SB said:

No sales or even marketing exec wants prices to increase.

 

I've worked with plenty of both and I can tell you for 100% honest fact, Sales and Marketing executives love it. Prices going up often means they are able to hit their own KPIs more easily. Higher prices also mean bigger commissions if they are still on that kind of plan, and higher company revenue means higher executive bonuses if they are on that kind of plan. The only thing that would bother them is if revenue went down because prices were too high.

 

And, as we have seen for years now, GW raising prices does not cause their sales to drop.

 

Sales will boom, people will celebrate GW's success, GW will apply another price increase, sales will boom, people will celebrate GW's success, et cetera, ad nauseum, ad astra, ipso facto leviosa. Them's the breaks.

[Jukkiz]

42 minutes ago, Jings said:

 

I ain't like it but they're a plc. They're selling a product with such a high demand it's generating genuine scarcity of their products. They have literally no reason not to bump up prices when they can't produce to meet demand. 

 

Obviously not great for consumers, but it is what it is and I can't see it stopping. 

 

They could keep up with demand if they didn´t make half the space marines alone, or single, one time fomo boxes or single miniatures, never to be sold again. They whine about machinery costing thousands, yet spend it for another singular model that barely sees release or is part of Fomo box with 5year old models and never again as separate release. 

[Halandaar]

6 hours ago, Kenzaburo said:

Thanks for the price lists. I think this might have been the first time in a number of years that I have looked at original GW prices. And hoo boy, was I shocked. A Land Raider Crusader is supposed to go up from 90 EUR to 95 EUR. But I did a double take: It is 90 EUR(!!!) right now? Checked the Warhammer Website and the price checks out. Are you kidding me? The last time I bought a Land Raider it was 65 EUR. 

 

Even worse, the Ork Battle Wagon is supposed to go 107.50 EUR from some price over 100 EUR. I bought that kit in a GW about 10-12 years ago for something between 55 to 60 EUR. We are close to doubling those prices now. But same goes for most of the vehicles - Devilfishes and Hammerheads are crazy now. Man, I miss the times when I could get a standarad transport for somewhere between 25 to 30 Euros - which is still more in line with the price that I think that kit is worth.

 

This has always been my beef with GW price rises. I can forgive a ~1-3% price uplift on a product that came out last year to align the profit margin with the increased cost of production, because I presume the design/setup cost is still being amortised. The same uplift for a 25-year old kit that has covered it's costs a hundred times over is a different proposition. 

[Gamiel]

2 hours ago, N1SB said:

I've seen that too, like people saying how dare a certain company raise its prices when everything else in the world are getting more expensive.  It's like they forget such a company operates in the same world we all live in, so its costs are going up along with ours.  It's as if products are made in the Impossible City in the Webway that's in a different dimension.

 

It's VERY possible GW already sees increases in, say, carriage i.e. transport costs because of fuel prices, so THAT's what I'd scrutinise next report.

 

And to your point, I've always wondered why energy costs for manufacturing isn't listed here.  Materials, like plastic, have.  It's an odd duck.

There is also that GW is in the plastic business and plastic is made from oil and right now we don't know how the oil price will develop.

[Jings]

3 hours ago, Jukkiz said:

They could keep up with demand if they didn´t make half the space marines alone, or single, one time fomo boxes or single miniatures, never to be sold again. They whine about machinery costing thousands, yet spend it for another singular model that barely sees release or is part of Fomo box with 5year old models and never again as separate release. 

 

At this point it's clearly the business model though. Kill Team is a great example. New kit for a system less people play, with new rules for the system people do play, often coupled with what is probably excess stock that they can clear out, and bump the price accordingly. 

 

They can do an initials run on the new model, sell it out, and then I assume they have metrics to estimate efficient volume for the next print run when they do a general release. 

 

I strongly suspect the FOMO marketing is going nowhere. It's on the name. How many of us have bought a box with models we don't really want because it looked like a deal and didn't want to miss out. 

 

It's a whale industry. Best thing you can do really is moderate your Hobby purchases but we all know we aren't doing that lol

3 hours ago, Jukkiz said:

They could keep up with demand if they didn´t make half the space marines alone, or single, one time fomo boxes or single miniatures, never to be sold again. They whine about machinery costing thousands, yet spend it for another singular model that barely sees release or is part of Fomo box with 5year old models and never again as separate release. 

 

At this point it's clearly the business model though. Kill Team is a great example. New kit for a system less people play, with new rules for the system people do play, often coupled with what is probably excess stock that they can clear out, and bump the price accordingly. 

 

They can do an initials run on the new model, sell it out, and then I assume they have metrics to estimate efficient volume for the next print run when they do a general release. 

 

I strongly suspect the FOMO marketing is going nowhere. It's on the name. How many of us have bought a box with models we don't really want because it looked like a deal and didn't want to miss out. 

 

It's a whale industry. Best thing you can do really is moderate your Hobby purchases but we all know we aren't doing that lol

[Isolia]

Just to nuance this, CGR is COGs - Revenue / Revenue (as a %). So, it shows how much a company earns vs how much the pure production cost of their products. It is not EBITDA (which also removes other expenses), nor net profit (which includes all expenses + taxes), and colloquailly, folks tend to confound any margin with profit. 
Not saying GW is not profitable, but confounding their 70% CGR with 70% profit is incorrect. 

 

I also work in an industry directly impacted by oil prices for raw materials, and an average ~5% price hike doens't surprise me one bit for raws + inflation over the past FY here in the UK. If it's necessary is another debate based on their net profit and strategy, but hey, it's a publicly traded company, what did we expect? 
 

Edited Monday at 07:33 PM by Isolia

[Blissful Brushes]

I wish they didn’t raise prices, I’d argue they probably don’t need to but everything is getting very expensive in the UK across the board. Without getting too political, our gov’t haven’t exactly helped big businesses over the last couple of years with increases to NI and stuff like that. Add tariffs, energy costs and hikes to raw materials into the equation you can see why the powers that be might start getting twitchy. 
 

I’d be interested to see a comparison vs other manufacturers in terms of price hikes. GW has and always will be the most expensive kid on the block unfortunately 

[Karhedron]

12 hours ago, Gamiel said:

There is also that GW is in the plastic business and plastic is made from oil and right now we don't know how the oil price will develop.

 

I don't see the conflicts in Ukraine or the Middle East resolving in the near future so I expect oil prices to remain high.

 

Having said that, the price of raw plastic makes up a pretty small amount of their costs. High oil prices have a bigger effect on transportation costs and on the costs of running stores and the factory. In the UK at least, electricity prices are linked to the price of gas (which is also high).

[Kenzaburo]

18 hours ago, phandaal said:

 

I've worked with plenty of both and I can tell you for 100% honest fact, Sales and Marketing executives love it. Prices going up often means they are able to hit their own KPIs more easily. Higher prices also mean bigger commissions if they are still on that kind of plan, and higher company revenue means higher executive bonuses if they are on that kind of plan. The only thing that would bother them is if revenue went down because prices were too high.

 

And, as we have seen for years now, GW raising prices does not cause their sales to drop.

 

Sales will boom, people will celebrate GW's success, GW will apply another price increase, sales will boom, people will celebrate GW's success, et cetera, ad nauseum, ad astra, ipso facto leviosa. Them's the breaks.

As a former head of Marketing I strongly disagree and I really hope not to be an outlier. My target was always to grow the amount of customers and retain as much of that customer base as possible with the least amount of effort, basically. Price rises were never ever fun. They mess with overall customer mood you have painstakingly nurtured and built, they outright annoy people and you have tons of work ahead of you in regards to community management to appease people. There is the incredibly rare justified price rise, where most people would agree that it might be a necessary evil, and even then you got enough complaints heading your way. 

 

But yeah, price rises have never done anything positive for "my" marketing department - just loads of work and tense customer and business partner interactions. Sales department is a different thing, but generally speaking, depending on the percentage of the rise and the reason for it along with overall customer satisfaction at the time, they might have quite the negative view of it themselves.

 

Price rises are not just fun and games, people. And depending on the business they might put quite a bit of stress on the company for a while, at least in some departments. But in some cases they might be necessary. With no real insight I can only guess there must be some larger market or ressource thing to do this. As N1SB clearly showed, it can't just be "We clearly have hit a rut, we are in a downward swing, raise prices to keep things afloat".

[phandaal]

4 hours ago, Kenzaburo said:

As a former head of Marketing I strongly disagree and I really hope not to be an outlier. My target was always to grow the amount of customers and retain as much of that customer base as possible with the least amount of effort, basically. Price rises were never ever fun. They mess with overall customer mood you have painstakingly nurtured and built, they outright annoy people and you have tons of work ahead of you in regards to community management to appease people. There is the incredibly rare justified price rise, where most people would agree that it might be a necessary evil, and even then you got enough complaints heading your way. 

 

But yeah, price rises have never done anything positive for "my" marketing department - just loads of work and tense customer and business partner interactions. Sales department is a different thing, but generally speaking, depending on the percentage of the rise and the reason for it along with overall customer satisfaction at the time, they might have quite the negative view of it themselves.

 

Price rises are not just fun and games, people. And depending on the business they might put quite a bit of stress on the company for a while, at least in some departments. But in some cases they might be necessary. With no real insight I can only guess there must be some larger market or ressource thing to do this. As N1SB clearly showed, it can't just be "We clearly have hit a rut, we are in a downward swing, raise prices to keep things afloat".

 

It could certainly be that the people I have met and worked with are a different breed. The industries I work in might be seeing different kinds of people get to those positions.

 

I can only say that closing in on more years than I realized before writing this, I've never seen a sales person or marketing person complain about prices going up. The closest I have ever seen, on rare occasions, are sales people complaining that internal price suggestions are too high, but that is before those things make it to customers.

 

Telling a customer that the price is going up is more along the lines of "OK yeah we can do that, let's call them and see how it goes." And speaking from the customer side (B2B, not GW kits) I have also been on the receiving end, and the message from the vendor is not met with moral outrage so much as "is this still worth it, do we have leverage to tell them no, what can we negotiate" etc etc.

 

Regarding GW, whatever the reason, they do find justification to increase prices every year. It's not even that controversial honestly. Like I said, to me that is normal business practice for a company that knows its customers are resilient to frequent price increases. I may not like it when looking at the kit prices, and I may personally not believe that the new price is worth it most of the time these days, but it is really not extraordinary that GW does it considering their position.

 

The somewhat amusing part is just that they seem to always do it after announcing how their sales are going gangbusters. "Look how amazing we did, BTW sorry to do this but times are tough so we're gonna have to charge more," year after year after year. That is a little bit funny, y'know?