What’s the point in GW releases?

[holly 12044xp 2]

So the new T’au boarding patrol is up for pre-order today. Pre-orders open at 10am.

this is the GW website at 9:59am.

is this incompetence from them or do they genuinely enjoy peeing off their customers?

it’s kinda ridiculous

[sundancer 42985xp 8]

They have driven the game of FOMO so far off the cliff it’s not even funny anymore…

[bloodmoonorcParticipant 1763xp 4]

Same for the Ork collection. I would assume they commit to a set allocation of units based on projected sales. Those units will be based around the plastic, instructions, decals but also box manufacture that needs to be slotted into a production schedule.
The issue here seems more related to getting those projections wrong, again. I would assume that once they sort out another production cycle they’ll be available once more. Some of these issues have been discussed on The Painting Phase.

[redscopeParticipant 2718xp 5]

The problem is the factory cannot keep up with the demand. Which considering they built a second factory just a few years ago might seem a surprize but in lock down the sales went up 35% in just a year. Its not dropping down just increasing at a slower pace demand is way above what they can produce at the moment.

They are struggling to find slots in the production to keep the lines they have in stock as well as making all the new boxes, 10th edition which no doubt it what they have been making for the last 6 months.

The lockdown is still having an impact because they work on a 18 months advance cycle we are still about 3 months behind schedule of releases so we are seeing a lot of timelines become shorted.

 

[wolfie65Participant 1238xp 6]

The point is to make as much money as possible, as fast as possible. The technique of artificially creating buying panic started with car dealerships – BUY NOW ! SUCH A SALE WILL NEVER COME AGAIN !!! – and has, over the past 30 years or so expanded to pretty much all merchants.

The thing about it is that these originally false claims have, against the odds, become sort of true in some cases.

I have noticed that if I don’t buy article X NOW – now that I see it in a store or on a website –  it may very well be gone and no longer available in a few months, weeks, days. Then, I will have to hunt for it and pay astronomical ‘collector’s’ prices on sites like Fleabay. Even paperback books, which used to be dirt cheap just a couple of years ago now cost 10 times their original retail price, in some cases -and that’s used……

I’m not sure how a company would benefit from creating artificial scarcity of a product they had just released, but I’m sure the bean counters at Nomad Investments – the major shareholder of what used to be GW – know……

[flatbattery 8265xp 5]

Incorrect forecasting, scalpers, inability to produce high numbers due to demand of other products. Could be any of these or all of these.

I doubt they’d purposely restrict making more money without a valid reason that would please investors.

 

[phaidknott 7023xp 4]

I personally feel a LOT of GW’s problems come from the fact they keep releasing “limited” edition box sets etc. If GW went back to just having a line item available in ONE box/blister (like they used to back in the 90s) then it would be easier for them to schedule production AND (perhaps more importantly) allow stockists to keep items in stock for their customers.

 

The fact GW do these fancy “pre-order” box sets where some new miniatures are ONLY available in that box set (although they may be released down the road a year later) causes no end of frustration with the customers/ Customers have to spend to buy a BIG box of minis to access probably about 1/3rd of the contents that they really want (annoying), AND then have to jump through hoops on release day fighting against the scalpers running “bot software” to snap up the limited availability within micro-seconds of it going live.

 

Customers need a Stalinist purge (well perhaps not literally) on GW marketing dept, as perhaps they have too many “bright” ideas for GW’s own good 🙁

[wolfie65Participant 1238xp 2]

There are MANY companies that need a Stalinist purge….and most of them have nothing to do with gaming.

While GW were never my favorite – prices were always high, even as early as the late 70s/early 80s when they weren’t even synonymous with Citadel yet. their marketing strategies always somewhat overly aggressive and ‘bullying’ – something I did like a lot about them was their archive service.

You could call the Mail Order Trolls and get any figures – including very old ones – and random parts of figures – a wing here, a head there, someone’s club, someone else’s left leg – cast on demand (metal, naturally) and sold at prices that weren’t completely out of this solar system. If memory serves, that went bye-bye sometime in the early 00’s, right around the time EVERYTHING became plastic sprues……

[ced1106Participant 6224xp 4]

If only there were pre-order platforms where you could take orders for a window of 30 days, then ship product to customer 1.5 years later. 😛

[iceeagle85Participant 4967xp 2]

I don’t think GW didn’t produce enough or had wrong forecasts concerning the demand.

These boxes are limited because the offer a discount, so they probably didn’t produce that much.
if this is a good business strategy or not I can’t say, they do always sell out though.

[bubbles15Participant 2308xp 1]

This sort of thing comes up regularly. It is a simple (although complicated) balance of production at a cost point to demand. If they get it wrong, they’re sat with old product that won’t shift. Get it wrong the other way and they sell out and lose sales. None of this is ideal, planned or desirable by Workshop.

Look at 9th edition – the Indomitus box. Websites crashed due to demand. They had to print more at a later date. The cost of doing that, with physical product is immense. Heck, in a bindery changing the plates of a book to a fresh ones is nearly an 8 hour downtime. With 24 books being churned out over 8 lanes every 12 seconds that’s a massive loss of cash as there’s no product to sell.

Therefore, please – please – stop complaining. No one is being spiteful or cruel. No  one is intentionally trying to scam you. It is an error of capacity planning.

Heck, imagine you’re on the other side: You make 1000 of a box that cost you £50 to make. You sell it for 100. Your orders go nuts and at the end of the day, 100 customer can’t buy your product. You’ve just lost £5000. Scale that up a thousand fold and the losses are almost painful.

[holly 12044xp 2]

When pre-orders for a product open at 10am and are already sold out at 9:59am, then absolutely I will complain.

im aware they are not being spiteful or cruel – but it is a ridiculous situation.

[wolfie65Participant 1238xp 1]

That’s what you get when everything is run by computers…..

[bubbles15Participant 2308xp 1]

@carlospicter – have you considered that your clock was wrong? That actually the item hadn’t sold out, but would come up for sale as soon as the – almost certainly an update script – completed?

I don’t see the value in complaining. There are too many variables involved. Is it annoying? Yes. can you – or we – do anything about it? No.

Wolfie – I wish more things were run by AI. It’d put a stop to 90% of the stupidity forced on us by government for a start.

[holly 12044xp 5]

Timings would be set by the clock on the web server, not my own phone – so my phone time (which I dont have to adjust) was correct. A live chat with GW staff on the website confirmed it was already sold out.

compaining due to poor service, or when a company promises one thing then dies another is perfectly legitimate.

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