Tuesday, June 13, 2023

Games Workshop's Confusing Business Model

 

Games Workshop, meanwhile, has a significant business model which, for the life of me I do not understand. Most new releases get announced the week before the release date, which has been on Saturday for most of the past decade. Especially on highly anticipated releases, there are often caps on the quantity a store can order. The recent Kill Team Ashes of Faith set had a cap of two units on it. While we had to turn away a few customers that wanted one, I shudder at thinking about how stores with much larger Warhammer 40,000 customer bases dealt with the customers they had to turn away.

The problem here is another supply chain snafu, this one self-created by Games Workshop though. By not announcing releases with a reasonable amount of lead time, stores do not have enough time to determine how much interest there is in the new release with customers only having about a week to find out about it. More lead time would allow us and GW to better judge product demand (I am still sitting on copies of Dominion).  With Leviathan, we have no idea what is in it or what it will cost, making budgeting funds to purchase copies pretty difficult, especially after just having paid for Pokemon : Paldea Evolved, Shatterpoint and Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth.  Retailers knew about those and could allocate funds. With Leviathan, stores are flying blind.

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