Mysterious new shipments arriving at local stores may prove that Games Workshop is out of touch with customers in ways no one had considered.
GW recently sent all stores in North America a mysterious box that seems to promote direct ordering. Overall, this is just an extremely odd move by GW that shows they aren’t in touch with the stores carrying their products.
Mystery Store Shipments are Proof Games Workshop is Out of Touch
The signage was listed as Trade: customer order POS suite 2023
This box of signage asking customers to directly order products from their store was sent to retailers this week with no notification or accompanying documentation.
As you probably know, there have been heavy allocations on pretty much everything since February 2023, which is a problem for stores. However, when retailers order direct from the GW webstore, they also make less money than if the item was in stock to order through their trade rep at wholesale cost.
At this point, stores are trading larger shelf space and potentially play areas for higher-margin products from Games Workshop. When stores order from the GW webstore, they make less profit and, in some ways, become a showroom for GW living rent-free.
At least cigarette and other manufacturers pay for shelf space at big box and corner store retailers. Games Workshop doesn’t even do that, and depending on who you ask, they may directly compete with those very same “partner-stores” via their own website and marketing.
We think paying for shelf space would be the least they can do these days with all their new release allocations to stores.
Card Kingdom’s Retail Display for Magic the Gathering Card Game
Then if they want stores to order direct for their customers, at least pay for the advertisement space so the stores get something out of it instead of lower margins. Especially when GW is basically competing with trading cards that take up a fraction of both shelf space and play area. Perhaps more importantly, while cards have a lower margin, they sell exponentially faster.
Another thing that stores receiving this kit mentioned to us is that seeing these “Billboards” for ordering directly could inspire customers to order online instead of from that very store. Which, of course, cuts the store out totally and gives GW maximum profit.
This is just kind of a weird flex from Games Workshop to send these kits to their self-titled “partner stores” without notification or explanation. Even weirder is that they are asking stores to do something that directly competes with their profits while hindering their ability to order new releases that are the fastest-turning easiest profit items from them.
What do you think about Games Workshop sending these signage kits to stores unannounced- are they out of touch?
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About the Author: Rob Baer
Rob Baer
Job Title: Founder, Publisher, & Managing Editor
Founded Spikey Bits In 2009
Socials: Rob Baer on Facebook and @catdaddymbg on X
Bio: Virginia restless, miniature painter & cat dad. He blames LEGOs for all this, as there was something about those little-colored blocks that started it all. Spikey Bits started with Rob trying to stay motivated to hobby on his backlog of projects and share his knowledge with others during the early blogging era.
Scale model hobbyist in the 80s, miniature wargamer, and trading card player ever since. He’s played every edition of Warhammer 40k and Warhammer Fantasy since 5th Edition, but Titans of all sizes will always be his favorite! It’s even rumored that his hobby vault rivals the Solemnance Galleries, containing rulebooks filled with lore from editions long past, ancient packs of black-bordered Magic Cards, and minatures made of both pewter and resin.
