The CEO of Games Workshop says they will continue to sell out of new releases as Warhammer products become difficult to find.
GW revealed in its 2023 financial report that despite hobbyists still struggling to obtain products, its sales numbers are soaring. However, this appears to be a specific strategy, as revealed by their CEO, and it will not change any time soon.
Their profits were higher, and they paid out more dividends. However, some of the numbers just don’t make sense when you look at product levels in stores and how insufficient allocations have been every month.
This also dovetails with their plan to increase online sales, as more people are seemingly forced to the webstore to buy products instead of going to a local store.
Games Workshop CEO Says They Will Continue To Sell Out of New Releases
The statements come from Games Workshop’s CEO, Kevin Roundtree, on July 24th, 2023.
Online sales increased by 6.7% compared to the same period last year. As noted above, our customers have a lot of options when it comes to shopping for Warhammer online and are able to buy our products both through our own web stores (reported in Online) and through those of independent retailers (reported in Trade).
To continue to be fair to our 6,500 trade partners and to ensure our stock allocation is appropriate, we don’t carry high quantities of new release products on our own online store – so it will nearly always sell out.
This brings up a few issues right off the bat. First, what is a trade partner? Is anyone with a best sellers rack a Trade Partner? Either way, they give numbers for trade partners, which we can use to figure out how much of something they supposedly make.
While they will never actually give out their production numbers, we’ll break down a guess below. But… this strategy of always selling out is creating FOMO for every single one of their releases.
Instead of just making enough for anyone to get them, they seem to want people to scramble, admittedly, while they still make the online sales revenue.
They could also be producing far more than we know and holding whatever they want in reserve for their own web store, keeping the FOMO strategy going. That seems to be why sometimes a second “restock” of products is sometimes available for stores the week after release.
Sadly, it only seems to happen if that release flops, as we saw most recently with the Kroot Hunting Pack Box.
The Production Numbers Don’t Make Sense
In the period, we opened, including relocations, 16 stores. After closing 8 stores, our total number of stores at the end of the period was 526. The performance of each store will be kept under review and any stores that do not meet our financial model will be closed.
Let’s do some math on the store numbers to see possibly how much they are making. We’ll use the Lion release, as it was one of the most anticipated and one of the heaviest allocated.
526 GW Stores +6500 “Trade Partners” = 7000 (roughly). So if you say each store gets only two Lion retinue (which were the caps), this means they only made 14,000 total, not counting thier own Webstore?
As we said, the Lion was one of the most anticipated releases, with rumors for years and years. So, while a production run of 14,000 might seem like a lot (but clearly not enough to meet demand), let’s consider some other numbers.
When we looked at what GW was importing directly from China, they brought roughly 4000 English Language codex books for the Eldar release in just North America alone back in 2020.
If you assume that the NA market accounts for roughly 50% of their sales, a number closer to 10,000 seems like an accurate production estimate of a popular Xenos faction codex book.
At $60 per item, this would generate about half a million dollars in sales.
Assuming again that a faction like Space Marines is twice as popular as the Eldar, you could expect a print run of at least double for their codex books, say around 20,000, which is the exact number we have seen in the past via import manifests.
Perhaps then, it’s not too hard to also assume that model kits sell at least twice as well as a rulebook. That would seem to indicate that a popular model like the Lion should have perhaps been produced at 30,000 units instead of the potentially 14,000-ish that we can logically account for above based on allocation numbers and the CEO’s statements.
So, if these numbers ARE true, GW made fewer Lions for the entire world than their previous production run of codex books for the Eldar? That’s basically GW saying that it’s not a must-have for DA or Space Marines players, and you could literally field him in any army for the 9th edition.
Depending on how you read the incoming port manifest for “components” and who you talk to, the rumor is that 75,000 Leviathan and 100,000 Horus Heresy core set boxes were made. If true, that means they made about nine times the number of those than the Lion.
Looking back at the most hyped releases of 2024, such as the Ork, Custodes, and Chaos Battleforces, along with Kill Team Nightmare, none were available in meaningful quantities.
Worse, as we showed you previously, these were also allocated to roughly two per store, so we know they only made roughly 14,000 of these items.
So, why so “little” of new releases?
Just as Rountree said, Games Workshop wants to sell out of each new release.
Worse, this seems to be the new strategy moving forward, as the allocations might not just be due to warehouse issues; it seems to be a purposeful strategy to make sure every release “sells out” to create FOMO and keep everyone buying…
What do you think about the Games Workshop product sell out and the limited stock we’ve seen all year?
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About the Author: Rob Baer
Rob Baer
Job Title: Managing Editor
Founded Spikey Bits in 2009
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About Rob Baer: Founder, Publisher, & Managing Editor of Spikey Bits, the leading tabletop gaming news website focused on the hobby side of wargaming and miniatures.
Rob also co-founded and currently hosts the Long War Podcast, which has over 350 episodes and focuses on tabletop miniatures gaming, specializing in Warhammer 40k. and spent six years writing for Bell of Lost Souls.
Every year, along with his co-hosts, he helps host the Long War 40k Doubles Tournament at Adepticon and the Long War 40k Doubles at Las Vegas Open, which attracts over 350 players from around the world.
Rob has won many Warhammer 40k Tournaments over the years, including multiple first-place finishes in Warhammer 40k Grand Tournaments over the years and even winning 1st place at the Adepticon 40k Team Tournament.
With over 30 years of experience in retail and distribution, Rob knows all the products and exactly which ones are the best. As a member of GAMA (Game Manufacturers Association), he advocates for gaming stores and manufacturers in these difficult times, always looking for the next big thing to feature for the miniatures hobby, helping everyone to provide the value consumers want.
While he’s played every edition of Warhammer 40k and Warhammer Fantasy (since 5th Edition) and has been hobbying on miniatures since the 1980s, 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 models made of both pewter and resin.
