There’s a chance Games Workshop may have spent close to a million bucks on something that seems pretty wasteful if you ask us…
In a recent development, Games Workshop might have spent close to a million dollars on air-shipping its entire new release stock of Solar Auxilia battle group starter boxes to the United States. What’s even more surprising is that they did a whopping three months prior to the release date even!
Games Workshop May Have Wasted a Million Bucks On This
Initially, we received reports of blank stickers covering up a UPS shipping label in cases of Solar Auxilia battle group starter boxes from a concerned retailer. We checked with nearly two dozen more stores, and from the looks of it, Games Workshop appears to have air-shipped the entire release stock for these Battlegroups over from the UK.
And yes, it was shockingly expensive.
Here is what retailers noticed: a faded yet still readable label “covered up” by a blank shipping sticker. Running the tracking number through the UPS website, you can see that they air-shipped cases of 5 battle groups directly from the UK to Memphis, Tennessee.
Castle Donington is outside of Nottingham near the Games Workshop East Midlands facility.
With the label still visible on the box, we were able to look at the tracking for the packages. As you can see, these arrived in just two days from the UK to the USA.
Show Me The Carfax!
According to the UPS consumer shipping calculator, these are the air shipping rates from Nottingham to Memphis. Each case of five Solar Auxilia boxes weighed 17 lbs, but the dimensions of the package appear to have made it 24 lbs because of volumetric shipping.
So it looks like the cheapest retail price to ship these was $631 a case, but for some reason, Games Workshop may have elected for the “Saver” option, which strangely cost $40 more.
As you can see, they picked the saver option instead of the expedited (in red) option; which cost $677.93 each. We can assume from allocation numbers (and past releases) that they sent about 8,000 battle group boxes to the USA, with five coming per case. This means they could have shipped as many as 1,600 cases in total. The question is, how much did they spend on sending these by air?
1,600 x $677.93 = $1,084,688
Now, we would assume they got some “high-volume” corporate discount. So let’s look at the price for 15% off, which still means they paid $921,984.80 to get them to the US. Even if they get 20% off the public rates, they may have spent $867,750.40.
Again, this isn’t the wildest thing ever, but it just seems very strange when you have a release planned this far ahead of time not to float it on a boat across the Atlantic Ocean…
Does it Really Even Matter?
Well, that is a good question. Consider the $210 price tag and the fact that GW has a super high profit margin without shipping. However, the price of shipping battlegroup now makes up about half the cost of the box in this scenario.
This again begs the question: Why would they send them by air? Did they not have the production run ready on time? Perhaps GW somehow forgot to ship these by boat earlier in 2023?
Maybe this somehow actually is the best way for GW to get products to the US for release windows “on the fly.”
It just seems strange for GW to spend this much money to ship over products to the US before the preview for them at LVO had even occurred, and even harder to imagine that they couldn’t ship these battlegroup boxes by boat for much cheaper.
At the end of the day, we will probably never know why they possibly spent a million bucks on two-day air shipping products to the US three months early. It may just be another fascinating footnote into the things that happen behind the scenes at Games Workshop.
What do you think about GW air shipping these cases and possibly spending nearly a million bucks doing it?
Let us know in the comments of our Facebook Hobby Group or our new Discord server. Make sure to enter the latest monthly giveaway for FREE today!
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About the Author: Rob Baer
Rob Baer
Job Title: Managing Editor
Founded Spikey Bits in 2009
Socials: Rob Baer on Facebook and @catdaddymbg on X
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 has won many Warhammer 40k Tournaments over the years, including the Adepticon Team Tournament and American Team Tournaments, and is on a first-name basis with almost every major company in the space.
He’s all gaming all the time. With over 30 years of experience in retail and distribution, Rob knows all the products and exactly which ones are the best. 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 1908s, 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.
