Gimme them sales

[Lord Logsdon]

Greetings fellow lowly plebes of the GW General Discussion forum!

I was wondering if there's any patterns/trends for GW sales. For example, do they do a black friday online sale or even sales for christmas? I'm trying to plan my next six months of purchases for the army I'm building. I know, I know...I can find better deals elsewhere but...

1) I prefer to buy my models still on their sprue or unassembled which not only lowers the price but puts me in less risk of buying someone's botched assembly job. It also lets me get creative. Sadly I've noticed a lot of the deals on Ebay are assembled minis.

2) I want to semi-support my local GW store since it's the closest place to play games right now. I don't want them to be my sole source but it'd be nice to give them some monetary support when there's good deals, etc.

So I beseech the almighty wisdom of this community to share with me if there's any worthwhile sales to wait for. I might hold off on some big purchases if there are.

[Jim30]

No sales at all, ever.

If you want discounts, try varioud independent retailers who do 10-25% off RRP. Otherwise it is fixed pricing on a permanent basis.

GW has no need to hold sales. From a business perspective they are great at clearing stock levels and raising immediate cash. The company has sufficient spare cash that it can pay a large share dividend. Sales would not noticeably help its business model, no matter how much we'd all love to see one again!

[shelfunit.]

Greetings fellow lowly plebes of the GW General Discussion forum!

I was wondering if there's any patterns/trends for GW sales. For example, do they do a black friday online sale or even sales for christmas? I'm trying to plan my next six months of purchases for the army I'm building. I know, I know...I can find better deals elsewhere but...

1) I prefer to buy my models still on their sprue or unassembled which not only lowers the price but puts me in less risk of buying someone's botched assembly job. It also lets me get creative. Sadly I've noticed a lot of the deals on Ebay are assembled minis.

2) I want to semi-support my local GW store since it's the closest place to play games right now. I don't want them to be my sole source but it'd be nice to give them some monetary support when there's good deals, etc.

So I beseech the almighty wisdom of this community to share with me if there's any worthwhile sales to wait for. I might hold off on some big purchases if there are.

The only way you will ever see a GW sale is in a pre-200 issue WD or below. Those will both make you wish you found GW earlier and that you could build a time machine. Under current management there will never be a sale of any kind, ever, and there is no point even dreaming there will be.

[Korraz]

GW makes PREMIUM products for PREMIUM customers.
They don't believe in "sales", "advertising", or "long-term".

[DarkLordBelial]

GW sum it up nicely in their annual report:

No, shareholders do not get a discount on beer. We don’t do discounts, not even for you.

[Adra]

No they don't do sales, nor do they need to. I think that GW should do more promotions at release time, combination purchases for example, but i can see why they dont do sales.

The problem with these discussions is people turn them into hating GW because they think they charge too much. When i was very young you could buy 3 Rhinos for £5 and I remember people moaning about the price...yeah. So I dont take people moaning about prices seriously anymore. Get a better job, give up GW and take up collecting shells, or just buy less, these are the options open to you.

Sales are used for a few things, mainly to get rid of unsold stock or to draw people into the store, and clearly GW dont feel they need that. A sale for to make customers happy....not sure I've ever heard of one of them :P

[Vos]

I remember the "new store opening" sales they used to have, which was buy 3 blisters/boxes and get the cheapest one free. I used to buy whole armies at a time in those days...

No sales ever now..... It's their loss as I don't buy stuff for 40K or WHFB any more, I just use my old armies....

Vos

[Chaos and Evil]

If you want "sales", go to an online retailer that offers a discount. You'll never get a discount direct from GW.

[EldarWolf]

Last sale as far as I know was when the York store had only just moved to present location and they had a sale to get rid of all their Epic stuff. Small carrier bag, as many epic blisters as you can pack in it and still hold bag by the handles... Yours for £5.00!
That must have been at least fifteen years back, but since then - nothing.

[shelfunit.]

Last sale as far as I know was when the York store had only just moved to present location and they had a sale to get rid of all their Epic stuff. Small carrier bag, as many epic blisters as you can pack in it and still hold bag by the handles... Yours for £5.00!
That must have been at least fifteen years back, but since then - nothing.

I burn with jealousy.

[Lord Logsdon]

Good points all around. I guess I'm just too used to retail methods here in the States where even stores that are typically pretty stringent on not offering coupons/sales still at least have some sort of Black Friday sale. For those unaware, it's the Friday after Thanksgiving and it's perhaps the most chaotic/epic celebration of consumerism. Last year my wife waited in line from 2AM to 5AM to get a huge flat screen TV for like 60-70% off.

I can also understand why they don't do sales, I was just wondering if they did. Maybe online retailers do black friday sales or christmas sales.

[blongbling]

etailers already knock 20-30% off......they cant really go below that as they will come up against the cost price and therefore not make money. It should scare you that a retailer can offer 60-70% off and still make profit on an item, it is like that in the textile industry too, that tshirt you bought for £15, cost about $2 to make and ship.

[shelfunit.]

Fortunately this year I will be in the states for "Black Friday" (first ever thanksgiving with the wife's family) - I'm looking forward to it... the thanksgiving that is...

[Dezartfox]

They don't do sales because then the entirety of the their customer base would buy nothing until the sales. Why buy something at release when you can wait a few months to get it in a sale?

[Agrimax]

etailers already knock 20-30% off......they cant really go below that as they will come up against the cost price and therefore not make money. It should scare you that a retailer can offer 60-70% off and still make profit on an item

Trade price, rather than true cost price. One assumes when GW sell things on to other retails on they’re still making a profit. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they could actually sell their own stuff at 60-70% off and still make a profit (at least over the manufacturing& shipping costs, adding in the upkeep of physical stores is another matter…)

[Adra]

I was once told by a GW manager that the company makes more on a box of models sold through a 3rd party than it does from the same box sold in a GW store due to the cost of running that store to make that sale.

[Rogue]

There will only be three occassions that would cause GW to put out a sale in my opinion:

1: the company goes bankrupt and auctions everything off anyways.

2: management all get struck by lightening and are replaced by rational businessmen.

3: Armegeddon

So basically I would suggest petitioning for devine intervention if you really want a sale.

[t-tauri]

They don't do sales because then the entirety of the their customer base would buy nothing until the sales. Why buy something at release when you can wait a few months to get it in a sale?

This is what I used to do when they had Grand Openings. I'd wait to make purchases until a GW store nearby had the reopening and then go and buy what I wanted in one splurge. They'd be cleaning out excess stock for £1 or 50p a blister as well. If I had the Tardis I'd go back to GW sales and hoover up so much stuff I could pay off the mortgage by flogging them on ebay.

Better stock control has killed off the excess stock and the no sales policy finished off the promotions. All that turns up now for reopenings are the faux limited things like drinks bottles and lanyards.

[MajorWesJanson]

Sales, no. On the other hand, many of the holiday megaforces are effectively the same result, a set of forces at a discounted price from individual purchases, if you plan to use all the models in the kit. Last year's Dark Eldar megaforce was awesome.

[Sai-Lauren]

They pretty much realised that there's no season for figures, so they didn't have to have sales to get rid of figures that are going out of date, and that plastic and metal could be shipped back to HQ and melted down. And yes, even back then, there were a lot of people who'd save up for a sale or grand opening and get stuff for a lot cheaper than they would otherwise, which doesn't really help their bottom line.

With Finecast though, that option is not really there - I'd guess that we'll get a few articles designed to promote the sales of figures that are going to get replaced about six months before they do so in order to increase sales and sell out of the models in question ("Here's how to convert figure x into the awesome model that was used in the last battle report.")