[Archive] Citadel Finecast - Huh?

Grimstonefire:

This price rise seems like quite an appropriate moment for me, as all the skaven I bought were heavily discounted and that is the last new army I will collect now from the GW studio.

All my money will be tied up in WF CD for years to come anyway, so for me the cost of the other stuff is largely irrelevant until they produce some decent plastic ironbreakers.

Bolg:

Funny thing is, here in Holland the main to tournaments were GW models only. But as GW does not organizes those anymore, and there are a lot of alternative tournaments I can let go of my rule of just GW made models.

(my bank account is very happy with this new rule)

Shakhorth:

Well I’m glad I got the armies I wanted. Only thing missing is a battalion box from the ogre kingdoms to use as fillers for my CD army. But even that I can find outside of the GW store. So adios GW for me… Unless they bring out new dwarven models. :wink:

Anonymouse:

It means one thing: people will stop buying and then GW will be forced to eventually drop prices due to a business slump that has been coming for some time.

Hashut's Blessing
Oh, you so silly ;)
It means that people will stop buying and then GW will be forced to eventually RAISE prices due to a business slump :p

G.2:

I wonder if it is easier to make illegal recasts of resin models using resin, than to illegally recast metal minis using metal??? If so, we may see a INCREASE in illegal recasts, and probably harder to spot. - Just some food for thought.

Lord Archaon:

The thing i honestly can’t understand why GW actualy “hates” their profit. They are complaing about low profit and instead of doing something to raise it they just jeopordise themselves with a new tax increase. The same thing happened in economical crisis in Latvia, they just kept raising taxes until everything blew up. If GW will keep doing price increases they will bankrupt in no time. And to be fair no one wants it. So maybe GW has to use their brain a little and think about their future.

Hashut’s Blessing:

The thing is, their profits are low because their unit slaes are dropping. They should first think about cost-reduction to themselves to increase profit. The first way of doing that that comes to mind is to simply stop reboxing things into sets of 10.

I understand that I don’t know the ins and outs of the business-workings of GW, but I do know a thing or two about business-workings and profit-maximisation. A luxury item (like GW’s) doesn’t work in the same manner as a necessity (like food).

Like I said before, they will notice a giant drop in sales and thusly profit. Even if they do decide to raise their prices when they see it, they’re just digging to get out of the hole they’ve dug.

Loki:

It certainly will be interesting to see what you will be getting for this extra money , are they completely new models or are they just the old ones cast in resin ?

Thommy H:

Old ones cast in resin.

Baggronor:

You wot?! :o £9.50 for a single model on foot?! In resin?! I could do resin (I just don’t). What the flock are they doing? Who is their target customer base? Footballers and Russian oligarchs?

Why can’t they just do things sensibly? Like, just eat the risen cost of metal for the remaining few years until they phase it out entirely, and just get on with replacing metals with plastics. While not raising prices again. Its like they’re run by the train companies or the bankers… Never thought I’d say it but Forgeworld actually looks like decent value now.

I felt bad because I raised my prices by 25p… I better get busy, people are gonna be looking for alternatives.

nitroglysarine:

Haha, I've just looked at some of the prices for the first time. Who the hell is going to pay £30 for one cavalry model? Who's going to pay £60 for a unit of five models? This is a massive, massive misstep.

Thommy H
WTF?
This is a massive mis-step GW, I already own models I'm happy with, i'm not going to buy the same models again at a higher price to have two, even if it is 'sharper'
I fear this is step 1 in GW downfall.

Thorne:

I wonder if it is easier to make illegal recasts of resin models using resin, than to illegally recast metal minis using metal??? If so, we may see a INCREASE in illegal recasts, and probably harder to spot. - Just some food for thought.

G.2
Exactly another valid point. Why buy models from GW when you can buy one cast 10 later and not tell the difference between the masters and the replicated models.

aka_mythos:

You wot?! :o £9.50 for a single model on foot?! In resin?! I could do resin (I just don't). What the flock are they doing? Who is their target customer base? Footballers and Russian oligarchs?

Why can't they just do things sensibly? Like, just eat the risen cost of metal for the remaining few years until they phase it out entirely, and just get on with replacing metals with plastics. While not raising prices again. Its like they're run by the train companies or the bankers... Never thought I'd say it but Forgeworld actually looks like decent value now.


Baggronor
In all fairness these resin miniatures is exactly part of their plan to phase out metal minis.  Some miniature would never be proftiable in plastic... those minis that are currently done in metal will now be done in resin. Then there is the fact that between the expectations to see metal prices to continue to soar indefinitely and the fact GW's pricing was already near these higher price points the jump to resin miniatures makes sense. GW's size is partially its own enemy here... other miniature companies might not be feeling the impact as much because unlike them GW's dealing in larger volumes.

It comes down to resin minis at these high prices or metal minis at an even higher price. Resin offers better quality, they might as well give us something extra.

Thommy H:

It comes down to resin minis at these high prices or metal minis at an even higher price. Resin offers better quality, they might as well give us something extra.
Bit of a false dichotomy there: what's wrong with resin minis that are the same price or cheaper than the old metals? Surely, if the idea is that resin is a cheaper material (which it is) so that the rising cost of metal can be circumvented by using it, actually raising costs on the basis that resin is somehow better is utterly laughable.

Either resin is cheaper or it isn't. If it is, this price hike is blatant gouging. If it isn't, or it's the same, why change materials at all?

Baggronor:

I can accept that maybe it was part of the plan all along, true. After thinking about it a bit, they do still have a lot of minis still in metal.

The price hike is indefensible though. This at the same time as preventing maelstrom from posting to RoW is frankly despotic.

Blue in VT:

Yeah I’m with Tommy on this one…they take any change of policy to stuff another price hike down our throats…even when it doesn’t match up with their previously stated information…frankly its criminal and insulting to ones intelligence!

Blue

aka_mythos:

Either resin is cheaper or it isn't. If it is, this price hike is blatant gouging. If it isn't, or it's the same, why change materials at all?

Thommy H
The resin is cheaper than the new price of white metal, so they went with resin. I don't see any false dichotemy there.

A model that previously cost them $10 to make, that they sold for $40... under the new price of metal GW might now expect it to cost $15 to make in metal and $12 to make in resin... both result in a higher price, but one is cheaper. Do you want to pay $48 for the crisper resin, or $60 for the exact same product?

While I don't like the high prices... Despite a high markup over manufacturing costs (400%), GW's overall profit margin based off their financial statements for their investors shows they have an overall after-tax profit margin of 9.5%. I don't consider that gouging.

Thommy H:

Do you want to pay $48 for the crisper resin, or $60 for the exact same product?
I want to pay the same price as I paid before - not be told that I'm paying more for a superior (i.e. more costly to manufacture) product when in fact I'm not at all.

Metal costs more than resin. They've switched to resin to save money. Therefore, prices should not rise because of the switch to resin. That's backwards. Prices can rise independently of that, because GW feels the need for whatever reason, but to say that it's happening because we're now getting a better product, and implying that's something we should be happy to pay for, is dishonest.

aka_mythos:

Do you want to pay $48 for the crisper resin, or $60 for the exact same product?
I want to pay the same price as I paid before - not be told that I'm paying more for a superior (i.e. more costly to manufacture) product when in fact I'm not at all.

Metal costs more than resin. They've switched to resin to save money. Therefore, prices should not rise because of the switch to resin. That's backwards. Prices can rise independently of that, because GW feels the need for whatever reason, but to say that it's happening because we're now getting a better product, and implying that's something we should be happy to pay for, is dishonest.


Thommy H
I think you just ignored everything else I wrote. You selected a single phrase out of context and just restated what you've already stated.

It is a fact that the price of metal is up. So expecting to pay the same price is not just unreasonable it absurd. Laborwise resin costs the same as metal to produce miniatures; its almost solely the material cost. You were going to have to pay more no matter what.

They've switched to resin to save money in the future. Just because resin is cheaper than metal doesn't mean the cost savings is enough to offset the entirity of the higher cost. The price of metal exceeds the price of resin. Resin is a superior product, its just not used on industrial levels because at that scale you tend to need mixing machines to ensure quality and until the price of metal got to a particular point those additional costs were not justified.

Like in my example... if it cost $10 before but would now cost $15 to continue in metal... GW's chosen to go with the $12 resin solution. More expensive than before, but cheaper than the alternative of staying with metal.

Grimstonefire:

If they are using the same spincast moulds as the metal, I can’t imagine labour costs are going to be substantially higher.  Certainly not 10% increase in selling price higher.

If they have stopped producing metals entirely, forever, they could sell off a lot of machinery specifically for it.  This would help pay for mixing machines.

Imo they have passed the annual price rise in metal as a ‘quality’ rise in resin.  Which will hardly be noticeable for the vast majority of models they are just recasting.