Is GW Stretching Itself Too Thin?

The preeminent Ron Swanson had a great quote, pictured above. When it comes to life, sometimes less is more, and the same goes for companies. In the mid 2010’s GW pursued a relentless path of optimization ruthlessly cutting games that weren’t leading in sales, and isolating a lot of hobbyists. In the years since, the number of games GW supports has exploded, but does that come with a hidden cost?

Let’s start by looking at all the games that GW currently has regular, active releases for:

• 40k
• Age of Sigmar
• Kill Team
• Warcry
• Necromunda
• Blood Bowl
• 30k
• Adeptus Titanicus
• Warhammer underworlds
• LoTR Battles
• Aeronautica Imperialis

This list doesn’t include the upcoming Old World game, nor the rumored expansion of Epic (which will also consolidate AT and AI). Also not shown are all of the Black Library releases, Citadel paint lines, gaming accessories,etc. It’s a lot of different products for one company to stock and source.

We have seen GW’s logistics strained recently. Whether it is due to a disastrous rollout of warehousing software, roll over effects of the pandemic, or simply prioritization, it’s never been harder to reliably get GW products. Given that GW plans on continuing to expand both the number of games it supports, as well as the number of different minis within each game, this problem will likely get worse. It appears that GW doesn’t fully understand how popular its games are, and underestimates the required logistics (see the queues at Warhammer Fest).

Let’s take a quick look at business logistics. The ideal system would produce the perfect amount of goods such that the last person who wanted the item would buy the final copy. Since this is almost impossible, you have two extremes to consider. The first is overproduction. The benefit from overproduction is that you reliably meet consumer demand, and you don’t have to worry about scalpers. The downside is that you will waste money having to store and produce items that will never sell, and this can hurt future sales. An overabundance of similar goods will drag down the value of your product. People will be content to wait for secondhand opportunities to get models, or wait for sales, as they know they can grab a copy of their desired good when they get the best offer.

The other extreme is underproduction. In this, you are conservative with your sales estimates and routinely sell out. This is better for your bottom line, but can have a lot of knock-on effects. Firstly, it annoys your customers and can shrink your reach as new players simply cannot find the models they need to play the game. Another underappreciated impact is that people look for other ways to obtain the utility of these models. Maybe it’s the LVO banning the new Guard book, because not everyone can get it. Maybe people turn to re-casters and 3D printed models as alternatives. The more you restrict the supply of your products, the more exclusive you become, but you also increase the value of 3rd party alternatives. We have seen elements of this crop up in the ANZ area. GW prices are exorbitantly higher here relative to the rest of the globe and thus, 3d printed and re-casted armies thrive. The fact is, the more people are driven to seek out alternatives to official model the more comfortable they become with prioritizing these sources in the future.

Ironically, one of the reasons for recent limited runs of new pre-order products may be GW trying to fight this trend. The rumor is they are producing massive quantities of the 10th ed box set to ensure they don’t sell out immediately like the 9th ed Indomitus boxes did). Even if this is true, it still doesn’t make me feel much better. GW will have another massive release coming with 4th ed AoS next year, to say nothing of any range refreshes certain armies are due. They have also announced the return of many Warhammer Fantasy kits. How will GW be able to cope with the demand they unleash when the Old World drops? Even assuming they cope, the number of models they produce will only increase. If GW doesn’t scale up their production lines these issues will only become worse and could limit the company’s ability to grow as people get turned off by the endless scalping limited stock.

Restricted stock is a fact of life for most competitive hobbies. No company prints hundreds of copies of its rarest cards for games such as Yu-Gi-Oh and MTG just so that everyone can use a copy. However, secondary markets can be a good gateway for new players and having cheaper products (that must be easily available) is vital to keep pace with demand. It doesn’t surprise me GW is trying to limit their stock (they are a luxury brand after all). But I do worry that they aren’t going to be able to keep pace with the demand they unleash. I worry that many armies across all systems will only have 2/3 or less of their models available for purchase and this will drive away newer players. If GW wants to take the next step, the door is wide open for them to join the other gaming giants, but they need to fuel their growth properly or it will wither on the vine.

And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!