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GW Made to Order


pretre

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via Games Workshop Salisbury 10-5-2016

“Missed out on any old models when they went onto last chance? You may want to keep your eyes on our Facebook page on 15th October” 

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This sounds like a miniatures analogue to the Black Library “print on demand” program.  So far GW has only mentioned items from the “Last Chance” inventory being made available again in some way.  We will have to wait till next Weekend to see what the scope of the Made to Order program is.

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I was kind of wondering if they were going to do something like this. Especially for the plastics, since the major investment there is in the molds, and those take forever and a day to wear out. It may not be worth their money to keep ordering packaging and taking up shelf space for those kits, but it's probably pretty doable to keep the molds around and run off a few now and then and ship them off in generic packaging.

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If it's all Failcast or Finecrap, I'll pass. If it's plastic then awesome. Nice to see GW becoming more and more customer friendly again.

 

I shudder to think how much this service will cost. And the amount of time an order will take to process and then actually be made. GW charges a lot for shipping. I can totally see GW rotating what they offer, as in limiting what they will make for say, a couple weeks. I doubt they have the facilities or the manpower to pull the molds out of storage, and then cast 100 Sisters of Battle (someone will do it...) along with a single Empire Rifleman #2. Just one. And then someone else will request 23 old Ork Nobs, and a single Imperial Preacher with P-fist. Yeah... initial demand will be fairly large, and this whole process could be very labor intensive.

 

It would seem GW wants to reduce it's standing inventory- product on the shelves is not making the company money, and takes up space. Not to mention when it comes to tax time, that excess inventory... whew.

 

The old Bitz Wagon was awesome, as was the time when you could buy bitz from GW. Returning to this service seems like a no-brainer, as long as you can get the bitz you want. I'd rather have a Bitz Service then have them make a model on demand for me.

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I can't imagine they will return to Bitz Service. That was a loser for them.

 

That being said, I imagine this is one of two things:

- Print on Demand for plastic minis / books / cards that are out of print

- Some crazy new-fangled 3D print service with scanned old models.

 

The first is what I would bank on.

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Nice to see GW becoming more and more customer friendly again..

More than likely, this is GW's method of retaining copyright and denying people's ability to 3d print their own stuff. I strongly doubt this has anything to do with improving customer relations, and has everything to do with making money. 

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More than likely, this is GW's method of retaining copyright and denying people's ability to 3d print their own stuff. I strongly doubt this has anything to do with improving customer relations, and has everything to do with making money.

They are a business. If they weren't trying to make money, their shareholders could hold them accountable. That line of thinking is kind of a non-sequitor though. GW has been more customer friendly since they got their new CEO and this is another step in that direction. It's like they figured out that not being a dick is good for business.
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