# No more Bitz sellers?



## MadCowCrazy (Mar 19, 2009)

Well, it's now confirmed.

MWG put this up: Click me

Drop Box link with all the GW trade term pdfs



Found this and it doesn't bode well...

BitsandKits can u comment? You been given any messages from GW?




> It has been a strange Games Workshop day for me. I woke up this morning intent on calling Games Workshop about a missing part I had with my new Helcannon, As always Games Workshops customer service was great, they were processing my re-order when all of sudden the phone cut out! I tried calling back and all I got was a busy signal, 15 minutes later a GW customer rep called me on his personal cell phone to finish the conversation. Like I said, really great customer service! The rep said that they entire phone system was down, but wouldn’t give a reason. I really didn’t think much of it, but when I got to my local game store the owner asked me if I knew anything about GW changing their terms to retailers.
> 
> I told him no, but ask him why he asked me. It turns out that GW reps had sent out an email warnings retailers about upcoming changes to their policies. Like all GW retailers they waited for the slap in the face from GW to arrive. As it turns out, all American retailers got this notice and could be one possible reason for the phones “not working” in Memphis.
> 
> ...


DakkaDakka thread: Clickety click


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## LukeValantine (Dec 2, 2008)

Bastards! Does their evil know no bounds? On a interesting side note this change may lead to a incredible boom in third party look alike/conversion bits....which I use a lot of.


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## MadCowCrazy (Mar 19, 2009)

If anything this will lead to more conversion bits makers making more money, even if GW did reintroduce their bits selling line the bits will probably cost so much it'd be cheaper to just buy a whole new kit.

This wont affect the ebay bits sellers, or anyone selling bits who doesn't have a trade account with GW.


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## Jacobite (Jan 26, 2007)

MadCowCrazy said:


> If anything this will lead to more conversion bits makers making more money, even if GW did reintroduce their bits selling line the bits will probably cost so much it'd be cheaper to just buy a whole new kit.
> 
> This wont affect the ebay bits sellers, or anyone selling bits who doesn't have a trade account with GW.


Yes and yes. Also is this isolated to American stores only?

If this is to stop bits being shipped south of the Equator some arse in GW needs a fucking kicking. Stop charging me 40% more than the Brits and then we can talk ya wankers. I'll be sure to mention this to the staff at local GW next time I pick up my WD (only thing I get from the GW). If they spin me some shit about its to help their store keep afloat I will ask them point blanc if they expect me to buy a Ravenwing Battle Force simply to get the DA techmarine shoulder pad. 

If GW are wanting to get back into the bits game... well lets hope it goes smoother than the roll out of Fine Cast (still getting problems with it today btw - I avoided it as long as I could and the first one I buy is fucked, only one of the two possible replacements was any good as well).


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## SilverTabby (Jul 31, 2009)

The reason GW stopped their bits department was not to be dicks, but because the picking floor was a massive use of limited space, a huge number of staff were needed to pick orders and it simply wasn't financially viable at the time. The space taken up by the picking floor now houses 8 plastic casting machines that can each cast hundreds of sprues a day.

Whilst I would love to see a bits department come back in, spare a moments thought for how it would work. You couldn't feasibly do what the small bits companies do and break open boxes, unless it was a VERY select part of the range. All the bits would need to be individually catalogued and a computer system set up for pickers. Every order would need hand picking, which means a LOT of staff. Don't forget, GW caters to the entire world. And if this was set up on each continent, then that's a picking floor and more staff too. The financial benefit would unlikely outweigh the financial cost. 

Whilst I disagree with closing down bits sellers, if people are buying stuff through a GW account then they have the right to say "we won't supply to you if that's what you do". That's how businesses work I'm afraid.

If they've worked out a way to sell bits again properly, then marvellous. I doubt it though.
Maybe, just maybe, they are trying to close down GW accounts doing bits selling because they want to set up official bits sellers themselves? Accounts *specifically* designed for that purpose?


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## bitsandkits (Mar 18, 2008)

This has always been games workshops policy in europe, all this does is level the field in the US, pay it nomind ,while ever there is the hobby people will want to convert and people like me will find a way to sell you bitz, gw legal have tried numours dirty tricks to stop bitz sellers in the past and i have in the past taken legal advice on the matter, they dont have to sell to bitz sellers but they cant legally stop them selling bitz.


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## Boc (Mar 19, 2010)

Interesting, though bits sellers still do make a profit if they buy the kits at full retail then sell the bits individually. If they originally bought at partial price, then I'd expect bits prices to increase so that they avoid legal implications, but not the death of bits stores altogether.


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## bitsandkits (Mar 18, 2008)

I cant really go into detail other than to say, GW will always make policy to maximise there own profits and protect there own interest and make it harder for indie traders to sell GW products, GW are perfectly happy for you to hand over full retail price for a pack of say grey knight terminators so that you can kit bash up a terminator libby and chuck the rest of the sprues in the bin, but the fact is GW know that they cant stop the second hand market for minis any more than they can control the price of world oil, even if GW managed to stop supply to all bitz seller today, i can say for certain bitz sellers would still be happily trading until some time after GW ceased all production of all models.

there is always someone wanting to sell up there collection of bitz, there is always an indie trader wanting to off load his GW stock, there are always people selling off there childrens collections for peanuts on ebay and car boot sales and as Boc says anyone can walk into a GW store and buy what ever they want, how many GW stores are going to turn away someone who wants to drop a grand on minis?


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## Warpath (Nov 27, 2007)

As others have said they will never be able to remove bits sellers, yes they may make it more difficult or even more expensive but they can't stop it completely. As for them re-opening their own bits department well i would love to see this again but you have to look at the difference in how they package and build their kits now. Silvertabby is right on how much space, employees and the finacial costs it had at the time. I worked there when they decided to get rid of it and it was a sad day  But now you'd have to buy sprues to get the one piece you wanted! It would be a task that would take years to catalogue every part on its own now due to that amount of pieces you get on the sprues. Though i do miss the catalogues they use to produce, looking through them at all the small bits for conversion ideas. 

Long live our bits sellers :biggrin:


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## VonMarlon (Apr 18, 2011)

Could this mean GW are going back into the bits business themselves? 2 minds about that if they did. On one hand it is always nicer to have more bits stockists especially from the makers themselves as this would mean more hard to acquire parts are in stock but on other hand, it was the independent bit sellers that took it upon themselves to supply bits after GW stopped doing it. GW setting up there own bits section would likely damage the independent sellers and that would be mighty harsh.

I guess if GW were to do this. I'd only use them if the part were out of stock elsewhere.


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## Zion (May 31, 2011)

Bits sellers get their stuff through a retailer or supplier that isn't GW thus skipping any legal connections to GW in that regard. All this does is keep your FGLS from chopping up boxes specifically to sell bitz.


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## GrimzagGorwazza (Aug 5, 2010)

It's not a massive change, maybe it is a hange for the US but there has been a clause in the contract all indi Euro sellers have to sign that limits the sale of product to other retailers and the breaking up of components. 
All that it means is that any companies selling bits will need to form a secondary company which sells the bits. The first company has the GW contract and sells the models to the second company, which hasn't signed an agreement with GW and so is not bound by the terms.
There are probably easier ways to do it but it's not like setting up a secondary business for paperworks process is that hard.


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## MadCowCrazy (Mar 19, 2009)

From what I understand selling bits is one hell of an undertaking and GW doesn't provide any help at all. You need to take pics of all the bits, set up a webshop and entries for all the bits, then you need to stock the boxes and cut the parts from the sprues and organise them.

We are talking about thousands upon thousands of entries of bits to keep track of and with every new release a thousand or so more to categorise and organise.

All this work for very little profit, there are usually about 5 bits from every kit that is highly desirable. The rest just takes up shelf space and in turn cost you more than you make.

I've cut my ebay bits buying now as I practically own every 40K kit GW makes and have the max you are allowed to field on a normal FOC. I spent 4 years buying bits for about €100-200 a month, I bought 99% of my bits on auction and there it was pretty easy to see what parts were desirable as some sold for 10x the price as other.

When it comes to bits there are a few things that will always be desirable to converters, the most common are wheels, turrets, guns for said turrets, heavy weapons, MC main bodies and wings. The number one thing that always seems to sell though are female bodies. Heck I bought whole DE wych and warrior body auctions only for the female bits. I have a box of male bodies I could make an entire DE army with.
Every bits seller I know charge about 50-100% more for a female body than the male counterpart, it's a supply and demand thing for sure as GW supplies very few and those who want all female armies.


The best thing GW could do is allow for bits seller only accounts, basically they'd send only the sprues to the seller for a bigger discount than normal but with restrictions on how much they could sell the bits for.

GWs sprues are very inefficient in design though, they should put all bodies on one sprue and all weapons on another instead of having 2 sprues with mixed parts. This would allow them to sell specific sprues, but they want you to buy a whole kit just to get those 3 parts you need for your conversion.


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## Karyudo-DS (Nov 7, 2009)

I'm surprised they haven't figured out a good way to do this with 3D printing advancements yet. Basically just print the bits to order (with some backstock of course but not full kits laying around). Maybe someday but I could see buying decently priced bits made like that off of GW eventually, may as well with the look-alike retailers.


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## MadCowCrazy (Mar 19, 2009)

Well, it's now confirmed.

MWG put this up: Click me

Drop Box link with all the GW trade term pdfs


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## Jacobite (Jan 26, 2007)

Is anybody else wondering when the day is going to come that you need to sign an end customer user agreement every time you buy a GW product saying that you promise not to sell this product on to anybody at all?

Just me?


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## MadCowCrazy (Mar 19, 2009)

So what do you guys think about this? Click Me

Application for this job ended on the 18th of Feb, and now we have the bits ban in the US?

This a position for posting bits or am I just reading too much into it?


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## bitsandkits (Mar 18, 2008)

MadCowCrazy said:


> So what do you guys think about this? Click Me
> 
> Application for this job ended on the 18th of Feb, and now we have the bits ban in the US?
> 
> This a position for posting bits or am I just reading too much into it?


You have added the number two to another number two and come up with the answer of bacon


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## SilverTabby (Jul 31, 2009)

Components in this case are not what you think they are. Every order and delivery is made up of components...


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

MadCowCrazy said:


> So what do you guys think about this? Click Me
> 
> Application for this job ended on the 18th of Feb, and now we have the bits ban in the US?
> 
> This a position for posting bits or am I just reading too much into it?


I think you might be onto something there given this: 

"A requirement that all Retailers resell GAMES WORKSHOP products (including, 
but not limited to, components) only in their Original Packaging and Labeling;"

is from the trade agreement you linked to and clearly shows that GW use the words components to cover "bits".


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## bitsandkits (Mar 18, 2008)

Magpie_Oz said:


> I think you might be onto something there given this:
> 
> "A requirement that all Retailers resell GAMES WORKSHOP products (including,
> but not limited to, components) only in their Original Packaging and Labeling;"
> ...


but as silver has pointed out components is everything that makes up a kit, all sprues,instructions,decals,bases,boxes are components(they even have component numbers), its a common term used in business that means "stuff that makes up an object" , and as you quote above "in there original packing and labeling" that means bitz packs like we already have from GW.

personally i think GW are done with Bitz, Bitz packs have all but dried up,GW are clearly not interested in the loose change market of a space marine head here or a shoulder pad there that is the bits supply, they want big chunks of cash for small amounts of grey plastic in a small carboard box.


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## MadCowCrazy (Mar 19, 2009)

bitsandkits said:


> You have added the number two to another number two and come up with the answer of bacon


If two wrongs dont make a right then I dont want to be right cause bacon is frickin delicious! :crazy:


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## Bubblematrix (Jun 4, 2009)

Surely you could just set up a company to buy the kits, have a web based site selling kits to make it look like that's where the stuff goes and then sell those kits on to the company selling bits at cost.

GW can only theorise on that then and you break no terms.


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