# GW bits service



## nightfish (Feb 16, 2009)

Should they have got rid of it? Was it really as expensive to do as they made it out to be?

I've never really got a proper answer from GW staff even though I put my point across that conversions were for many people the core of the hobby.


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## fynn (Sep 19, 2008)

i dont think they should have got rid of it, tbh its a pain in the arse, as ive picked up a few second hand models and theres a few bits missing and cant get replacements anywhere. 
when i asked in my local GW about and said i thought it was a bad idea on gw part to stop the service, the red shirt basicly said that if i need any bits then i have to buy the kit, which i thought was takeing the piss tbh, e.g i need a rplacement arm for a penitent engine and he surgested i buy a full kit, talk about trying to con you out of your cash


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## Lord of Rebirth (Jun 7, 2008)

While there is some certain cost to having the space to hold all the bitz and then needing to stock all the bits then needing to pay people to pick orders and take phone calls in the end just telling people to buy full kits for replacement parts will lose them a lot more money.


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## fynn (Sep 19, 2008)

what made it even more anoying is the red shirt dickhead tried to treat me as if i was a complete newbie i.e a ten year old, and knew nothing about the game or about making models. luckerly i mangaed to keep calm and just walk out of the shop with out giveing him and a peace of my mind (and probaly getting banned).
mind you he did say sorry to me a few days later when i went back to buy some bits for the wifes army.


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## Kobrakai (Jul 25, 2008)

the bits service made converting so much easier and gave you so many more possibilties!

It's a shame they got rid of it


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## hells_fury (Apr 17, 2008)

u mean they had a service like that, darns, im newish (about 6 months) and the other day i was thinking that it would be great if they sold something like a bitz box where its just comes with diffrent weapons and bits and ect for an army. something along those lines would be great when you want one part and not the whole model.

to the question no they shouldnt of gotten rid off it. i doubt it would of been to expensive they make the parts. it makes sense in my head i just cant put it into words so sorry for not giving an explanation


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## nightfish (Feb 16, 2009)

hells_fury said:


> u mean they had a service like that


Yea part of the golden age of the hobby as a whole. In WD after every battle report or conversion there were pages of bits with part numbers listing how you could make your army so much cooler than it already was.



lord of rebirth said:


> While there is some certain cost to having the space to hold all the bitz and then needing to stock all the bits then needing to pay people to pick orders and take phone calls in the end just telling people to buy full kits for replacement parts will lose them a lot more money.


The trolls are still there since they take mail order and answer rules queries.

Since they are making the box sets, they already have the bits. 

Take the Penitent Engine as above as an example. They make it for release so the bits are there, someone has to pack the bits in the plastic casing so the order pickers are there.

The days of being able to create custome Chaos Lords or big mutants or even mutants now they dont do the sprues is gone and I would like them back. Whats weird is that if I go to the GW site I can still get packs of meltaguns or plasma guns, shoulder pads for marines or even DE slave girls so why not the rest of the bits?


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## Jezlad (Oct 14, 2006)

:laugh:

This thread is hilarious. It's common practice for businesses to suggest you need a whole new product to make a simple replacement. 

I was out cruising in my Bentley last week when an orange smartie flipped up off the road and cracked the windscreen. The mechanic told me to get a replacement Bentley since they don't sell parts, a bargain at £225,000.


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## reubiedoo (Mar 21, 2009)

Jezlad - think that mechanic had been chewing too many orange smarties.


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## Cadian81st (Dec 24, 2006)

God, I miss the bitz service so much. I used to spend ages planning conversions with it, it was such a nice feature. Now we have...what, SM shoulderpads, SM weapons, SM heads, SM Torsos, SM codpieces, and DE babes in bikinis? Thanks GW! :laugh:


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## keytag33 (Apr 20, 2008)

The bitz service was great. I bought some marines off of a guy and he through in a rhino(mkI), I simply phoned GW and bought the bitz to make it into a whirlwind. It was great and damn easy too.

But now...I lost the end piece for my Cron Immortal's gun and to get a new one I have to buy an Immortal blister aaaargghh:angry::ireful2:

Bring back the bitz service I say.


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## MaidenManiac (Oct 2, 2008)

The "old mail order" was indeed awsome but also used an huge ammount of space. Thats the reason they dumped it. It costed alot to provide that service to the customers. 
I've worked at 2 diffrent sorts of big mail-order companies so far in life, you think that a few CD-records dont take that much space, but when the numbers hits 10000's of diffrent records it requires *ALOT* of space. Even more so when you add the fact that those records need to be at levels that folks can access fairly easy, to allow them to be picked up by someone without requireing acrobatical feats:shok:
Making mail ordering profitable ain't just tossing up a few shelves and putting the bits/CDs/whatevers there, it requires alot more planing then one might think...

As far as I know, and I have quite good reason to believe this is true, the majority stock holders deemed that the bits stock took way too much space and was ineffective. As I'm told there will pop out more and more "bitz bundles" over the years, but in a way thats not a total financial loss which the old system more or less was:scare:


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## Lord of Rebirth (Jun 7, 2008)

As much as I know a lot of people used the bitz service for all sorts of little things who misses it for the simple stuff like full sprues? I have a pair of old Chimeras and somehow a turret is missing but can I get the whole sprue to replace it? Nope. Also I ordered a pair of FW Mark something Predators and I figured they would send me a couple full pred kits then the nice turrets and instead I was left with only lascannon weapon sponson options and when I went to GW asking to order the sponson sprues they told me off.


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## reubiedoo (Mar 21, 2009)

I hate that it is gone - that catalogue was awesome. However, I sadly have to admit it makes business sense. Say for example one multi-part model has a really cool sword/ gun/ insert object here, and 3500 people order it for conversions for different characters and races, they are left with 3500 worthless kits if noone wants the other bitz. GW have to survive, but I hate that they stopped it. 

And while 5000 people spending £3/4 on bitz is better than them spending nothing for the whole model they don't buy, but You have to remember GW have already payed for the production, and would rather they sit on the shelves and be sold slowly and cast in small batches (i.e. no waste) than have multitudes of incomplete models that have more than likely lost money.


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## Xabre (Dec 20, 2006)

Conversions used to be the reason I got into this game. pretty soon I hope to have pictures up of my Tzeentch army made entirely out of DA veteran robed bodies. I used to custom order characters by mixing and matching bits all over the place. Grey Knight terminator, Chaos head, power mace arm, a staff from Inquisitor, etc, etc. 

I scratch-built a Titan and got alot of use out of buying two Earthshaker sprues from the full IG kits. I wouldn't be able to recreate it without buy two full basilisks.

I have SIXTEEN dreadnoughts at home for my home-made codex. Some were core kits, others with FW arms, I had to buy special claws for some of them, extra flamers, sarcophagi covers...

I had even considered customizing a BFG Emperor-class battleship by using the prow of the Master of the Ravenwing speeder. But now that's all gone.


of course, now there's a bunch of websites coming out that are making a fortune by buying up GW's upgrade kits and various plastic boxes, and selling all the bits piecemeal for people who want to convert. But three dollars for a terminator assault cannon....


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## nightfish (Feb 16, 2009)

GW have tonnes of room at their HQ and anyway people did buy stacks of bits from mail order. Is it business sense to close down something that was universally popular?


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## Syph (Aug 3, 2008)

Clearly it did make business sense from their perspective as they closed it. If it made them so much money it'd be up and running again.


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## xiawujing (Mar 2, 2009)

There's still services online for straight-up bits ordering aren't there? I haven't had to use any yet, but I have a few friends who get a lot of their conversion materials from bitz ordering off of 3rd party websites.


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## Syph (Aug 3, 2008)

Yeah there's quite a few actually, as well as eBay. Very easy to get 40K bits, but as I found when I was after Malus' Warpsword for my Dark Elves, not very easy for Fantasy - particularly metal bits.


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## torealis (Dec 27, 2006)

bear in mind also that to make one 'bit' available, in the majority of cases they have to cast the whole model... so theyre left, in the majority of cases, with tons of half of a model that no one buys and they cant sell.


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## admiraldick (Sep 9, 2008)

as i understood it the reason the 'bitz' were dropped is not because of direct financial implications, but because of supply and demand. GW has a 30 back catalogue of miniatures and components that it could make available, but can you honestly imagine how many individual components that is?!

during 3rd Ed it came to the stage where they simply could not support their whole back catalogue any more, it was simply too complex and there were simply too many components to keep any quantity of them all. they said, when they dropped the bitz service, that those bitz that would be available would form a selection form the whole thing and would change routinely to allow players access to the majority of stuff. sadly that never really appeared.

i think its a real loss to the hobby and have noticed that since 2nd Ed the quality and average of conversions has gone down hill. that being said, new models have more and more components with them, and so conversion work is a lot simpler with what comes out of the box and what you have left over from your last project even if that does tend to stifle the imagination.



reubiedoo said:


> However, I sadly have to admit it makes business sense. Say for example one multi-part model has a really cool sword/ gun/ insert object here, and 3500 people order it for conversions for different characters and races, they are left with 3500 worthless kits if noone wants the other bitz. GW have to survive, but I hate that they stopped it.


that's not really an argument for anything other than GW having a poor business model. if something sells better than something else, you find a way of getting it to the customers. imagine if ever Space Marine army had to be accompanied by a Necron/Sisters/DE army? people would be fuming. there is no logical reason why GW, who routinely now rearrange rubbish sprues to make them more viable, could not create casts that only produce single components.



nightfish said:


> GW have tonnes of room at their HQ and anyway people did buy stacks of bits from mail order. Is it business sense to close down something that was universally popular?


one wonders whether Warhammer World itself is better for business than a bitz service.


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## MarzM (Jan 26, 2007)

What i want to know is where are the bitz we were promised.

I was told when the bitz orders went under that GW would be replacing then with Bitz packs. Yeah we have seen one or two but not the amount that i thought we'd be getting. 

Packs of Backpacks, or Weapons etc. All we have is sonic blasters and shoulder pads!!!

Pretty poor.

IMO, GW doesn't was custom armies in that sense. They want us to buy off the peg armies and just paint thim differently. Converting will become a thing of the past. Everything will become more generic!!


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## Inquisitor Einar (Mar 6, 2009)

The problem with the bits services was incomplete models. Quite a lot of ordered parts of models that as a whole were pretty expensive. Buying only the part they wanted meant that GW was stuck with the rest which they couldn't sell, and nobody wanted.

And making seperate molds for such things isn't financially feasable either, because the investment would take ages to break-even, because while the part would be popular, it's not THAT high in demand that making a seperate mold for it would be financially feasible.

I do hope they're working on increasing the number of bits packs though, especially backpacks ( I tend to lose them sometimes ), various weapons and such for remodelling units to suit your own tastes and whiles and the like.

I can imagine that especially Tyranid players are hurt by this, because basicly every unit in their army is very customizeable. I was horribly disapointed when I found out I couldn't order anything specific anymore for my sisters army. I'm planning on using Necromunda models for my inducted guard squads, and instead of being able to order exactly which models I wanted, I had to buy compelte gangs, which don't have everything I want, and several bits I don't want.. Not sure yet how I'm going to fix this problem. Though maybe I'll be able to do somethign with some IG sprues.

Anyone know where I can get my hands on some Lascannons that can be handheld?


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## mrrshann618 (Jun 6, 2008)

GW could have easily kept the bits order in place for many types of bits.
SM/CSM Backpacks used to be a separate sprue.
Jetpacks, both SM/CSM Don't tell me they cannot cast the jetpacks separate they used to be a separate sprue.
Shoulderpads - alot of the ones I've used in the past have up and dissapeared totally.

Alot of these things are slowly showing up. But it took nearly 3 years to get those jetpacks available. Those are always in high demand, especially with the new SM codex making my old veterans essentially into Vanguard, but up till now I couldn't even buy jetpacks to make em as such.

Yes getting rid of the overal bits service made sense, but there were bits that could have been ready on the reduced bits service from day 1. instead of 3+ years later.


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## nightfish (Feb 16, 2009)

Inquisitor Einar said:


> The problem with the bits services was incomplete models. Quite a lot of ordered parts of models that as a whole were pretty expensive. Buying only the part they wanted meant that GW was stuck with the rest which they couldn't sell, and nobody wanted.


I don't really buy that. A lot of the old chaos character models as well as others were one or two bits.



Inquisitor Einar said:


> Anyone know where I can get my hands on some Lascannons that can be handheld?


This is ironic. You argue for a bitz service being full of problems then ask whether you can get a lascannon bit for your army. The answer is you not likely to find one now. In the past you were able to order anything. Funny that isnt it?


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## admiraldick (Sep 9, 2008)

Inquisitor Einar said:


> And making seperate molds for such things isn't financially feasable either, because the investment would take ages to break-even, because while the part would be popular, it's not THAT high in demand that making a seperate mold for it would be financially feasible.


why?

GW don't cast up individual models. the moulds cast several repetitions of the same model at once. some models have multiple moulds with multiple repetitions in each. so why not make a separate mould for each component? its really not that large an investment. it just takes a little forward planning and fore thought to manage a sensible business model, rather than deliberately sustaining a system that is less successful.


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## Whizzwang (Dec 31, 2008)

torealis said:


> bear in mind also that to make one 'bit' available, in the majority of cases they have to cast the whole model... so theyre left, in the majority of cases, with tons of half of a model that no one buys and they cant sell.


THIS

is in essence why the bitz service went. I'm ex-mail order and can easily verify this information. most bits that were ordered were commonly the same thing. Alwasy that awesome part of something. The amount of times you'd go to pick a specific part for someone's order and discover that no, there were no dreadnought right arms but there WERE 20 exhaust ports.....

now imagine that for every multi part kit. yes yes they can be melted down recast, re picked, remelted. but then that's extra work for extra people. In the grand scheme of things, the manpower involved in bit orders did actually make it not worthwhile.

The majority of all the orders i ever took in my time with the phone trolls were pretty much full sets / pieces. I'd say the "full" orders outweighed the "bits" orders by about 10:1 easy

Bits Packs: are slowly coming back. shoulder pads, backpacks, wings etc. TBH I don't miss the bitz order service anywhere near as much as i miss single sprue buying. However, sprues are the same. Let's take the new Stormlord kit for example. we'd easily sell shed loads of the turrets and barrels sprue, but that would leave us with a crap load of tank hulls nobody is ever going to want. At least not in the same quantity as the other bits so it's back to wasted stock gathering dust.


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## Treewizard648 (Feb 4, 2009)

Luckily places like the war store exist, however they still lack very specific bitz such as metal parts. It is very unfortunate GWS discontinued this service.


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## Siege (Jan 18, 2008)

Yep it's pretty obvious why the bitz order service had to go, but it's still a shame. It would have been really useful with the new Traitor Guard army I'm building.


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## Inquisitor Einar (Mar 6, 2009)

nightfish said:


> I don't really buy that. A lot of the old chaos character models as well as others were one or two bits.
> 
> 
> 
> This is ironic. You argue for a bitz service being full of problems then ask whether you can get a lascannon bit for your army. The answer is you not likely to find one now. In the past you were able to order anything. Funny that isnt it?


I never said I LIKED the fact I couldn't get my bits I wanted for my conversions but had to buy whole units just for a few bits. I said it made business sense.

As an example, lets take the slave girls from Astrabal Vect's Dais of Destruction. These are great little models to use as slaves on just about anything ( I personally used the sister slave model on an objective marker, I have her sitting on a pile of rubble chained to a pole )

The mould for this model contains everything to make the Dais ( because that is what it was intended for ). So when you bitz ordered the slave girls for some conversion, they have to make the whole Dais, then send you just those two bits. These are waay more popular than all the other parts of the Dais, so they will have a lot of incomplete Dais's of Destruction they cannot sell collecting dust on their shelves.
However, making a mould just for the 'popular' bits isn't economicly feasible either. Simply because there's not enough demand to pay for the investment of making said mould.
A mould costs aroudn 50-60 thousand pounds to create. Now, lets give a random assumption that after taxes, shipping and whatnot, they make 50 pence profit on this model, they will have to sell 100.000 of them to break even on the investment of this mould. While such 'popular' bits sell quite well given they are bits, they will never sell that many of such a model, simply because there's not that many people that play this game that are interested in having the model.
So it's not feasible to make such a mould. However, selling the bit on it's own using the Dais mold is also not feasible because normall, a sale of the Dais model goes for 30 pounds or so. Instead, they sell about 20 pounds worth of bits from the mould ( if they are lucky ) as bits.
Hence they're selling at break even at best. Not considering the cost of having all the bits stocked and inventoried and stored, and the manpower needed to process bits orders.

Economicly, it makes sense to discontinue this, they don't like it either, but it's simply not feasible. A company has to make a profit to continue existing.

I hope they will work out a way to at least be able to mail order individual sprues and sets. A bit of proper marketting research on what bits sell and work out an investment plan to sell these as collected sprues or something like that takes time, though 3 years is quite some time.


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## Arcane (Feb 17, 2009)

torealis said:


> bear in mind also that to make one 'bit' available, in the majority of cases they have to cast the whole model... so theyre left, in the majority of cases, with tons of half of a model that no one buys and they cant sell.


That makes absolutely no sense. Bits are made from different molds on a different line. Making a Rhino tread does not require making an entire Rhino. All it takes is to run the 1 mold through the machine and out pops 1 piece.



Inquisitor Einar said:


> The problem with the bits services was incomplete models. Quite a lot of ordered parts of models that as a whole were pretty expensive. Buying only the part they wanted meant that GW was stuck with the rest which they couldn't sell, and nobody wanted


Your logic here is also flawed. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the mold injection fab process. How does making an SoB backpack require GW to make an entire SoB unit? It does not since they are made on entirely different lines with different molds. They can be made separately and easily. 

The factory makes 100 SoBs, they make 150 SoB backpacks. 100 of those backpacks are put into the SoB boxes, the other 50 could be saved for separate sell. If the 50 don't sell by the time the next back of SoB are ready to be ran, then you can choose to use those remaining 50 in the new packs if you feel it is needed.
*
It's not like you order up a Whirlwind Sprue and they open up the Whirlwind Box and take it out, leaving only the Rhino behind...*


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## Whizzwang (Dec 31, 2008)

Arcane said:


> Making a Rhino tread does not require making an entire Rhino.


Actually, yes it does.


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## Jezlad (Oct 14, 2006)

Why then are GW blocking independant US retailors from splitting sets?

Surely they should be happy with people doing the "splitting" for them?


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## Marneus Calgar (Dec 5, 2007)

Although, I have heard talk from my Local Gw that the bits service might come back...


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## Marneus Calgar (Dec 5, 2007)

Jezlad said:


> Why then are GW blocking independant US retailors from splitting sets?
> 
> Surely they should be happy with people doing the "splitting" for them?


Because GW hate people making profit out of what they make. That like saying, you make somthing, I rip it apart and sell it bit by bit to make a profit.


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## Zamgek (Dec 11, 2008)

another thing you can do now is just call in and say, I bought this, from this store, and there was a short/didn't come with this... and you get a free model + all the stuff from your 1st box it came with. I know 1 guy who bought the Stompa it's chainsword had a short on it he called about it and they sent him a free stompa... So now he has 2 because he made a claw for in place of the chainsword


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## torealis (Dec 27, 2006)

Arcane said:


> That makes absolutely no sense. Bits are made from different molds on a different line. Making a Rhino tread does not require making an entire Rhino. All it takes is to run the 1 mold through the machine and out pops 1 piece.



This isn't quite what we were talking about. I think the topic is really about the loss of the bitz ordering, which was by and large composed of metal bitz. I meant in my post that if you wanted, say, Coteaz's daemonhammer, they had to cast coteaz and his hammer for you to get the hammer, thus theyre left with a million Coteaz's they never sell.

also, making a rhino tread would require them to run the entire sprue through.


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## Arcane (Feb 17, 2009)

torealis said:


> This isn't quite what we were talking about. I think the topic is really about the loss of the bitz ordering, which was by and large composed of metal bitz. I meant in my post that if you wanted, say, Coteaz's daemonhammer, they had to cast coteaz and his hammer for you to get the hammer, thus theyre left with a million Coteaz's they never sell.
> 
> also, making a rhino tread would require them to run the entire sprue through.





Whizzwang said:


> Actually, yes it does.



The hammer makes sense of course, because it is part of the same model. The tread does not require an entire Rhino, unless of course you are saying that an entire Rhino fits onto one sprue, which it does not. All they need is the one sprue, not the entire model, the transfers, the box etc. 

The example best works with models which have completely separate sprues, such as pewter figure's parts, like a Witchunter Backpack, which cannot be found seperately anywhere, even though they are made on their own sprue. 

Fact of the matter is, GW knows they will make more money by people having to buy an entirely new model than letting them buy just what they need. It is very similar to bulk construction materials disapearing in hardware stores across America. The Execs have told me themselves that they are phasing out by the foot electrical cord because, while they make money at it, they make even more when someone has to buy an entire roll than just a couple feet.


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