Wyrd in Europe, future and opportunities

[Farbschmier]

First of all, I hope this is the right place.

In Facebook, the question was asked, how many play Malifaux, compared to Warhammer and why.  What was criticized about Wyrd products was the language barrier and availability. 

First of all, I think the whole Wyrd stuff is awesome. And your website including Wyrd Homepage is exemplary. But ..,
I partially agree with it. The language problem is not so bad, multilingual education is standard in the European Schools, Europeans speak 2 or 3 languages on average. There are also good translations for download now. So that's not so bad and was solved well with the translations for download.
What bothers me, however, is that even with well-stocked stores (I take as an example the largest in Switzerland, Tactica Zurich) many figures are simply not available. Not because the shop does not order, but because wyrd does not deliver.
It is understandable that you would rather deliver a large quantity than to send a small order for the same logistic service. But the bill does not work that way.
I would like to take the example of the Swiss shop once again: the infrastructure there is optimal. It has 3 or 4 large game tables. It has a table where I can paint as customer figures, the colors are provided by the shop for free. If I want to buy paint for myself, the whole Vallejo color assortment is there. And that of Games Workshop. And that of Armypainter.
But ... what good is that to me as a Wyrd fan, Malifaux addict and Neverborn lover, though I still can not buy Lord Chompy after 10 months? Hey, for a real little monster, I only need 9 months! (Actually my wife, I only need 5 minutes)
I'm in the shop and look at the assortment. And notice that new things come every week. From the game workshop.
A junior player does not wait 10 months for a character. Then he renounces Wyrd games and wastes his money on spice marines.
So invest a bit, Wyrdos! Also send a smaller shipment abroad. The infrastructure is there. The interest is there .. and also the money from the clientele.
I think if you do not neglect that, you will succeed. Otherwise you will drown or lose at least one market.

The original question at the Facebook post mentioned was: How many people play Malifaux out of 100 customers in a Games Shop? So if 100 people play Warhammer and 20 of them are interested in Malifaux, but those 20 can not buy the products. ... then all 100 games will continue to play Spice Marines. This is a pity. Because TT games ...are OURS!

[Treehouse]

Well, that will be hard to find out:

1. Due to the boom in miniature games, there is a ton of interesting games competing against each other. In the past, jf you went to a club, warhammer/40k basically was the go-to system, later WarmaHordes joined. Then, many others followed filling the void warhammer left when people started to turn their back. There are currently some 'major' gaming systems, the renewed 40k, warmahordes (on the decline, as I heard), guild ball, x-wing, with the occasionally dust or freebooters thrown in. Games like infinity or malifaux have fans, but it is hard to find players. But this is the case for many games. Instead of 1-3 systems, the vast number of available games makes it hard to reliably find opponents because people are trying out many different systems and you might end up playing against the same 1-2 people. 

2. Malifaux gamers in germany are not as connected as in, say, the uk. The hot-spots seem to be the north, hamburg/cuxhaven' and the south-west, saarbrücken. there are people elsewhere, of course, but more scarce and not all playing in stores.

3. Physical, brick-amd-mortar stores are on the decline. Because of the internet and reason nr. 1. It is impossible to have a good stock of so many games. If you have a stable community for malifaix, you might have a better stock, but it is also risky. 

3. Availability for Wyrd products is, let's say it that way,a valid reason to criticize. Shipping from the us is prohibitly expensive for.privat buyers. Big stores in germany ordering products only recieve parts of their order and/or it takes alot of time for them to arrive. This is very annoying and i suppose is off-putting for many gamers. also, the gimmicks like the promotions or guilder program are hard to benefit from.

[Farbschmier]

I agree. What I mean is that Wyrd preferably should deliver to specialty stores, even with smaller order quantities. Because the strength of the real physical, brick-and-mortar stores is that they can acquire new customers. And thus also new future game partners for me. The convenient and cheap shopping from your own PC is nice - shopping in a real game shop with social interaction is even more enjoyable. And it keeps the hobby alive.

 

[Acid_Weasel]

Ok, guys, isn't it impossible in your physical, brick-and-mortar stores to speak with owner or sell-person and ask about bringing specific, not so popular lot special for you? Yes, it may take month or something like that, but is it really any rush?)

[Adran]

I'm not involved with ordering of product, but I thought I read somewhere that the supply chain does not go from Wyrd direct to shop, there is a distributor in between. So you may well be talking to the wrong people with your complaint. 

There certainly have been some products that keep going out of Stock from Wyrd because they get bought quickly.

 

[Ludvig]

Yeah, there is a go-between. My local shop has had a devivery time of something like 8-10 months for Lady J's starter box since other european stores that ordered bigger quantities got first dibs so it's not a matter of waiting one month but more than 6 months for some popular boxes. That is a big problem for a player starting out as well as for us veterans.

[Treehouse]

Thing is, once a product is released and open for ordering ,it is not good if you have to wait even a month, actually. Manufactoring issues, shipping etc. is a factor,  but I think it is understandable if there are complaints when players have to wait xy months for the product. If it is the supplier's fault, well, then that might be so, but it is not the supplier's product, so in the end the ball is in Wyrd's court. So it makes sense if the customer does adress Wyrd, not the supplier (if known). 

[Adran]

I know my local stores have to reach a minimum order with their supplier before they can order anything. So just because I went in and asked for box X, it may well take some time until the store builds up a big enough order to make its order from  the supplier. The Supplier I assume also has a minimum size order, so if your item is not in stock with them, it might not instantly be ordered with wyrd, but instead just added to their next order, which could easily not happen until a couple of months after you spoke with the store. And thats the first Wyrd know of you wanting it. So saying they haven't delivered in that time is not fair on them, because It hasn't been ordered from them yet. 

And I assume some stock is sent by sea, so its not going to arrive straight after it gets ordered anyway. 

 

[Ludvig]

Some sort of Wyrd Europe warehouse with a more direct line of restock would solve this. The models are made in china anyways, right? Probably a big risk for a company of their size though, not sure if the market is big enough to support that. I just wanted to say that we're not talking about a month or so when we talk about waiting for your stuff getting restocked as someone seemed to imply.

[Adran]

Here is a thread where Nathan talks about this sort of topic

 

[Acid_Weasel]

So what about your local henchman? S(he) anyway make orders from Wyrd web-store for tournament kits and cover delivery cost by entering fee on events, so why not to include some more stuff for local community?

[Ludvig]

2 minutes ago, Acid_Weasel said:

So what about your local henchman? S(he) anyway make orders from Wyrd web-store for tournament kits and cover delivery cost by entering fee on events, so why not to include some more stuff for local community?

I am the local henchman. I think the package will not be marked as free stuff then which may result in customs adding tax to the hypothetical value of the tournament kit. Haven't really tried it. I'll ask a few other swedish henchmen. I only order around 2-3 times a year because of the shipping and customs fees.

[Chou]

10 hours ago, Ludvig said:

I am the local henchman. I think the package will not be marked as free stuff then which may result in customs adding tax to the hypothetical value of the tournament kit. Haven't really tried it. I'll ask a few other swedish henchmen. I only order around 2-3 times a year because of the shipping and customs fees.

Exactly, I've ordered in the past models for me that for different reasons are not delivered to my LGS that later in the package must be listed for customs and since it's not free stuff or promotional kits they charge you quite some money. In Spain the distributor is Diacash and we usually receive the new models one month later than when Wyrd releases them (for instance Talos hasn't arrive yet); I've heard that Diacash imposes some kind of restriction in the amount of models you can order for each new release, but that I can't confirm. 

[Ludvig]

A month wouldn't bother me. The problem for me is when stuff is out of stock for a really long time. That gives a strong incentive to order a clump directly from wyrd (especially on pre-sales at gencon) and eat the shipping. I'm not a fan of that approach since I like my local shop and want to support them. I also prefer buying stuff piecemeal, I get stressed out buying an entire army in one go.

[Sol_Sorrowsong]

Same for the Finns.  It doesn't seem to be that our hench and LGS isn't trying to get us our orders (that wouldn't make sense at all), but the distributor is either out of stock or causing some sort of issue in getting our orders filled.  I can't see it being a Wyrd thing either because although it takes some time, I still get my bonus model for supporting my LGS when they have promotions.  Takes a month or two, but it is better than 3+ for getting a specific box.

[Beta]

Another problem besides the long delivery times is missing product. There is a store in Germany which collects orders from other stores to place bigger orders every few weeks. The prolem is...most of the time nearly half of the ordered items are missing and you would again have to wait several weeks/months to get your stuff (and hope everything is delivered this time).

[bedjy]

Today, the Spanish provider of my LGS was proud to announce that they received a lot of news for Malifaux !
October news... (which they still didn't have)

[whodares]

On 17-11-2017 at 9:32 AM, Beta said:

Another problem besides the long delivery times is missing product. There is a store in Germany which collects orders from other stores to place bigger orders every few weeks. The prolem is...most of the time nearly half of the ordered items are missing and you would again have to wait several weeks/months to get your stuff (and hope everything is delivered this time).

I live in Belgium and order from the UK. The webstore where I buy is cheaper than the official Wyrd store after converting $ to € and the shipping is also tons cheaper.

They are a fairly large store and even they have problems with getting stuff. I ordered a Dreamer crew with Teddy, Dopple, Insidious Madness, ... in May. I got My Dreamer and stuff in August, the Doppleganger in September and I'm still waiting for my Insidious Madness at the end of November with no expected delivery so far.

I had a tournament this weekend where I couldn't play the crew I wanted because a model box hadn't been in the shop for over 6 months. The last one they had got sold in March-April and they have been waiting ever since to get some more stock. Even if I were to bite the bullet and order from the official Wyrd store, I still wouldn't have it. It's been sold out on there for ages as well. It's not fun playing a summoner and one of your key models can't be used because it hasn't been in stockfor ages ...

[Chou]

20 hours ago, bedjy said:

Today, the Spanish provider of my LGS was proud to announce that they received a lot of news for Malifaux !
October news... (which they still didn't have)

Tell me about it... my LGS will receive them by the end of the week, it still doesn't make sense to me that a very famous shop in UK that gets its models from the same Spanish distributor has them available for several weeks now while here in Spain we will have them this week. I could understand it if it was a local problem due to the Spanish customs, but if it happens also in France... I guess it's related to some EU border-thing 

[bedjy]

All the informations about providers can be found here
UK got their own provider : Simple miniatures which may be a lot more efficient than Dia Cash.

I know Intrafin's prices are terrible and their stock is very limited...

I don't know anything about Game Distribution (Belgium), Game trade Italy & Wyrd edizioni (Italy) and Hall of the phenix (hungary). Maybe they are also more efficient than Dia Cash... At least Dia Cash now has an english speaking representative now ^^.

[bedjy]

But customers like us can't get any information about providers, only retailers can contact them to have range of prices and stock availability.

 

[Ludvig]

3 hours ago, Chou said:

Tell me about it... my LGS will receive them by the end of the week, it still doesn't make sense to me that a very famous shop in UK that gets its models from the same Spanish distributor has them available for several weeks now while here in Spain we will have them this week. I could understand it if it was a local problem due to the Spanish customs, but if it happens also in France... I guess it's related to some EU border-thing 

The bigger orders the higher priority of shipping you will get from the middle-distribution so if the english shop places a huge order they will get their stuff first, the layer may be depleted so the smaller stores get theirs when the distributor gets their next shipment from Wyrd. That's how I've had it explained to me.