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Carrion Empire Gone Already?


Sleboda

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Went to my local GW store today, two hours after they opened. I was ready to drop $200 on carrion Empire and the FEC warscrolls. Both were sold out. 

They got one copy of Carrion Empire and zero copies of the warscrolls. This is an actual GW store.

Manager said that Carrion Empire is out of print.

So much for me starting a new army. Nice planning, GW. :(

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It is only out of stock in America. Depending on how well it sold elsewhere they will either decide to do another print run or move some stock from the UK warehouse. 

Regarding the warscrolls I heard there was a problem which delayed delivery to the states.

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Warscrolls are always a limited print run - for some reason GW has trouble keeping cardstock long term for some product lines. 

 

As for Carrion Empire if its sold out that fast they might well shift stock around from another territory or do a second print run. That said I salute our loyal skaven clans in the colonies for founding so many new clans!

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Our local store has a dude that is basically the unofficial GW organizer.  He isn't an employee so the store gives him a discount and first crack at the releases.  Store got 4 copies of Carrion Empire and he bought 3 of them.  I only got a copy of the FEC book bc I caught his bat signal and he was able to get the store to hold one for me.

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One fact is we don't like GW's projected lifespan for the box; it could be that GW has not only sped up the battletome release to tie into the box release; but they might also have sped up the shift to retail for the new models. I can bet that they get more than a few complaints and also have to deal with the fact that the longer the box is out the more people are buying from ebay - which means money they could be spending diect on GW products is lining another persons pocket as their product is twicesold. 

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For me it’s a limited edition type set because it’s almost a splash release with the new battletomes and it offers an amazing deal. We’ve seen it before with the other sets they have done and will see it again in a few weeks with the new 40k set. I think if you look around you can still get copies or find people selling half a set.

Shouldn’t stop anybody starting a new army though.

 

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My comment was more about how poorly GW managed their demand planning. For a Warhammer store to get only a single copy of the box, and zero copies of the warscrolls, implies that preorder demand was much higher than anticipated.

The manager said he had chatted with other GW managers who were also shorted and their conclusion was bad planning.

It's funny, too, because when I was in trade sales, we used to fight the battle with the independent stores to get them to never order just one of a new thing. They would order one copy and be so proud of themselves for selling out and not having dead inventory. I would shake my head and have to explain that they had no clue what their sales potential was. The ideal situation is to plan well enough to have one copy left over in the shelf after the release excitement window closed. Restocking a week later, with one copy, misses out on so many hype sales.

I'm sure I'm not alone in letting pre-release hype overtake me and get me to spend more than I might normally. This was one of those times. I would have bought the box then and there due to excitement, but if I'm going to need to wait a week, the excitement and immediate gratification factor will have faded, so better heads prevail and I save the cash.

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15 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

My comment was more about how poorly GW managed their demand planning. For a Warhammer store to get only a single copy of the box, and zero copies of the warscrolls, implies that preorder demand was much higher than anticipated.

If you were getting it from store, would it have made sense to pre-order it? Even via mail order which if you do in store still supports the store? Yes I agree it’s not amazing planning but surely the store manager would have asked for more? Or is it a case that it’s more popular than anticipated and store copies became preorder ones? 

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Skaven getting a reunited tome I'm sure draw a lot out of the middens and dark places; which likely made them all rush out and buy carrion empires! Plus any Flesh Eater fans its a perfect box as the only thing not in it is their zombie-dragon and the hero they have in it is a summoning powerhouse. 

 

Very popular on both sides I think .

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2 hours ago, Gaz Taylor said:

If you were getting it from store, would it have made sense to pre-order it? 

I had already pre-ordered over $300 of other stuff, and at that point was on the fence about another $200.

I kept reading more and more on the GW site in the week after the order but before pick up. On the way to the store I was taking about it with my gf and our mutual excitement tipped me over the edge. The hype had done it's job, and so I opened the store's door ready to pick up a copy of a featured new release, at the store owned by the manufacturer, at full retail, only two hours after the store had opened for business ... only to be told that the single copy they had was sold.

We can come up with all sorts of stuff around it, but the bottom line is that lack of planning on their part directly foiled all the hype and lost a $200 sale plus any additional stuff I might have bought over time for the army.

Anyway, I'm not all that bothered by it now, it's just annoying and dumb. Back to my Death Guard, KO, Nighthaunt, Necrons, Knights, Gitz, ... 🙂

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16 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

We can come up with all sorts of stuff around it, but the bottom line is that lack of planning on their part directly foiled all the hype and lost a $200 sale plus any additional stuff I might have bought over time for the army.

Yeah I think we can come with stuff around it but at end of day I think it comes down to that it was more popular than GW thought it would be and it sounds like it was more of an impulse buy on your part rather than you were missing out on anything.

I learnt years ago, if I wanted a GW release, always preorder it as they are often popular (well the things I want are!) 😉

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@Sleboda, bit hard to say whether it was bad planning or not. GW would have followed their data to predict sales. No predictive method is going to be perfect. That said, this set is definitely my favourite out of Wrath and Carrion. I would give them a call to see what you can do, you might still be able to get a copy.  

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5 hours ago, Sleboda said:

My comment was more about how poorly GW managed their demand planning. For a Warhammer store to get only a single copy of the box, and zero copies of the warscrolls, implies that preorder demand was much higher than anticipated.

The manager said he had chatted with other GW managers who were also shorted and their conclusion was bad planning.

It's funny, too, because when I was in trade sales, we used to fight the battle with the independent stores to get them to never order just one of a new thing. They would order one copy and be so proud of themselves for selling out and not having dead inventory. I would shake my head and have to explain that they had no clue what their sales potential was. The ideal situation is to plan well enough to have one copy left over in the shelf after the release excitement window closed. Restocking a week later, with one copy, misses out on so many hype sales.

I'm sure I'm not alone in letting pre-release hype overtake me and get me to spend more than I might normally. This was one of those times. I would have bought the box then and there due to excitement, but if I'm going to need to wait a week, the excitement and immediate gratification factor will have faded, so better heads prevail and I save the cash.

Grognard has a copy.

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15 minutes ago, novakai said:

they seem to always have a tendency to understock stuff for US store. the DoK Caldron was sold out for nearly 3 months, other units like Centigors and Grot Stabbas (which are still out of stock) also had the same problem after their release.

To be fair Stabbas are out of stock basically everywhere in Australia too.

The basic fact seems to be that GW are at this point facing an issue of over demand and under supply (note they recognise this - if you read their half year report the CEO specifically calls out the issue of stock level). They are investing a lot of money in fixing this issue, again in their financials you can see significant investment in production facilities, and I read a newspaper article about the Memphis distribution hub doubling in floor space. However, supply chain issues aren't resolved overnight.

Wouldn't surprise me if in general GW has been caught flat footed by the demand for AoS products.

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GW are building a new factory to help deal with production; also for a significant time one of their current factories was under producing because local city works was robbing power from its supply. 

 

The main issue is that GW went and did a load of things customers wanted ontop of things such as codex updates for ALL of 40K at once. So they got a massive spike on all their lines at once. Plus they've bee adding several specialist games to their roster. Basically their product expanded and their market expanded at the same time so they got a double hit. 

But it takes time to resolve production issues and GW doesn't watn to rush either because they know this big bubble is going to burst at some point and things will ease off. The last thing they want is to panic and end up in a position where when things ease off they are left holding un-needed infrastructure. 

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19 hours ago, Overread said:

Warscrolls are always a limited print run - for some reason GW has trouble keeping cardstock long term for some product lines. 

I can make a summation as to why that likely is - the UK is well known for it's oddball climate, damp and cold in the winter, wet with blistering hot spells in the summer.  This makes storage of thinner card & paper really quite tricky as it'll warp like nobodies business.  Short of having a climate controlled warehouse (which cost millions) it makes sense to have them printed in smaller quantities.  Plus it means they won't have too much money tied up in stock for things that might not sell as well.  On a positive I'm fairly sure that warscroll cards are produced in the UK so there's a much shorter lead time to restocking than things that get made in China :)

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1 hour ago, RuneBrush said:

I can make a summation as to why that likely is - the UK is well known for it's oddball climate, damp and cold in the winter, wet with blistering hot spells in the summer.  This makes storage of thinner card & paper really quite tricky as it'll warp like nobodies business.  Short of having a climate controlled warehouse (which cost millions) it makes sense to have them printed in smaller quantities.  Plus it means they won't have too much money tied up in stock for things that might not sell as well.  On a positive I'm fairly sure that warscroll cards are produced in the UK so there's a much shorter lead time to restocking than things that get made in China :)

I agree with this. Plus I think they have had their fingers burnt in the past by producing too many magic cards for Warhammer Fantasy. Basically it's stock that takes up valuable shelf space either in store or at a warehouse.

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Must be GW is planning on Carrion empire being a short term product then! Wouldn't surprise me to see the new models appear in boxes of their own in short order then! Or at least I would hope so. The other option is that we've burned through global stocks in a few days - good going rats and fleshies!

 

Ps - Anyone in the UK want to swap their skaven for some flesh eaters from the box?! 

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