I really appreciate Games Workshop, but sometimes I wonder about the thought processes over there, and the recent Champions of Slaanesh – Emperor’s Children Army Set release (see "Emperor’s Children Hit Hit the Battlefield") brought those thoughts to the forefront once again.
Under GW’s current preorder policy (except on rare occasions when the company really wants to push a title, such as Skaventide), the company’s sales representatives do not take preorders. Instead the company sends out an email with a description of the items solicited for preorder and a link to a form on which the store puts its preorders. At my store, the preorder form is due by 5:30 pm on Tuesday, and once the store clicks "submit," that is it.
Unlike initial orders and Final Order Cutoff orders from comic distributors, which allow stores to adjust orders until the deadline, GW only allows "one and done." This means, instead of allowing stores to put a running tally of customer orders into their form and then submitting it, stores have about 48 hours to solicit actual wants from customers, and then turn around and submit the order by the due date and time.
The 5:30 pm cutoff time is another problem. Unlike other cutoff times, which are at midnight or early morning, 5:30 pm falls right during peak sales time for most stores. Evening traffic generally starts picking up around 3 pm or 4 pm in the afternoon and continues steadily until 7 pm or later. Given the number of customers coming through, especially for a smaller or one-person shop, missing the deadline is not unheard of.
In our store, I have waited (especially on popular releases) until as close to the deadline as possible and on a few occasions, have missed it, meaning we did not get the new releases on time. Generally, we have been able to either source the missed items from those stores that did get their orders submitted on time or pick them up later when GW got them back into stock. Still, a midnight or early morning deadline would certainly help.
Another problem I have seen with this limited window of orders is that GW cannot plan well for demand of products. There is no guarantee that, once a store submits its order, it will get the requested number of units. From what I've heard, several stores submitted preorders for 20 to 24 copies of Emperor’s Children, only to see their orders cut in half. I have been told by GW staff that the company sets its production runs one to two years in advance for new releases, then solicits orders from stores two weeks before the release date. That does not allow for much margin of error in terms of calculating demand and results in disappointed customers.
I would almost rather go to an allocation process as GW used to have. Before moving to this order model, GW would send out solicitations for new releases and indicate if there was a cap on quantities orderable or not. That way, stores could take orders with reasonable expectation of fulfilling them.
Comments? Send them to castleperilousgames@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
