In a weak moment I ordered a 28mm Orc army earlier in the week. I went with Mantic because of the price and the look of the miniatures. Then I browsed the GW site to see what an equivalent army of mostly ten year old miniatures would cost. It wasn't pretty. That can't be good for business. Also, why increase the price of ten year old plastic miniatures? (Apart from the obvious reason that they seem to have gotten away with it so far). I work in the plastics industry and boy let me tell you, it isn't the raw material cost at least. And you'd think they had recovered their initial mould and design investment several times over by now.

I mean seriously, raise the cost per miniature and increase the amount needed for the game. How long will it work? /end rant

Because they (think they) can.

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Classic mistake in looking at pricing is to consider how much they cost to produce. The only reason this matters is in whether to sell them at all, ie if you can't sell them for more than that then don't sell them. No, you sell things for as much as your customers are willing to pay (as an aggregate group). The group GW aims at is middle class with disposable income and enough of them are willing to pay the prices. Sure, if they lowered them, maybe more people would buy them. But it would have to be a large number of extra people for it to be worth the profit lost from the people who would have paid a higher price.

I'm not saying they've got the prices exactly right, but I don't think they're too far wrong (from a business perspective). I reckon there's a certain amount customers are prepared to spend on the hobby, and GW therefore has to aim to translate as much of that into profit as possible. Fewer models at higher margins. They just have to balance this against number of customers (lower prices = more customers in a price-competitive market). That's why GW goes for quality, because you can avoid the "race to the bottom" on price.

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Which is fine if your product/service is vastly superior than the competition. Heck, my employer is trying to push that line. "We're the only company in the world that can deliver these levels of quality consistently. Pay the premium and you won't have to worry about issues in your product line due to bad raw material." I imagine that is what our customers' machinery manufacturers say as well. Or maintenance providers, or whomever that wants in on their business. Only problem is that there are competitiors, which in the case of 28 mm Orc gaming miniatures, are (in my opinion, obviously) providing a better product at a lower price. You want to charge me more? Make it worth it to me. The reason I brought up raw material cost is that several companies refer to it when they raise prices. I guess it makes it simple since we as customers generally have no clue about the prices.

Well raw material price rises can be passed on for that reason, but also because they affect competitors too (so you don't lose customers to them by doing it).

Of course everybody likes to think they offer the best quality, but (development) cost vs quality decisions are made all the time and if your business model revolves around quality it generally shows. All I know is, if you read the shareholders reports you'll get the impression that GW themselves certainly think nobody makes models as good. (This is also why they aren't worried too much about counterfeited models i.e. recasts, they are convinced people want the best quality). For all I know though, you might be right about fantasy models - I've no idea about mantic's. Is the aesthetic the same? For 40k it's probably not the case and maybe that'd help explain a supposed drop off in sales of one but not the other.

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