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I have a hard time believing that GW distribution would intentionally screw up orders to high-volume stores just to supposedly help their own stores, for several reasons. 3 anecdotal, and 3 based on marketing principals:
1) My friend who owned 3 game shops in middle-TN told me that the GW stores were primarily to promote the hobby. This was confirmed to me by another shop owner. Given the location of the local GW store (among the highest overhead locations in Nashville), I tend to believe them. It seems the stores are about promotion, marketing, and advertising rather than retail profits.
2) The local GW store is incredibly helpful. Again, my buddy said they promoted the hobby and were less interested in direct competition. The GW shop is actually running a promotion that culminates in a tournament at an independent store.
3) Directly questioning the owners of two other local stores resulted in both of them telling me they weren't worried before/haven't suffered any discernible loss of business since the GW store opened over a year ago.
4) GW knows that local shops have loyal customers who prefer to do business with them. Tanking those stores would not result in full capture of their business, and would make a lot of people mad. They only locate corporate stores in high-volume areas, which means that there are probably multiple outlets. If they mess with all of them, the chances that everyone would be out of the same stuff at the same time is slim, and would be blamed on GW.
5) In the past few years, the amount of communication between stores has skyrocketed, and they have been fighting heavy-handed marketing and distribution. For example, GW started requiring large minimum orders for new releases and stores ended up with dead stock. After many online discussions, many of the stores decided to skip the new releases and order smaller lots after the figs went to the regular rotation. Not only did GW get a drop in new release orders, the figs did worse overall because by the time the stores had them, the excitement had worn off.
6) Related to #4, it's a good way to lose overall hobby market share. Miniature games don't just compete against each other, and neither do the retail outlets. RPGs, CCGs, and computer games compete for much of the same pool of hobby money. Screwing around your customers is going to result not just in customers going to competing miniature games, but other hobbies as well.
In short, it would just be a bad idea, profit-wise, and my personal observations are that GW, however business-oriented they are, is not a stupid institution.
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Neal
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