Quote Originally Posted by RealGenius View Post
Couldn't a store pay retail for boxes and then break them down to bits? I thought GW just didn't want the reseller price for bits.

If GW had bits again, that would be nice, but their bits service was never as good as the alternatives.
Yes, but there are two things wrong with that as a business model:
1) Margin on purchasing retail
2) the Volume of boxes

I'll address the 2nd issue first:
The amount of boxes you would need to purchase retail would send up a flag to GW (or it wouldn't be worth it as a business). For example, if a store orders 20 boxes of Dark Vengeance as a one time purchase from GW, that probably won't send up a flag. if they did it every week, for a month or two, that probably would.

At retail that's $100 per box...plus taxes, so you're ordering just over $2175 worth of stock per week. which means you'd need to break that down, kit it out, (shipping and packaging etc) and sell over $2175 in bits to recoup that. You'd basically need to be able to sell that entire box of stuff for $125-$150 to make a profit after supplies and labor. And that's not counting all the competition and market saturation etc... But this is just one example.

Point is you'd have to move a lot of stuff for it to be profitable, and even then you're looking at razor thin margins IF you're buying at retail.

Which brings me to my 1st point: The margins are paper thin if you're paying retail. The investment required to get started at retail, plus the amount of storage you'd need, work/labor you would need and organization you'd require just doesn't seem worth the return on investment. It's feasibly possible if you have free labor or you're doing it in your spare time, but that is a whole other ball of wax. If someone had a business model based on that (free labor) then I could see it working...for a while.

Oh and I almost forgot, and Brandon can back me up on this, about the 2nd point: If GW FEELS like you (the retail store) is supplying one of these online stores with merchandise, they will just choose not to sell you stuff. Which if they play connect-the-dots long enough they will figure it out.


TL;DR -- Yes, a store could pay retail. But it would not be reasonable in the long run.