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Something thats been tugging at my conscience for a while, Yoymart, Yoymart for those that don’t know is a heavily discounted website based in China, it sells a wide variety of things, but most interestingly for us, Warhammer 40k, the website sells Warhammer 40k recasts for dirt cheap prices, Wriathknights have been selling for £20-£25, Forge World Hornets are £15 each new releases have been known to go up on Yoymart 48hrs after release. As I say, heavily discounted off the RRP that GW sells at!
Is this a good/bad thing? I mean, Ebay has been around a while now, it’s not killed GW, but then again at some stage someone has bought a GW model, so at least they have had some money go through the bank account. Yoymart, nothing goes to GW... and with falling sales, Ebay and places like Yoymart are most likely taking that custom or customers are leaving the hobby.
For those customers that are saying the high GW prices drive people to look for cheaper ways to buy plastic and what Ebay, Element Games and Yoymart does bring is a more affordable hobby, for some, take myself as an example, me and the wife have agreed a £50 budget each per month on our hobbies, she rides horses, I buy plastic toys... it works. As I have a meagre budget for GW stuff. My budget couldn’t even buy an Eldar Battle force box direct from GW now at £70 a pop, it blows my budget, if I want a few items take a Wave Serpent and a squad of Guardians from GW its £50 and my budget for the month is shattered in one go, I have to scour Ebay or the other discount websites like Element games to purchase my plastic, or I can go to the dark side, Yoymart.
A little comparison on the current Eldar battle force:
GW £70 (£89 if bought separate)
Element Games £59 (£79 if bough separate)
Yoymart Vyper for $18, Falcon $30, Guardian squad $20 and Dire Avenger squad for $18 – Google tells me its £50 (remember its £50 for a Wave Serpent and Guardian squad from GW)
As you can see, Yoymart is very very cheap, only £10 cheaper from Element on the Battleforce, but if you’re picking stuff up separate it jumps to almost £30 and almost £40 in comparison to GW.
I’ve used Yoymart a few times now, the sculpts are not 100% amazing, a few bent weapons, bubbles and even a broken leg on a Kroot (maybe broken in transit), all are easy fixes and at 30%/50% off RRP I was expecting worse. The lead times varies massively 1-4 weeks has been the norm for me so there is that to factor in, if you’re urgent for something, then maybe Yoymart is not the way to go.
I have mixed feelings about Yoymart, Element games is fine for me, it has to buy from GW afterall... Yoymart just recasts and sells at cheaper than GW... completely undermining their work, but myself and I suspect many others GW prices are driving me to places like Yoymart to continue to collect and ultimately play the game.
What's your take on placed like Yoymart? Is this a hobby killer or life saver?
One of my best friends is Gavin Newton one of GW's sculptors, I know that the whole department hates these thieving ripoff companies. To spend months if not a year on a project and have these recasts companies can along and steal all your hard work is galling for the design team. The design team cost GW millions in wages each year and more in other resources, the recasting is just plain stealing and I would never support it.
ReplyDeleteDo get me wrong GW's pricing policies are insane and completely nonsensical, while I don't feel it's 'that' expensive for the quality they could easily rebalance and make significant improvements.
As for affordability well you could always paint something you already own, play some games, plan a campaign or do something that's basically free and then save up money for the bigger purchases. I have a similar budget agreement with my wife £100 each for all personal expenditure, so any going out, clothing, haircuts, Spotify and gaming in any form comes out of this budget so if I want a big kit I need to save.
Two years ago I would have been more upset about it, but the way GW wants to nickel and dime us over every little thing nowadays, they have to think about their own karma. And what did they expect would happen, when they exported their manufacturing base to a nation of copyright pirates. Every decision has been about pumping up GW stock in the short term, and yoymart is the cancerous result.
ReplyDeleteI am inclined to agree. Overpricing a product is a sure way to invite copyright theft, as it both makes it worthwhile for the pirate and motivates the customer who feels they are getting ripped off.
ReplyDeleteI suspect many people who buy from Yoymart or Ali-Express or NotFailcast feel they have the moral high ground because GWs price inflation has got so ridiculous, and their manipulation of the meta to sell new models so extreme.
I've bought a few things from yoymart, mainly items where the only option is a FW model like a Conversion Beamer Master of the Forge. Some FW single models are ludicrously expensive when you factor in postage.
I've always been pretty happy with the quality. Its a shame they don't sell codices and rulebooks because thats where GW's exploitation is really obvious, and these are must have items if you are to play!
GW really need to rethink their pricing policy. Cut the deadweight from their business, make troop choices especially cheaper. Why not simple bagged clip together minis for troops? How many Cultists would they have sold if they were £15 for 20 in a bag?
Free or really cheap (under £5) PDF versions of the rules would boost sales massively as people could get the rules for that allied unit they fancy buying without paying £30 for a codex. Most people would still pay for a physical book for gaming, though a softcover book at £20 would be more sensible than making everyone resentful with the £30 hardcover-yet-less-units-and-worse-fluff editions they've been putting out lately.
The last issue is cost of entry. I have several friends who've seen my nerdy posts on Facebook and really wanted to start 40K, but as soon as they find out how much the rules and codex costs, let alone the cost of a 'normal' points value army, they are put off. I usually try to convert their interest to Star Trek Attack Wing as its better than losing them as gamers entirely!
GW badly needs a small scale skirmish version of their rules. Why isn't Kill Team available as a £30 book with army lists in the back? Put rules for new Kill Team useable units in the boxes. Its so obvious I can't believe they haven't done this! New players would join by the thousand, and many would graduate to full 40K in time I'm sure!
Lastly GW needs a prepainted game set in their universe to get people started. Imagine a new Titan-centric version of Epic, cardstock scenery like Dropzone Commander have done so well. Play with a handful of Titans per side. Use the rules-in-the-box expansion method that has worked so well for X-Wing and Star Trek. Money and love would pour in!
If GW adopted these policies not only would their sales sky-rocket but piracy would fall away!
Weren't they having problems that caused Paypal to drop them a while back?
ReplyDeleteyes, but they now have Paypal back again so they must have sorted whatever the problem was.
ReplyDeleteNo paypal at my end?
ReplyDeleteI agree with both of you guys, people/companies will ALWAYS exploit gaps in the market and Yoymart is doing that, and well, from what I've heard.
ReplyDeleteI bet the whole of GW hates the likes of Yoymart, I mean I hate the competition where I work. But our company reacts to such threats, GW don't seem to be, other than failing in pressing court charges against Chapterhouse.... which makes the whole PR issue so much worse and brings more competition out the woodwork as they might feel they stand a chance against the power house in the table gaming industry.
ReplyDeleteAnother issue which I didn't really take into account in my article, the never ending change in Meta and quick release times makes it almost impossible to keep up or so expensive only the rich can do it. I don't really want to spend £140 on 2 Wraithknights to find the new Dark Eldar is the most competitive codex ever and makes my new Wraithknights pointless. So if I can save a lot of cash and get them for £50, I can still use them every now and not feel guilty for not having them in every list...
For me personally I only get kicks out of tournament gaming, I've played for fun, played campaigns, even played in 40k roleplaying campaign for years before my first tournament, but nothing got to me like tournaments and I want to be competitive... not winning all tournaments, but I like top 25% finishing and to do this I must keep on reacting to the meta. GW make it impossible to do without cutting corners. Be in downloading PDF Codexes or using Yoymart if I want that new model...
you're right, it was there last week but its not now. Perhaps GW are leaning on Paypal. Damn, should have ordered last week! Its not such a bargain with any of the other payment methods.
ReplyDeleteYou can still find deals from other HK-based sellers on eBay. It's the difference between getting a Thanatar for $90+free shipping vs $120+shipping from the UK.
ReplyDeleteYes, it's bad that artists' hard work gets ripped off, but you wouldn't have that in the first place if GW didn't have such a high entry cost. Someone over there thinks they're the Apple of wargaming, but between their high prices and their byzantine rules, they're killing their own market.
ReplyDeleteI am pretty much a fluffy player but I do like a reasonably close game as it is much more interesting. I don't update my army too often as I don't have the spare money and I like everything to be painted before I play with it which takes time, although I have a massive collection of old minis (maybe 8000 points).
ReplyDeleteGW however always makle the new stuff much more powerful and combined with the lack of balance between codices means I am yet to win against the new Eldar after about 10 games. These meta changes and unbalanced codexes bug even fluffy non tournament players like me.
Because of these transparent manipulations of the rules to sell models, and because of the stupid price of rules and codices which I have to buy if I am to keep playing, I don't feel any loyalty to GW whatsoever and happily buy from whoever is cheapest. This used to be Ebay but these days is China.
I ordered from them two weeks ago - I got in touch with their customer services and let them know about how I was having problems with payment methods... they simply invoiced me directly through PayPal and I received my order last week Thursday :)
ReplyDeleteI am not sure if they are doing these invoices as a matter of course or just because I asked.
thats good to hear. A lot of Aliexpress sellers will also take Paypal if you ask them.
ReplyDelete