We all have our brick and mortar stores we love to go to - often just to browse the merchandise and chat with our fellow gamers. But often enough, we do go online to buy our hobby needs there - maybe because they are cheaper or sell hard to find items, or even because their inventory is much easier to browse through.
In this new section of my blog, I will review the Online Stores I've already purchased hobby items from, to give you an impression if the shop is any good.
To start this off, I will begin with Der Fantasyladen (The Fantasy-Shop).
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| The cute store logo :-) |
This is an Germany based store, so the layout and contents are much better in the original german language, although there is an english option.
1. Store Description, what do they sell?
Der Fantasyladen sells about anything related to the miniatures hobby: Games Workshop, Privateer Press, Flames of War, Wyrd Games, Vallejo, Army Painter - to list just a few of the big ones. You name it, they got it.
Apart from the big ticket items, they also have tools, ingredients for mould-making, accessories, basing materials, RPG's... the list goes on. A big plus (for me at least, as the store is located in my hometown) is, that they also have a brick and mortar presence besides their Online Store. You can even go to their warehouse or the store to pick orders up you placed online - very convenient.
2. What did I buy?
I placed a lot of orders there over the last two years. Figures, paints, Sourcebooks, tools. Just check out my Christmas came early section in this blog, as a lot of the items listed there were from www.fantasyladen.de.
3. Service Quality
Over the years, there have been some issues, but all of them minor. Once, my package got lost between warehouse and store, as the postal service screwed up - not the fault of Der Fantasyladen, but I did have to contact them repeatedly, to get the issue sorted out. Which irked me a bit, cause the screw up was on their part. Another time one of their employees sent me a "package is ready to be collected" email, which, as it turned out, was wrong, so I made a trip for nothing. No biggie for me, as it is my hometown, but for others it might not have been so trivial. But I chalk those up as growing pains, as the store is a relatively new endeavor and is only around for the last 5 years or so - and it has gotten a lot more professional in the last year or two.
Other than that, they have always been very helpful and forthcoming.
4. Speed
The speed is greatly influenced if the product is in stock. If yes, they are very fast. I ordered things off of the website and could pick them up in the store the next day, which was very good. If the items are out of stock, it's out of their hands. Right now, I'm waiting for some Wyrd Games figures to be restocked and I'm hoping this will be the case late next week.
5.Would I buy there again?
Definitely! It's my FLGS, which also happens to be a very well stocked Online Store - Lucky for me, I'd say :-).
6. Verdict
Great store with a huge selection, although the contents are much better organized in german than in english. For all you english speakers out there, there are many just as good alternatives, some of which I will be covering the next months. For all the german speaking folk out there: You could do much worse than supporting this shop. ;-)
I hope this little review was helpful for some of you!
Cheers,
IK-Painter
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