[Zap Rowsdower]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SmokeBellew

I'm doing the same and trying to reason it out. The topic seems to be that pre-ordering would help Hasbro identify which toys are more popular for the purposes of deciding upon case ratios. I think the pre-order idea could work for a limited, collector-focused line available only through a few vendors, but I don't see how it helps with deciding upon case ratios for a "mainstream," mass-market line due to the reasons already outlined.

I hear ya. Since Joes and 3.75 Black Series have pretty well entered the "collectors-only" status it could still apply to our case. I don't think it was intended to be a suggestion that would, for example, bring those lines back to mainstream. Rather, the suggestion appears to me to be aimed at keeping the lines from withering on the vine and being discontinued due to unnecessarily poor sell-through caused by overproducing less-desirable figures. Since peg jams of exactly this sort have caused me to miss out on a lot of merchandise over the last few years I find the discussion interesting and completely relevant...even though I figure the odds of anyone actually taking steps to try this at Hasbro are as close to zero as statistics will allow. I'd rather see the idea refined rather than dismissed out of hand or misunderstood, so I only chimed in to point out which parties would be doing the pre-ordering in this scenario. I'm not trying to disrupt the conversation or cheerlead for anything. I just want to make myself clear.

Anyway, now back to your regularly-scheduled programming...

[axonrey]

I'm still digesting a lot of this, but i will say that there's no reason, in today's world, that any of us should struggle to obtain products that are released at retail the way we do. Preorders would probably work best at the store level, with retailers adding to orders thereafter, but that would only work for "by each" orders, and eliminating case packs altogether.

[Snakeeyesisposh]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SmokeBellew

A better feel for PART of the market maybe. Namely, the collector market. But as he stated, that doesn't really account for what the market-at-large wants, and that's what matters from a dollar standpoint. So, for a lower production, collector-oriented line, it could work, but it probably won't do much good for a high-volume toy line with aspirations of broad appeal. In other words, what adult collectors want and what kids want don't always jive.

I think it really depends on what the manufacturer & retailer want from the product line in question. I could see this working for a line like the TRU exclusive "50th" G.I. Joe line, since it apparently only really appeals to folks like us. TRU could offer preorders on their website and then produce to suit those orders (provided the order quantities are large enough to justify the dollar and opportunity costs of production), but it's not a workable model for a mainstream product line hoping to attract customers from multiple demographics enough to justify its shelf space. Plus, like I said earlier, there's no guarantee what was popular in January as a pre-order will still be so popular in July. It stands to reason that once the people who pre-ordered their items get them, the demand for those items is automatically lessened. And now we're back to asking whether or not kids and collectors want the same things, because it'll be the kids who will be predominately buying the toys at retail that were shipped in case ratios based on those pre-order demands.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SmokeBellew

I'm doing the same and trying to reason it out. The topic seems to be that pre-ordering would help Hasbro identify which toys are more popular for the purposes of deciding upon case ratios. I think the pre-order idea could work for a limited, collector-focused line available only through a few vendors, but I don't see how it helps with deciding upon case ratios for a "mainstream," mass-market line due to the reasons already outlined.

I should probably make changes to the first post in this thread to make it more clear. Hopefully this should help.

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Individual figure pre-orders were one of the responses I proposed to help alleviate pegwarming in mainstream mass-market.

Currently, pegwarming figures is a big problem in mass-market retail action figure sales in particular because it is one of the greatest weaknesses in selling toys in waves of cases. Each figure in a Toy case will always sell differently, because each is demanded differently, and selling Toys in cases means the price is set, yet demand for each figure is not, hence peg warming occurs.

Currently, Hasbro's sales figures only include sales figures of the whole case of figures, not the individual figures themselves, so when Hasbro attempts to construct cases of figures, it's doing so partially blind which is inefficient. Hasbro also only receives this data after the problem has occurred and months later, so it's reaction time is slowed.

An individual figure pre-order before manufacturing would allow Hasbro to not only get a better picture of the sales data for individual figures in toy cases and give data on the demand of each figure, it would also occur earlier, which would increase flexibility in response time and allow various types of responses and allow for the construction of better future Toy Cases, much like what Lego and many other Toy companies do to increase reaction time.

The pre-orders would also give Hasbro some hard sales data months ahead of the current system of sold Toy Case data returning months later after the product had shipped. This would allow Hasbro to craft a response ahead of time and foresee future bottlenecks and pegwarming problems and immediately begin measures to mitigate them.

If Hasbro applied these individual figure pre-orders before manufacturing in other words, Hasbro would be able to predict which figures would peg warm and which will sell better with more accuracy and supply the appropriate amounts which will allow Hasbro to sell closer to the amount of figures people actually want.
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E-tailer, vender and physical retail participation.

Venders will be the ones making the pre-orders to Hasbro, but keep in mind that the venders bear the brunt of the risk of unsold inventory, so Hasbro can expect the venders/ e-tailers to use prudent judgement and use their expertise to try to pre-order to their own maximum benefit or go out of business and leave the market. Usually venders/ e-tailers themselves open pre-orders to seal sales of their own pre-orders.

Given that Hasbro can open new pre-orders later, have special pre-orders called backorders later on and modify future Toy case waves and release more in the future in one form or another, the individual figure pre-orders sales should probably be ratio pegged to each other to prevent overselling one figure. Meaning the top seller should be made to not be able to out sell the lowest seller by 12 times or some other large determined ratio etc to prevent possibly huge loses or vender hoarding. If it does reach that ratio, it's probably an extreme case of supply and demand see below.

* If there is a massive supply and demand imbalance in the line of 12 figures of Joes sold for 1 Batman sold, I believe the pre-orders before manufacturing I propose would observe this imbalance, then Hasbro/ Toy company could respond to the situation with special responses, namely multi packs, blind packaging, tailored cases and special pre-orders called back orders.

** If the demand for a figure is wayyyy too high, or wayy too low, Hasbro can offer them separately as exclusives in appropriate amounts or multipacsk to maximize profits and prevent them from interfering with the Toy case itself, but that would of course be a last resort option.

I expect some pre-order shenanigans to still occur, but these should be happening before the manufacturing phase, which would allow Hasbro or a toy company to react to demand, such as increase or decrease planned production of individual figures, plan a response Toy Case Wave for foreseen surges and nosedive of demand, etc. This is in other words, the place where Hasbro should find out what will work and what won't BEFORE committing their massive resources.

[Steevy Maximus]

Hasbro HAS started to mitigate some issues my offering single case assortments of Star Wars Black 6" figures, and has done so (to varying degrees) since 2015. But it still doesn't mitigate the short attention span of collectors. The 40th Anniversary Han Solo rerun is slated from online vendors in October. Will many of those collectors even care, especially as stores continue to restock product and new product sees release?
Nobody knows, and won't know until after the fact.

The "before manufacturing" doesn't work for many lines either as "break out characters" can and will disrupt the entire process. Nobody really cared about Rey in September of 2015, her figures were no harder to find than anyone else. But when people saw the movie, THEN did she become a hot commodity.

And as said before, data from collectors is pretty much meaningless. What WE want doesn't often jive with what KIDS want. If collectors ran Transformers, you wouldn't see half the Bumblebee figures (and in fact, has been a rarity in the Generations line proper), yet, aside from the Beepocalypse in 2011/12, I've rarely seen a basic Bumblebee figure from the movies "shelf warm" to the extent it disrupted new product from arriving.

And the core retailers Hasbro sells most of its product to, generally, DO NOT GIVE A FLYING EFF about case assortments. If products sells, they order more. If it doesn't, they clearance and maybe stop carrying that kind of item. Solid case packs do NOTHING in that environment except create a whole new level of peg/shelf warmers as a retailer could stuck with a solid case of a character (much as has happened in the UK).

And, once again, ignores the realities of the "current system". With the speed Disney is cranking out Star Wars and Marvel films, Hasbro doesn't have the luxury of a post mortem run to mitigate short availability, and the secrecy surrounding these films make it impossible to even offer a reliable preorder as most code names mean NOTHING.
Again, manufacturing is a MONTHS long process from order to available in the USA. By the time they've identified a popular character, its already time to move on to the NEXT movie or project.

Hasbro DOES spend enormous resources in mitigating this issue (again, we've never again seen a Transformers Beepocalypse, and the removal of Build a Weapon in Star Wars vastly loosened Hasbro ability to carryover figures).

There is simply NO WAY for Hasbro to make the above concessions and still maintain its (profitable) business with mainstream retailers who DO NOT CARE about most of those issues.

[Steevy Maximus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by axonrey

I'm still digesting a lot of this, but i will say that there's no reason, in today's world, that any of us should struggle to obtain products that are released at retail the way we do. Preorders would probably work best at the store level, with retailers adding to orders thereafter, but that would only work for "by each" orders, and eliminating case packs altogether.

I have NEVER missed an item I've really wanted. And in the case of GI Joe, most of that was from preordering from online retailers like Big Bad Toy Store. Hell, I got the first two waves of 2011 (the infamous waves 3 and 4 of PoC) for LESS than retail because of stores over pricing of the figures themselves.

Anyone that has been following this industry for the past couple years SHOULD be able to see trends and plan accordingly. And with the increased value of online ordering, preorders for many figures are NOT drastically more than retail (and shipping can be mitigated in other ways).

Retailers will never move to a system of individual figure SKUs. They don't allocate the space, the employee training, or even the desire to change the current setup. Which largely WORKS for Hasbro's largest clientele.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marine-73

I have to disagree with you on this, and agree with the original poster and I will give a current real example.

Nothing you posted has ANY relevance to the point I was making with product lead times. I'm not disagreeing that Hasbro has and continues to produce questionable case assortments for all its products, but that wasn't the point I was addressing.

Quote:

You have 2016 wave 5 that had Darth Revon, Sabin Wren, Ben kenobi, Princess Leia, at at driver, and imperial snow trooper.

If you have a case assortment that is so heavy on "must have" and collector/scalper fodder (both are almost equally responsible for the lack of availability at mass retail anymore), that's when you should start looking at a case order. At the very least, whatever you don't want, could be traded or easily disposed of while still netting you the figures you want for only slightly above retail.
And I say this from experience (GI Joe was MIA from my area between the end of RoC and the aborted launch of Retaliation).

And stated before, Hasbro IS addressing issues with Star Wars Black with solid case refreshers for online retailers. You need Base and Chirrut?
Star Wars Black Series Chirrut Imwe 6-Inch Action Figure - Hasbro - Star Wars - Action Figures at Entertainment Earth
Star Wars Black Series Baze Malbus 6-Inch Action Figure - Hasbro - Star Wars - Action Figures at Entertainment Earth
Add $10 or so for shipping and you aren't paying an extreme amount over retail, and far less than from an eBay or Amazon seller.

I've also heard that Han Solo (40th) is on deck as well and I wouldn't be surprised if R2D2 wasn't either. But these are still secondary to getting orders filled for mass retailers.

Quote:

hell my local Walmart ordered 1 case of wave 1 40th due to the rogue ones peg warming.

The 40th Anniversary series are a SEPARATE SKU from the normal Black series figures. The amount of Black series figures you have DO NOT effect how much of 40th your store will get (which is also why you can't get 40th figures for discounted prices Black series is seeing)

[afsupplies]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steevy Maximus

I have NEVER missed an item I've really wanted. And in the case of GI Joe, most of that was from preordering from online retailers like Big Bad Toy Store. Hell, I got the first two waves of 2011 (the infamous waves 3 and 4 of PoC) for LESS than retail because of stores over pricing of the figures themselves.

Anyone that has been following this industry for the past couple years SHOULD be able to see trends and plan accordingly. And with the increased value of online ordering, preorders for many figures are NOT drastically more than retail (and shipping can be mitigated in other ways).


And stated before, Hasbro IS addressing issues with Star Wars Black with solid case refreshers for online retailers. You need Base and Chirrut?
Star Wars Black Series Chirrut Imwe 6-Inch Action Figure - Hasbro - Star Wars - Action Figures at Entertainment Earth
Star Wars Black Series Baze Malbus 6-Inch Action Figure - Hasbro - Star Wars - Action Figures at Entertainment Earth
Add $10 or so for shipping and you aren't paying an extreme amount over retail, and far less than from an eBay or Amazon seller.

Pre-ordering is definitely the way to go for collectors.

As for Baze and Chirrut, yes EE have them for pre-order at a good price but considering these figures came out in mixed cases in February or March and they won't be available as solids until (maybe) June doesn't help with Collectors who want them NOW. Most won't re-pre-order, they'll take the chance that they can pick up the figures on ebay for an inflated price rather than wait 3 or 4 months. We can see it happening now with Han and R2, Revan and Baze and Chirrut. And there's no sign of solid cases of Revan afaik.

[Steevy Maximus]

That's part of the biggest problem with this entire thread's idea:
Collectors are short sighted and impatient. Given production lead times, there is ZERO guarantee that any efforts Hasbro makes to address shortages will amount to anything when collectors will hold out for a cheaper price or more immediate purchase.
Hell, historically, I can point to a number of situation where Hasbro's attempt to address shortages back fired:
Transformers Alternators (white box) wave 1, 25th Revision cases, etc

[Marine-73]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steevy Maximus

That's part of the biggest problem with this entire thread's idea:
Collectors are short sighted and impatient. Given production lead times, there is ZERO guarantee that any efforts Hasbro makes to address shortages will amount to anything when collectors will hold out for a cheaper price or more immediate purchase.
Hell, historically, I can point to a number of situation where Hasbro's attempt to address shortages back fired:
Transformers Alternators (white box) wave 1, 25th Revision cases, etc

As for your response to my post,
I know the 40th is a separate SKU from the black series, however for you to say it has no relevance to what a store orders is dead wrong, especially when it comes straight from that employees mouth that they will not be getting more cases of that item due to their stock on hand. I've heard it from both the walmart and the target in my area.

[Marine-73]

And personally I do not care for ordering online as I like to see figures paint apps and joints in hand to make sure it's good quality, so I for one am not impatient nor short sighted as I look, and hunt. Problem is stores not getting product, if they do it's a case here or there and most the time the one per case figure is snagged by someone who has a inside source. I was merely stating that if the cases were divided up evenly of equal number figures per case then we collectors would have better chances of finding items in the wild and the scalpers could not drive up the prices for the current hard to find 1 per case figs.

[CaliViper]

Hasbro should just do cases per figure instead of mixing them up with different figures. That'll be a clear way to know how much is selling