madhaus has him for ~$315CDN

 

BSF took $130 to be the wholesale price in China. It's not. It is MSRP.

If this is the same as previous FansToys products, there will be significant discount for those who (managed to) pre-ordered. That would be closer to wholesale price, I imagine.

People want to blame FansToys or retailers for the price increase, but shipping by air is really very expensive now.

(Retailers are using today's price to project six months down the road.)

Retailers should consider shipping by sea.

 

Thats why people should wait for reissue when shipping price is normal again.
But then again, will the price really fall?

 

Well I think he's confusing people by how he calculates margins. My understanding was that margin equals profit divided by revenue. That makes $210 on $140 a margin of 33% and not 50%.

Also @nhyone I agree that that the waters were muddied by claiming $140 was MSRP. Distributor price comes in below MSRP but sometimes not by very much as anybody working with Embarrassment Earth can confirm. Those assholes actually have to float their own SRP (note the missing M) to make anything they sell look even halfway attractive to retailers. It's possible the FT distributors that western shops have to work with are as horrible but I thought most of them were buying direct and would get real wholesale prices as a result.

So there's this conflicting view in my head. I know what my margins were when I bought for resale and they were so small I couldn't turn a profit paying eBay/Amazon marketplace fees unless I sat on stuff until prices climbed significantly. That was why I bailed out. I needed to sell $20 toys for $21-$24 just to break even and couldn't do that as long as Walmart was dumping everything for $12 with free shipping. Then I hear people tell me the rule of thumb for retail is to sell for double or triple what you paid, which I can't fathom because I never had the connections to buy anywhere near that cheaply and not for lack of trying either. But it's about the only way a business could sustain itself so it must be happening somewhere.

 

It is what it is. I only want one, it’ll never be sold, $220 is a lot but I don’t care, and I’ll be more than happy for someone who may get this for a reissue $150. Just put this mother fucker in my hand.

 

Depends on how you calculate.
If calculated from 140 ( how this should be, because it should cost that ), then it is plus 50%.
If you calculate from 210, then it's 33%. But 210 was never the intended price, was it?
So we calculate from 140, which makes it a 50% price hike.
Maybe Thomas is heavier or box is bigger due to the train tracks we get with him, which makes shipping more expensive.

But fuck, i'm still getting one.

 

Good question. With how much it seems to be selling for $220, I don't expect a reissue to be significantly cheaper, no matter what percentage of the current price is made by shipping costs.

 

It's all relative. If Takara hadn't gone off the deep end, the price tag on this would look crazier to you. And I find in business, alot of information is concealed/distorted because it serves their interests to keep customers in the dark (like the talk of margins sort of distracts from hikes in base prices that they're calculated against and vice versa). Sometimes customers are right about being ripped off and sometimes they just don't understand. When I was shopping distributors, I thought I could make it on what was offered. I didn't expect all of the horseshit they put me through, or skyrocketing fees/rent, or collapsing traffic, or that I'd pick some duds that never ever sold at any price, and I certainly didn't see Walmart dumping like they have for the last four years. My point is that retail's a hell of a rabbit hole to fall down...

(Note: I did order one but I think only some of the hike was due to shipping so people waiting for a massively discounted reissue are in for a rude awakening.)

 

Just good info for anyone looking:


Margin Formula
The formula for calculating retail margin is the sales price of an item minus COGS, divided by the sales price, multiplied by 100. If you sell an item at $20 and paid $10 to acquire it and sell it, your retail margin is $10 divided by $20, or 50 percent. Retail products have variable margins, even within the same store or department.

Markup to Margin
A key factor that influences the margins on retail products is the markup percentage the retailer applies to particular goods. Calculating markup is essentially the inverse of calculating retail margin. You subtract your COGS from your desired sales price in the same way, but then divide that amount by your COGS. If your target price is $20 and your COGS are $10, your markup is $10 divided by $10, or 100 percent. Thus, to achieve a 50 percent margin on an item that costs you $10, you need a 100 percent markup.

 

Lots of muddled up economics etc. BSF took what the FT rep said was the retail price and christened it wholesale--this throws all his calculations off. He's also wilfully ignoring that none of the FT Dinobots actually cost 200 USD [reissue prices at 179 USD, original retail prior to reissues was lower IIRC] and the fact that from all the pics so far it's confirmed that Astrotrain won't be around their height, he'll be shorter than Sovereign who's shorter than them.

Despite these mental gymnastics, the video did have some good points on how there's possibly less releases per figure to accommodate more releases of unique figures per year. There's also the good point that instead of trying to put the blame on retailers jacking up the price, FT could just come out and say look folks, this figure has a higher parts count than most other figures [looking at the photos, definitely the case] so the price per unit is higher.

People also can't start comparing FT Berserk's preorders from what, 4 years ago to current prices. Production costs are bound to be much higher nowadays and the entire figure has been redesigned. Any retailer can very easily [and will] turn around and say we've received a new solicitation for the figure, here's the new price. Do people expect the new FT Soundwave figure to cost around 100 or so USD as it would have cost if it came out around the same time as Quakewave?

 

A freaking MEN!

 

After Scoria, the dinobots were $185-$210 shipped even at Asian sellers on first release for me. Some dropped after release like Sever though. Reissue Grinder was $185 for me from Asian vendor for me.

First release Quakewave was $160 shipped from Asian sellers. I remember that one well as I'd never paid that much for a figure before, lol.

But yeah- he makes good points whether his math is perfect or not. I mostly agree with his position on this situation. Too many customers expect sellers to sell at ultra low mark ups which means they'd have to sell at HUGE volume. Sellers of niche items can't use the huge volume/low markup formula to make $. That's how Walmart works, not low volume toys/collectables.

 

Well Baba did me a solid and refunded me the deposit. Like the others, I just replied to his email.

 

BSF posts a diatribe with incorrect information? Unheard of!

 

Showz still has mine as po, and haven't removed it.
Let's wait and see what happens.

 

preordered mine from tfs express on deposit, seeing as it may be sold out soon. They say they will have restock/reissue if it does indeed sell out just now on their fb.

 

The price NA retailers pay for Thomas is not too far off from that price. It tends to be on the higher side of it, not the lower side though because freight charges may be included in the wholesale price.

Buying direct from FT, the "wholesale" price is pretty close to the number that was given as the retail price in China. That is why JJ used that number in the context of his ignorance of the cost of running a business in North America, which is to say his feigned surprise that they would charge $80 more for the product here. The implication in his comment is that he's charging them pretty close to that price for the figure.

From a consumer perspective, this is a fine way to calculate it.

His information on this one is pretty good. He did make some calculation mistakes, like around the 07:30 mark where he applied the shipping increase to Berserk which is the older figure and wouldn't have been impacted by that, but his overall point is correct and I appreciate him recognizing that the biggest portion of the price change is due to FT's wholesale price going up, not this smoke and mirrors about freight increases which is not the lion's share of the increase. And, like him, I have no problem with it because it's the cost of doing business and there is no "right" to purchase everything I might want, contrary to the thinking of some in the entitlement generation that believe that just because a product exists, they should be able to have it, and if it's too expensive for them, then it must be #becausegreed.

 

For this price, can FT package leg screws of varying lengths and thickness please?

 

Aftermarket also plays a part here. They see what this stuff goes for after it sells out. Aftermarket isn't even really aftermarket these days anyway. It's not so much secondhand and overstock as it is speculation and stock held back due to the herd's lust for unobtanium.

Plus distributors are such a bad deal that anybody looking to start selling by sourcing through them should quit until they have a better plan. When it came to imports, I got better prices through Japanese retail than any "distributor." 3rd party channels were a tough nut to crack though, but up until shipping went berserk and killed their free shipping I would've assumed Chinese retail was a better route than a "distributor."

 

Oh how I like the way you think good sir. Right there with you. I preordered him as soon as I had the chance and I have no regrets whatsoever.