Obviously, these geniuses make oodles of Star Wars collectables. But they don’t have a website where one can order them directly. I would definitely order a ton of stuff from them if they had it available online, as I assume many hardcore collectors would. As it is, I do not feel like wasting my time by going to every Toys R Us and Wal-Mart looking for their products.
Is there any friggin’ logic to them not having a website???
I mean seriously, I WANT to give them money. Don’t tell their distribution methods are that bad?
Shit, I remember Michael Elrath, who was in third grade at the time and lived in the house at the corner of Fir Park Way and Montecito Meadow Dr., had the X-wing fighter, and one of the wings was broken, but I still thought it was the coolest toy in the neighborhood. Man, why don’t you talk to him about that? I bet you could trade the whole Special Edition Tiger Force GI JOE squadron for it, and the Planet Hoth outpost base, too. . . .
With the Internet, it is very easy to sell to retail customers. For a company like Hasbro, it could easily set up Internet operations, even hire a company to do it for them.
In fact that’s what Amazon is doing for ToysRUS. If Hasbro were to cut out the middle man, TRU, they’d make a lot more money. If Hasbro is reading this, it’s time to consider your strategy.
Amazon has yet to make a profit. I would imagine that Hasbro’s stockholders would be pretty upset if they invested millions of dollars into Internet Merchandising, which so far seems to be a failure.
There are some successful internet business, but they mostly sell computer gear or porn, nothing else has really proven itself.
Hasbro used to have a collectors site at hasbrocollectors.com; it shut down last March. I bought some Japanese Transformers there once, but now the site is just a gateway. Now I find most of my toy collectibles from the sites below. You should check them out as some of them sell Star Wars stuff.[ul][li]BigBadToyStore.com[/li][li]Image Anime[/li][li]Toy Maniacs[/li][li]ToyArk[/li]Wizzywig Collectibles[/ul]
Well, let’s not get into Amazon. That’s a whole another (sob) story. I don’t think Amazon could be profitable even selling porn. And Amazon and TRU, that’s just the blind leading the blind as far as Internet merchandising goes.
Another problem with today’s corporate thinking: millions of dollars are not needed. Hasbro, if you’re reading this, give me $1 million and I’ll set up a workable and profitable Internet Merchandising department for you.
The problem with TRU and the Internet was that they didn’t have enough warehousing or stock to fill orders. Hasbro is the manufacturer, that is not going to be a problem.
With all due respect I get the impression that you really don’t grasp how involved and fraught with difficulties online retailing is. The bleached bones of numerous failed e-tailers littering the net landscape should be caution enough to proceed with some humility in this arena.
I’m curious as to just how you plan to deploy the relatively tiny sum of one million dollars to set up a complete net based ordering, shipping and fullfillment system for a huge toy manufacturer that will profitably market, sell and ship individual toys to individual customers. Very bright people with hundreds of millions of dollars at their disposal are having a difficult time with this retailing business model.
Could you give us just a taste of this dynamic, low cost e-tailing action plan of yours?
I have ordered Star Wars figures from the Hasbro website. They don’t do it regularly, but they have offered a couple of “internet exclusive” figures. Probably trying out the water and, since this was a few years ago, decided against it.
Astro’s right. Retailing and wholesaling are two entirley different things. Retailing, esp. mail-order to individuals, may not be worth the risk/effort involved.
Hasbro’s thinking: We’re a hugely successful toy manufacturer. We sell huge amts. of toys to retail stores, who then have to worry about the entirely different problem of selling them to real consumers. Why should we bother getting into that? It might make us some money, but then there aren’t really any proven e-tailers, so it could very easily cost us millions.
I think we should just sit back and let the Star Wars fanatics beat each other up digging through the displays at Toys R Us, and keep collecting our easy money.
If collectibles were easy to find and get then they are no longer that collectable. Beanie Babies are just cheap little bean bag toys until some get hard to find because Ty discontinues models. Without the challenge of finding the exact one you want you are just a grown man buying toys.
OT:
Etoys went from IPO to bankruptcy in 7 months. Their business plan was so bad they could not stay afloat for 1 year on the really huge amount of money they made from the IPO. Amazing.
The domain name (www.etoys.com ) was purchased by, I think, KBToys. So you can indeed by stuff via the site. I get email specials from etoys fairly regularly. Which is wierd - I used to work for them, and they still owe me money.
No. Its a real pain to be both a retailer and a manufacturer. Shipping systems just are not well set for doing both, or if they are it costs lots of money.
You might say “No biggies, just some stuff on the webpage and you’ve got instant retail”. But there’s literally hundreds of issues behind the scenes that you now have to deal with. Database issues, box issues, shipping company issues, staffing issues, oh and let’s not forget you’ve just pissed off your regular retailers.
A lot of manufacturers tried this back in early 2000, they quickly gave up on it for the most part since it just wasn’t worth the hassle.
Years ago our son was into the star wars figures and space craft models. He really wanted a “storm trooper” figure and it was heavily advertised on TV, but we couldn’t locate on locally. Eventually we looked on the “Luke Skywalker” figure package and called the 800 number. The operator that answered the phone was very helpful and agreed they were heavily advertised and virtually impossible to locate. She went on to say, “I just happen to have one here at my desk, I’ll send it to you if you’ll give me your address.” Needless to say we provided our address. The boy had a “Storm Trooper” in his stocking Christmas morning (free of charge) and I have an excellent customer service story to tell for the next twenty years or until I get great service again.
I work for a manufacturer-not a toy manufacturer, but one who sells to retailers only(and actually I sent a resume to Hasbro recently. Sales of goods to individuals is more complicated than to retailers.
For example-when you sell to the final consumer, you must charge sales tax. When the items are sold to the retail store, you don’t have to charge it, because it will be collected when the final customer purchases it. In many accounting systems, collecting sales tax for individual states(never mind cities with additional sales tax on top of the state tax)involves setting up accrual accounts for each state, then submitting the necessary proceeds on a regular basis.
These toys may be licensed so that they can only be sold to toy retailers by Hasbro. Often royalty agreements will have a clause in them limiting where the manufacturer can actually sell the goods.
Oh, and if you sell them and compete with your major customers? You have definately pissed them off. You’ve decreased their sales-and your sales, because you just may lose their business entirely. I’m sure that Toys’R’Us buys a heck of a lot more from Hasbro than individual customers would.