chuckdawg1999 wrote:Seibertron wrote:Seibertron wrote:From what I understand, HasbroToyShop.com is its own separate entity. It is not run by Hasbro.
Odd statement to make, I know, can't remember who I was talking to at Hasbro. Maybe I misunderstood what was being told to me, but if I recall correctly the relationship between HasbroToyShop.com and Hasbro isn't as straightforward as it seems and is actually managed by another company. I can't remember the specifics of the conversation from at least a few years back but I reached out to Hasbro to get some clarification again. Yes, the name is owned by Hasbro and it's supposed to look like the retail arm of Hasbro, but it is its own separate company that operates separately from Hasbro if I remember this correctly.
The easiest way to think about the relationship between HTS and Hasbro is to think of it like a franchise, take McDonalds for example. A franchisee owns the store, pays for the food, equipment, and employees out of their own pocket, but they still have to pay McDonalds for the rights to the name and do everything they say.
Best I can tell the store is still Hasbro's. They handle the website, the listings, the promotions, and all of that sort of stuff, but when it comes to order fulfillment they send it off to the outsourced warehouse for picking, packing, and shipping. By the sounds of it that place is pretty enormous and caters to more web stores than just Hasbro. Probably a lot cheaper to use a third party fulfillment center than to build their own and staff it since HTS is a relatively small shop when compared to places like BBTS or HLJ.
Emerje