The Energon Pub

KAPOW TOYS
Tis a sad day at Kapow Toys, after much deliberation and thought we have decided to withdraw from the 3rd party toy market and greatly reduce the amount of companies we deal with.

Over the last few years the amount of companies / individuals with an idea has increased in such number its become nigh on impossible for many retailers to keep up with it all let alone successfully sell the items for the prices demanded, in turn quality has slipped, interest has withered and the only winners are the people manufacturing the products themselves. In many cases they would rather tell a blogger or product photographer more than those funding their business and selling their items, this is not a healthy working relationship and one that causes many day to day problems on our side of the fence costing money and business in the short and long terms.

With many companies it has now reached the point of having to basically beg to sell an item or even establish a decent line of communication, when your throwing thousands of £'s at people wanting to purchase stock it is a bizarre set of circumstances and one we can no longer put the effort or finance into supporting, imagine if you emailed Kapow Toys wanting to purchase a £100 of figures and we couldn't be bothered to respond to you ? I'm sure we would soon be out of business or at least find our audience drying up.

Over the next week many open pre-orders will begin to close and after we have fulfilled the items on release will no longer re-stock or add new items in that category. Certain companies will remain unchanged as they have been easy to deal with and supported the European market and fans from the beginning but it would be unfair to name them here on Facebook as it would give an indication there is a specific problem with specific companies which is not the case, there is no malice or vindictiveness in our announcement its simply not working on some fronts and we have to draw a line in the sand.

This is by no means the end completely and we will still continue to bring the 3p news via our Facebook page and sell small quantities of new items but on a first come, first serve basis without a re-stock and often without a pre-order.

I hope you understand the predicament we find ourselves in and thank you for your understanding, the positive flip side of this is we will have more money to improve our already large range of Hasbro and Takara Transformers, figures and accessories.

Thanks for reading

Andy & The Kapow Toys Team.

Mkall wrote:I do feel sympathetic to our UK crowd though as I think Kapow was a main dealer for that area.

mooncake623 wrote:Can't say I'm surprised. I feel bad for our neighbors across the pond though =/

Syn_13 wrote:

mooncake623 wrote:Can't say I'm surprised. I feel bad for our neighbors across the pond though =/

Yeah, it sucks. Not only are we paying more we also have a harder time getting hold of figures.

It's a brave but understandable decision by them and I will continue to support their business as they've always been great to deal with.

I wonder if any other UK vendors will follow suit.

Autobot Genocide wrote:

KAPOW TOYS
Over the last few years the amount of companies / individuals with an idea has increased in such number its become nigh on impossible for many retailers to keep up with it all let alone successfully sell the items for the prices demanded, in turn quality has slipped, interest has withered and the only winners are the people manufacturing the products themselves.

Rated X wrote:So basically they went "kapow" ?

I never understood why this company was such a big deal to the euro crowd ? If I can import stuff from china here in the US, they should be able to as well. I suggest all of you european collectors buy from chimungmung. He has all the good stuff. Screw kapow...

Tsutsukakushi wrote:It's not 3rd parties fault you and your workers lack the skills and programs necessary to keep track of inventory.

Most USA sites are making enough profit to be deemed winners.

Just to clarify, Kapow will still sell 3p but we're going to work with companies that give a good product and actually give enough of a crap to work with us which limits things to about 4 of them but that's going to work for us in the long run, it is a shame but we can't keep dropping chunks of company money on stock which either doesn't sell or stinks up the warehouse to meet crazy MOQ's or take a chance on a 3d render that might never see the light of day or is delayed by a year etc etc etc

Takara have really upped the game with MP's of late, that's where sales are at the moment, thats where we'll be concentrating on things, back to the old skool as they say doubt we will be the last

Tsutsukakushi wrote:

Autobot Genocide wrote:

KAPOW TOYS
Over the last few years the amount of companies / individuals with an idea has increased in such number its become nigh on impossible for many retailers to keep up with it all let alone successfully sell the items for the prices demanded, in turn quality has slipped, interest has withered and the only winners are the people manufacturing the products themselves.

Disagree with things written here.

Customers and Sites buying interest has increased not withered.

Think quality has gone up not down.

It's not 3rd parties fault you and your workers lack the skills and programs necessary to keep track of inventory.

3rd party prices keep going down not up.

Most USA sites are making enough profit to be deemed winners.

Buyers are deemed winners as they get a product HasTak hasn't made.

Lord Raze wrote:

Rated X wrote:So basically they went "kapow" ?

I never understood why this company was such a big deal to the euro crowd ? If I can import stuff from china here in the US, they should be able to as well. I suggest all of you european collectors buy from chimungmung. He has all the good stuff. Screw kapow...

Because believe it or not I don't enjoy getting hit for customs charges every time I order something from overseas.

Rated X wrote:

Lord Raze wrote:

Rated X wrote:So basically they went "kapow" ?

I never understood why this company was such a big deal to the euro crowd ? If I can import stuff from china here in the US, they should be able to as well. I suggest all of you european collectors buy from chimungmung. He has all the good stuff. Screw kapow...

Because believe it or not I don't enjoy getting hit for customs charges every time I order something from overseas.

A problem US buyers dont face, or at least not for purchases that are only a few hundred dollars or less. Every government has its way of milking cash from its citizens through pointless taxes. Customs fees must be thr UKs cash cow. Somebody has to pay those fees. Obviously kapow wasnt working with enough money to pay them and still turn a profit on smaller less in demand items. They dont want to gamble. They rather focus on Hasbro and Takara stuff because they see it as their safety zone.

Lord Raze wrote:

Rated X wrote:

Lord Raze wrote:

Rated X wrote:So basically they went "kapow" ?

I never understood why this company was such a big deal to the euro crowd ? If I can import stuff from china here in the US, they should be able to as well. I suggest all of you european collectors buy from chimungmung. He has all the good stuff. Screw kapow...

Because believe it or not I don't enjoy getting hit for customs charges every time I order something from overseas.

A problem US buyers dont face, or at least not for purchases that are only a few hundred dollars or less. Every government has its way of milking cash from its citizens through pointless taxes. Customs fees must be thr UKs cash cow. Somebody has to pay those fees. Obviously kapow wasnt working with enough money to pay them and still turn a profit on smaller less in demand items. They dont want to gamble. They rather focus on Hasbro and Takara stuff because they see it as their safety zone.

Kapow are seriously handicapped by uk/european taxes but still they've been trying to supply the demand over here. They're official outlets for some of the bigger 3p companies but they never seem to get any exclusives offered their/our way. They're constantly playing second fiddle to the bigger market (bbts/tfs) who have their orders filled first and everyone else comes second. As such the 3p companies are starting to set unreasonable demands with regards to minimum order quantities which makes sense for them but doesn't for the retailer if he knows he can't sell that many.
He offered the example of Utopia, it's costing them £290/$490 per unit which they're selling at £310/$525. BBTS are selling Utopia at $400.
They also stated previously that the early bird pricing on not-motormaster made their margins so small it would have been better to not stock them at all.
There's also warbotron who are only accepting a minimum order of £50000/$85000.

Lord Raze wrote:

Rated X wrote:

Lord Raze wrote:

Rated X wrote:So basically they went "kapow" ?

I never understood why this company was such a big deal to the euro crowd ? If I can import stuff from china here in the US, they should be able to as well. I suggest all of you european collectors buy from chimungmung. He has all the good stuff. Screw kapow...

Because believe it or not I don't enjoy getting hit for customs charges every time I order something from overseas.

A problem US buyers dont face, or at least not for purchases that are only a few hundred dollars or less. Every government has its way of milking cash from its citizens through pointless taxes. Customs fees must be thr UKs cash cow. Somebody has to pay those fees. Obviously kapow wasnt working with enough money to pay them and still turn a profit on smaller less in demand items. They dont want to gamble. They rather focus on Hasbro and Takara stuff because they see it as their safety zone.

Kapow are seriously handicapped by uk/european taxes but still they've been trying to supply the demand over here. They're official outlets for some of the bigger 3p companies but they never seem to get any exclusives offered their/our way. They're constantly playing second fiddle to the bigger market (bbts/tfs) who have their orders filled first and everyone else comes second. As such the 3p companies are starting to set unreasonable demands with regards to minimum order quantities which makes sense for them but doesn't for the retailer if he knows he can't sell that many.
He offered the example of Utopia, it's costing them £290/$490 per unit which they're selling at £310/$525. BBTS are selling Utopia at $400.
They also stated previously that the early bird pricing on not-motormaster made their margins so small it would have been better to not stock them at all.
There's also warbotron who are only accepting a minimum order of £50000/$85000.