Guitarbot wrote:HI everyone - I'm a long time reader, first time poster
This was an excellent article. Just from my own perspective, in Northern NJ, Walmart and Target shelves are still full of Tuner Mudflaps from ROTF. There have been a few shocks of new product - a local TRU had a giant end-of-aisle display of RTS Wave 1 & 2 (Tracks, Jazz, G2OP, WreckGar, Perceptor, and Bee) which sold out in less than a week.. however, now all the new product is gone and there are STILL giant piles of ROTF TRU exclusives and voyagers. At least they're starting to put them on markdown.. and they also have lots of TRU Rodimus Minors left, as well.
I work in distribution in the Fashion industry and I see a lot of the same trends that are described in Hasbro's annual report. Retail chains are carrying much lower inventories to remain lean, keep liability off the books, and react to trends; they expect suppliers to deliver goods on the turn of a dime. The main focus in Retail now is speeding up the supply chain to shorten turn time and get product from the factory to the selling floor FAST. Traditionally it took several seasons to plan "waves" and "floorsets", planning often began over a year in advance, but now the trend is to reduce lead time to weeks.
I honestly can't blame Hasbro for our Retail woes, I think much of the problem also rests in the hands of Retail chain inventory planners and buyers who over-order certain waves. I don't know lots about retail buying, but from what I know I'd imagine a savvy inventory planner for a retail chain would know their product well enough to stock appropriate levels of certain items. If an inventory manager doesn't know the difference between ROTF, Animated, HFTD, RTS, and Generations, they just order enough "Transformers" to keep the shelves stocked, regardless of the subline imprint. I also notice, at least in my area, that the big retail chains themselves try to push too much product through larger flagship stores. In my experience it's the smaller, lower volume stores that have newer product sooner, as they order much smaller volumes and sell through more quickly, than the giant flagships that seem to languish with the same product for ages. I often find new figures at a small Walmart in a tiny community in the tail end of South Jersey in the middle of winter MONTHS before I see any new product on the shelves of my local NNJ TRUs (5 min outside NYC). I found the Battle in Space 2-pack there on New Years Day, the same 2-pack JUST showed up at TRU here in NNJ 2 weeks ago.
I do agree and wish, however, that HTS would carry higher volumes of stock for later wave figures. They may be missing out on revenue here - the inventory that clogs up the retail chain is already paid for, Hasbro's made their money on that product, so if the big box stores won't buy later waves due to the fact their inventory levels are too high, why not push it through other online outlets? Depending on the cost, it may even be a good idea for them to issue free shipping as an incentive to people who don't normally order online. They can only make more money... I'm still holding out hope there are more Windchargers and Grappels on a vessel from Hong Kong making their way to the HTS distribution center right now. It may be just a matter of time... keep the faith!!
Although I need to take a spending break during DOTM, I recently found some solace by pre-ordering the last few Generations/RTS waves with TFSource or BBTS. I used to enjoy the hunt, but it started to become too nerve-racking and time-consuming to me. Ordering online is worth the extra $10 shipping for the peace-of-mind. I use the "Pile of Loot" feature to collect several waves, and I STILL get the figures long before they show up at retail. I have my Wheeljack and Thundercracker, but I don't quite know what I'm going to do about Warpath yet...
Anyway, that's my two cents. Thanks for listening!
amtm wrote:Hey everyone, just noticed something on HasbroToyShop.com. Maybe someone here has already mentioned it, but I hadn't seen it before.
http://www.hasbrotoyshop.com/new-to-has ... ST=SO&PG=1
Burn wrote: Spam. It's what powers the HMW part of the server.
Someone wrote:Meanwhile, Astrotrain told Fanimusmaximus to get godzillabot a nice new haircut.
FanimusMaximus wrote:The unfortunate truth is that WE are Hasbros' bitch.
Kibble wrote:Here's what the pathetic local Walmart near me has looked like for the last couple months:
They're not even trying to clear older stock...they're just empty and apparently content with that fact.
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