Hey SS before the 1/6 Villians line starts UPGRADE AGAIN!

[Darth Robbler]

Okay, I love the priority pre-order but it does have its drawbacks. I couldn't even get on to order Qui-gon, I had to call my wife at work to see who could get the page to load first and get the order in. I have fast service but for the life of me it would not load and when it did load it was sold out(thanks to my wife for it loading on hers first and getting my order in!!).
With the way this line is drawing in the people, and the popularity of the villians your site will be hammered!!! Once these get into the peoples hands even the most hardcore harsblow collector will be drooling on themselves.
So just a little advice:
<h1>UPGRADE YOUR SYSTEMS BEFORE DOING THE VILLIANS OR ANY MAIN/POPLUAR CHARACTER!!!!<P>
If people miss these there will be a lot of angry emails, calls, and maybe rioting....

 

[dunedain]

Well I think SS tries to do their best but when 1000 people want a Obi 12 inch and want it whithin a Minute it's a little difficult to solve the problem.

What do you want to do with the servers when there is no pre-order going on. Collect them dust?

SS will find a solution I'm sure of it.

And if we don't were going to see a lot of this kind of stuff:

 

[EVILFACE]

Yea, Star Wars is the only line that causes their servers to work during a priority preorder.

Not really feasible for a company to invest lots into something that only lasts a hour once a month.

If people miss these there will be a lot of angry emails, calls, and maybe rioting....

The only thing they might miss is a exclusive. And since there are going to be more people wanting them than their are of exclusives, then there will be people that miss them. The fastest server in the world won't help that.

 

[Darth Loki]

I have high-speed internet at work and thank god I sit at my computer all day. I have no idea how my computer at home would handle trying to do a pre-order. Just keep them on work days and all will be fine.

 

[rogueboy]

<h1>UPGRADE YOUR SYSTEMS BEFORE DOING THE VILLIANS OR ANY MAIN/POPLUAR CHARACTER!!!!<P>

I don't get your point?
Maybe the letters are too small ?

 

[Deak Starkiller]

It takes a few minutes but I think the experience was fine.

 

[Customikey]

You realize of course that the more stream-lined and effective the systems are, the faster the exclusives will sell out.

Just a thought.

 

[tomandshell]

The number of people who want a figure is greater than the number of figures produced. When demand is greater than supply, there will always be a crowd rushing to order. The current Priority Preorder system seems to be the best possible way of dealing with this supply/demand problem. The only other option would be to increase the edition size, and that would irritate a great number of collectors. So somebody is going to get mad no matter what. The trick is for Sideshow to find a way to make the least number of people mad as possible. I think they have done that. At this point, the vast majority of people sitting there at 10 AM PST are getting their orders in.

Yes, it will be hard to order Vader, Maul, or Fett. That's a given. They could go the Gentle Giant route and make 20,000 of them. But that's not gonna happen. The other option would be to make a Vader with no exclusive, equalizing the playing field with 8,000 of the same version right off the bat. Or, they could release the regular version first and the exclusive later on, after demand has settled down. But if the exclusive/regular release pattern remains the same, then I think they already have a pretty good way of dealing with the demand problem that exists. Not perfect, but as good as it gets.

Personally, I don't expect a small company to invest huge amounts of money for server upgrades that will only be used once every month or so. They made $100,000 selling the exclusive Qui-Gon. In the big business world, that's not that much! By the time they spend the money to make all of those figures and pay every single staff person at Sideshow (even the janitor gets paid out of the Qui-Gon profits) plus the licensing fees to Lucas, I don't think we're talking about a giant sum of surplus money that warrants the purchase of major computer upgrades. They stand to make millions with this line, but it hasn't happened yet. (Don't forget that Luke is the only one to actually begin to bring in cash--and only just this week.) They have done a lot to improve things within their budget already, and I thank them for that.

 

[darthviper107]

You know, I never thought of that. They did the preorder for Luke in November and just now they are getting the money for it. I wonder if that causes problems in finances.

But yeah, they don't make a completely huge amount of money, I'd say for these SW figures they make like 1 Million per figure, which probably ends up being half that money after everything is said and done. That's also a reason why they can't do the whole 3D Scanning of people's faces for better head scuplts--it's way too expensive.

 

[nash]

ive never had a problem with a exclusive preorder yet. system seems fine

 

[rainman]

https://www.sideshowtoy.com/behindtheshow/?p=964

In order to better serve our loyal customers, we are moving to a new location that has larger warehouse facilities for our shipping department and a new Customer Service call center.

Does this not qualify? They stand to make more money than they have in the past because of the Star Wars license. They have already upgraded the servers and now they are moving to a new facility. Isn't that enough? What else can they do?

 

[Darth Loki]

You know it's weird, I missed the first 3 12". After that they upgraded the servers so that's the only experience I know. There has only been one figure that it took me longer than 5 minutes to get and that was Mace. I have no explanation as to why it was so hard for me to get the page to load, but Mace was a pain in the butt for me. Every other piece has been cake.

 

[tomandshell]

But yeah, they don't make a completely huge amount of money, I'd say for these SW figures they make like 1 Million per figure, which probably ends up being half that money after everything is said and done.

Actually, let's say 2000 exclusive figures and 8000 regular figures at $50 each. That is a grand total of $500,000, or half a million. Once you take out the actual costs of the figures and pay Sideshow's sculptors, clothing designers, graphic artists, janitors, web team, management, shipping and returns department, overseas production staff, and other bills (electric company, etc.)--plus the Lucas licensing, you are talking about actual profits of much less than one million per figure. They will have earned a nice amount that would easily pay off my mortgage, but it will take a while before this line brings in actual profits in the multi-million dollar range.

 

[Wor-Gar]

You realize of course that the more stream-lined and effective the systems are, the faster the exclusives will sell out.

Just a thought.

YES! Listen to Mikey.

Can you imagine if you had about three minutes to get in and order? Even fast computers and fast dsl lines can have momentary problems. I think a 30 minute window is calling it pretty close as it is.

 

[King Darkness]

Okay, I love the priority pre-order but it does have its drawbacks. I couldn't even get on to order Qui-gon, I had to call my wife at work to see who could get the page to load first and get the order in. I have fast service but for the life of me it would not load and when it did load it was sold out(thanks to my wife for it loading on hers first and getting my order in!!).
With the way this line is drawing in the people, and the popularity of the villians your site will be hammered!!! Once these get into the peoples hands even the most hardcore harsblow collector will be drooling on themselves.
So just a little advice:
<h1>UPGRADE YOUR SYSTEMS BEFORE DOING THE VILLIANS OR ANY MAIN/POPLUAR CHARACTER!!!!<P>
If people miss these there will be a lot of angry emails, calls, and maybe rioting....

I have DSL at home and a t3 line at work....I am 7 for 7 with SW exc....I have only have to order one at work and I actually had more trouble with the t3 line.....So I don't know that there is much SS can do to make it any easier for...It has taken me as much as 45 minutes(Luke) and as little as 3 minutes(Mace)...SS cant make maricle happen....sometimes you are going to get through and sometimes you may not

 

[pickard]

I have high-speed internet at work and thank god I sit at my computer all day. I have no idea how my computer at home would handle trying to do a pre-order. Just keep them on work days and all will be fine.

I've had equal success using high-speed and dial-up.

 

[gdb]

I don't presume to know the answer to this problem but I trust Sideshow to feel their way through to a more or less copacetic compromise. They want to keep everyone happy but Sideshow is a big tent. Some poeple like the challenge and the thought of other people missing out. Some people don't care. Some poeple like the eBay "value" of their items as decided by scalpers on eBay. Some could care less. Anyway, they do their best to make room for all types of collectors and second hand market buyers/sellers and keeping them happy is a jumbled series of ballances and compromises. Which is all to say, I trust that Sideshow will make the ordering experience as "possible" as they can, if not as "easy". And I'm cool with that.

 

[Buttmunch]

The only soulution is to make the exclusive editions larger or have no exclusive version at all. Its that simple. I haven't heard anyone complaing that Qui-Gon's or Han's editions were too high, so why not make more and make more people happy? If there were 8,000 exlusive editions and 2,000 non-exclusive editions, all of them would still sell.

The best idea they could have would be to have every figure ordered through sideshow directly be an exclusive, any ordered through outside dealers wouldn't be. It would still be a sideshow exclusive that way.

 

[Wor-Gar]

The best idea they could have would be to have every figure ordered through sideshow directly be an exclusive, any ordered through outside dealers wouldn't be. It would still be a sideshow exclusive that way.

I actually like this idea very much. And if you think about it, it does make sense. If you want it cheaper, go elsewhere...but if you want the exclusive, then you pay SS prices. SS might actually make MORE money this way (at least with StarWars -- although this practice might work against SS on other lines).

 

[Customikey]

The best idea they could have would be to have every figure ordered through sideshow directly be an exclusive, any ordered through outside dealers wouldn't be. It would still be a sideshow exclusive that way.

I'd definitely go for this! It's the first reasonable alternative on the subject I've yet read.