XM Studios Magneto

[Y4NK33 PL4N3T]

Buddy, it will happen anyway. Maybe later than sooner, but it will happen. And if mo money are indeed mo problems, those are problems any company would gladly kill for. And they will. Remember, the real world.

A 20 year industry giant cannot successfully implement what your suggesting a start up company do out of the gates, remember, the real world.

 

[SurlyJ]

A 20 year industry giant cannot successfully implement what your suggesting a start up company do out of the gates, remember, the real world.

He said later than sooner... not sure how that translates to right out of the gate. And there is a big gap between XM and Sideshow... plenty of middle ground to cover. All he is saying is that if XM's popularity continues and demand stays very high, they will eventually adapt to the market and meet that demand.

 

[divo]

He said later than sooner... not sure how that translates to right out of the gate. And there is a big gap between XM and Sideshow... plenty of middle ground to cover. All he is saying is that if XM's popularity continues and demand stays very high, they will eventually adapt to the market and meet that demand.

Thank you sir. Your clarity & logic are refreshing.

 

[SimplyToys]

Good morning, it is 8.30am and looks like a cooling day in Singapore.

I would like to thank every single collector here who have read and empathized with us and understand where were were coming from. As Magneto came as a surprise to us, we really were not expecting the response we have gotten. Received email from XM with allocated pieces on Friday morning and put up on the site within 1-2 hours. We did try our best to have policies in place like limit the number of Magnetos one can order, cater to individual requests, etc.

The first thing we did was to allocate the number of pieces to three departments after calculating the number of orders received for the past XM studios and allocated the quantities to respective departments according to the percentages. We should have been greedy and not sell a single piece to any wholesale customer and earn the full margin from retail sales. However, we work on strong beliefs to treat our customers fairly and not fulfilling orders on a first come first serve basis.
1. wholesale department (pre-allocated to retailers to assign them the coins in the same ratio, accepted orders but I understand from my colleague in charge of wholesale he did not promise any retailer any quantity as he was well aware the qty given to him will never be able to cater to all his customers)
2. web sales department (department sold out in a couple of hours)
3. retail stores department (this department only sold out their allocated pieces on Sunday)

When we sold out the pieces online, I suggested to the retail sales in charge to give me the rest to be sold to those on the waitlist. However, we have decided to keep them for the regular customers who are used to buying/ordering items from us through the retail shops. We agreed if there were pieces left by Monday morning, we would have them used them to fulfill the online waitlist orders. Unfortunately that did not materialise.

Why did we have a waitlist in the first place? This is because we understand from XM there is a possibility we can get more pieces ONLY if retailers do not take their full allocations. After finding out by Tuesday there is no way to squeeze out even one extra piece for us, we closed our waitlist so not to lead people on. My understanding from my websales colleague is whenever people on the waitlist ask about the chances, he will always tell them the chance of getting a Magneto is slim and not to give hopes and some people managed to get them directly from XM through their retail channels or via other shops...

Now that we know the pre-order dates are for the rest of the items, we will be able to prepare ourselves for future pre-orders and even come up with forms for collectors to fill up and be notified personally via email when we know our allocation for the pieces.

Thank you for reading this lengthy post. Have a nice day!

Regards,
Ann
Simply Toys LLP

 

[SimplyToys]

Hi Ann,

I sent an email to the address you posted this morning. I understand why you are offering the Magneto's the way you are, but I feel it is unfair to offer the coin to people only ordering now over people who ordered a Magneto on day 1 but were not allocated a coin. Can you please offer some explanation why those of us who were already passed over for a coin should be passed over a second time?

I don't mean to just add to the undeserved negativity you have received today. I am very happy to have an order for Magneto with your store, but as my first time ordering with you I am a little perplexed. It sort of feels like getting treated as a second class customer twice.

Anyway, I really do appreciate your presence here in the thread. Personal interaction on boards like this go a long way towards establishing trust and make the consumer experience a better one. So thank you for taking the time!

Hi SurlyJ,

thank you for writing. We are allocating the extra coins we received to customers who have ordered on Friday on a first order first serve basis. Just waiting for my websales colleague to come into the office to sort out who will get the coins. He should be in the office in another 60-90mins. He will probably send out the emails to the few customers within the next 2-3 hours?

Ann
Simply Toys

 

[SurlyJ]

Good morning, it is 8.30am and looks like a cooling day in Singapore.

I would like to thank every single collector here who have read and empathized with us and understand where were were coming from. As Magneto came as a surprise to us, we really were not expecting the response we have gotten. Received email from XM with allocated pieces on Friday morning and put up on the site within 1-2 hours. We did try our best to have policies in place like limit the number of Magnetos one can order, cater to individual requests, etc.

The first thing we did was to allocate the number of pieces to three departments after calculating the number of orders received for the past XM studios and allocated the quantities to respective departments according to the percentages. We should have been greedy and not sell a single piece to any wholesale customer and earn the full margin from retail sales. However, we work on strong beliefs to treat our customers fairly and not fulfilling orders on a first come first serve basis.
1. wholesale department (pre-allocated to retailers to assign them the coins in the same ratio, accepted orders but I understand from my colleague in charge of wholesale he did not promise any retailer any quantity as he was well aware the qty given to him will never be able to cater to all his customers)
2. web sales department (department sold out in a couple of hours)
3. retail stores department (this department only sold out their allocated pieces on Sunday)

When we sold out the pieces online, I suggested to the retail sales in charge to give me the rest to be sold to those on the waitlist. However, we have decided to keep them for the regular customers who are used to buying/ordering items from us through the retail shops. We agreed if there were pieces left by Monday morning, we would have them used them to fulfill the online waitlist orders. Unfortunately that did not materialise.

Why did we have a waitlist in the first place? This is because we understand from XM there is a possibility we can get more pieces ONLY if retailers do not take their full allocations. After finding out by Tuesday there is no way to squeeze out even one extra piece for us, we closed our waitlist so not to lead people on. My understanding from my websales colleague is whenever people on the waitlist ask about the chances, he will always tell them the chance of getting a Magneto is slim and not to give hopes and some people managed to get them directly from XM through their retail channels or via other shops...

Now that we know the pre-order dates are for the rest of the items, we will be able to prepare ourselves for future pre-orders and even come up with forms for collectors to fill up and be notified personally via email when we know our allocation for the pieces.

Thank you for reading this lengthy post. Have a nice day!

Regards,
Ann
Simply Toys LLP

Thank you, Ann. Insight like this is helpful and reassuring.

 

[SurlyJ]

Hi SurlyJ,

thank you for writing. We are allocating the extra coins we received to customers who have ordered on Friday on a first order first serve basis. Just waiting for my websales colleague to come into the office to sort out who will get the coins. He should be in the office in another 60-90mins. He will probably send out the emails to the few customers within the next 2-3 hours?

Ann
Simply Toys

Oh, very cool! I'm glad to hear it. I hope I get one. I put my order in very quickly

Will keep my fingers crossed but either way am glad to hear you are handling the situation in this manner.

- Jacob

 

[Y4NK33 PL4N3T]

He said later than sooner... not sure how that translates to right out of the gate. And there is a big gap between XM and Sideshow... plenty of middle ground to cover. All he is saying is that if XM's popularity continues and demand stays very high, they will eventually adapt to the market and meet that demand.

When the convo started he mentioned nothing of later, that was just added in last post. Paraphrasing his post isn't changing anything, it wasn't complex initially.

 

[SimplyToys]

Did you guys know Ben checks every single statue that comes into Singapore? Of course there will probably be some which will slip through the cracks, missed out by his naked eye. It will be exceedingly dull for him to go through 3000 statues vs the 500-1000 pieces. I would rather he spends his time focusing on developing new nice products than spending time checking the statues. So I believe he will not want to increase the edition size although I did suggest to him to make Magneto an ES of 999, give me the extra 199 pieces so that I can make 199 retailers and customers happy. hehe

Regards,
Ann
Simply Toys

 

[SurlyJ]

Did you guys know Ben checks every single statue that comes into Singapore? Of course there will probably be some which will slip through the cracks, missed out by his naked eye. It will be exceedingly dull for him to go through 3000 statues vs the 500-1000 pieces. I would rather he spends his time focusing on developing new nice products than spending time checking the statues. So I believe he will not want to increase the edition size although I did suggest to him to make Magneto an ES of 999, give me the extra 199 pieces so that I can make 199 retailers and customers happy. hehe

Regards,
Ann
Simply Toys

Hah. Hey, if you've got the pull, use it

That's a good point you raise about him checking every piece. That's a solid reason to keep the ES low. I don't think anyone (certainly I wasn't) suggesting that the ES suddenly get bumped to 3000, I just know that because they have one policy now does not mean the policy will not change at a later date. Everything changes with time. If in two years XM is still killing it with releases, acquiring new licenses and maybe one day getting that vaulted North American license, expansion is a natural growth of a successful business.

I suppose the main point is that saying that they will never expand their ES is as silly as saying they definitely will. If anyone has a crystal ball they are using to know what Ben's mindset will be after a year of three of business, I'll pay good money for it

 

[ambasah]

I want xm studios to become massive. I believe quality can be maintained if they stay true to their origins, move slowly, and hire enough quality people to meet their expanding needs.

 

[V8_Club]

BTW Guys, I can personally confirm that the Bundle offer isn't only a Simply Toys thing. This "offer" was extended to me by a US retailer as well. I was told that XM Studios will only offer additional allocations IF they order more of Hulk, BW or IM . My opinion, XM maybe isn't as innocent as we think...

 

[SimplyToys]

Hah. Hey, if you've got the pull, use it

That's a good point you raise about him checking every piece. That's a solid reason to keep the ES low. I don't think anyone (certainly I wasn't) suggesting that the ES suddenly get bumped to 3000, I just know that because they have one policy now does not mean the policy will not change at a later date. Everything changes with time. If in two years XM is still killing it with releases, acquiring new licenses and maybe one day getting that vaulted North American license, expansion is a natural growth of a successful business.

I suppose the main point is that saying that they will never expand their ES is as silly as saying they definitely will. If anyone has a crystal ball they are using to know what Ben's mindset will be after a year of three of business, I'll pay good money for it

Sadly, I do not think getting a USA License and keeping the edition size low at the same time is realistic. If XM were to get a license to sell to the whole world, Disney would definitely ask for a huge sum of royalties which will definitely not be justifiable to keep the edition size below 1000. So take your pick! Want a huge edition size but make it available in USA (assuming there is no resistance from the existing licensees) OR keep the edition size small and make them available only in South East Asia.

 

[SurlyJ]

Certainly possible. They haven't sold out of Iron Man, BW and Hulk and with low ES on all three likely didn't expect to still have that many around. If they are sitting on stock they need to move in order to A) make back their investment money to put towards production on upcoming pieces and development and B) clear out storage space for their other releases, it makes perfect financial and business sense to offer a more popular piece exclusively to go with a less popular piece. Now bundles for expensive items make it disconcerting as it makes it less feasible for many to order, but the concept is in no way shady and is quite savvy. Companies often do this, offering bundles to move stagnant products or to sell items with higher profit margins with products with lower profit margins.

 

[Y4NK33 PL4N3T]

Did you guys know Ben checks every single statue that comes into Singapore? Of course there will probably be some which will slip through the cracks, missed out by his naked eye. It will be exceedingly dull for him to go through 3000 statues vs the 500-1000 pieces. I would rather he spends his time focusing on developing new nice products than spending time checking the statues. So I believe he will not want to increase the edition size although I did suggest to him to make Magneto an ES of 999, give me the extra 199 pieces so that I can make 199 retailers and customers happy. hehe

Regards,
Ann
Simply Toys

 

[ambasah]

BTW Guys, I can personally confirm that the Bundle offer isn't only a Simply Toys thing. This "offer" was extended to me by a US retailer as well. I was told that XM Studios will only offer additional allocations IF they order more of Hulk, BW or IM . My opinion, XM maybe isn't as innocent as we think...

specfiction or secret compass?

 

[V8_Club]

Secret Compass

 

[Smooth Criminal]

So how are you guys going display him? I think next apoc would look awesome!

 

[SurlyJ]

Sadly, I do not think getting a USA License and keeping the edition size low at the same time is realistic. If XM were to get a license to sell to the whole world, Disney would definitely ask for a huge sum of royalties which will definitely not be justifiable to keep the edition size below 1000. So take your pick! Want a huge edition size but make it available in USA (assuming there is no resistance from the existing licensees) OR keep the edition size small and make them available only in South East Asia.

Oh absolutely not realistic. That's what I was driving at. If XM is offered the ability to obtain a NA license, and I don't see why they wouldn't unless they don't feel confident they can maintain the quality they strive for and thus keep their market interested, bumping the ES would be fundamentally necessary.

What I want is immaterial. I just want excellent statues. Making them less costly and easier to obtain is second to that and then concerns over ES place after. Quality > Price > Rareness are my priorities, but every collector is different.

 

[Y4NK33 PL4N3T]

So how are you guys going display him? I think next apoc would look awesome!

In between Thanos and Wolvie