No more Smiles?
I just read about this, is this for real? Can anyone shed any light about this? Danny?
Quoted from Tomopop:
"I'm really hoping that this news doesn't turn out to be true. We received a tip today alerting us to a new policy coming down from Good Smile Company. CD Japan, in a newsletter today, stated the following, "IMPORTANT: Unfortunately, products manufactured by Goodsmile Company, including Nendoroid and figma, are no longer available at CDJapan as they decided to discontinue exporting their products through online shops located in Japan. We apologize for any inconvenience caused, and appreciate you for understanding."
A check of the major retailers does not show any immediate implementation of the policy outside of AmiAmi. On all Good Smile products at AmiAmi have the note of "For Sale in Japan Only." This notice has appeared on items before, but orders are still able to be placed for those items. Hobby Link Japan and Hobby Search have not shown any indication of any changes regarding Good Smile Company products.
I'm inclined to believe that this is the official policy of GSC, especially considering the past actions concerning heavily discounted merchandise. As to reasons why this is being done, I believe that the company is seeing its popularity and trying to expand into the American market. However, I believe that these Japanese retailers will force GSC's hand and allow them to sell the goods or just flat-out ignore the order."
Source:
http://tomopop.com/tomopop-business-report-good-smile-stopping-us-exports-17131.phtml
Never knew CDjapan even carried them.
That would be a terrible thing for Good Smile Company to do since I'm a huge consumer of their goods and the mark up in North American stores is atrocious. Even if the mark up wasn't so bad, there are barely any online retailers in Canada that sell them and shipping from the U.S. costs WAY more than from Japan... I'm going to hope this isn't true.
I always hear about the markup on North American sites being high, perhaps, I'm just not shopping at or visiting these sites. I order the majority of my items from bigbadtoystore.com. More often than not, the things I order are cheaper than what I see them for on Japanese sites, if not the difference after including shipping generally isn't that much. Things like the Play Arts line by Square-Enix and the Marvel/DC Bishoujo line by Kotobukiya generally are much more expensive on Japanese sites than on bigbadtoystore.com. The difference on the Marvel/DC Bishoujo line is usually around $15-20 USD. Also, I recently purchased the Jill Valentine figure from Hot Toys for about $150 USD, IIRC, she was listed on HLJ for about $185 USD.
My most frequent purchases happen to be Nendoroids, so Japanese prices of 2,600 yen being marked up to $40-$50 US is a huge price increase. Not to mention that shipping SAL halfway across the world from Japan only costs me about $10-$12 whereas a single Nendoroid from the US costs $25 to ship! I could pretty much buy a new Nendoroid for that alone! So a Nendoroid that would cost me about $40 including shipping from Japan would end up costing me $65-$75! Likewise, really popular figures can be marked up double the Japanese cost. That's ridiculous... Not to mention the even more drastic difference when limited edition figures are involved.
Bizzare. I can't see how GSC stands to gain anything from this to be honest.
would make the value of their products higher xD
because, Im sure we'll get it by other-means (tokyohunter,proxy service, ebay, etc.) if necessary.
but also would be harder to get.
Yeah but profit would go to resellers :P
Maybe its just for Cdjapan.
I seem to remember something similar to do with amiami ages ago to do with GSC permission to sell abroad. Plus quote from their own site
"With our skills and knowledge, our products have earned good reputations in Japan and other countries in recent years. "
Highly doubt they will stop selling to other countries when we probably buy 50% plus of their overall sales
I reckon its more to do with them only allowing certain online retailers to sell overseas, that way it limits compeition from these company as that always leads to competitive pricing and discounts.
So maybe only allowing a few companies to sell overseas stop them all undercutting each other and thus lets GSC make more money:p
Only a thought:P
Anyway if its true across the board then ahwell their loss :)
Shops discounting isn't really a problem, because GSC don't retail themselves, and as such it is not cutting into their profit margin. The only People that are effected by the discounting are the retailers themselves *shrugs.
but at the moment it sound like cdjapan is the only company effected, let's hope it stays that way...
Exactly what I thought, why would GSC lose money from a retailer selling it for extremely cheap? GSC already have made their own profit by selling the product to the shop?
I can't really explain their actions if this is true, all it's doing is destroying their image with the international community. :/
It makes their product seem have less value and lose the prestige/collectible image.
and may decrease popularity on the longer run.
I wouldn't be buying much nendoroids,figures if it was $10~ a piece. it gives the feeling they are just "toys" instead of "collectibles"
Come to think about it, since I buy a ton of nendoroids from amiami, I faintly remember the "For sale in Japan Only" tag being on their products for at least 6 months.
Besides, Danny is friends with GSC, and a foreigner himself. So I bet he will fight for us importers if it ever came down to it =)
this makes a perfect business model sense for GSC, its not all about profit but ensuring a healthy supply network/distribution channel for the future. if u were a distributor of GSC u wouldnt want sells lost to other regional markets i.e. japan as this would damage ur business and kill it. think of it like this, when u buy a car thats made in japan in the US/Europe u have to pay tax and dealership fees etc and the car maker and the dealership need each other to form a distribution network. the way i see it, we had it too good for too long and this is hurting local GSC distributor in the rest of the world.
i dont like it myself but free trade means local dealers will go out of business and undermine GSC distribution network.
oh, think of it like this - China is manufacturing all of the US goods and the US is losing jobs and the money is going abroad creating a deficit, same principle is going on with GSC's policy to stop the tide.
They have no European distribution whatsoever though, so they aren't gaining anything there.
yep, with no European distribution, GSC will gain nothing from this. All the stores here order form places like HLJ anyway (such as tokyotoys)
if people in the US workers accepts Chinese wages, they will be more then glad to move the manufacturing back here. but that just isn't going to happen
=P -this means two things:
a: rely on proxies more
b: forget GSC in it's entirety
Exclusives aside, the reason why I always buy with Japanese shops is no matter which German shop sells the same item, it's always more expensive even with shipping + customs because there are I don't know how many resellers involved who also want their share (and taxes).
If it turns the other way round someday I don't believe I will be buying figures at all then. The idea to pay double or triple the original retail price really puts me off.
At least for now it's only GSC (?)
I only recently found out about Nendoroids, and got my first two in the mail... and want more... so this is very sad news for me... and frankly, if they make it really hard to buy them (who would the US distributers even be?!)... I'll probably just not get any of them anymore.
And would they still honor all of our preorders? I've preordered a Mirai figma... as I'm sure a lot of non-Japanese customers have... so they'd be hurting this website too.
And GSC still sells the product that the distributers (like AmiAmi and HLJ) end up with... so they're still making a profit on all this stuff. Is it just greed? Are they just looking for more of a profit? Or is this just a nasty rumor?
=P -maybe Danny can open his site for sales
or AmiAmi can do better for us
Its not just GSC, its Max Factory too. This really sucks. I put in a pre-order for the Kos-Mos figma back in October at AmmiAmi, now I cant put in an order anywhere else because all pre-orders are closed T.T
Anyone have any leads on where I can pre-order without having to pay 100$ for a 45$ fig?
have you tried hobbysearch or hlj?
...I thought Amiami still had it opened?
I found a few sites...mostly with a price thats ~20$ more than AmiAmi.
So I wrote to AmiAmi to find out whats going on... looks like all pre-orders will be honored to date.
Based on that, I think im in the clear. Just as well too, it was going to be my last figma (1)its Kos-Mos!! 2)I like PVC's better) and I was never really into nendos.
The company flat out hates discounts. Discounts on products hurts sells period for retailer and the company creating the product. Japan may also sell figures threw licensing rights . My company buys the rights pays them a profit share the longer the item sits on a shelf the less a licensing fee I have to pay ...... there for I get better profit not GSC and now they must limit sells to improve there bottom line
Deep Discounts that is. Or else Hobby Search couldn't have shipped all those BRS figures earlier this month.
As Far as I known, GSC would have already made their money when the retailers "purchase" the items in question. at that point any discount is only cutting into the profit margin of the retailer, not the producer.
And since GSC is only a producer not a retailer (Good smile cafe doesn't count :p) they are not actively competing with the retailers.
Tomopop is full of crap. Sorry, I find their commentaries to be very immature half the time.
AmiAmi/HS/HLJ have yet to put any notice out, I'm sure everyone's pre-orders are safe.
I really hope this isn't true, I would be extremely disappointed because I won't be able to get figma anymore.
It's amazing how GSC loves a drama... Money is money, does it really matter where it is coming from ?!
My thoughts exactly lol.
As long as GSC is making money, why should it matter who buys their products.
Almost my whole collection is GSC stuff, so I hope this doesn't spread to amiami/HJL etc -__-
Tomopop has updated their article with new info. Link is same as above.
Cliff notes: HLJ says this won't affect it's GSC inventory, and AmiAmi says it will honor all current orders, with nothing said about future products.
Worse case senario you would need to simply source the same product from other places like e-bay, Mandarake or one of the many agents in Japan. Yes in some cases the item you want may be a little dearer, but shouldn't be too much more.
The draw backs though are a drag in that you lose the easy ordering and billing systems offered by people like Amiami and HLJ. You also lose a nice feature of Amiami like bulk billing where they save each months order up and bill you once and ship it all together at the start of the following month.
Well regardless...
=P -we'll probably see Figure.FMs "classified" site being more active than what it is already, selling MIB GSC and Max Factory products.
XD -And then GSC will come to Danny telling him to stop the classified section
I think this MAY be that kick I need to stop collecting figures
Another update on Tomopop's link:
"HLJ has made a comment regarding the situation, stating that the policy 'does not affect HLJ's ability to sell GSC products overseas.'"
Well, this seems like a good sign...? <:
Nothing to worry about. Looks like another article to get people worried to drum up page views and comments.
Good to know. Thanks!
Well... that's pretty jerky of them >8(
I'm glad all my HLJ preorders are safe though. I can't wait for my Mirai!!
Good to know! Thanks for the heads up! At least all my preorders are safe >.<
XD -and Danny has saved the day~
I was worried about this as well when I saw the "For sale in Japan only" note on Amiami about a week ago so I emailed them to inquire and they stated that confirmed orders will be fine so there should be nothing to worry about.
But they did say that the notice you was placed on the items due to the request of the manufacturer.
So I assume if GSC really plans on restricting Japan international online sale, we wont be able to get GSC products from amiami anymore... >///<
Really hope this is not the case...
Some of you might think this is just a silly stir of the pot. However if you check for yourself on the AmiAmi site (both Japanese and English) you can see distinct differences.
On the Japanese AmiAmi, there is banners (on the right) for both Max Factory and GSC. Both of which are absent on the English AmiAmi, ever since that discount dispute. In addition, if you simply search up some GSC Nendoroid (on the Jap site), one can also notice massive discounts 50%+ and beyond for some products. While the Eng site, these sales or items has been taken off display and simply considered non existent through searches despite being available previously. If this isn't GSC limiting AmiAmi distributing sales internationally then what is with this remarkable difference.
ummm, it's not like you can't manually search for them... I mean, yea, too bad for the figure sales, but some of the stuff video game sales are still there on the american one, for instance, SRWL
Was just referring to GSC products in general, other stuffs like games are obviously still available =P
FWIW, J-List hasn't heard anything about this, and we plan to keep selling all their products. We don't buy direct, so maybe this will be a good thing? They can't stop us from buying form 2-3 different distributors.