My exact thoughts. If they had just released this people would have bought it. It is probably more to do with the pointless crowdfunding done by a major corporation.
Almost every other star wars item they crowd funded for hit the sales targets though. The only other one was a rancor. Its not cause of the crowdfunding, ppl just not interested in this chars shit
They don't need crowdfunding. But isn't it a nice perk for Hasbro to be able to flip the production costs onto the consumer?
In the past, a company had to pay out of pocket to fund the development and production of a product. If they misjudged potential sales, they ran the risk of getting stuck with a bunch of unsold things to liquidate.
Now, with sites like Kickstarter, they can shift all the risk to their customers. Much less dead stock; they produce to fill the pledges (AKA pre-orders) and their estimate of what will sell at retail. Ideas that don't make their pre-order targets would likely have failed at market and the company dodges a bullet there. Plus input from people making pledges functions as a free focus group. I used to be interested in board games and, as of a few years ago before I stopped paying attention, almost all the major publishers used Kickstarter to pre-fund most of their projects.
I actually don't have a problem with the idea of doing pre-orders, as long as the consumer gets a decent discount for putting their money up front for an unseen product. The issue I see with established companies using crowdfunding is that the system is set up for basically begging for money, with no real guaranteed return for people making pledges. That's fine for an average Joe trying to raise money, but inappropriate for a large company. Plus, the crowdfunding site takes a huge cut for being what amounts to an unneeded middleman for a large corporation. It would be more appropriate for Hasbro to just set up a pre-order system internally.
Holy shit it’s actually genius! Sidesteps any “hasbro doesn’t respect minority characters” Twitter narrative without having to waste money on producing a bunch products nobody wants. Even Star Wars fans have a limit.
Don't know about Hasbro, but I have contacts in the (German) RPG scene.
Normally a product is priced 20-50€ (adventure, source book, rule book, ...) and you can expect a 40-50% store discount (so the publisher only gets 10-25€).
Now enter crowdfunding. Suddenly that store discount no longer applies, since you deliver directly to the customer.
Also people are suddenly willing to pay way more for the same product, because you unlock "stretch goals" and similar things. Oh you get a book mark! And a thank you letter! And we throw in a small 8page adventure.
The people would never pay 30-40€ for that. But crowdfunded? No problem!
And you don't even lose the customers who only want the initial product.
As an example "Das Schwarze Auge" (German RPG) kickstarted "Wege der Vereinigungen" (source book about sex & similar things in RPGs, where you could roll for penis length, ...).
~1800 people crowdfunded it for a sum of ~224k€ and it has 242 pages. Retail price is 40€ (which is quite high for a 242p product). The average crowdfunder paid 124€! 3 times as much!
If they had sold this book only for the retail price they would've made 72k€, so 150k€ less.
My exact thoughts. If they had just released this people would have bought it. It is probably more to do with the pointless crowdfunding done by a major corporation.
Almost every other star wars item they crowd funded for hit the sales targets though. The only other one was a rancor. Its not cause of the crowdfunding, ppl just not interested in this chars shit
Copros use crowdfunding as a way to gauge interest in a product rather than as a way to raise capital.
They don't need crowdfunding. But isn't it a nice perk for Hasbro to be able to flip the production costs onto the consumer?
In the past, a company had to pay out of pocket to fund the development and production of a product. If they misjudged potential sales, they ran the risk of getting stuck with a bunch of unsold things to liquidate.
Now, with sites like Kickstarter, they can shift all the risk to their customers. Much less dead stock; they produce to fill the pledges (AKA pre-orders) and their estimate of what will sell at retail. Ideas that don't make their pre-order targets would likely have failed at market and the company dodges a bullet there. Plus input from people making pledges functions as a free focus group. I used to be interested in board games and, as of a few years ago before I stopped paying attention, almost all the major publishers used Kickstarter to pre-fund most of their projects.
I actually don't have a problem with the idea of doing pre-orders, as long as the consumer gets a decent discount for putting their money up front for an unseen product. The issue I see with established companies using crowdfunding is that the system is set up for basically begging for money, with no real guaranteed return for people making pledges. That's fine for an average Joe trying to raise money, but inappropriate for a large company. Plus, the crowdfunding site takes a huge cut for being what amounts to an unneeded middleman for a large corporation. It would be more appropriate for Hasbro to just set up a pre-order system internally.
Holy shit it’s actually genius! Sidesteps any “hasbro doesn’t respect minority characters” Twitter narrative without having to waste money on producing a bunch products nobody wants. Even Star Wars fans have a limit.
Don't know about Hasbro, but I have contacts in the (German) RPG scene.
Normally a product is priced 20-50€ (adventure, source book, rule book, ...) and you can expect a 40-50% store discount (so the publisher only gets 10-25€).
Now enter crowdfunding. Suddenly that store discount no longer applies, since you deliver directly to the customer.
Also people are suddenly willing to pay way more for the same product, because you unlock "stretch goals" and similar things. Oh you get a book mark! And a thank you letter! And we throw in a small 8page adventure.
The people would never pay 30-40€ for that. But crowdfunded? No problem!
And you don't even lose the customers who only want the initial product.
As an example "Das Schwarze Auge" (German RPG) kickstarted "Wege der Vereinigungen" (source book about sex & similar things in RPGs, where you could roll for penis length, ...).
~1800 people crowdfunded it for a sum of ~224k€ and it has 242 pages. Retail price is 40€ (which is quite high for a 242p product). The average crowdfunder paid 124€! 3 times as much! If they had sold this book only for the retail price they would've made 72k€, so 150k€ less.
Do you now know why companies do crowdfunding?
Because consoomers are idiots
Limited edition run. Suppose its good to know exactly how much to produce without having to worry about overstock etc while hitting economies of scale