Dec 15, 2013

MOTUC cost about 2 dollars to make... Let the chaos begin!

Somebody found out that to make a MOTUC figure it costs about $2 to make.  The Article is in Spanish, so Google Translate it if you don't speak/read Spanish...
I'll summarize it:
The Sales Representative for the Factory that does MOTUC among other things revealed that
it costs them about $2 to make a figure ($1.9 to $3.5) I suppose the Large scale items are more expensive. This is making the figure, painting it and packaging it. The minimum for their orders is 1000 and they have the capacity to make 500,000 figures in a month.

Of course this is making people think about MOTUC's costs...

Now, I'm not defending Mattel here, but it's got to be more than $2 per figure here.
The $2 there covers assembling, painting and packaging the figure and their minimum is 1000
So, that's $2000 there to make an order. (assembly, painting and packaging of the figures.) I'm not certain if that includes the costs on Raw Materials.(Plastics, Cardboard, etc.)

Transporting the figures from China to the US costs money... I guess we're paying that bill as well.
Then there's the Fourhorsemen Studios stuff... I know they love MOTU and they make stuff in their free time like the Battle Ram, but they don't work for free. So, I suppose that Mattel must recover the costs of hiring the 4Horsemen from somewhere.

Let's be honest here: Mattel isn't doing this out of love, well they are, but their love is for
the almighty Dollar... and I'm not talking about Macaulay Culkin's dog...
Money, Moolah, Dinero, that's what moves Mattel to make MOTUC figures.
This is something we all know and have to live with.

Mattel did sell MOTUC to Big Lots! who ended up selling them at $10 including giants like Megator and the Mo-Larr and Skeletor 2-pack. If Big Lots! made a profit by selling them at $10 then Mattel's Profit Margin on these must be rather large.

Hmm... I think I now get that quote I read from an article regarding Black Friday the other day:


The common assumption is that retailers stock up on goods and then mark down the ones that don't sell, taking a hit to their profits. But that isn't typically how it plays out. Instead, big retailers work backward with their suppliers to set starting prices that, after all the markdowns, will yield the profit margins they want.
 So, companies still make a profit even with the slashed prices. Assuming the previous sentence is true then Mattel's last 7 days of Cyber Monday sale feel even more pathetic now.

I know it seems messed up, but this whole "Factory makes each figure for $2" thing, but like I stated before, that's one part of the process... Something that we do not have all the information on all the steps and costs. Before we get people running to get the pitchforks and torches, remember that we do not have all the information and yes, Mattel will obviously have a considerable profit margin in order to do these toys. So, we could speculate until the cows come home, but without all the info, our aim would be worse than a squad of Stormtroopers shooting the broad side of a barn! Some could make more educated guesses than others, but at the end of the day they're just guesses.

Hell, even my argument is based on guessing and speculation!





No comments:

Post a Comment