2018 HasLab - TVC Jabba's Sail Barge (The Khetanna)

[JediJman]

Barge Backer Update: 2767

Not much of a surge, especially given its the weekend.   

[CHEWIE]

Well the price for the UK market is like $800+ for this... my goodness

[Pete_Fett]

Barge Backer Update: 2767

Not much of a surge, especially given its the weekend.   

Unfortunately no, and considering the mark-up, I'm not surprised.

We're now at a point where the required backer rate for the remaining time is 147.5 backers/day - three days ago it was 128 backers/day.

I thought for sure with the Dark Side Toys announcement we'd at least hit 3000 this weekend.

[McMetal]

All I know is that thread over at RS is an epic train wreck of idiocy. Like, Olympic level.

[Rob]

All I know is that thread over at RS is an epic train wreck of idiocy. Like, Olympic level.

Between the people who are angry about it for any one of 10 terrible reasons, to the people who think they understand marketing better than Hasbro does... I don't know why I keep checking it.

[Nicklab]

All I know is that thread over at RS is an epic train wreck of idiocy. Like, Olympic level.

Between the people who are angry about it for any one of 10 terrible reasons, to the people who think they understand marketing better than Hasbro does... I don't know why I keep checking it.

Even a dumpster fire can be fascinating...

for a while.

[Dave]

Adam Pawlus has some good stuff on the Sail Barge, TRU, and KB this week.

Kind of interesting to think about the Sail Barge revenue in comparison to Hasbro's business operations.  5,000 Sail Barges is only $2.5 million in revenue, while Hasbro does $5.2 billion in sales a year.  The Sail Barge is a rounding error of 0.05% of their revenue.

I sure hope it works, but its probably more about PR to make something this cool than it is about revenue.

[Darby]

I thought his column was very insightful re: the Barge. There's almost no economic incentive to make the Barge, especially with the performance of large vehicles at retail in the last few years. So why do it? His theory on Hasbro doing it to 1) bid for the renewal of the license and 2) regain the interest of collectors who have not come back, even with the new films, sounds very plausible to me. Also, a DTC sales method in a collapsing retail environment makes a ton of sense, even if the Barge doesn't fund. It's an advertisement for the future, an Early Bird Kit for the 21st century. We may not get this exactly, but we're going to get some cool things.

[Jayson]

5,000 Sail Barges is only $2.5 million in revenue, while Hasbro does $5.2 billion in sales a year.

Don't you have to back the production costs out of the 2.5 mil and what remains is the revenue?

[Dave]

No.  What you described is gross margin.

Revenue is just top line sales numbers and doesn't speak to profitability. For all we know Hasbro is going to break even or even lose money in the process when you pull out all the production and overhead costs. 

I think we're all assuming this is going to be margin positive and hit their internal hurdle rate, but it might be very different than when they work though their normal distribution channels.

[JediJman]

All good stuff to think about.  To Dave's point, the $2.5 is gross sales, not net sales.  Hasbro's $5.2B in revenue translated to about $400M in net income (about 8%).  If you apply the same rough rate, their $2.5M in Barge sales would translate to just $200,000 of profit, which is essentially nothing for them.  I earlier assumed that the margin on this would be higher than previous vehicle offerings, since Hasbro is avoiding the retailer margin hike, but it could easily be lower or even negative since they've never done anything like this.  Either way, its probably small peanuts for profit, but likely worth the expense for the PR, goodwill, and learning that will come from a direct sale test like this. 

[Nicklab]

So the Barge passed 2800 backers today?  Hmmm.  It's going to be interesting to see if orders from Europe continue to ramp up through Dark Side Toys.  It looks as though the pace has picked up.

[Pete_Fett]

So the Barge passed 2800 backers today?  Hmmm.  It's going to be interesting to see if orders from Europe continue to ramp up through Dark Side Toys.  It looks as though the pace has picked up.

Yes, there does seem to be an up-tick of sorts, but still not good enough.

As of my post, we're at 2828 backers and that leaves 2172 needed over a span of 14 days which is a daily average rate now of 155 backers/day.

Late on Saturday night, when I ran the same numbers for an earlier post it was at 147.5 backers/day - so we're still going in the wrong direction, just not as quickly as we were in the days leading up to the Dark Side Toys announcement.

I wonder if the throne/cushion piece that goes under Jabba can be removed from the barge - maybe we'll get lucky and at some point Hasbro will offer a Vintage-boxed Jabba the Hutt with barge throne/dais/cushion as an homage to the Kenner Jabba w/dais set from the 80s.

[Dave]

Do we know if Dark Side Toys' orders are getting placed and being reflected real time on Hasbro's site, or are they going to do a bulk buy on the last day based on their total orders with a big uptick?  I would be kind of surprised if it was real time.

[Pete_Fett]

Do we know if Dark Side Toys' orders are getting placed and being reflected real time on Hasbro's site, or are they going to do a bulk buy on the last day based on their total orders with a big uptick?  I would be kind of surprised if it was real time.

It's possible that they are. Hasbro did not officially come out and say that Dark Side Toys was authorized to sell the Sail Barge in the UK. So like I said in my earlier post, all Dark Side Toys could be doing is taking pre-orders on their website and then having someone who lives in the US or Canada, on their behalf, placing an order for a Sail Barge.

Then if the 5000 backers is reached, that individual would take receipt of all Sail Barges that Dark Side Toys took pre-orders for. That person would then pack them up (probably in a shipping crate) and have them shipped to the UK. The value would be declared for the total shipment and Dark Side would have to pay the duty tax/fee before taking receipt of the shipment. I'm sure they looked into what it would cost duty wise to have two Sail Barges shipped from the US to the UK. (I say two because I believe the rate of tax/fee changes if you cross either 500GBP or 600GBP in value)

So now you have for over-head: (1) the cost to ship the crate across the Atlantic; and (2) the duty charged to take receipt. Then Dark Side would be responsible for shipping them throughout the UK and to the rest of the EU (which thanks to changes coming due to Brexit probably have their own challenges).

Considering that they want $835 for each Sail Barge, that extra $335 can easily account for the additional fees, duty, taxes, shipping costs, etc... plus giving them a modest amount for their time & effort.

So, yeah, I think their orders are being reflected in near-real-time.