Transformers retail prices in 2012 unchanged despite exchange rate

[griffin]

Moved these posts here from the BigW Pricing topic, as my posts were getting the News posting off-topic.

Pity about the prices though, as it shows Hasbro have gone another year without passing on the difference in exchange rate over the last few years.

So comparing to US$ prices, and compensating for approximate tax-rate difference...

Deluxe
In America - US$12
Here - AU$24-30 (about US$25-31)
Difference - US$13-19 (over 100% extra here)

Voyager
In America - US$20
Here - AU$48-50 (about US$50-52)
Difference - US$28-30 (up to 150% extra here)

Bot Shots single pack
In America - US$4
Here - AU$7 (about US$7.50)
Difference - US$3.50 (almost 100% extra here)

Bot Shots Launcher pack
In America - US$8
Here - AU$17 (about US$18)
Difference - US$10 (over 100% extra here)


That's a lot of extra money going into Hasbro's pockets... and more reason not to buy locally this year. Buying locally at those mark-ups just gives them reason to justify it if we accept it.

This looks to be the first line that I'm not planning to buy any of it domestically. Importing is too cost-effective for me as a completist to not do it.

[Cyberwing]

Well it could be the probable landslide during DOTM, which left them not enough budget to either change the size of figures or the prices, or I'm completely off.
Either way I'll just stick to the reality of their 'vampire' powers.

[Hursticon]

Cheers for the heads-up KaRNiV8L PRiME, appreciated as always mate
I agree DD, that is a more palatable price on the Deluxes but the Voyagers are really no better than TRU ; but I completely agree with Griffin and believe sending a message via our wallets to Hasbro AU is really essential if we're to try and get more comparable pricing - Educating the parental masses is what really needs to be done though.

[Golden Phoenix]

I am quite surprised by the price of the individual Box Shots. I would be pretty happy to pick one or 2 up for $7.
The deluxes are pretty good too.

I think we have to remember that we will never have the prices or prices anywhere close to what America has for many reasons.
We are a smaller market that is spread out. That means less product sold to a bigger area. That makes transport costs much higher. We also have much higher overheads (I am pretty sure the staff at Big W get paid much much more than the staff at the Big W equivalent in the US) and rent and insurance. Even though the price of the actual product has gone down, the price of everything else (transport, insurance, staff, rent and so on) has stayed the same (actually has gone up a bit due to inflation)

We also have to remember that a few years ago deluxes at Big W were a lot closer to the $26-30 price point. If we picked up a deluxe for $24 on sale we did pretty well. Now it is the standard and the on sale price is $18-20. So the prices for some figures have gone down. And even though some other figures (like voyagers) have not dropped down by as much, they also have not gone up with inflation either.

[griffin]

We are a smaller market that is spread out. That means less product sold to a bigger area. That makes transport costs much higher. We also have much higher overheads (I am pretty sure the staff at Big W get paid much much more than the staff at the Big W equivalent in the US) and rent and insurance. Even though the price of the actual product has gone down, the price of everything else (transport, insurance, staff, rent and so on) has stayed the same (actually has gone up a bit due to inflation)

We are indeed a smaller market... but America is about the same land-mass as us, so transport costs are comparable. And they have inflation and fuel-based cost increases comparable to us as well. But since Hasbro currently sells the toys to American retailers at 35-45% of the price they charge Australian retailers... the transport and inflation factors only affect the retail prices. If hypothetically, Hasbro sold the exact same product for the same (wholesale) price in the different countries, then we would be able to pin any retail price differences on non-Hasbro factors. But unless someone does something about it, Hasbro will keep charging Australian retailers MORE than the retail price in America (for the exact same product).

[griffin]

I was thinking that with all the factors in play, we need to visualise this, using the Deluxe Class as an example...



Note though, that it isn't just Hasbro not passing on savings of the exchange rate - it is just easiest to show the cost breakdown of the Deluxe size-class.
And our Wholesale price has the added component of funneling commission to the American Companies, who are already getting profit from their own domestic sales to pay for R&D, staffing, shareholders and future projects.

But Retailers are parties to the "offence" of either being negligent in not chasing up savings (by doing research on what items should be costing them) or intentionally accepting the higher prices to keep the higher profit margin (the margin between wholesale and retail is often about 40%, so smaller wholesale/retail prices means smaller margin per unit).
I'd never expect these multi-national corporations to give us a fair deal with pricing, but looking at the cost breakdown above, can you see why I'm so passionately upset about how much we are being shafted here.

(I'll move these into a new topic, as my posts are taking this one off-topic)

[Golden Phoenix]

Where have you gotten the figures from? Also, where do you think the overhead costs fit into it?

[griffin]

Figures are from...

Retail prices are known.
Tax rates are known.
Wholesale price is either known (here from 2 years ago) or calculated (US, based on the fairly standard ratio distributors have as their RRP from their Wholesale price). I've imported as a wholesaler in the past, and have also seen domestic prices from various sources.

The wholesale price was only broken up into three components (actual cost to Hasbro at the Factory (blue), the cost for Hasbro to get the product from the Factory to each country (green), and profit from what they then sell them to the retailers for (yellow)) to show that the first two factors are the same for Australia and for America, leaving the variable I'm trying to highlight (Hasbro's profit per figure) as being the big difference between the two countries.
Hasbro are never going to come out and say exactly what the cost breakdown is, and I had to utilise figures revealed on that recent Hasbro Factory article (which included a document that showed us that the production cost to Hasbro at the factory is 20.14% of the RRP before tax in America). But since the total cost of the blue and green are essentially the same for US and Australia, the yellow blocks are the only variable... keeping in mind that the Yellow block had to be enough to cover "R&D, staffing, shareholders and future projects, etc", based on how cheaply we now know they produce the toys now in the factories.

Basically, we know enough of the factors to extrapolate approximate values and even eliminate elements claimed to be factors. But unless Hasbro comes out with official figures (which they wont), this is about as much as we know from what has been leaked or revealed.

If it was just a small margin of difference, I wouldn't be so obsessed about highlighting this. But we have years of Hasbro US getting rich off the weakening US$, by not passing on savings to non-US markets.

Can you think of any other cost elements that could make our prices so significantly higher than America? If I've missed some variable between the two countries, I'll fix up the figures.


(IMO though, theoretically it shouldn't be cheaper to express post the exact same items from the other side of the world, than what it costs here domestically... when we know that the unavoidable price factors aren't much different between the two countries)

[GoktimusPrime]

So it seems that $18 is the min. price that retailers ought to be charging? I feel a bit better now paying $15 for Deluxe DOTM Optimus Prime at Big W But of course, not so good for all the number of times I've paid $30 for so many other Deluxes. :/

$25 seems an okay price to pay - it's outside of that "cheapest retail" range and on the lower end of "high end retail". Big W's slated $23.88 RRP for TFP Deluxes doesn't seem too bad either considering (it would place it on the upper end of "cheapest retail"). I'd be curious to see how this comparison would look for Voyagers and Leaders as I suspect that it is in these larger classes that we're getting more seriously ripped.

[griffin]

Those $15 store exclusive Movie deluxes proved that non-US branches can have the US prices passed onto us fairly, but the mainline stuff is just too profitable to discount if consumers are willing to keep buying them.

And recent downsizing of the main size-classes makes it even more annoying, as it feels like we are paying more for less.