Subject:
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Re: Still no answer, but the new piece rule is nice to hear
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.color
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Date:
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Sun, 23 Sep 2007 13:31:56 GMT
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Viewed:
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5798 times
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In lugnet.color, David Simmons wrote:
> The reason I'm asking this question in the first place is because the person
> who posted about the article initially said "It also explains the change in
> color pallets." I was hoping that this meant that they were saying that the
> article would describe why certain colors which were not eliminated from
> the current palette were "altered." From my perspective, the article did
> not address that.
Hmm, I guess I thought it did. They drasticly reduced the number of resin
suppliers, which means that a large number of suppliers (who might have been the
ones supplying, for instance, old grey) were eliminated, making those resins no
longer availible. As an example, say you start out with six different suppliers
selling eight resins:
Ralph's Resins -
Supplies: red, blue, yellow
Also availible: brown, orange
Gary's Greys -
Supplies: old light grey, old dark grey
Also availible: peach
Harry's Hues -
Supplies: brown
Also availible: light bley, dark bley, purple, tan
Ken's Kustom Resins -
Supplies: orange
Also availible: old light grey
Winnie's One-stop Wonders -
Supplies: tan
Also availible: nothing
Resin's Aren't Us:
Supplies: purple
Also availible: Tie-dye (hey, I can wish?)
Current pallet: red, blue, yellow, old light grey, old dark grey, brown, orange,
tan, purple
Now if you want to reduce the number of suppliers drasticly, you have to find a
smaller set of suppliers that can supply something like your required pallet.
Here, one possibility is Ralph (for red, blue, yellow, and adding orange) and
Harry (brown, and adding light bley, dark bley, purple, tan). You've kept a very
similar pallet (swapping the grey for bleys) and preserved what you could
(stayed with the brown from Harry instead of switching it pointlessly for the
slightly different one from Ralph), but drasticly simplified your supply chain.
If a lot of the resins were being sourced in "boutique" fashion, I'm surprised
there weren't *more* changes in the process.
Why not keep one more supplier (Gary) and keep the original pallet? Perhaps,
cost. There's a balance to be struck, and while not everyone may agree with the
result, I can see how an attempt to reduce the number of suppliers will lead to
a shifted color pallet in some cases. Also note that when the grey shift came
out, there were comments that LEGO had other reasons as well to "shift" those
colors (market research, or perhaps focus groups). If your research indicates
you can reduce costs by changing your supply change in a certain way, and in the
process marketing says focus groups are not neutral but actually approve of the
resulting changes, well... that would seem to me to be a Good Choice.
Now you can open this argument up a whole lot (again) with things like "The
incremental cost increase of keeping the original grey supplier would have been
small", or "They used the wrong focus groups (i.e., I wasn't in it", or "But in
cutting the supply chain cost they are making an inferior product", or "damaging
brand image", or "violating customer loyalty", etc. All those may be true... but
they aren't relevant to the above possible explaination.
Note I'm not saying this is why the color change happened, or that this is the
only cause, etc. I'm just pointing out how the constraint of reducing the number
of suppliers can indeed exaplin a shift in the color pallet. The exact
individual choices would be based on the exact mix of suppliers and products,
and pricing (both for indiviual colors and bulk sales), so it doesn't "prove"
anything... but it does offer a reasaonble explaination.
> Whooaaaaah, nelly! Let's just back off the
> anger throttle, shall we?
Agreed. I didn't take your post as offensive, and in fact I think your raised a
good point ("how exatly does this explain it?"), which I tried to answer. Yeah,
anger seems... uncalled for.
> Just because they're back to being profitable
> does not mean that they are beyond called into
> question for the decisions that were made to
> restore said profitability.
Agreed. They could have become "profitable" by selling off all the company
assets too, so I'd agree that there are paths to "profitable" that would violate
the core ideals here, and those should be called into question. Personal
opinion, I *don't* think the color change is one of those... but then again, I'm
from a very different end of the hobby than most in the color issue (robots, and
functional mechanisms).
> Finally, I have to say that the main reason that I don't participate in
> Lugnet forums as much as I used to is because I'm tired of having to defend
> myself merely for asking a question!
I completely agree, which is why I jumped in to try to explain the possible
reasoning. You and I may see the color issue very differently, but that
certainly doesn't mean there needs to be an attack. Heck, perhaps it's just my
POV - I've done more on USENET than I've ever done on LUGNET, and LUGNET at the
worst of times is a civil, quite, respectful backwater compared to USENET :-).
--
Brian "for not caring I'm long-winded" Davis
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Way to go, Brian!
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| Wow, Brian, thanks so much! Your thoughtful, intelligent and mature response gives me hope that Lugnet will continue to remain a place where fans can engage in introspective and constructive (pun intended) conversation without devolving into petty, (...) (17 years ago, 23-Sep-07, to lugnet.color)
| | | Re: Still no answer, but the new piece rule is nice to hear
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| Thanks for the explanation and contributing positively to this thread, Brian. Like David, I also couldn't quite figure out how limiting its suppliers led to changing the colors, but your explanation does an excellent job. My favorite line in your (...) (17 years ago, 24-Sep-07, to lugnet.color, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Still no answer, but the new piece rule is nice to hear
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| (...) The reason I'm asking this question in the first place is because the person who posted about the article initially said "It also explains the change in color pallets." I was hoping that this meant that they were saying that the article would (...) (17 years ago, 23-Sep-07, to lugnet.color, FTX)
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