Subject:
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Re: New Knight's Kingdom Prices
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.general
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Date:
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Wed, 9 Jun 2004 17:49:38 GMT
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Viewed:
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1318 times
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In lugnet.general, Jindrich Kubec wrote:
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although your message may have some valid points, the ones about LEGO in
Czech Republic are not.
Following info is from reliable source:
There are about 300 employees in Kladno factory.
About 90 of them are making models (parks, displays).
The rest are doing various tasks - for example there are parts printed
(except minifigs), backhoe pneumatics completed etc. Some packing for
Dacta.
The sets are not packed here. No parts are produced here (no ABS
production facility).
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My source on sets being packaged in the Czech Republic was the 2002 LEGO Brand
Guide, which was part of a 4-book set given out at NY Toy Fair. It states that
“LEGO elements are molded and decorated in Denmark and Switzerland, while they
are packaged into finished goods in the United States, Denmark, Switzerland,
South Korea, and the Czech Republic.” It unfortunately doesn’t go into any
greater detail, so I couldn’t be sure how much packaging happened there. My
source on parts being produced there now was
this post, which again doesn’t go into any
great detail about what parts are actually made there. This appears to be a
very recent change. How current is your information?
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Re: labor costs, I think the ‘operators’ get about $2-$3 per hour
(pre-tax ofcourse). 42.5 hours per week. Go figure.
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Where in the US they’d probably be expecting at least $9 for a basic machine
operator. I know that regular sets are packaged in Enfield (I have a Geonosian
Fighter box that says so), but early releases are usually listed as being packed
in Denmark or Switzerland, which makes me suspect that they pack up a bunch of
sets and a bunch of sorted loose parts and ship them all over at the same time
(or sets first/parts later). The prepackaged sets could then go right out the
door, while the loose parts would still have to go through the packaging
process. Shipping by sea is generally more concerned with weight, but when you
consider how empty some boxes are, you could either ship a single container full
of Spybot parts, or five containers full of packaged Spybot sets
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Re: prices. Everybody thinks LEGO is insanely expensive, and you don’t
take the rest of world into your figures. For the very same AT-AT you’ll
pay $99 + sales tax. I’ll pay $146 + 19% of sales tax.
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Sales tax is regulated by local governments, so that has nothing to do with MSRP
differences. I suspect most of that comes from market size. The US is the
largest single consumer-nation of LEGO product in the world, and very large
chain stores have more buying power here than similar stores would have
elsewhere. More buying power gives you a better position for negotiating
prices, so the more a single store chain can buy, the less they’ll expect to
have to pay. When we had to set our MSRPs at work, we didn’t actually decide
how much the end consumer should have to pay. We determined how much we needed
to receive for our product from our customers, and the distributors came back to
us and gave us a multiplier that they wanted applied to our distributor prices
to determine the MSRP. The idea here was that they could then show the MSRP
instead of their cost, so if they charged slightly under MSRP their customers
would feel like they were getting a deal instead of getting screwed. I’d be
very surprised if The LEGO Company makes $47 more on an AT-AT sold in a Czech
shop than on one sold in a US shop. Yes, they probably charge a higher price to
Czech store chains than to US store chains, but most of that $47 is probably
going directly to the store where you bought it. S@H pricing gets trickier. No
store chain wants to have product sitting on their shelves at MSRP when you can
buy direct from the manufacturer at a significantly lower price, so (in the US,
at least) the major chains force manufacturers to agree to sell at MSRP or
higher for direct sales by threatening not to buy anything at all (and
brick-n-mortar sales are always going to be the biggest source of revenue in the
US). In the case of S@H, yes, TLC gets more money for a Czech sale than for a
US sale, but they probably aren’t legally allowed to sell to Czech customers at
US pricing, and they know for a fact that they won’t sell to US customers at
Czech pricing.
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As I’ve started czech site about LEGO, we (the members) will try to
‘infiltrate’ the factory (ie. asking them for a tour), then I may bring
you some more info.
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What I’d be most interested in finding out is why the Knight’s Bus package lists
the Czech Republic as a location where parts are manufactured if they aren’t
actually making parts there. Does applying paint deco count for purposes of
listing where the components were made?
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: New Knight's Kingdom Prices
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| Hi, (...) This is _current_ info. Re: packing - I was told only Dacta packing occurs here, not the regular sets. (...) That's why I compared US MSRP of $99 (you pay sales tax at cash register, right?) and Czech price without the tax (we have tax (...) (20 years ago, 10-Jun-04, to lugnet.general)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: New Knight's Kingdom Prices
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| Purple Dave wrote: [snip] (...) [snip] (...) [snip] (...) Hi Dave, although your message may have some valid points, the ones about LEGO in Czech Republic are not. Following info is from reliable source: There are about 300 employees in Kladno (...) (20 years ago, 9-Jun-04, to lugnet.general)
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