Subject:
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Re: Improving the adult image of LEGO
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.general
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Date:
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Wed, 17 Sep 2008 20:10:51 GMT
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Viewed:
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12026 times
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In lugnet.general, Allan Johansen wrote:
> In lugnet.general, Michael Shiels wrote:
> > YES but LEGO wouldn't be around if they don't make some profits right? How
> > at production cost would they survive.
>
> I didn’t say that they should stop selling the normal sets. I just asked for
> an additional service above and beyond that...
>
> But of course you have a point regarding the need for profit. Perhaps such
> an offer should be available only to certain clubs in order to limit the
> impact on the market? Or something like that...
I think that's not quite the point that was being made. The point is that
selling individual bricks to individual consumers is *grossly* more expensive
for the company, not that it's cheaper, and hence would need to sell sets to
keep their profits. That's why if you build a "set" out of Pick-A-Brick online,
you'll find that it's far more expensive than buying the same set at retail. If
that weren't true, you'd probably see the prices be roughly comparable.
> In my experience, Pick-a-Brick, and by extension the LEGO Factory, are
> crazily expensive compared to Bricklink. When I build a model in LDD I
> usually end up buying the bricks through Bricklink, thus cutting the price
> in half...
>
> But perhaps it’s just me having a love for the wrong bricks...?
Bingo.
You want bricks A, B, and C in mass quantities in colors 1, 2 and 3, and someone
else wants D, E, and F in colors 2, 9, and 12. All told, that would mean Lego
couldn't predict what you were going to want in the future, and would have to
stock tons extra, or would have to do incredibly short runs of parts (on-demand)
making the cost per brick in the hundreds or even thousands of dollars. You
simply can't set up a series of injection molding machines to run for a
particular part and color only to make a thousand parts or so. Each individual
element costs next to nothing, but the overhead in setting up the run to go
smoothly is very large. So they set up the run, and let it go for a few hours or
days or what-have-you, and get a few hundred thousand or maybe even a few
million parts, and presto, your setup cost is balanced out.
If everyone wanted the exact same elements in large quantities, we'd have no
problem. But you need such a variety that it's simply not even close to being
feasible.
> > I'd love it if I could request custom runs of parts in the colors I choose,
> > and I'm sure if I could purchase enough to make it economical, TLG would
> > probably do it
>
> Would they? Maybe...
Probably. But I expect we'd be talking in the millions in order for them to
start paying attention. Maybe once you got into the hundreds of thousands of
dollars, they'd start listening. Anyway, suffice to say that yes, if you could
afford it, yes, it would be economical for Lego, and they'd do it. If I said I'd
pay 100 billion dollars for a run of 10,000 old gray monorail tracks, they'd
FIND a way to make it happen. But that happy medium between "reasonable for me"
and "economical for Lego" is still unreachable on both sides.
> In truth, I’m not entirely convinced. As has already been pointed out, TLC
> seems to have been somewhat slow when it comes to dealing with AFOLs.
> Perhaps it’s not a question of whether or not there’s a profit to be made,
> but rather the simple fact that they haven’t thought about it? Or, at least,
> haven’t figured out how to do it in a viable, and profitable, way...?
They've certainly thought about it-- but to date, the feasibility isn't there.
As hinted earlier, the cost is in the overhead of setting up a production run of
a particular part/color combination. As it stands, there's a lot of stuff
involved in doing that. It takes time, manpower, and resources, because (as I
understand) they run the line, test the bricks, tweak things, run it again, test
the bricks, tweak again, run again, test the bricks, find out everything's good
to go, and finally run it for production. I don't know how much time and
resource that all takes, but I know it's a lot.
If there were a way to manufacture bricks WITHOUT that overhead (IE, not
injection molding, or a way to guarantee consistency without testing, and
automate setup quickly), then yes, this could be done such that it might be cost
effective (though probably still more expensive!) for AFOLs to buy.
DaveE
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Improving the adult image of LEGO
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| (...) I didn’t say that they should stop selling the normal sets. I just asked for an additional service above and beyond that... But of course you have a point regarding the need for profit. Perhaps such an offer should be available only to certain (...) (16 years ago, 17-Sep-08, to lugnet.general)
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