Subject:
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Re: According to TLC...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.lego
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Date:
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Thu, 23 Sep 2004 08:01:31 GMT
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Viewed:
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3341 times
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David Eaton wrote:
> I think one issue is that most Americans are cheapos. How much we've
> been trained to spend on toys for our kids is (I'd guess) different
> than in Europe.
Yea, I'd second that. An important factor may be mass vs. class. Some
product in the US has to be big in order to sell better, thus those
large, half-empty lego boxes we increasingly see in the last years. But
LEGO grew up in a market where bricks in tight, crammed boxes sold...
> I dunno how far reaching clone bricks are, but here in the US,
> there's a lot of competition with MegaBloks who charge ... uh... I
> dunno, maybe 1/2 or 3/4? of what the comparable Lego set would be.
Well, in Germany (second biggest LEGO market, not far behing on sales,
despite having less than a third of the US population), they actually
have a "Lex LEGO", a court decision that in effect disallows any
compatible toy in the market. So Megablokes and others are no
competition, and there is no need to adapt to their pricing.
> So most parents take one look at the price tag and buy the cheaper
> thing.
And that is something that brings down the prices. Here, the only
competition is non-compatible, notably Playmobil, a larger-scale kids
toy, which, nonetheless, has a way better service and offerst chances to
customers we can only dream of.
> Heck, even most AFOL's seem to wait for 25% off or better deals
> before we'll buy something.
Yea, but thats the same on either side of the pond. Although I'd daresay
that, taking into account the amount of sets an AFOL buys, this still
results in a better net result per person...
> But something else I don't see in your numbers is cost. Europe may
> produce 60% of revenue versus the US with 30%, but how much cost goes
> into supplying Europe, being that it's made up of lots of different
> countries, each with their own currency, language, etc. US is fairly
> easy by comparison. If Europe produces 60%, but costs 60%, and the
> US produces 30% and costs 30%, then it's perfectly balanced with the
> existing prices.
1. Different currencies - we have the Euro, at least most of us have,
Denmark being an axception, but the exchange variability (and therefor
risks) are minimal. The only currency in Europe that has a notable
variance to the Euro is the British pound, as the UK likes to cuddle a
lot with the US. Actually, the rate of the US$ was mentioned in the
report as one of the mayor business risks, IIRC
2. Different languages - have a look at a typical LEGO set. How much of
the set, the box, the instructions are language-dependent? The only
point where language differences really come into play are
catalogues/advertising and internal documents. The first are not
excactly high literature, and therefor not really a big translation job
(if they are available in a particular language, anyway). The latter
should either be high-level enough to be read by people already capable
of a foreign language (eg. English), or so low-level that it is only
relevant and available locally.
Yes, covering the whole of Europe may be more expensive than covering a
mostly uniform US market. But they do not cover the whole of Europe,
anyway. Of central Europe the cover (AFAIK) German, French (with
sideeffects for Kanada), Italian and Spanish (Propably not primarily for
Spain but for the Spanish speaking population in the US). Danish is
covered, of course, but I don't know about Swedish/Norwegian/Suomi in
the northern European markets.
When it comes to costs of legal stuff (Patents, Trademarks) it is
usually way more expensive (for a European company, anyway) to cover the
USA than the whole rest of the world (with the exception of Japan, maybe).
Yours, Christian Treczoks
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: According to TLC...
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| (...) I think one issue is that most Americans are cheapos. How much we've been trained to spend on toys for our kids is (I'd guess) different than in Europe. I dunno how far reaching clone bricks are, but here in the US, there's a lot of (...) (20 years ago, 22-Sep-04, to lugnet.lego)
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