Black Friday sale on Lego, Scalextric etc

[russy01]

miniman said:

ALawson said:

Does that mean there is a damaged Lego train set going cheap?

I'll give you all a heads up when we start selling our damaged stock off. We did a bout recently to clear space for new stock, but often do a load after Christmas. We send what we can back to our suppliers to get credits, but a lot of it has to go on auction to recover whatever we can get for it.... but yes you'll probably find some Trains in it....

[SydneyBridge]

Are you and/or amazon not obliged to sell Lego for the rrp most of the time, or can you (and amazon) do what you want in terms of pricing? I assume Lego have to protect their own shops and website
Like you said it seems stupid to undercut you by such a large amount.

[ALawson]

Cool, not to bothered on the box condition unlike my brother; his spread sheet I think shows him having spent £6k on Lego which he thinks is worth (based on selling prices) somewhere north of £10-12k!

All was fine (he was getting it delivered to my mums house) until his wife went into his old bedroom, circa 3m * 3m and it was literally filled to 2m above the floor level!

[miniman]

russy01 said:

miniman said:

russy01 said:

miniman said:

Prices of Lego seem to vary wildly. Amazon are doing the latest big Lego Friends Mall set for £77 delivered tomorrow, or wait until Monday and have it for £58.

LEGO prices on Amazon drive me absolute wild and it often causes us a lot of grief.

E.g I can sell 50x LEGO Cargo Train in a day at £130 (RRP 129.99) on Amazon if they're out of stock. Then the next day Amazon have got it back in stock and put it up at £89.99!

Queue half of my customers sending us emails to return their orders OR giving us bad feedback because we are "ripping them off". We then have to deal with all the returns, with half of the products coming back damaged as they havent packed it properly. We then get no choice other than process a full refund and take it all on the chin, as if not Amazon will force it anyway.

Dont mention Amazon prices to me again....makes my blood boil.

Presumably they can buy significantly cheaper than you? Or simply tolerate minuscule margins?

Yea well obviously - they have considerably more buying power than pretty much any retailer worldwide. But it still doesn't explain a somewhat daft pricing structure. I mean they can control who gets the sale buy giving themselves the buy box, they could then strengthen this with say a 10% undercut. But needlessly cutting the price by 30%+ all the time just devalues the product and makes them significantly less cash.

But oh well, its their business they can do what they want. I just hope manufacturers get sick of it and make a stand and dont supply them - otherwise at this rate in a decade you'll have no choice but to buy from Tesco or Amazon. Its hard work out there at the moment...

I've read in various places that their margins are wafer thin and that the business isn't really intended to make money at this stage, it simply becomes increasingly large and "valuable", until no-one is left, I guess.

[russy01]

miniman said:

russy01 said:

miniman said:

russy01 said:

miniman said:

Prices of Lego seem to vary wildly. Amazon are doing the latest big Lego Friends Mall set for £77 delivered tomorrow, or wait until Monday and have it for £58.

LEGO prices on Amazon drive me absolute wild and it often causes us a lot of grief.

E.g I can sell 50x LEGO Cargo Train in a day at £130 (RRP 129.99) on Amazon if they're out of stock. Then the next day Amazon have got it back in stock and put it up at £89.99!

Queue half of my customers sending us emails to return their orders OR giving us bad feedback because we are "ripping them off". We then have to deal with all the returns, with half of the products coming back damaged as they havent packed it properly. We then get no choice other than process a full refund and take it all on the chin, as if not Amazon will force it anyway.

Dont mention Amazon prices to me again....makes my blood boil.

Presumably they can buy significantly cheaper than you? Or simply tolerate minuscule margins?

Yea well obviously - they have considerably more buying power than pretty much any retailer worldwide. But it still doesn't explain a somewhat daft pricing structure. I mean they can control who gets the sale buy giving themselves the buy box, they could then strengthen this with say a 10% undercut. But needlessly cutting the price by 30%+ all the time just devalues the product and makes them significantly less cash.

But oh well, its their business they can do what they want. I just hope manufacturers get sick of it and make a stand and dont supply them - otherwise at this rate in a decade you'll have no choice but to buy from Tesco or Amazon. Its hard work out there at the moment...

I've read in various places that their margins are wafer thin and that the business isn't really intended to make money at this stage, it simply becomes increasingly large and "valuable", until no-one is left, I guess.

Yea well thats the whole idea around it. Its all about market share, when they are satisfied they just need to whack £1 on the price of everything they sell and all of a sudden they make an absolute fortune. However shareholders will only hold on so long before they start demanding a return so they wont get away with it forever..

As for the prices. Somebody like LEGO cannot dictate prices, its price fixing and a very serious offence. So anytime its mentioned to them they just say there is nothing they can do about it and its down to the seller.
Ultimately the only thing that can be done is to cut supply. I deal with a few smaller brands who I can talk to more personally and several have stopped supplying Amazon for the reasons we speak of above. Whilst they have more admin (dealing with lots of accounts instead of one jumbo account), ultimately sales havent been affected too much as a lot of their accounts sell via Amazon Marketplaces anyway. Then they obviously also get the benefit of these smaller sellers all putting a lot of effort into promoting their brand on their sites and their shops (Where Amazon just slap it on their site and cut the price!)

Anyway thats enough of that.

Looking at sales coming in and we are selling loads of Tamiya RC Bundles on this promotion - they are bloody cheap! You can get yourself a Tamiya Rising Fighter with everything you need to get it going (Radio, Battery, charger etc) for about £85!

If anybody is looking to get their boy (or girl) an RC Car or Scalextric set this Christmas Id get on it now....

[ALawson]

Russy01, would I be right in thinking that Scaletrix Digital is still to complex for a 4 year old? From memory he had a go in Hamleys and was ok?

I suppose I could get one and see how he gets on? There is model shop in Basingstoke selling £250 digital boxes for £150.

[mcdjl]

russy01 said:

Looking at sales coming in and we are selling loads of Tamiya RC Bundles on this promotion - they are bloody cheap! You can get yourself a Tamiya Rising Fighter with everything you need to get it going (Radio, Battery, charger etc) for about £85!

If anybody is looking to get their boy (or girl) an RC Car or Scalextric set this Christmas Id get on it now....

I can't seem to make it that cheap...not that i have a boy/girl to get it for!

[miniman]

ALawson said:

Russy01, would I be right in thinking that Scaletrix Digital is still to complex for a 4 year old? From memory he had a go in Hamleys and was ok?

I modified my Digital controllers like this:



Drill a small hole through the trigger, then put a split pin through it. Neatly restricts the max speed of the cars and can be put back to normal quickly. My 3 year olds get on fine with it, generally speaking!

[ALawson]

miniman said:

I modified my Digital controllers like this:



Drill a small hole through the trigger, then put a split pin through it. Neatly restricts the max speed of the cars and can be put back to normal quickly. My 3 year olds get on fine with it, generally speaking!

That's quite neat, I suppose a variety of hole position could be used!

[russy01]

mcdjl said:

russy01 said:

Looking at sales coming in and we are selling loads of Tamiya RC Bundles on this promotion - they are bloody cheap! You can get yourself a Tamiya Rising Fighter with everything you need to get it going (Radio, Battery, charger etc) for about £85!

If anybody is looking to get their boy (or girl) an RC Car or Scalextric set this Christmas Id get on it now....

I can't seem to make it that cheap...not that i have a boy/girl to get it for!

You need to add the Black Friday Discount code (BLACKF) to the basket. Makes it £85.99 including courier delivery.

[russy01]

ALawson said:

Russy01, would I be right in thinking that Scaletrix Digital is still to complex for a 4 year old? From memory he had a go in Hamleys and was ok?

I suppose I could get one and see how he gets on? There is model shop in Basingstoke selling £250 digital boxes for £150.

Digital is no more complex than analogue. Its track, Cars, and a controller - just a bit more tricky to set up (but dad does that)

As demonstrated you can add a pin to the throttle, or if you have the 6 Car powerbase you can restrict/handicap the power levels of each car.

My colleague has a 4yr old and to begin with he just mashed the throttle and the car would come off every corner, after half hour of explaining it to him he can now control the car fairly well, until he gets excited again.

Frankly if you are concerned Id start off cheap. Start off with C1319 (£59 with the deal) which comes with tough cars and see how you get on - if you want more track and to upgrade to digital in the future then I can sort you out with conversion kits etc.

[mcdjl]

russy01 said:

You need to add the Black Friday Discount code (BLACKF) to the basket. Makes it £85.99 including courier delivery.

I was looking at the car with the add on package, not the complete deal at the end of the list.....if wasn't the day charger too.....most not be tempted

[russy01]

mcdjl said:

russy01 said:

You need to add the Black Friday Discount code (BLACKF) to the basket. Makes it £85.99 including courier delivery.

I was looking at the car with the add on package, not the complete deal at the end of the list.....if wasn't the day charger too.....most not be tempted

I hate having to sell the slow chargers, they do my nut. However every other shop seems to offer the slow charger to keep the price down. So unfortunately I have had to follow suit - otherwise we dont sell any and constantly get told we're "greedy" for our set being £10-15 more than other sellers!!

So if I ever get the chance to talk with a customer, 9 times out of 10 I convince them to spend a few more quid and get our 3A charger (instead of the 0.18A!!!!!)