[Snowflakian]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JanSolo

It was neat.


Does anyone know exactly how places like Walmart and the like work in how they get their toys? Like does Hasbro sell all they have to the stores, the stores put them in big warehouses, the warehouses ship them to the retail outlet where some are put on the shelves and a bunch more are in back? Like could there be a bunch of hard to find MUs just sitting in the back of a store room or ware house?

It varies somewhat store to store based on size.
For all of them though, it's an initial ordering system and hasbro does have warehouses of what they produced that they want to sell to them.

This is how stuff that's been produced, but is at the end of a line or has "no outlet" goes to closeout stores. The major retailers don't order a certain product price class(like no more gi joe alpha class vehicles), or decide to stop carrying a line. Then whatever has been produced but hasn't shipped to those stores for their warehouses has to find an outlet.

The stores do each have their own warehouses. It varies store to store on the chain of national to regional to local. Some are hasbro shipments straight to regional instead of national, but local straight from hasbro is usually only smaller stores or internet. Comic Stores are often secondary market via Diamond or others, which is why they often jack up the prices.

So the stores do have warehouse stock they try to sell off. Warehouse material could potentially be sent back, or destroyed, but in store material is usually clearanced out or in some cases destroyed.

So pretty much it goes:
Hasbro generates retailer interest and or listens to their please for what they want to buy.
Hasbro makes it. Stores decide if they want it, order it based on their distro network to cover nationwide. So long as the stores are still ordering that product line, hasbro keeps preparing and making new assortments. When the orders stop or overtly slow, Hasbro slows and or switches gears to the next. Transformers take roughly a year from design to mass figure, the turn over for things like MU is faster, typically 3-6 months, ditto to GI Joe. So each of those lines have to prepare accordingly to always present new product for retailers to order, or entirely new product lines for when retailers decide they don't want certain lines due to slow sales.

There's more and more from there as you really get into the market data, distro networks, case assortments, etc. But it does vary store to store, and because of that the distribution reflects it on the local levels.