Mattel Disney Pixar Diecast CARS: The Price Creep … Or Price Leap …
What once was is no more …
But I know he’s cheatin’ on me
I look him in his eyes but all he
Tells me is lies to keep me near
I’ll never leave him down though
I might mess around it’s only
Cause I need some affection oh
So I creep yeah
Just keep it on the down low
Said nobody is supposed to know
So I creep yeah
‘Cause he doesn’t know
What I do and no attention
Goes to show oh so I creep
(Movie quote here)
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16 August 2009
42 Comments
Dude, I used to sell products to Target and Walmart. They all work on 70%PMU (Percent mark up). They will not sell your product if they cannot make at least 70%PMU. You can forget that 20 – 35% markup. They will still get 40% on a sale item. And then next year they want your prices to be lower and they will keep their same price to the consumer or as we see here in the cars aisle raise the price.
This may have been true in the past, but it is not now. I know several Managers at my local WalMarts and Targets and know exactly what CTA (Cost To Acquire) is. When the haulers first hit the shelves the Store Manager at WalMart was amazed to see a 37% markup, and he told me that they almost never see a markup that high on toys.
WalMart and Target are no longer considered “Discount” retailers because they have driven the competition to compete or die, lowering the average price across the board. They sell in mass volume so they have no need to price their products with outrageous margins.
The problem is that Target and WalMart are no longer “discount” Retailers. For those that closely watch and track prices, like myself, you may have noticed that “discount” retailers no longer sell at the MSRP (Manufacturer’s Suggected Retail Price).
I track a lot of products and have notices that products that can be bought from the manufacturer at the MSRP from their own stores are now more expensive at WalMart and Target. This is primarily true for products that sell for less than $15.00.
I will provide evidence for my assertions. Lego sells set 6742 Mini Off-Roader for $4.99 in their online store and at their few retail stores. Walmart sells this for $5.88. Target sells it for $5.44. For those that care, Toys-R-US sells this for $6.99 online and $5.99 in the store (but then they cannot be compared to “discount” retailers.
I see this happening in many product lines from games to toys, etc. I believe this might be happening for one of two reasons. First, how can you mark down something you have little to no margin of profit on? It’s hard to have a sale if your marking down items below cost (a myth that is perpetuated in the retail business as a “loss leader”).
Next I believe retailers are marking up the lower cost items to increase profits. If you made 20 to 35% (typical retail markup) on an item that costs $5.00, which would be about $1.00 or more, then you stand to make much more on a $5.00 item you charge $5.88 for. Also, I believe in this hard economic times, people are still buying stuff for children, they just are not buying the $20 item. Instead they are buying the $5 and $10 item. Your 20% markup on a $20 toy is worth carrying the toy for $4.00 or so in profit. The $5.00 toy is not so much worth it. I have noticed that many of the $20 and up toys are exactly priced at the MSRP.
So, for what its worth, that’s my opinion based on a little exerience and some conjecture.
Sincerely,
Todd
Interesting observation.
I went into a Target in Port Orange, FL today and they were up to $3.99 for singles . . .and the pegs were STILL FULL of the same stuff that hasn’t sold in the last 3 months . . . . might as well mark that store of my shopping list for Final Lap cars . . . .
Full pegs of singles? I haven’t seen that at a Target here in ages. They are all down to literally one or two little singles half hanging on the pegs because their j hooks are torn.
REv n Go at TRU for 10.99. way too much!!!!!!!!
Dudes!
Picked up a couple Torquey Pistons and Clutch Aides in Launcher formation at our friendly neighborhood Walmart ( Or “Big W” as my lil’ guy likes to call it) Without a price hangin’ on the shelves…
$15.95!!!! CND!!! That’s $15.31 US after taxes!!!
Each!!!
Son of a ditch!!! That’s almost eighty smakeroos in one foul swoop!!! DANG!!!
What’s up with that!?!?!?
So long as they keep up with my demand I might let it slip…. Otherwise there will be hell to pay!
Won’t be collecting these…too much money..bought one for the collection and traded for Rev n Go, but otherwise they will sit on the shelves as far as I am concerned!
$15.92 to be precise.
You can buy the same cars as K-Mart racers on eBay for cheaper. Let WM die with their jacked-up stock.
Walmarts are charging $2.00 for peg warmers around here.
No changes at target yet.
Ours were $4.74 when we were at Target on friday too!
Prety soon we will catch up to Canadian prices!!! 😆
I cannot understand JACKING up the price on peg warmers that are already NOT SELLING! I think that I will be very hard pressed to find ANY Final Lap cars in my neck of the woods! 🙁
It’s a WM Canada strategy!!!
1) Try to sell Mega Size Al Oft for $6.92.
2) When you find he doesn’t sell, increase the price to $8.44.
3) When he’s still warming the pegs, increase the price to $9.44.
4) Clearance him at $7.00.
Needless to say, he’s still “hanging around”. Poor Al.
Still 2.99 at my targets, but nothing new 🙁
All Target could sell around here for $4.49 are those nice shiny EMPTY Pegs. 😆
Maybe it’s a case of the old “mark it up to mark it down” technique?
I have a feeling Target is going to have a major clearance soon, and will be able to put “WAS: $3.99” (or $4.49 or 4.69 depending on your location).
It would be a clearance of Tumbleweed McQueens and Trunk Fresh Pittys, wouldn’t it?
Yep…I told you..the prices are going ↑ ↑ ↑…I’m gonna take a pic of the prices in my Target…$4.69!!
My Dad when he was alive, worked in sales. I remember him telling me the store would take $3.00 Shoes and put them on sale at 2 For $10.00 and they would sell like hot cakes, because of the word “ON SALE”!
They are raising the prices because they can. a) like already stated, they have exclusives, b) they have all of the data on every line they carry. They know exactly the market for the upcoming releases(collectors for the most part) and they know what we will pay to keep going. The data accesible to the big corpations is incredible. They know our habits better than we do.
Once the exclusives are gone, nothing else will sell.
Do the math, Target doesn’t have enough employees to analyze ALL the scan data they could possibly collect, nor do they probably really CARE. The price was most likely increased on the wholesale side, so once that is entered into their system, a new price is automatically calculated and issued. Making a statement like “They know exactly the market for the upcoming releases” is pretty funny. How many times have you walked through Target and seen the end caps full of close out, discontinued, 75% off sales? ALL THE TIME. Big retailers don’t have the time to worry about what the sell. They just sell it all and dump the scrap later. If they had pencil pushers analyzing all the data, by the time the pencil pushers came up with a realistic model of what a Cars buyer, collector of not, would buy, that model has already changed. In case you’re curious, my brother works for a huge data collection company in Texas and does all the specific scan tron data analysis for one of the top 2 cola companies. And my family owns a marketing research firm with locations around the U.S. I’ve been involved either directly or indirectly with data for a good portion of my life. One thing I can tell you for sure is that Manufacturers love data, but rarely use it. While data analysis is very interesting, it is NEVER current because in most cases, it takes way too long to sift through and analyze the volume of data that is collected. When you say that “The data accesible to the big corpations is incredible. They know our habits better than we do.” you kind of sound like a conspiracy theorist. Big companies know enough of our habits based on brand matching. They look at what we buy together, i.e., ribs and bbq sauce so they can sell one at a premium price and put the other on sale for a minimal percent off and make extra money in the whole deal. That kind of extrapolation is easy to get from the data that is scanned, but the kind you’re talking about, not so much. Unless you’re using a loyalty card, which Target and WalMart don’t use, they know NOTHING about the shopper as a person, ONLY as to what else they purchase.
Well you should now prices in Europe are allready skyhigh!In Belgium Single cars are between 5,50 and 7,00 euro that’s 7 to 10 dollars!3 cars sets are 18,00 to 20,00 euro!Haulers are 20,00 euro! Oversized are 14,95 euro and the tracksets go up to 60,00 euro!But there are A few good points like A box contains 30 cars and not everybody wants to pay these prices so you can pretty much find everything(out in Europe offcourse)!Costing A fortune to keep up!But they look so great!
same on OZ. Standard Cars line is 9.99 per car, which is more than double what you guys are paying in the US. It gets worse with other releases. The 3 packs are 34.99 and just the other day I picked up some haulers for 34.99.
So if I wanted to try just make my money back and sell say a NitroAde hauler on the trade forum it would cost you guys in the US $29.50 and that would not cover postage and only get me my money back.
So anyone still want a Nitro Ade Hauler? Postage extra.
I’ve said it before, this is what you get when you give any one retailer exclusivity on a popular item.
Seems to me like Mattel probably raised the price to Target, WM, etc because their company is not doing so hot. So, in turn, Target, WM, etc had to raise their prices to keep the same margin. Also, it doesn’t hurt that Target will have plenty of exclusives. That is my theory!
Well, so much for the big guys. Fred Meyer’s circular for this week (8/16) has a coupon special for all die cast cars, trucks and airplanes BUY TWO GET ONE FREE. The coupon even shows a Cars trailer-Mack. Normal price is $14.99 So three for $29.98! Only exclusion is the basic Hot Wheels collection.
Only problem … they have nothing!
exactly – you can get three Macks for the price of two – WOO HOO
Not so in Tacoma, WA! 🙂
Unfortunately, I think the retailers have already been spayed or neutered because they’ve definitely done something about the cars population.
smart….. Target knows we will shell out $4+ for some cool new releases when people are already paying $4 for the less than stellar lenticular repeats.
Why would Target know that when they don’t sell Lenticulars, do they? This is a joke. I thought $3.99 was pushing the boundry, but over $4? The Targets around me still have plenty of pegwarmer singles even after the re-sets. Even if they do bring out a couple of cases, once they’re stocked, only the new releases will get purchased and that will leave a whole bunch of new pegwarmers hanging around. And then, they won’t stock again until the pegs open up. Which, at over $4, I think will take a long, long time. This is a big MISTAKE.
I realize that it’s probably Mattel who raised the wholesale price as they try and squeeze every little coin out of everyone. Have you seen their stock price lately. Geeesh.
Regardless of where it’s from, the price increase will slow the sales of this line down tremendously. I hope Target doesn’t get the feeling that the line is a waste of space as sales dry up to a trickle. It was bad enough when the Lenticulars took the price to $3.99, but paying $4.39 for non Lenticular, regular old ROR die-casts? Not.
Close to a 30% increase is a joke when Matchbox and Hot Wheels continue to sell for $.97 cents and have for years. The price increases this line has seen has not mirrored any quality increases. In fact, the quality on plenty of the newer products (haulers) has been questionable all along. Quality goes down as price goes up? This doesn’t seem like a very sustainable business model. Collectors can only carry Mattel so far. Maybe in their eyes, just far enough to get them to the release of Cars 2. Maybe it’s time to move on.
(MET: I’m not excusing the price increase but the fact all the toy companies have to be more vigilant about the lead testing and the factories have naturally passed that cost along + an additional increase because a lot of plants have closed so there’s less competition … as for HW & MB, the mainline is the $.99 line and while both Mattel & retailers hardly make anything, it’s the price to drive people in the stores … and of course, entice you with a $2.99, $.99 or more HW or MB …YOu’ll also notice the increase of a couple bucks on most action figures …).
“The Price is wrong! B****!”….one of my favorite quotes.
Looking at the prices: “Are we in Canada, Dorothy?”
That’s one of my favorite TLC songs.. 😀
I know! … Now I have Waterfalls and Creep stuck in my head 😀
Check out Paul McCartney’s “Waterfalls” from 1980. Sound just a BIT familiar? TLC did a little lifting here!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYstxLoOnYA
Wouldn’t doubt it if they raise the prices just to get more money out of us Disney Cars Diehard Fans. Maybe they should just allow us to order the certain ones we want from the cases and they won’t ever have to worry about selling all the extras in each case. That would solve restocking problems too.
These both at the same WalMart?
the second is at target
Ahhhh…. I see the new pegboard now!