Xm studios: European prices

[akumakiller]

XM.EU does not accept paypal for deposits?

I am interested in buying XM pieces, to use Daredevil as an example, to secure the statue with a deposit I have to do a bank transfer, which basically means I can't get my money back should any problems occur and the deposit is for 50% of the value of the statue?

I don't think this is reasonable?

[Finisher]

Originally Posted by shorudan

Hey everyone, sorry for the long delay in updating this. I've been going through and fro with the EU distributor and also a very very helpful EU customer (I'll keep him anonymous due to his preference) to run through every single line of costings. What I can confidently say is that the EU distributor is not marking up/over profiting more than other Countries' Distributors - he has priced fairly so this part I would like to reassure the EU customers. It is also worthwhile to note that the EU distributor, unlike other distributors, is solely dedicated to XM products which means creation, maintaining of website, events, travels are all absorbed by the German Master Distributor. It has been noted that they also take care of certain defects locally which is a very good support for locals. In this regard, the EU distributor is actually charging a reasonable margin.

Due to contractual and confidential numbers I cannot reveal, I've narrowed down the reasons of the EU higher prices to the following;

1. Licensing cost is higher in EU than in SEA.
2. Shipping cost is higher due to double shipment. i.e, first to port, then to main distributor in Germany, then again to resellers in other countries.
3. VAT or EU taxes are based on the final selling retail price, which creates a significantly higher cost on higher priced items such as XM. For instance, a XM product retailing for 1,000 Euros means about 200 Euros are actually tax (the product is more like 800 Euros)
4. There is actually double mark ups, first from the Master Distributor, then the other EU countries' resellers but note that even with the combined mark ups, the amount is reasonable and not much higher than the other XM distributors with a single markup. This is what I meant by a fair markup and the higher costs not really due to EU Distributor markup.

So the only practical way to reduce EU pricing is to remove the extra 2nd tier resellers but even after working out the numbers, the savings we are looking at is about 70 euros per piece on a 1,000 euros product. And in exchange, we are talking about giving up the benefits of a wider network of local resellers who are closer and able to provide more support to customers. i.e. if a customer has issues with a piece, they can go to the local reseller rather than send it to the German Distributor.

I've been mulling over this and doing all price scenarios covering port shipping costs, license costs, various VAT costs by diffferent EU countries via 3rd party consultant (not the EU Disti) but unfortunately, it seems XM products will be pricier in EU with little options of making it cheaper. At this point I must also point out that even if you buy from say Singapore and ship it to EU, and if you add on the legally required additional costs such as increased license fee (all XM products in EU need to subject to that increase license cost or legally they are actually not allowed in that region) plus the VAT (without under declaring the value), you will find that the resulting cost is the same as what the EU distributor is retailing for (plus EU disti throws in local support & Customer Service). Remember if you are buying from another country, you aren't actually paying the licenses for that product to be in that country. The EU Distributor rightfully has to abide by the EU license fees and Taxes so please bear this in mind when comparing retail price between EU and other countries.

Thats well written! Many thanks for this ! Really appreciated.

Anyway: Pricing is too high anyway for XM statues (in my eyes).
Now above explanation just doubles the pricing-problem. And there seems sadly no way out.

50% atop of a very high price makes pricing just even worse...

50% extra on 100 is just 50.
50% on 800 is that you pay 400 extra..ermm.

Visualized, this means you lose a Sideshow Powergirl during shipment...

Sad. But I believe XM will only sell there to a few fanboys with big wallet.

[Nebiros]

Originally Posted by Finisher

Thats well written! Many thanks for this ! Really appreciated.

Anyway: Pricing is too high anyway for XM statues (in my eyes).
Now above explanation just doubles the pricing-problem. And there seems sadly no way out.

50% atop of a very high price makes pricing just even worse...

50% extra on 100 is just 50.
50% on 800 is that you pay 400 extra..ermm.

Visualized, this means you lose a Sideshow Powergirl during shipment...

Sad. But I believe XM will only sell there to a few fanboys with big wallet.

I love Xm statues but i've no intention to pay 1000 euro or more for a statue.

[Raziel85]

there must be a cheaper way to sell to collectors in Europe.
It is not possible such a high price.

XM Studios should not take so many new preorder/innovations/developments in such a short period of time of the same character.
For example spiderman villains. I think XM should be spaced in time between the preorder spiderman villains.
Many new releases of the same character in a short period of time is a big problem to collectors.

For 2016 we have Kraven and Mysterio sure, for me one more is enough.
The prices are very high, so I think good idea help collectors not charging/take a year of excess reserves of the same character.

shorudan if you can not help with such high and unfair prices, you could at least help to space reserves same character.
Rationing in time or space between reserves/preorder (for example spiderman villains) I think is a good idea and helps the collector with the high prices.

I dont see logical 2016 with just marvel spiderman villains statues.
They must have also dc , star wars, own productions and another marvel characteres.

what do you think shorudan??

[Eky]

all the WE without reply from european customer

i myself have nothing to add since i don't care anymore

but my personnal case isn't universal

why such a silence ?

or maybe more customer think the way i do ... i don't know...

[Hunterkingxxl]

Iron Studios started to distribute in Europe. I consider them to be on par with XM on quality and they retail for under €800 incl. shipping. Well, since they are being sold locally, shipping is free with most shops.

Seems like they are doing something right, where XM is missing the boat. 1/4 scale Marvel sold by Iron Studios in Europe , jeeee.

XM, step up your game and get those prices in check and sort out the license.

[loricstone]

Originally Posted by Hunterkingxxl

Iron Studios started to distribute in Europe. I consider them to be on par with XM on quality and they retail for under €800 incl. shipping. Well, since they are being sold locally, shipping is free with most shops.

Seems like they are doing something right, where XM is missing the boat. 1/4 scale Marvel sold by Iron Studios in Europe , jeeee.

XM, step up your game and get those prices in check and sort out the license.

How about you move to Singapore or one of the approved non EU territories so you can get them for just a little more than a SS statue?

That would definitely help alleviate the problem. What I am curious about is how in the world is Iron Studios able to do Galactus (clearly under the FF Fox license) and neither XM or SS can do characters under it? That's quite puzzling to me.

[The Mule]

Originally Posted by Hunterkingxxl

Iron Studios started to distribute in Europe. I consider them to be on par with XM on quality and they retail for under €800 incl. shipping. Well, since they are being sold locally, shipping is free with most shops.

Seems like they are doing something right, where XM is missing the boat. 1/4 scale Marvel sold by Iron Studios in Europe , jeeee.

XM, step up your game and get those prices in check and sort out the license.

Hi mate, forgot to thank you for the EU shops link you gave me on another thread, thanks!

From what I'm seeing right now, the Mark 43 by Iron Studios is nowhere near the level of quality it should have at his price point. Actually, he's much much more closer to Sideshow's quality.
The criticized Mark 42 by XM is on another level of paint app and simply the best painted IM on the market. Pose might be average, base very generic, but paint app is flawless. The IS version, yes it has a nice red paint, but everything else is a trainwreck. The super plain grey, the dull gold plates, the white reactor on his chest.
Very quick comparison I did with what I got, but comparing two actual production pieces I see the XM version coming out as a clear winner.
And as for XM vs IS pricings, IS is cheaper because retail price is lower, hence all the proportional derived costs (customs, fees, taxes, everything is calculated on a % of the item's price), but not that much cheaper. If you look at that, you'll notice that IS pieces get imported at nearly double the retail price - which is exactly the same thing that happens for XM pieces. Rationale behind is the same.
Cheapest I've seen for IS Iron Man is 775€, the XM Mark 7 is 875€ shipped from EU distributor. Sure there's 100€ difference, but given the above comparison, I'd say that 100€ for a superior paint app is quite balanced. If Bryan really manages to drop down prices a bit and bring, say, the Mark 7 to 800€, it would be an absolute no brainer imho.