Quote:
Originally Posted by Chronicle CS
When we started with ED-209 I also had guys wanting it at any price, when I released it at $999 they were no where to be found. These polls are like political polls, it's a fantasy number until you put the rubber to the road.
We are doing a lot of projects with our retail partners like GameStop. Those relationships will allow me to keep making high quality replicas. Jurassic Park and our Buck Rogers Starfighter are the next pieces to drop. JP will be the Hammonds Cane followed by some dinosaurs.
We are being far more careful with what we chose to produce. Just because the die hard fans say it will sell, it probably won't.
Robocop is an evergreen, but I want to go after new films and dabble with the older stuff. With Terminator Genisys we saw what we can do with several well placed and thought out products.
Robocop is heavily saturated, I doubt we'll revisit the property except to produce the 1-1 Cain head, but it will most likely be limited to 100 pieces.
Paul
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I agree polls have to be taken with grain of salt at times. But you have to consider the information available when a poll is made. If you create a poll asking how many collectors want a JP T-Rex, you're probably gonna get 99% of people say yes. So you go ahead with the project and then it PO's for $3000. Now your poll results are out the window as your approval just went from 99% to 30%. That's the problem with ED-209 and Cain, it's a lot of money for a small statue. In collector logic it just doesn't equate. You still sold quite a bit though because the quality and accuracy was there, and that's all high end collectors want at the end of the day.
I look at what PCS is doing with 1:3 pieces and don't see why Chronicle can't accomplish the same. PCS is creating mixed media 1:3 statues with light up features for $800. If you managed to make a 1:3 Robocop with great quality, accuracy and finish I'm telling you it will be an overnight sell out. You could even charge $1000 for something like that, it would still sell out.
I'll use Prime 1 as another example. When they first came onto the scene no one knew who they were. Their first piece, megatron, was mind blowing. No one knew how much it was, all they knew was that they wanted it. It later went up for PO at 2k. That price scared a few people away especially when you considered the size, you could buy a 1:2 statue for that kind of money. Which was the same situation ED-209 fell into. But P1 did sell quit a bit because the "quality and accuracy" was there. Pieces after megatron did sell out once word got out of the kind of quality to expect. At this point however, P1 has sorta hurt themselves a little by making these pieces with huge edition sizes. The exchange rate I'm sure is also drastically hurting sales for them right now. It's the main reason I cancelled Optimus, because by the time it got to my door it would cost almost 4k, and it's just not worth it at that point. But if you look at P1's recent Batman 1:3 PO's, all of them are more reasonably priced, even for international collectors. And guess what? Batman sold out in less than 24 hours @ $900.
With that in mind, collectors will be more selective with orders going forward. You have to factor this into your planning when considering to make large expensive pieces. However, collectors CAN and WILL find the money to order something that is clearly a jaw dropping masterpiece, just like megatron. They will do or sell whatever they have to for the chance to own a future "grail". If you found a way to make a 1:3 Robocop for $900, I'm telling you right now it will sell out in no time with a 500 ES.
Chris
