XM Studios Venom 1/4 Statue

[ZenLogikos]

Originally Posted by built2shred

Even though XM is restricted to their licensed area, who do you think the flippers are selling to, it's people outside the licensed area, if everyone overseas stop buying their statues, i'm not 100% sure XM could sell 999 statues of any character just within their licensed area. You have to remember it's a small area compared to Europe and North America... just not as many collectors.

Oh well it was a fun ride while it lasted and in the big scheme of things I will save a lot more money just buying stuff that is licensed for North America as shipping charges kept getting more expensive for XM statues.. It was getting to the point that 35% of the price you paid for the statue was just shipping costs.

I also think XM is probably going to switch to a model where they only sell their own product on their website and at conventions and get rid of the middle guy....

As cool as their statues are they're just not worth the premium price flippers want.

If what you say is true, XM only remains viable due to middlemen. And those middlemen can potentially stick it to their buyers. Further, it's not worth it for XM to crack down, as they'd go out of business. And what sense does it make for Marvel? If XM goes under, then no more licensing fee.

More than ever, a distributing deal with SS seems to make a lot of sense.

[built2shred]

Originally Posted by loricstone

I thought you said they should be lowered to 500 or such...now you want it to be lowered to 300? What next...150?

If they don't sell yes 150...

Right now their making people buy less popular statues in order to buy more popular ones. That tells you right there that they over estimated the popularity of a lot of the statues they just did.

[built2shred]

Originally Posted by loricstone

Is any statue worth it? More than likely...no. But I will say of all the companies that sell product, XM offers the most for what you get.

There are things XM is working on insofar as getting licenses worldwide. One major line is already getting a major change...and I am not talking about Top Cow!

This company has been around for 3 years now and has grown. Some things don't happen overnight...and licensing agreements are one such thing, especially when one company has such a major hold on many worldwide licenses.

If they can get a world licenses and not cost us $200-$400 for shipping then that would be awesome but until they do it's not worth the price of dealing with flippers...

Originally Posted by Eky

I erased my ambassah quote about this.
We saw the same thing in his post

Furthermore 999 is a max, they can adapt ES.

I agree they can lower their Edition Size, but my point was the reason their edition sizes doubled over the original 500 was because of all the people outside the licensed areas buying them.

My post was mostly out of frustration that XM feels they have to use their more popular statues to sell their less popular ones and greatly reduce the allotment of popular statues to their stores where most of our contacts purchase the statue for us....

[FJC]

Originally Posted by Eky

Wrong,
At least for what they show, because with XM you can be sur of NOTHING.

http://www.xm-studios.eu/

I don't know what you think I'm wrong about. I live in the US and can't buy any of their merch directly from their website or their authorized dealers. Their licencing agreement with Marvel doesn't allow XM to sell to collectors on my side of the pond. That includes the website you have listed for me.

[FJC]

Originally Posted by built2shred

Even though XM is restricted to their licensed area, who do you think the flippers are selling to, it's people outside the licensed area, if everyone overseas stop buying their statues, i'm not 100% sure XM could sell 999 statues of any character just within their licensed area. You have to remember it's a small area compared to Europe and North America... just not as many collectors.

Oh well it was a fun ride while it lasted and in the big scheme of things I will save a lot more money just buying stuff that is licensed for North America as shipping charges kept getting more expensive for XM statues.. It was getting to the point that 35% of the price you paid for the statue was just shipping costs.

I also think XM is probably going to switch to a model where they only sell their own product on their website and at conventions and get rid of the middle guy....

As cool as their statues are they're just not worth the premium price flippers want.

I won't pay flipper prices for XM pieces. They are already costly enough at retail. However, I agree with you, shipping costs are the main reason that I'm hesitant to buy XM merch. Those shipping costs are just too hard to stomach for me personally.

[FJC]

Originally Posted by Armored_Berserk

Are you aware that they also sell their statue through a European distibutor? So its not a licence problem.

Those European prices are a no go for my budget. Add shipping and it's almost as bad as buying from a flipper. And if I can order XM merch on a European site, it's only a matter of time before that loop hole is closed. Simply Toys did it for US collectors until Marvel said stop. Besides, I'm not a European. I live in the US.

[FJC]

Originally Posted by loricstone

Correction....XM did not sell outside the licensed agreement. It was the shops XM sold statues too in the approved territories that sold outside of the territories.

Sorry, I don't for a minute believe that XM wasn't aware of what was going on with their distributors.

[loricstone]

Originally Posted by built2shred

If they can get a world licenses and not cost us $200-$400 for shipping then that would be awesome but until they do it's not worth the price of dealing with flippers...




I agree they can lower their Edition Size, but my point was the reason their edition sizes doubled over the original 500 was because of all the people outside the licensed areas buying them.

My post was mostly out of frustration that XM feels they have to use their more popular statues to sell their less popular ones and greatly reduce the allotment of popular statues to their stores where most of our contacts purchase the statue for us....

I get this part and agree.

This second part is what I don't get. I know of some businesses that obtained XM product were at one time doing the buy multiple statues to get a certain one. As far as middle men, I just know about people that have PO'd other XM products (in Venom's case...all those who PO'd the previous Sinister Six have first dibs on Venom) have access to XM most popular statues before others that have only bought one or two. I haven't seen any that I know of demand you have to buy two of something to get one statue that is really wanted.

I'm just going off what I know.

[loricstone]

Originally Posted by FJC

Sorry, I don't for a minute believe that XM wasn't aware of what was going on with their distributors.

Maybe....maybe not. At this point, you or I can't know that for certain, but what I responded to your previous post has nothing to do if you believe XM is or was not aware....it had to do with them selling directly...of that which they did not do.

You incorrectly made a comment and I corrected it.

[FJC]

Originally Posted by loricstone

Maybe....maybe not. At this point, you or I can't know that for certain, but what I responded to your previous post has nothing to do if you believe XM is or was not aware....it had to do with them selling directly...of that which they did not do.

You incorrectly made a comment and I corrected it.

There's no maybe about it. Distributors and middle men all got their merch from XM directly. They may not have sold their merch directly from their XM website but using distributors and middle men to sell to collectors outside their territory did happen. I can accept that XM may not have known if some obscure or small retailer was selling their merch outside their sales territories. However, just about all of their distributors were selling world wide (along with middle men) before marvel stopped it. Just having Simply Toys selling internationally had to be known by XM. Everyone else knew it. However, I do believe that XM was under the firm belief that if they didn't sell merch outside their territories on their website, they weren't breaking their licencing agreement with Marvel. I really don't care either way. Everything seems to be sorted for the most part.

Even if I could score XM pieces easily, shipping costs are too high already and only going to increase with time. That pretty much puts me on the sidelines for the most part when it comes to XM merch anyway.