|
Post by Darth Daniel on Jun 9, 2005 8:20:15 GMT -5
Company mergers are strategic management changes to its organization to share a common yet larger capital base in order to gain increased market share... The position of the market share for Tomy and Takara against wealthy Bandai is indeed second rate. They can compete with the superb market for Gundam models and an international exposure with Power Rangers. Bandai is very popular with its diecast toys, and Gundam models, which they invested on till now. Takara, a near giant during the 80's to 90's are know of course with transformers, an advantage they share with Hasbro. But unlike Hasbro, they divided their toylines to exclusive Japanese; thus shrinking and containing their market in Japan instead of abroad (this was the time that they still cling to their bubble economy and resisting globalization). They could have been Japan's version of Hasbro...if only they open their marketing channels outside Japan, investing on marketing exposure and retail instead of concentrating in the local Japanese market. Now its too late since Bandai has covered the distribution and their toylines are as popular as ever (Power Rangers galore). Tomy however turned its back on higher age brackets for toys and concentrated on the younger ages, which has an attractive growth rate and larger market rather than its initial (zoids etc). They came back with the line with partnership with animation studios for a twofold; sell toys internationally with an animation as marketing strategy. They have alreadly leased their molds to Academe and Wave in order to get royalty rather than the risk of producing it themselves. Their strategy is get more product movement and sales through new and diverse toylines. Both Tomy and Takara are just second best to the Giant Bandai. Looking at their toylines, Tomy has the cheapest product price, with more product value at minimum profit spread (hence they earn from a huge quota). They benefit from production scale and continue to do so, while investing on new products in their toylines. Takara, well known for their transformers, have identified nitches in very diverse markets; one for the high-end diecast toys and another for the plastic formed ones. The diecast toys have fewer runs due to the loyalty of transformer fans, while it has higher production runs for the newer transformer lines. They also earn from high spread, however heavily invests in designing product lines (transformers are harder to build compared to zoids and require more R & D). Bandai is the smartest of them all. Looking at the Gundam kits, the production cost for such is pretty much less compared to that of Tomys and Takara; which in terms of Toy design costs and production run, Tomy and Takara incurs more production costs based from their toy design. Bandai's strategy for low cost, plastic toys at a higher price range due to the popular Gundams. The royalty that Bandai pays for Gundam is well worth it, and it still suceeds as a low cost, low production but higher profit spread keep them at the top. The merger of Tomy and Takara, I hope will provide more capital enough to cover more toy designs suitable to their current markets and share the same supply chains and distribution channels to combat Bandai. I forsee more new products for each Takara and Tomy Toyline, far numerous than before and coupled with better and aggressive marketing internationally. Unless of course they price their products same as Bandai in lower production, a real no-no since they already have a founded consumer base... Sorry for the rant...just got to share...should have had my MBA paper in Asian toys instead of Digital Animation and Multimedia... DD.
|
|
clowz
Sergeant
ZOYDO!
Posts: 295
|
Post by clowz on Jun 10, 2005 12:32:11 GMT -5
Bandai is the smartest of them all. Looking at the Gundam kits, the production cost for such is pretty much less compared to that of Tomys and Takara; which in terms of Toy design costs and production run, Tomy and Takara incurs more production costs based from their toy design. Bandai's strategy for low cost, plastic toys at a higher price range due to the popular Gundams. The royalty that Bandai pays for Gundam is well worth it, and it still suceeds as a low cost, low production but higher profit spread keep them at the top. DD. Wow! does this have anything to do with all gundams looking more or less alike? i mean like cutting down on design cost?
|
|
|
Post by grim on Jun 10, 2005 23:14:42 GMT -5
actually gundams all share a similar design in thier structures but for the most part they are all different designs. but they don't require the engineering that zoids do thus why they are less expensive to make.
|
|
XRaiderV1
Lance Corporal
autobot for life
Posts: 54
|
Post by XRaiderV1 on Jun 11, 2005 13:26:18 GMT -5
one question: what does this mean for the future of the zoids franchise?
|
|
|
Post by Darth Daniel on Jun 11, 2005 16:28:27 GMT -5
MARKETING
If it means sharing distributor channels, its better distribution of Zoids to retail outlets that will carry Takara products, such as Transformers etc. Where Takara toys are, you would likely see Zoids carried too...
Aggressive Advertising and Marketing...
PRODUCTION
It may also mean better R&D on toy designs, but it go two fold; depending what strategy Tomy-Takara would prefer:
A. Motorized zoids with lesser assembly, and more non-motorized ones with articulation (like Genesis) targeted for a younger audience.
B. More new motorized zoids with challenging assembly, complemented with non-motorized zoids (ex. Fuzors) keeping the current audience.
ALLIANCES
More Team-ups with smaller toy manufacturers (like being done for Wave, Academe, Yugin, etc) for zoid related merchandise, Animation Series, Limited issues...(leased molds)
|
|
TFWDraven
Lieutenant
I think you're called Milford Cubicle.
Posts: 322
|
Post by TFWDraven on Jun 12, 2005 7:14:18 GMT -5
Hmmm... Licensed moulds could be interesting; Takara licenses some of their moulds out to a company called Sonokong in Korea, who produce the same toys with near-identical quality but with different packaging; look on eBay at Transformers listings, and look for things like cheap Big Convoy toys and the like; if the boxes don't have windows on them, it's probably a Sonokong reissue, and often at a fraction of the cost of the original. For example - I have a Sonokong Brave White Dragon, which is a re-release of the G1 Dai Atlas figure. Whereas Dai Atlas can go for a LOT of money, the Sonokong version (different colours, but pretty much the same quality) cost me next to nothing. If Tomy/Takara do go this route, maybe it could lead to older Zoid designs being more available and affordable....?
|
|
|
Post by Darth Daniel on Jun 12, 2005 16:33:47 GMT -5
If Tomy/Takara do go this route, maybe it could lead to older Zoid designs being more available and affordable....? i definitely hope so..if they have the same production run as the normal releases...so far the limited issues produced by Wave and TDP have lesser production run. Or cheaper plastic I dream that you can get Gilvy, King G and F2 on hobby stores shelves again with nearly the same OJR prices (way back 1980's~ 90's) ;D
|
|
|
Post by Clutch - DS3000 on Jun 16, 2005 18:16:30 GMT -5
first off, there wont be zoid transformers. just because tomy and takara are merging doesnt mean they are going to mix a bunch of crap together.
secondly, i doubt they will even continue zoids after this and if they do i will be suprised.
they are only merging because in japan there is a "people shortage" and no babies are being born and all that crap. i am dead serious if you dont believe me. also, if tomy and takara merge that would be a good company. i hope they bring back zoids anyway.
|
|
|
Post by Yurei Avalon on Jun 16, 2005 19:00:55 GMT -5
I think that if Tomy did not intend to continue making zoids and they had known for a while they were probably going to merge they wouldn't have come out with Genesis and had an anime made more it. That's a big investment after all, why bother making new moulds and rereleasing old ones if you're just going to end a line? they'd just be doing recolors and retools at the most then.
|
|
|
Post by RZ-009, Jaxom on Jun 16, 2005 21:30:51 GMT -5
^I agree... tomy wouldnt just cancell zoids that easily.. and also, wouldnt it be ironic for thier last series of zoids to be named Genesis? Genesis means "beginning" after all..
hmn... a merger of these two companies may result in completely new and dynamic toy lines...
imagine: better zoids action figures... Or: relatively cheap transformers kits..
and who knows.. maybe some new product related anime?
|
|
|
Post by Deadborder on Jun 17, 2005 3:47:55 GMT -5
Or: relatively cheap transformers kits.. Better forget about that. News is that Takara will be leaving Transformers after Galaxy Force isd done. Doesn;'t come as a suroise either; Takara yhave been far form succesful; when it comes toi TF lines of late. Rick R.
|
|
|
Post by hanzkaz on Jun 17, 2005 7:01:00 GMT -5
Not exactly good news. I was hoping for an updated version of Fortress Maximus.
On the other hand, I think Zoids will continue after the merger in one form or another, if only as the occasional recolour, or even in some form we haven't even seen yet (and we've had everything from the Whiteheads to Grade-Up types, to Blox, and Bio Zoids.). As for Transformers, it should be interesting to see what designs Hasbro comes up with on it's own.
|
|
|
Post by Clutch - DS3000 on Jun 17, 2005 11:13:05 GMT -5
i didnt say they would just cut it off... it will be a while before the new management of the merged companies will be made. just because it is named genesis doesnt mean that it wont be the last. tomy is a company, companies make choices, its not ALL about zoids. but you have to look at the facts... so far what i know, hasbro has dropped zoids, stopped making them and all, and shipped most of the already made zoids somewhere else to be baught. so tomy is all that is left pretty mutch. ands when they merge they will probably sit down and look at what is best going to profit them. so i doubt zoids will be going after it all.
another thing, and listen good, THEY ARE NOT MERGING THE TOYLINES!!!!
|
|
|
Post by RZ-009, Jaxom on Jun 17, 2005 20:52:18 GMT -5
too bad.. I was hoping to see van get into his liger and yell: "LIGERZERO TRANSFORM!!"
|
|