Retiring Soon - open speculation

[inversion]

11.) Secret LEGO warehouses?

In my opinion they store manufactured sets in a warehouse and allocate them for different destinations over time, like shipments to B&M, other retailers, overseas, s@h, etc. according to actual demand and priorities. Restock happens on s@h when stock gets allocated for it.

[Sprocket77]

Having analyzed those LEGO Webshop EU graphs a bit for info on exclusive sets, one could draw some conclusions like the following 10 fun/trivia facts (without liability) - if the data found there is more or less correct:

 

1.) "Is this good or bad?"

The worst selling exclusive sets in the shown timeframe of March 2015 were:

- Benny's Spaceship

- Sydney Opera House

- Architecture Studio

- Ewok Village

- Fairground Mixer

- Metal Beard's Sea Cow

- The Tower of Orthanc

So, not too much love especially for the LEGO Movie sets with Benny's Ship seemingly being THE worst selling exclusive overall in March. Now the big question is: What is better - Investing in slow sellers, so there is less competition (but also less demand) post-EOL; or investing in the big sellers, having to deal with masses of other resellers (while having more potential buyers)?

 

 

 

Some good analysis, but there's two things I'd pick you up on

 

I don't think you can make the inference from this information that Benny's Spaceship doesn't sell well. It isn't an exclusive and is available at much cheaper prices than directly from Lego, even allowing for VIP points, so why would people buy it from them. The sales info is only useful when looking at genuine exclusives. I can get Metal Beard's Sea Cow and Ewok Village in my local store too.

 

I also don't think you can say something like the Tower of Orthanc didn't sell too well. It sold 400 units in a 3 week period, in just two of their markets. Even allowing for a spike for double VIP, that would amount to signifcant sales value for one set.

 

Think you should highlight point 9, mark it with stars, increase the font just in case anyone has any other idea on this set, even allowing for it being non exclusive, those sales are anemic 

[Val-E]

Yup the bwing stood out in a bad way when I ran an anaysis on my portfolio. If I had had that info, I would definnitely have passed on the b wing and that might be the best use this data serves - check for absolute stinker,, contrast with stock levels in other shops and eBay prices and make an informed decision.

 

Birds data is up now too, so that will be interesting to follow.

[Neosphinx]

Yup the bwing stood out in a bad way when I ran an anaysis on my portfolio. If I had had that info, I would definnitely have passed on the b wing and that might be the best use this data serves - check for absolute stinker,, contrast with stock levels in other shops and eBay prices and make an informed decision.

 

Birds data is up now too, so that will be interesting to follow.

Sold Bwing 10227 for 66% profit a few months ago. I don't see that set as a stinker.

[Val-E]

We are referring to the current model 75050!

[Sprocket77]

Sold Bwing 10227 for 66% profit a few months ago. I don't see that set as a stinker.

 

The 75050 has sold 42 units in the last month, pretty poor sales for a set at that price point. To give a comparison, the Tie Advanced Fighter 75082 sold about 200 in the same period and it's not as iconic a set. It's not out as long though to be fair.

[Frank Brickowski]

Maybe investors should take the last two B-Wing fails as enough of evidence to step away from investing in that ship in whatever form/size it may come - compared to other options (since the UCS B-Wing was not a complete fail after all, but likely sold rather badly while on the market).

 

Could be that most people dislike sets of which they don't know where "up", "down", "left" and "right" really is...

[diablo2112]

This data is really rather important, and I don't think folks realize what can be done with it yet.  Yes, its only EU sales for Lego sites.  None-the-less, we can glean a tremendous amount by cross referencing this with other sources.  At the end of the day, our community would love to have total inventory numbers, sales numbers, production run amounts, restock amounts, and sales rates, all be set number.  We can make some progress to good estimates at these numbers with careful review of this data, with appropriate cross references to other sources such as eBay and Amazon sales, TLG annual reports, and various press releases and advertising data.  

 

There's much more to say about this, and eventually, it will warrant its own thread and discussion.  For now, I want to really thank rfish, who has grasped the importance of this data well before most of us.  I would add, the raw derivative of this data set if really quite interesting, it shows the sales rates.  Big sets can move in the range of 500-1000 units/week.  (see, for example, detective's office week of March 19 - April 2, ~1000 units; TLG moved about 200/day on March 15 and March 16).  That's just EU and just Lego sites.  Compare that rate to observed sales numbers on eBay over the same time period.  By my count, I have a total of 7 (seven) sales of 10246 in that same time period.  This is a ratio of over 100:1.  For every unit sold on eBay, Lego SAH EU moved more than 140 units.  Just that number is of fascinating use.  Now, of course eBay sales are over MSRP, and there's lots of other caveats, but it is still valuable raw data and a kind of calibration we've not had in the past.

 

Frankly, it would be completely worthwhile to compile statistics of this ratio (Lego sales vs. other source sales) for all our exclusives, and include Amazon sales numbers if we can find them as well.   Compare those numbers to our stock levels, and I think you're going to find we're actually small-fish in this market, all of us.  Some have speculated that resellers dominate this market.  I think the opposite may be true.  We're a small fraction of TLG overall sales.  And, thats very good news.  

 

Much, much more to say and think about here, but for now, I hope others are beginning to see what a Gold mine these kind of numbers are.  As just another example, it shouldn't be too hard to calibrate how much of TLGs overall sales are in the EU.  This would be a pretty good way to extend these EU sales numbers to world-wide overall sales.  Really, there's so much that can be done with this data, we're just scratching the surface.

 

Among other things, I hope some folks are getting screen shots of key graphs for exclusive sets, in case this data source goes *poof*.  This data really is the "missing link" that will allow us an (unprecedented) way to get the kind of overall sales and inventory data we've long sought.

Edited April 3, 2015 by diablo2112

[diablo2112]

I've spent the morning (Friday off, here) extracting and copying data for most of the sets we're interested in.  I have image files for all the currently available exclusives, plus many other sets.  Just an FYI.  There's so much to do here, lots of info to digest.  

 

Here's some early data.  The best selling sets were the Helicarrier (700 units is 7 days, steady 100 units/day), Slave 1 (no surprise) and T1 (big surprise, data below).  Other robust sales were of all the modulars (roughly 250 units/week for all), Tower Bridge (160 units/week), TOO (90 units/week).  T1 was killer, (350 units/week till sold out); the mini cooper not so much.  Sydney Opera house moved a steady 40 units/week.

 

The trains were slow movers, and sold in lockstep at about 10 units/week (roughly same numbers of sale for 60050, 60051, and 60052 and the track packs).  Speed Champions is interesting.  In the EU, the Porsche was the best seller (almost 200 units/week, and the small cars all sold about equally.  For every Ferrari Truck sold, they sold 3 sets of the small cars.  There's some dogs with few sales, Fairground Mixer, Arctic Base Camp (10 units/week) and Simpson's House.  Mindstorms EV3 was completely dead.  42009 moved a steady 60 units/week, while the 42030 Volvo Loader was slower at 30 units/week.

 

In Star Wars, Slave 1 is the champ, which moved 350 units in 4 days to sell out.    Sandcrawler was a good mover, 100 units/week, and Death Star which moved 80 units/week.  Ewok Village did 50 units/week.  Red Five moved at 90 units/week until sold out, twice.

 

Another observation, double VIP sales period had little effect on the data.  Basically all these sets had inventory levels move at the same rate pre- and during double VIP.  

 

This is just a snapshot, more analysis to come...

Edited April 3, 2015 by diablo2112

[Legodog]

I think we have to remember that these numbers are for inventory levels and not sales. What that means that if there are 1000 of a certain set in inventory and they sell 500 but replenish the inventory with 400 new sets it will look like they only sold 100 as there will be 900 in the inventory still. We have no idea how often they replenish inventory. It could be a steady stream of new inventory or a large bulk amount at one time or a combination of both. I would tend to believe that replenishing inventory would be done with large sums of a set being added at once and we do see that at points in the data but it does not rule out that new inventory is being added at other times also.

[exciter1]

Further analysis of this EU chart thingy can move over here:

 

http://community.brickpicker.com/topic/13798-analysis-of-lego-eu-2015-inventory-data/

 

I'm tempted to move all the posts from the past couple days, but it will just clog the new thread. 

[trekgate502]

Secret Warehouses, Spooks, NSA, Men in Black Suits, Lego Police, Dogs living with Cats, Anarchy, Subterfuge what's next?

[Val-E]

I was the one that made the first post about it so for me you can delete the posts and we start again at the agreed meeting point.

Edited April 3, 2015 by valenciaeric

[trekgate502]

Are you meaning this? 
Is this about that excellent European data I have not looked at yet?

 

[hirustar]

Where can i find the data source?

[bendra1]

I'm playing the death bugle (is that a thing? I think I just made that up actually) on the VW Camper Van. I think the last shipment to stores was the last batch, and maybe it'll see some life through summer, but it'll succumb to the flashing gem in it's hand (Yeah, I made a Logan's Run reference. You saw it. I did it.) by winter, which'll make the perfect gift for all those hippies that became yuppies who can now afford the pointless material possessions they once denounced. The smell of irony and cash will insure this to be a very holly jolly Christmas. 

 

Also, on an off topic note, does anyone else ever get the feeling that the entire planet earth is someone else's lego set and that we've been slapped with the "retiring soon" label on some cosmic website that we can't access? If that's the case, I'm predicting about a 300 to 400% ROI on it. That or it's just a Chima set waiting to happen. 

[Battrax]

...Also, on an off topic note, does anyone else ever get the feeling that the entire planet earth is someone else's lego set and that we've been slapped with the "retiring soon" label on some cosmic website that we can't access? If that's the case, I'm predicting about a 300 to 400% ROI on it. That or it's just a Chima set waiting to happen.

At the rate we're going, I think more Galidor than Chima.

[bendra1]

At the rate we're going, I think more Galidor than Chima.

 

(Slow clap). So good. 

 

Who knows, maybe some alien race will find a way to parcel out the mini figures (humans). Which one can hardly say for Galidor collectors. Those poor non-existent fools.  

[fossilrock]

I wouldn't refer to it as a "secret warehouse".  I'm sure many here haven't dealt with point of sales systems, but this data is simply stock allocated for online sales on the LEGO Shop at Home site in Europe.   There's going to be a lot of stock that is not part of this data (but part of the overall whole) and is sold and shipped to other retailers, or other B&M locations that wouldn't be allocated to the LEGO Shop at Home store.

[hxckid88]

Maybe investors should take the last two B-Wing fails as enough of evidence to step away from investing in that ship in whatever form/size it may come - compared to other options (since the UCS B-Wing was not a complete fail after all, but likely sold rather badly while on the market).

Could be that most people dislike sets of which they don't know where "up", "down", "left" and "right" really is...

A fail? Pretty sure the b Wing ucs was my most profitable exclusive ever. Buy in was 100.00 with a freebie I sold for 20. Buy in not including Vip points was 80 bucks. Sold all for 239. B wing was an amazing investment. That price was available to everyone for a few weeks. The same people who speak about b wing not being a wise investment are likely the same ones saying lotr and hobbit arnt good. It's simple Math and requires one knowing what the cost to aquire was.

[TLKC]

Simpson house in europe??toysrus had a limited sign and is now sold out. They told me theres no open order in the system and the chance is small that they will get any in the future.

 

In austria

 

In germany there are some left - limit 1

Edited April 6, 2015 by unholy

[GhostDad]

I bought my B-Wings at half off too, and have no complaints about how that panned out.  However, they still did worse in terms of profit (in an absolute sense, as well as appreciation over MSRP) than FB's I purchased later in 2013, and for only a 10% discount from MSRP.  Jedi Starfighter and B-Wing remain the standout bad performers in the SW exclusive space.  Tantive IV wasn't much better.  Two of those three are even original trilogy, and Tantive IV was Leia's personal space yacht.  So it's worth remembering that you can go wrong buying SW exclusives, especially if you pay MSRP.

[JHolland513]

Out of curiosity, what does everybody suspect regarding EOL of the Sopwith Camel? I know it's been out for a good 3 years now, and here in the US at least lego shop at home is sold out and has been for a while. They're getting harder to find and the ones you do find are already getting a nice bit of inflation above retail price. 

 

This is just speculation on my part but given the trends of it lately I wouldn't be too surprised if it went EOL sometime soon.

[bricketycricket]

Out of curiosity, what does everybody suspect regarding EOL of the Sopwith Camel? I know it's been out for a good 3 years now, and here in the US at least lego shop at home is sold out and has been for a while. They're getting harder to find and the ones you do find are already getting a nice bit of inflation above retail price. 

 

This is just speculation on my part but given the trends of it lately I wouldn't be too surprised if it went EOL sometime soon.

It's not marked as retired on Lego's site but it has been effectively retired for over 6 months now. It's not coming back

[MathBuilder]

Out of curiosity, what does everybody suspect regarding EOL of the Sopwith Camel? I know it's been out for a good 3 years now, and here in the US at least lego shop at home is sold out and has been for a while. They're getting harder to find and the ones you do find are already getting a nice bit of inflation above retail price. 

 

This is just speculation on my part but given the trends of it lately I wouldn't be too surprised if it went EOL sometime soon.

 

That baby is dead.