[OFFICIAL] Pre-Orders for 910059 Privateer Frigate Fortuna HAVE ENDED

[Fletch]

3 hours ago, BrickPerfection said:

Hmm I think you may be right. We have never had the case that 150k was reached across the Series. You're right that if it's shut down when reaching 150K, they'd indeed be taking a couple of sales from all the sets that are still below 30k.
Which BrickLink said they wouldn't do.

So maybe they added the additional caps to the better selling ones because in their data they couldn't see the total of 150K being exceeded (by much)?  Will be interesting to see how it develops. 

That would be my guess, they're looking at the "run rate" of the other sets and they don't think they'll get near

[GeoBrick]

1 hour ago, Fletch said:

That would be my guess, they're looking at the "run rate" of the other sets and they don't think they'll get near

The Bricklink Team does have half a dozen series worth of pre-order data under its belt now, so they're in a position to make predictions.

[Shiva]

Where are the preorder amounts published?

[Wolfpack]

20 hours ago, GeoBrick said:

The Bricklink Team does have half a dozen series worth of pre-order data under its belt now, so they're in a position to make predictions.

It does not seem so. 

It looks like I was right. They found out that they misscalcualted and will sell more than 150k and then they started tampering with the quotas (Alchemist) and even changing the numbers of sets sold, so now the sets are impossible to buy. Either they are sold out or they made a mess with the code.

[Yperio_Bricks]

STONEWARS reports the numbers as follows. Today at 10am German time. Only WALT and the Antique collection are still available until 21pm today.

• BDP 910059 Privateer Frigate Fortuna - 37.000
• BDP 910060 Sushi Restaurant - 37.200
• BDP 910061 Antique Collection - 13.700
• BDP 910062 Alchemist’s Shop - 40.000
• BDP 910063 W.A.L.T. - 15.800
• Overall set sold so far - 143.700

[GeoBrick]

I just checked, and as I write this the Antique Collection and W.A.L.T. sets have a bit over 30k pre-orders. So if STONEWARS is even remotely correct with the other 3 sets, there are less then 5k availabilities left to reach the 150k production limit.

4 hours ago, Wolfpack said:

It does not seem so. 

It looks like I was right. They found out that they misscalcualted and will sell more than 150k and then they started tampering with the quotas (Alchemist) and even changing the numbers of sets sold, so now the sets are impossible to buy. Either they are sold out or they made a mess with the code.

Those adjustions are more likely canceled pre-orders that were put in the data. It is telling that the numbers of the three most-ordered sets all went down.

I stand by what I said, the Bricklink team has half a dozen series of pre-order data under its belt, so are able to make predictions.

Edited February 23 by GeoBrick

[Wolfpack]

They made very bad predictions this time and their handling was really amateurish for such a large company. As someone said in the comments, "This situation cannot be explained by the official rules of crowdfunding, so it is either an IT problem or a lack of transparency." Obviously now we see it is the second. They got greedy and increased the limit to 40.000 for Fortuna (and 45.000 for Alchimist) and cca. 160.000 total and then they were sold out before they reached that number. The sets were still available according to all the numbers and even showing in green as available on the site, but were actually sold out for hours. And that on the last day of crowdfunding, when they know the sales are one of the highest, so it should not have surprised them. One second there were five thousand sets left and the next second they were sold out, I mean come on. That practice was completely misleading and deceiving and now many people are dissapointed. And that problem was something that even I as an average fan with no economic knowledge and some basic math could have predited.

I much preferred the old system with progress bars, that was at least transparent. And I think transparency is key in such programs. I have no problem if they increase the numbers for more popular sets, but they should have always stayed within the agreed arrangment and determined total numbers (e.g. 150.000). It is not that hard. Just make a progress bar, make it 30.000 at first and when you are completely sure you have enough capacity, make it 35.000 etc. If it sells out, it sells out, with clear markings and transparency everyone knows at which quantity and when it will sell out.

And I know anyone who wanted to buy the sets had "enough" time. It is not about that at all, it is about transparency and building customer trust.

[GeoBrick]

Pre-ordering is always a fluid thing. You can never know for sure which fans will at what time decide to order.
The 150k production limit was never changed. The set limit was only (virtually) adjusted upwards to accomodate the most ordered sets, and I reckon the Bricklink team took a hard look at how the least ordered sets did before increasing the cap of the most ordered sets.

To me it looks like the Bricklink team did the right thing to halt orderering of the top 3 sets. W.A.L.T. and Antique Cabinet had roughly a 1000 extra orders in the last couple hours.
If taken into account the Stonewars numbers in Yperio_Bricks post (which I know are on the low side, my last calculation after the latest decrease of the Alchemist Shop's cap had nearly 40k of preorders for this set alone), BDP7 was literally bumping the production limit.

My feeling is the Bricklink team made the right call a couple hours ago.

[cehnot]

The final numbers indicate the totals were as follows:

Fortuna 38,000 units sold out

Sushi 38,000 units sold out

Alchemist 41,000 units sold out

Antique 14,681 units sold

Walt 16,801 unuts sold. 

 

I hope they see that nicely designed pirate and castle sets will always do well. 

 

[Wolfpack]

3 hours ago, GeoBrick said:

Pre-ordering is always a fluid thing. You can never know for sure which fans will at what time decide to order.
The 150k production limit was never changed....

Yes it was, twice. First it was exceeded and in the end it was reduced to 148,425 (with no real explanation or logic, why would Fortuna get sold out the same second as Alchemist).

Exactly because you do not know when the fans will order and what, you need clear rules and you need to follow them. It has to be clearly stated what are the exact conditions for each set to sell out. I am talking about buyers and also designers. They have tons of rules for us to follow and sign (and it is getting legally worse and more restrictive each series, just check the guidelines updates), but they can change whatever they want whenever they want it and cannot follow the basic standards of customer oriented transparency on their part.

This for me is not a way how you do things. I'm just sad about those corporate practices, especially on Bricklink, where I had only positive experiences with all the buyers and sellers and everything in the last decades and I really love the basic idea of the programme and the designs and designers are fantastic. It is so great to have something where the fans are included, to see all the people creating marvelous things, to see people vote and talk about it, to follow the crowdfunding and everything, but it seems this inclusion is losing meaning with each series. I believe the original motto of the programme was Follow along or something like that, but the number of votes and selection is happening in total secrecy (which is almost worse than the first Invitational), then they removed bars, now they are just changing everything the last day... I just don't want this to became another Ideas. That is all I wanted to say, I did not want to usurp this thread with all the BDP stuff and selling analysis.