Wall Street Journal on Lego Holiday Sales

[Off the wall]

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303932504579255894234800308

[eurotrash]

Societal drift? Now you talking my language! I work as a Maths-ninja for a Tech Company and I spend my weeks analyzing and predicting volume patterns. We've had success using some of the tools and techniques from Investment Management - mainly with oscillators and fibonacci. It's fascinating (and it enables my Lego addiction)

[ShaydDeGrai]

Perhaps this explains why I've been averaging 2-3 emails PER DAY from Shop-a-Home for the past few weeks - lately it's been getting a bit excessive. I've even gotten direct (personal) emails from people at my local store reminding me of new kits now becoming available since the last time I dropped by. I appreciate the personal touch, but I also I got the feeling they were trying to make a sales quota or something.

[fred67]

I'm admitting I'm writing this from a fairly grumpy perspective at the moment, but I personally hope TLG has a miserable Christmas... I'm very much a capitalist, but TLG is doing phenomenally well financially, the constant increases in profit margins needs a smack down. I'm glad they were able to avoid bankruptcy ten years ago... but they did it partially by realizing they didn't have serious competition, and so stopped trying to compete with the likes of MB.

[Andy D]

Discovering why we have this"Societal drift" should not be too difficult. The world economy is still not great and people want to make sure that the necessities of life are covered before luxury items are purchased. Most Christmas gift, including LEGO are luxury items.

Andy D

[eurotrash]

Discovering why we have this"Societal drift" should not be too difficult. The world economy is still not great and people want to make sure that the necessities of life are covered before luxury items are purchased. Most Christmas gift, including LEGO are luxury items.

Fer shure! But I bet TLG are analysing the individual themes to uncover specific seasonal buying patterns. I'm guessing that not all themes in all territories are showing this deferment (or at least not to the same extent) and then the key is to identify whatever external factors are influencing the purchase. TLG's problem (along with many, many other companies) is the Production time it takes to ramp up a specific theme or set to cater for a specific need and thereby reducing the need to carrying too much inventory.

[Faefrost]

My gut instinct tells me that unless the retailers grossly under ordered this year, Lego will have quite a good Christmas. The Lego aisles at all the major retailers around me have been poth packed with customers, and by all looks have been effectively looted or seem to be looted as soon as they restock. The $20 - $60 price point items in particular seem to be doing very strongly.

[TheLegoDr]

This is news? I'd assume most toys are in this same boat. I only try to buy at select times in the year, unless a great sales comes along. I typically have all of my lego shopping for by October for double points. I did shop later this year for the second Christmas set, but that was still before Thanksgiving.

Edit: it probably helps with tru and target both having bogo 50% off sales recently. The shelves are pretty bare at times.

Edited December 16, 2013 by TheLegoDr