Re: Custom JAMES BOND THREAD
Major cost is probably the license itself - you know that'll be high with Bond. And then you've got the designing, prototyping, sculpting, etc that becomes fixed costs that you have to spread across the line itself. Oh, and salaries of all the BCS employees and contractors too. So it's kindof a hard question to answer. Each individual figure probably costs $20 or less. It's that other stuff factored in that you struggle with.
Thanks for your reply.
OK guys some facts for you...
The way licensing works is that you sign up for a minimum guarantee (MG). This is the amount that you guarantee to pay the licensor, irrespective of how many you make. For more prestigious licenses this amount can be very high indeed. The company then has to pay an advance amount of signing. Again this varies, but as you might imagine with a higher MG the advance is also higher. The licensee then pays a royalty fee per piece sold to effectively earn out the money to cover the MG and ideally more on top to pay the licensor.
Next up you have development costs, design, sculpting, tailoring prototyping etc. Depending upon who you use, this cost can be high. A certain sculptor who shall remain nameless, but who is very much in the limelight at the moment routinely quotes $10,000 for a head alone!
Next tooling, which depending upon what the figure comes with, and the number of separate tools required, can easily run to $20,000 for a single figure. I should add we are still talking a main a suit here, not an armour clad character, which would require a considerable amount of additional tools.
Now product cost, trust me $20 is way, way off. A standard 6 inch action figures will run to around $4-$6 per piece, so with all the bells and whistles of a 1:6 scale figure, all of which require individual hand operations to mass produce, the cost is $50+ at a minimum. I won't give specifics, but I will tell you that BIG Chief pay a good amount more than this per piece. Remember also that Chinese vendors require 100% payment before the goods can be shipped from their shores, there's no 30 days after invoice deal.
So simple math based on 1000 pieces would result in a cost price as...
Development $10.00
Tooling $20.00
Cost per Piece $55.00
Running total $85.00
Now this does not include additional costs including running costs, salaries, royalty fee, public and product insurance (required to sell into the US), freight insurance, returns etc etc.
Before you know it you're at
$100 a piece for short runs.
What helps are larger volume runs, the kind of which Hot Toys see, but remember they will have HUGE MGs.
A little more math for you. A distributor looks for a preferable discount of 60% off selling price. The reality is that is simply not possible for high-end items, so let's base the math on 50% discount off selling price.
Selling Price $239.99
Discounted Distributor Cost $120.00 (50%)
Given the example cost per piece of $100 as a minimum and the selling price of $120 this leaves a $20 margin out of which all of the additional costs have to be deducted.
So prices are high and they have to be.
