Now that oil is a quarter of the cost it once was, does this mean that cost of plastic will go down, at least a little, and maybe the cost of minis will come down a bit? I know that the cost of minis is far more than just the cost of one component, but I am just a little curious...
What it means is our currency will crash, and abruptly be worth 68% of what it was worth just a couple years ago, so we'll have to pay about 1/3rd more for everything we want.
Oh. Wait. You're not in Canada. Never mind.
I don't know the full impact of what will happen on WizKids end for their costs with the price of oil coming down.
But I am pretty certain if they 'do' see a reduction in costs on their side, we won't see it on our side. They will most likely keep prices status quo, especially considering from what I've heard in that the sets are selling well at their current price point.
Unfortunately, the "if it costs us more to produce, it costs you more to purchase" doesn't apply on the flip side for consumers. At least not usually for these kinds of products.
Capitalism at it's best.
But you never know, I could be proven wrong.
Surely the cost of the plastic is among the smallest/most trivial line items in the budget of producing a line of miniatures. Frankly, I'd be surprised if it even represents a two cent outlay per piece, though I know little about injection molding or supply lines or the infrastructure of Chinese manufacturing, so someone might come along and prove me wrong any minute now.
I was told, by a WoTC employee, that the reason WoTC did not make a Gargantuan Green Dragon was directly related to the high price of plastics (tied to the price of oil)
Surely the cost of the plastic is among the smallest/most trivial line items in the budget of producing a line of miniatures. Frankly, I'd be surprised if it even represents a two cent outlay per piece, though I know little about injection molding or supply lines or the infrastructure of Chinese manufacturing, so someone might come along and prove me wrong any minute now.
That would have been my thought too.
They can sell plastic toys ridiculously cheaply, provided they know they can make millions of them. That suggests to me the cost is in the sculpting/design stage and presumably in the configuration of the factory (it's surprisingly costly to switch a machine shop from making one part to making another)
The number/complexity of figures probably don't really enter into the raw material equation (in that they remain constant whether you make a million copies of one figure or one copy each of a million figures).
If there's something the petrol prices will affect, it's transport price. Material costs are negligible compared to work and distributions IMO.
The funny thing is that when oil prices go down the consumer doesnt see a benefit immediately, if ever. But when the prices go up every gas station is raising their prices on gas thats been in their tanks for days...
It's all a gimmick.
The prices for minis are overpriced because of the lack of competition.
Wizkids has the market pretty much cornered and can charge what they think consumers are willing to pay. 39.99 for 6 30mm minis is crazy, especially because unlike indie mini creators these guys mass produce and should be cheaper.
In 2012, Vic said that oil prices did affect the price of the plastic to make the minis.
I'm not at all surprised, however, that the prices won't go down when oil prices do. UPS and FedEx always apply surcharges to shipping when gas prices are high, but they never lower their rates when gas prices are down. Apart from cynicism about capitalism and profits, I imagine that they get complaints every time they raise their rates: lowering them and then raising them again as fuel prices fluctuate likely causes more customer unrest than simply allowing them to ride. If the consumer is lucky, low oil prices may result in their annual rate hike not being as steep as it might otherwise have been.
Oil prices go up. Immediate impact on what you pay, maybe even a fuel surcharge. Prices go down, yup...you guessed it, no reduction in price. Btw, pretty sure airline tickets are t any cheaper but they sure jump on the price hikes.
With all these valid points and astute observations being made about declining oil prices, they not only reinforce the original poster's question about the cost of minis coming down but they also trigger another: why instead have some prices gone up? I'm referring specifically to the recent releases of Iconic Heroes box sets #'s 4, 5, and 6. The retail price on each of these is $34.99, five dollars up from the $29.99 costs of prior sets. In the famous words of Larry David, "Interesting..."
With all these valid points and astute observations being made about declining oil prices, they not only reinforce the original poster's question about the cost of minis coming down but they also trigger another: why instead have some prices gone up? I'm referring specifically to the recent releases of Iconic Heroes box sets #'s 4, 5, and 6. The retail price on each of these is $34.99, five dollars up from the $29.99 costs of prior sets. In the famous words of Larry David, "Interesting..."
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The funny thing is that when oil prices go down the consumer doesnt see a benefit immediately, if ever. But when the prices go up every gas station is raising their prices on gas thats been in their tanks for days...
It's all a gimmick.
To be fair, it does make sense and it's more than a gimmick.
If you were a manufacturer, and the costs to you to make a widget were $1, you might reasonably decide that you would sell that widget for $1.50
Then, after a year of doing so, prices for some of your components go up by 30%, making your costs $1.30 At that point, you might reasonably recognize that your profit margin has been reduced significantly, and accept that you need to raise the selling price of your widget. Assuming a 50% mark-up, you'd now want to sell your widget for $1.65
Your customers complain.
Six months later, the prices of some of your components go down. Others may have gone up, but let's pretend they haven't, and your costs happen to have returned to $1 to make your widget.
What do you do?
You KNOW that the component pricing fluctuates, and you KNOW that $1.30 in costs has been seen recently. You KNOW your customers complain (understandably) every time you increase prices.
You could reduce your selling price back to $1.50, and hope for some sort of good-will from your customers, and hope that component prices don't return to their higher rate forcing a return to the increased price.
Or you could sit on things as they are, turn a 65% profit on your widgets for a while, maybe even a year. Then, you've got this nice situation where if component prices creep to say... $1.40, you might hold off on raising the price again, because you know you've met your profit goals for the quarter/year.
It's just not that simple to expect prices to move in lock-step with component pricing.
Stuff like border security and regulation in general never gets cheaper, for instance. Barriers to smooth business are invented every day.
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I think there's a lot to what Angush says.
But in the case of WizKids in particular, I know that they have an idea of how much profit they want to get out of a run of minis, and unlike the printing business, they actually have a variable that they control that allows them to control their costs to some degree, and that's the number of paint ops on their figures. So when their plastic costs are down, maybe that gives them some extra room to say "yes" to more of the additional paint ops that we're always trying to get in.
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I think there's a lot to what Angush says.
But in the case of WizKids in particular, I know that they have an idea of how much profit they want to get out of a run of minis, and unlike the printing business, they actually have a variable that they control that allows them to control their costs to some degree, and that's the number of paint ops on their figures. So when their plastic costs are down, maybe that gives them some extra room to say "yes" to more of the additional paint ops that we're always trying to get in.
So lower plastic costs are generally channeled into better-quality minis? I'm totally on board with that. ^_^