How many dolls are sold every year?

hmmm probaby alot!!!!

 

dolls overall combining every company, store, website, artist, and ebay, and person to person I have no clue thousands i assume

 

As an individual or through companies?

As an individual... I go through a lot of dolls. >.<; So far I've sold 13 dolls in the past 4 years, which probably isn't that much for some people here. lol =P

 

Make a poll, maybe? You could gather a sampling, then make a rough estimate, based on DOA membership numbers. Not scientific, perhaps, but better than nothing.

 

Even a DoA poll wouldn't really give an accurate figure since DoA is far from every BJD fn or buyer! The countries where most of the dolls are made (Japan, Korea, China) are not very heavily represented here, for example, but there are tons of people in those countries who are buying BJDs!

Thousands? Tens of thousands? There are so many doll artists and companies, and so many buyers in so many countries that it seems impossible to ever know exactly.

 

How about a 1000 dolls per establish company per year? Round off number, I could be wrong

 

It is impossible for a company to sell 1000 dolls in a year, at least in this industry.
(take Narindolls for example. 500 limitations on narae's and has been for years.)

We have 25000 members on this forum, and some has a lot, some has none.
I would guess 1 doll per person for 25,000 on this forum, plus offsite collectors... uhh, Let's say off site is 1/4 the amount of DOA. So, maybe 31,250 dolls worldwide?
So a few hundred dolls in total per year isn't impossible...

(That is a lot o_O )

 

No one know the exact number. If a company sells 10 - 20 different dolls per year,(and some of them do) that would be how many per year? 31250 divided by how many companies? per year?

 

Wouldn't offsite dolls actually be more dolls than DoA, though? I know DoA is the biggest international abjd forum, but I always had the impression that the abjd community in asia was much bigger and would account for the majority of dolls made.

 

I'd say somewhere in the 100,000's area. I mean there are so many companies and so many people with dolls in the world. Some companies make very small amounts of dolls and some make LOTS of dolls.

 

For most small companies, sure... but Soom only needs to sell a bit over 80 of each of their monthly dolls (or half that for each Teenie Gem) to sell 1000 in a year, and many of their dolls have over that amount just in the DoA waiting rooms (which isn't counting people who don't use waiting rooms or aren't on DoA, and also doesn't take into account all of their non-MD dolls which aren't quite such hot sellers but do still account for some sales).

Volks has at least 3 Dolpas a year in Japan, plus owner events and US Dolpas, with multiple dolls released at most events, in quantities that I would think are relatively large in some cases- though they don't release numbers for most editions I think it would be safe to say that most of their limiteds nowadays are editions of over 100 dolls. Again, they also have several standard dolls that seem to be steady sellers as well as their popular full choice service.

Iplehouse might not reach 1000 dolls per year, but they have released quite a few popular dolls in the Noctarcana Circus series... Luts are always popular sellers and have intruduced a few new sizes recently. Shops like Bobobie and Resin Soul seem to be doing good business with their very affordable prices and large range of resin colours... and there are so many BJD companies nowadays that even if they don't sell many dolls individually there are still quite a lot of dolls being made when you add them all together!

 

Put it this way - When Volks has a limited, how many members of DoA actually get to own it? That should give you a good idea as to how many people on DoA there are Vs. how many aren't members but still buy dolls. Then calculate the average amount of dolls an owner has (I know there's a poll for that somewhere here) times the number of members & non-members, then divide by the number of companies out there and you should get a good average... I think... it's been a while since I did any sort of real math LOL

 

Also don't forget to calculate in the companies who only sell heads or bodies. It's kind of hard to calculate with them. To say you own a 'doll' from that company wouldn't be correct, only the head. So do you count that as one point towards the company since that's all they make or one towards where ever the body is from?

 

Bobobie's order numbers are sequential--for example order #20090121 was ordered in 2009, and was the 121st order (20090121). The highest order number last year that was asked about in their forums was #...299 so that means there were at least 299 orders last year, and I know a fair number of those were multiple doll orders so let's say maybe 350 dolls--and that's just direct order from their own site--they also fill orders through quite a few retailers such as Junky Spot, DDE, and Featherfall. I bet they easily/ cast 500 dolls...and that's not counting the dolls they cast for ResinSoul, Garden of Dolls, and all those other small companies they cast for.

 

Absolutely! I think quite often when English-speaking hobbyists go on about "new" companies "rushing out" dolls to "jump in on the bandwagon" or however the complaint is framed, they are talking about companies that are really well established in their home countries, with their own following, and are not new or rushing in at all - just expanding into the international market. I think that's true of a lot of Chinese companies - the Chinese doll fandom seems huge, and to barely touch DoA. And I know when I was asking about Angelsdoll's tan resin, they said they had been making dolls a long time in Korea.

DoA and the other English forums are, I think, the tip of the iceberg. I don't believe Angelsdoll would survive as a business selling three dolls a year, which is the impression you'd get from DoA.

So I have no real idea as to what the number of dolls sold a year is, or even the number of companies out there, but I suspect the answer is "more than you'd think".

 

So is the question as follows: How many ABJD companies exist? and what percentage of dolls do one sell to the American public if any.

 

I'm thinking it would be tough to come up with any kind of meaningful number for the span of years involved. Volks has been in business for 10 years and a bit, but *most* of the companies we see every day have been around for many fewer years. Just that in and of itself means that the number of dolls sold "each year" -- whether in their home country or abroad -- is going to be hugely skewed toward the more recent years.

I guess if someone had the ability to get such figures from the companies themselves, it might make for an interesting number-crunching project. Anyone up for a dissertation? ^_^