The consequences of copied dolls

I thought I had seen Angell Studio dolls being sold on their official site for something wild like $1800 for a standard doll, but having gone back to their site now I see that they are somewhere around $500-600, so perhaps I wasn't reading something right? I'm a little confused by what I thought I saw, but uh... well that was me attempting to tell you about a $1800 doll.

 

Perhaps you were seeing the price in Chinese yuan?
Their previous site came up with Chinese currency by default and you had to actually select US dollar if you wanted to see the prices in that.

 

Yes, that is probably exactly what happened. I thought I was going crazy at the time, looking at it thinking "$1800 for this doll?! Why?!". Here I've been walking around thinking that Angell Studio was some super prestigious doll company that only rich people could buy from. I'm such a weiner.

 

Back to the actual topic, I think the original sculptors would be hurt, and possibly just feel unmotivated to make any more dolls for sale. Especially if they saw more and more of their so-called fans going for bootlegs instead of the actual thing. And once they stop having motivation to cast the real stuff, I think prices for the originals will just hike upwards even further, which just means more difficulty for the people who really respected the sculpts in the first place, and then more people will complain about original collectors being "elitist" and all that.

Probably all dolls would need serial numbers and certificates of authenticity, and too bad if they're lost. I mean, if you lose your own ID things can get shitty as well.

CBAB: If you depended on sculpting these dolls for a living, if you paid your rent and bills by putting your life into these dolls for hours on end just for the passion of creating, even $2000 is low. Think of living expenses nowadays. Everyone in the company takes a bite of each $2000 doll, what's left? People can earn that at a secure desk job but they give it up to pursue this. What about dolls that don't get so popular? Does that mean they don't get any pay that month?

Without these artists in the first place, I don't think we would be having this hobby at all. So what part of this is overpriced? I think you are looking at secondary market prices, where people buy at reasonable prices from Volks and just hike it up themselves.

 

I think in the earlier posts in the first few pages, the debate was headed towards trying to figure out what these consequences would be, if people believed there to be consequences.

(In my first post, I mentioned that if everyone kept their eyes peeled and the original companies did their part in reporting copyright violations and pursuing legal action where possible, then the doll-related bootlegging could possibly be held at bay by a simple united show of lack of support.)

The discussion turned, then, towards trying to figure out people's motives for buying bootlegs to begin with as it pertains towards trying to get people to NOT support bootlegs...

And now, here we are - discussing why bootlegs exist and why people buy them and whose fault bootlegs exist in the first place.



Maybe we can push the debate back on the original tracks as Pam had asked.

What do people suppose will be the possible consequences of a growth in the bootlegged dolls industry.

If people don't believe that the industry will grow enough to have such an impact (I think that I am one of the more optimistic ones, despite being an artist and dealing with copyright violations day in and day out), maybe they can explain why.

And if people have any suggestions for keeping the bootlegging at bay, maybe they can air those out, too?

</attempt to get the topic back on track>

 

You claim that there are basic sets going for $1200+, which is encouraging scalpers. When asked for proof, you change the subject.

Your accuse the companies of ridiculously jacking up prices(that you have yet to offer evidence of) out of greed, and imply that they are to blame for the rise of scalpers/copies.

How about we try laying blame where it truly belongs: the consumer. A doll is only worth what a person will pay for it. If a person doesn't want the standard for (the alleged) $1200+, and buys a knock-off for $300, that's their call. If enough people adopt that policy of buying the cheaper alternatives, the original company has no choice but to increase the prices in order to recoup from the loses of not having their molds sell. Not to mention they still have to pay their artists, advertising firm, web servers, basic upkeep for their offices, and machinery.

You seem to be operating under this notion that Volks (and other big BJD companies) are this gargantuan empires effortlessly run by a handful of people that live the life of the ridiculously wealthy; they bathe in buckets of American dollars, and their driveways are paved out of Euros. Business is not a cheap venture, even more so when you're in the business of constantly creating. They've got to make sure everything is in tip-top shape, or run the risk of having their quality suffer noticeably.

 

The thing that worries me is whether or not there is really any way to stop bootleg dolls.

It's like the issue with counterfeit money. When the US government does things with the money like putting all kinds of numbers in the background, weird colors, it always seems like the counterfeiters find a way to recreate it, and pretty well a lot of the time. When I was a cashier they were always teaching us new ways we were to go about identifying real money, because everytime the government would change it, the fakers would find a way around it.

I wonder if the same couldn't happen with BJDs. Even if a company did start putting it's own personal logos on headcaps or something like that, couldn't a bootlegger just eventually come up with a way to mock it? Obviously it wouldn't look exactly as good, it never does since it isn't the real thing, but it could fool a lot of people just like it already has.

I guess it is always possible to stay a step ahead, it's just sad that it has to come to that. Sometimes it seems to me like it would always just be "a step ahead", and never really doing away with the problem. I just don't know if it's possible.

 

Unfortunately, what this really goes to show is that you don't truly understand the nature of larger business.

True companies have more than just the cost of a sculpt and production to cover. There is a large amount of up front cost that gets funneled towards research and development, marketing, securing space and staff, permits, designing products, and then hunting down an artist to sculpt for you, an artist to paint for you - and this doesn't even begin to cover expenses garnered by clothing, placing wigs, and photographing your dolls, once they're even made, all of which needs to be prearranged. We've seen on this very board what happens when you don't research your target market well.

And this is before even a cent in customer money is made. Further these are ONGOING COSTS. For a company that continually expands their doll lines, they grow, bit by bit, for each doll. They will need to set up divisions for casting, mold making, sanding, finishing, painting, packaging, and shipping.

Further, these are luxury items. If you had any experience with the buying and selling of fine art prints, you would know that just getting a print of an original work can be very very expensive - just like dolls, lithographs sell for anything from very cheap to hugely expensive. They are not single prints, either, they are entire print runs.

Finally, people will create copies of anything - from fine art to yellow ribbon stickers - in the name of making a quick buck. Doll companies do not bring this on themselves due to their prices, there are copies made of even more economically priced dolls. There are copies of Duncan yo-yo's, comic books, movies, even television series (not just anime, check out some of the scams running for shows like MST3K or Battlestar Galactica), undercutting the companies that made these products, and impacting their sales. Lower sales mean fewer jobs to be had, fewer jobs to be had means people out of work, people out of work create a drain on the overall economy. Meanwhile, bootleggers make a tidy profit, often using unsafe materials, working conditions...the list goes on.

Saying that high prices causes rip offs is showcasing ignorance of how business works. I am sorry if that sounds harsh, but the stark reality is that companies need to make a very large profit beyond materials cost.

 

Not only materials go into the price of dolls. It's also time. It takes time to make the doll, it takes time to cast the doll, it takes time to remove seams and gate marks. The people who do these things are professionals, who probably get paid around $80.00 an hour.

Dolls are pretty much a work of art. A sculpture made for your enjoyment. As a person who has also sculpted a doll, (and is sculpting one now) I would ask for at least $600 for all of the time that has been put into making the doll. I think that they are worth every penny.

I am horribly offended by these copies. It would feel so bad to have something that you put hours of work into to make, to be taken and sold under someone else's name.

 

comicbookartistboi has left the discussion, and I think it's generally agreed that his figures were slightly skewed.

But to veer away from that, even if it's underlying and covert, I'm sure it's a blow to these small artisan companies producing the dolls. What incentive is there to create if their designs will simply be copied and they can't profit from their labor?

If they truly suffered such a tremendous blow, this is just a thought - might they be forced to raise prices to counter-act the losses? Or do you think they'd simply try to sell their remaining stock, recoup some of their losses, and simply close shop, and completely stop producing dolls?

Or could it possibly create a more competitive atmosphere? In that, companies have to provide truly stellar products, and perhaps at more "competitive" prices? (Personally, I find this thought too optimistic). Or would it simply bring lawsuits, trouble, and eventual bankruptcy, or a slow deterioration of the hobby?

To be honest, there's quite a few clothing and shoe imitations that I've seen; wigs as well. I've bought them from reputable sellers, and then stumbled upon the shoes they were most likely based upon. (Ex. Volks Shoes, Similar shoes) Yes, they are not exactly alike, but I use those two, simply because the particular buckle seems to be such a unique design.

It's interesting how this is already present, in however innocuous a form it may be. And it certainly doesn't seem stoppable; as long as there is a more inexpensive form (even at a lower quality), people will buy them. I wonder how companies have already been affected by this? Or if it's such a standard practice, that they expect it to occur?

 

Ah! I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way. ^^; No, I pay for for the stuff I enjoy. (and even don't enjoy 8| ) My family has had our software ripped off quite a bit, and my brother is a young director, so we know what the pain is like, and the hard work that goes into your art. I was just saying that because I have definitely contributed to the fansub industry quite a bit, and felt guilty if if I said I haven't support piracy in any way. No, I pay for my stuff now, which is why I don't watch anime anymore. Way overpriced. Yessss, all that money goes into resin now... :3

On topic, I definitely think that sculptors and the companies would be hurt by too much bootlegging. Artists don't get free money. It takes time, LOTS of time to mold, and more time still to keep on casting. I'm sad when small companies release limiteds (like Peroth, even Migidoll) but I understand. They're people who work to make a living. Bootlegs may not hurt bigger companies like Dollmore, Volks and Luts so much as it will hurt smaller artist companies. Which is a sad, sad thing, because some one them have the most lovely sculpts and I'd hate to see any dramatic change for the worse because of all these copies.
Thankfully, copiers tend to go for the more mass produced dolls, so they'll be found out less quickly. Not that it doesn't hurt larger companies, but... >.> I think everyone has said this already. ^^;

The one result of anything I'm afraid of would be poor quality resin coming from our beloved companies. If scalpers and copiers were so bad than companies would have to change how they make dolls to a low quality cost-efficient alternative to bring in more money to counteract the effects of the copiers, it would be hard to stay in the BJD fandom, for me at least. Maybe it's the "chinese mass producing crap quality" scare (anyone remember the days when anything made in japan was bad quality?) but I really hope none of these awesome, hardworking companies go in that direction.

 

One thing I haven't seen mentioned in this whole pricing debate... the effect scalper prices can have on retail prices, and whether that's wrong or not.

Since Suigintou has been mentioned I'll use her as an example. Say Volks releases this limited doll for $1000. Not so long after that, they see that she sells for up to $3000 on the secondhand market. This means that someone gets a $2000 profit for the act of waiting in line at a Dolpa and then putting up an auction on Yahoo Japan. That's more profit than the entire original price of the doll. Could you blame Volks for wanting to charge more in a case like this, so that they can get the money that would otherwise be going to someone who's done nothing more than go to an event and wait in a line? Since they've designed the doll, pursued the licence to do so with the creators of the character, paid for that licence, sculpted the doll, created molds of the doll, cast the doll, assembled the doll, painted the doll, patterned the outfit and shoes, made the outfit and shoes, advertised the doll on a very high traffic website and in print, and then finally sold and distributed the doll (basically the only step they share with the reseller).

If I were Volks in that situation I'd probably be thinking "People are willing to buy our doll for $3000 and we sell her for only $1000, don't we deserve to be making these wild profits on our dolls?"

But the fact is... they don't! Suigintou sold at retail for the exact same price as Japanese Madoka, one of the very first limited female SD13 dolls (according to Where Angels Lie, where I'm getting all this info) who was originally sold all the way back in 2003. In between there have been limited releases of SD13 girls at lower prices, true. But Suigintou was sold at the exact same price as a limited SD13 girl who was sold about 4 1/2 years earlier. Honestly, I don't think that's too bad on Volks' part! They can see quite easily that people would be willing to pay a lot more for their dolls, it wouldn't be hard for them to raise their prices and still make sales, but they aren't.

Personally I see BJDs as art (well, I see them as both art and toy, but I would never deny the sculpts as being art), and so the profit that the companies make is for their artistic effort. Just as a painting is worth more than the price of canvas and paints, so it makes sense that a finished BJD is worth mor than the price of resin and elastic. As for the idea that multiples make it not art... what about printmaking or cast bronze statues? There are enough casts of Degas' "Little Dancer of Fourteen Years" around that I've seen it in various major museums, but you could hardly say that those bronze casts are worthless because they are cast reproductions of an original sculpt. Similarly, there are many well-known printmakers who make art prints (different from, say, a poster you can buy for $20) and some prints can have very high value regardless of the fact that there's more than just one in existance in the world. The key difference between reproduced art and reproduced junk is that reproduced art is made by or under the supervision of artists, with a lot of individual care and attention, and usually in low quantities. Mass produced junk is made without a lot of individual care, usually by assembly line workers who are untrained in art and supervised by factory managers as opposed to artists, and usually in very large quantities. The quality of the materials and work can vary quite a lot as well- very few mass produced toy dolls are made of expensive resin, for example.

 

In some venues that argument can be made even though I absolutely disagree with it, in others, absolutely no -- and I'm in one of the 'absolutely no' ones. So I do try to encourage people to be honest and -not- steal from artists.

Back OT, though with me, and circling back around to the OT point: this does not exactly encourage artists to keep creating. Why should they if the vast majority will not give them the basic respect one would give to someone in any other profession? Why is it that we think artists should be working for free (which is what happens when people steal their work for profit or distribution that prevents them from earning a living or profiting from their work and justify it in some roundabout fashion) when the postman would not, or the secretary, or even the guy at the fast food counter? They wouldn't. Honestly, what makes artists the exception? They're not.

You don't pay someone for their labor, sooner or later they're going to quit laboring. When their labor is the creative effort that produces what you want, not only can you not get the original or anything new from that source.

edit: Enedving -- Sorry about that. It's been a weird and migraine-inducing day, with some piracy threats looming, so... *whimper*

 

I personally take the stand that there will always be bootlegs and nothing can be done to stop them, short of the original companies taking charge and pursuing legal action on all other companies that copy them.

But I think that even with the existence of bootlegs, the original companies will be, for the most part, fine.

Are the loyal patrons of these companies suddenly going to jump for the recast copied dolls?

Are places like DoA going to suddenly support bootlegs?

I know that music and dolls aren't the same thing, but I remember back in the day when the artists and record labels were up in arms over mp3s and filesharing and RIAA got in the know of mp3s and applications like Napster and KaZaA and stuff and started shutting people and places down down down.

And then... in the last year or so... a person named Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails stuck his head out and said something like "HEY! These people filesharing are onto something! I can use the nets for my own use and hell yeah; the CDs ARE being priced too high and I'm gonna do something about it and divorce my label and go on my own way!"

And he did.

And according to him, he's still as successful as he used to be if not more and this is WITH him freely sharing his music online and at no-cost with the option to buy his CDs - regular and collector's and otherwise - at a lower cost than what was previously offered.

Yes, yes, music and dolls aren't alike, but the thing is...

I think Trent's right.

Whether it's with music or with dolls, if you've got the fanbase and you're secure in knowing you have a loyal fanbase - you will have people who will monetarily support you in addition to supporting you in other ways EVEN when there are bootlegs and 'cheap' versions out there of the real thing.

Doll companies are comparatively smaller compared to the presence that someone like Trent is, but it doesn't mean that their fanbase is a bunch of daisies ready to be trampled on by bootleggers and bootlegged dolls. If nothing, the amount of squalling I've heard from fans of major doll companies in regards to bootlegged versions of their dolls has been LOUD and fervent. Loud enough that some doll companies have posted notices on their websites THANKING their fans for letting them know.

I think the doll companies themselves should know that bootlegs will always exist. I also think that they also know that no matter what, there will be some people who will purchase the bootlegs. But at the same point, I also think that the companies know that despite these bootleggers and people who support the bootlegs, they have a very firm and very stiff backing behind them - people who are willing to save money to spend on the next doll release - and that the true support will help them through it all.

Yeah, we've got bootleggers and yeah we've got people who support bootlegs.

But uhm... HI?

You, you, you, you, oh and you you AND YOU are NOT bootleg supporters and probably won't become one, right? We wouldn't be debating this topic otherwise, right?

Just as there will always be bootleggers, there will also always be the supporters and with the sort of mentality that places like DoA support - YAY to originals and NAY to bootleggers to be simple - I truly believe that the people who do buy bootlegged dolls will find it much harder to be accepted.

Unless people keep their bootlegged BJDs under wraps completely, eventually, they will get seen and maybe not the first time or the second time, but eventually, I think it will be found out and when that happens...

Social stigma is a big thing.

And here's the difference between bootlegged music and bootlegged dolls.

Where even someone with as much 'influence' as Trent expressed his disgust at the prices of his music CDs thereby calling into question the pricing on all OTHER artists' CDs, the pricing of BJDs - where 'expensive' - has been accepted and explained by those who understand and even have sculpted their own BJDs (people like Donn of Bishonenhouse and Batchix for example).

Filesharing of music with disregard to payment is supported by Trent who is a prominent music artist who would, as one might tend to think, every right to be up in arms over all the whole illegal file sharing.

Bootlegged dolls are supported by... whom of similar stature in the BJD community?

The fact of the matter is, there IS a reason the dolls are priced as they are and artists like Donn and Batchix and Dollstown have gone out of their way at times to give their potential patrons a look at what goes into designing, building, and then casting a BJD.

 

QFE, Iikaya.

 

Oh and since that post took me AGES to write and the conversation has shifted directoin again... XD In terms of the impact of bootlegs, I don't actually think they'll be hurting the popular doll companies that much. Companies like Volks, Lati, Luts, etc probably aren't going to be expanding their customer base drastically, a lot of business is repeat business from within a relatively small hobby, and even new customers for one company are often already members of the BJD community who often own dolls from other brands already. I see the bootleg market as being more for people who have never seen BJDs before or only have a vague idea of them and don't know enough to know when something is a bootleg, or for new customers who aren't a part of the hobby yet and in many cases wouldn't be buying the originals anyway because they think even a bootleg is pricey. In other words, they are cusomters that a company ike Volks probably wouldn't be getting business from anyway. I think that msot people who would be a customer of the main BJD companies probably will be. Within the hobby there's a lot of pride in our dolls, and a lot of disgust for bootlegs. As long as there's still a large customer base who want to have a legitimate doll they can take pride in and love, I think the companies will be okay.

That's not to say that I think it's okay to bootleg dolls. I think it's pretty terrible myself, it's theft of someone else's art. I would never knowingly buy a bootleg doll and if I saw someone posting a link on LJ or some non BJD forum showing a bootleg doll they were planning to buy, I'd step in and tell them it's a bootleg and why they should buy the original. I'd really love it if all bootlegging doll companies shut down and stopped trying to sell their copies.

But I do think that with BJDs, which are already a luxury treated similarly to some types of art, the dedicated fanbase will always support the original artists over bootleggers. And I think that very few people would even want to try to sneak bootleg dolls though DoA as the legit thing. I'd also hope that buyers of dolls put up for sale would try their best to make sure the doll is legit (asking the seller questions, asking to see pictures, maybe looking to see if that seller has ever posted the doll in question to the gallery or if they've mentioned them in the company discussion thread or waiting room or posted a profile or etc etc etc). But I think that most people who are genuinely interested in being part of the DoA community wouldn't try it, and those who post 40 comments to gallery threads and then suddenly have a bunch of dolls for sale would be treated cautiously by potential buyers. DoA seems to police itself pretty well, and in cases of suspicious sales often people will say "hey this looks a little suspicious".

EDIT: Dagnabbit, Iikaya, if I'd seen that post before I wrote this whole thing up, I wouldn't have bothered! I agree with you entirely! Loyal fans can do so very much and I think DoA is full of them!

 

@ Quilibet & skwerlie

If DoA weren't so full of loyal tried-and-true fans (a lot of us have encountered the bootlegs and haven't 'given in', right?) I honestly believe we wouldn't be having this debate in the first place.

 

That was excellent, Iikaya. It's definitely true! Don't underestimate the power of the fan base. Like record companies becoming obsolete because of the internet, we are powerful tools to market these beautiful resin dollies. Even though illegal music sharing creating a great advertising opportunities can't be completely paralleled do the the doll fandom, it can still be said that we consumers are not all helpless against bootleggers. When someone spots a copy on ebay or other places, news travels fast here, and the companies are reported and shut down before they can do too much damage. And because copiers usually go for the more popular, bigger companies, it probably won't hurt small artisan sculptors as much as we might fear.
I'm sure most of us here would buy a true version of the sculpt if we found out we had accidentally bought a second-hand copy. A matter of principle and support.

 

At what Iikaya said:

Trent Reznor is actually far from being the first to take distribution matters into his own hands. Independent labels and artists have been doing this for a couple of decades (particularly in the electronic dance scenes), and even disregarding that and focusing only on popular music, artists such as Prince and Frank Zappa beat Trent, Radiohead, etc. to the punch years ago.

Sorry, I just had to clear that up.