1. It has come to the attention of forum staff that Dollshe Craft has ceased communications with dealers and customers, has failed to provide promised refunds for the excessive waits, and now has wait times surpassing 5 years in some cases. Forum staff are also concerned as there are claims being put forth that Dollshe plans to close down their doll making company. Due to the instability of the company, the lack of communication, the lack of promised refunds, and the wait times now surpassing 5 years, we strongly urge members to research the current state of this company very carefully and thoroughly before deciding to place an order. For more information please see the Dollshe waiting room. Do not assume this cannot happen to you or that your order will be different.
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  2. Dollshe Craft and all dolls created by Dollshe, including any dolls created under his new or future companies, including Club Coco BJD are now banned from Den of Angels. Dollshe and the sculptor may not advertise his products on this forum. Sales may not be discussed, no news threads may be posted regarding new releases. This ban does not impact any dolls by Dollshe ordered by November 8, 2023. Any dolls ordered after November 8, 2023, regardless of the date the sculpt was released, are banned from this forum as are any dolls released under his new or future companies including but not limited to Club Coco BJD. This ban does not apply to other company dolls cast by Dollshe as part of a casting agreement between him and the actual sculpt or company and those dolls may still be discussed on the forum. Please come to Ask the Moderators if you have any questions.
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Trying to Understand the BJD Industry

Mar 25, 2011

    1. It wouldn't surprise me if Taobao (the Chinese equvalent of ebay) sells far, far more units of bjd's to Chinese customer than all that is bought here in the US--partly because the factories are based in China, even for some of the Korean producers (it's easier to shop out the casting to an experienced factory once you have your prototype, though you have to trust the factory won't get into a sideline of "borrowing" parts of your dolls for other customers.) So in the US I would say you are still dealing with a niche market of a niche market--and even the general US toy industry has been in a state of chaos and destruction since 2008. KayBee toys went down, ToyRUs may or may not be solvent, and even Mattel has taken some hits. (Somewhere there is a great book about Mattel as an industry, hugobopp you should poke around Amazon and see if you can find it, because it describes the development and marketing of Barbie, so you can get a feel of what an American toy maker does to develop a market. Also you might go to Toy Fair in New York--it's a huge convention where people introduce their new toys and try to get distributors to pick them up. But I will be honest with you--being on the manufacturing side of an item (whatever it is) is sadly not going to make you rich. It may bring you a lot of satisfaction in seeing your product on the shelves, but the real money always goes to the investors who lent you the startup capital, and the distributors of your goods, (which if you are working on a large scale you cannot do without), not to mention your accounting firm, your employees (which if you want to retain, you need to compensate adequately), and the various health and safety equipment, and other capital expenses you will have to periodically invest in.

      And remember, you aren't making something like the TurfVac (which my grandfather was a co-developer of) that people see as a necessary tool to maintainting their property..you are making the ultimate economic widget, an essentially useless decorative item that will be a super indicator of economic health ;) You might want a sideline owning liquor stores for the valleys of the economy.
      (As a side note, my grandfather ended up making an adequate, if not fabulous, living manufacturing cement tamps in a small plant in LA that he owned, and got very little from his invention--the money was in marketing and distribution of "the Zamboni of Lawns") But as they may have taught you in business school, never invest in something you don't understand, which is why you should absolutely try your hand at casting a doll--your allergies will make you take adequate safety precautions (respiratory equpiment, cover suit, work in a garage or outside). The fun part, making a paperclay master, won't give you any trouble and you can see how to develop different joints..it doesn't have to be a thing of beauty, or even completely finished, but it will let you talk knowledgeably to your casters when the time comes, and make intelligent manufacturing decisions.
       
    2. Keep in mind, Hugo, Iplehouse offers layaway on many of their dolls. I myself have a doll on layaway with them right now. It is safe to assume that others do, as well. That means that even while their site is "closed down" (which it is not - it just has many items currently marked as out of stock so that the employees can handle the move rather than deal with sales), they will still have money coming in from people sending payments on those layaways. So they're getting money, without having to actually handle processing new sales, while packing their things up for the move to a new space and subsequent unpacking. Even if you make the leap that they'll miss out on a significant number of sales during their "down time", and that the people who would have ordered during this time will not order once things are back in stock on their site (which is unlikely, as people in this hobby are used to temporarily out of stock items and waiting with money set aside for ordering periods), that still sounds like a win-win situation to me.

      That layaway-not-allowed sale they just had to sell off as much of their already-made stock as they could so that they wouldn't have to haul all of it to their new location probably brought in a TON of money. Companies have sales for a reason. (Black Friday is a perfect example of this. It's called Black Friday because companies rely on sales from that one day to bring their ledgers from the year out of the red and into the black. And for most companies that participate in it, it works. They take a hit on their per-sale profit margin with the expectation that their overall sales will spike, and result in higher across the board profits.)

      Companies deal in exclusivity and hard-to-acquire or limited products for a reason. These are all successful, proven marketing tactics (both in the ABJD world and beyond), and Iplehouse is wielding them well. I think the only doll companies that have done a better job than they have with using limited items (dolls) as a way of getting people to panic about the fact that they won't be able to buy a doll in the future*, and thus making collectors scrabble to find the funds to purchase a doll within a certain time frame, are Soom and Volks. Soom in particular has this style of marketing down to something almost like an art form, and it's still effective even though they have been doing it for several years now.

      All of that said, I'm curious as to where this idea that none of the doll companies or artists have any idea how to run a business comes from. Evidence indicates that this is not the case at all. The fact that their business model may not be what you think their business model should be does not invalidate its success. This does not mean that all of the different artists or companies have successful business models, but that is true of all industries the world over. It is notable that a very, very high percentage of ABJD companies have been successful, and a relatively small number have gone under. The numbers for success in this particular industry are actually far higher than they are in many others.

      None of this information seems to indicate that your "the industry is going to collapse within the next year or two" prediction holds any water whatsoever.

      * Or will have to sell a kidney in order to afford secondary market prices if they decide they want it after all.
       
    3. I'm not going to bother writing a long post to this most recent essay from Hugo. I already feel like I'm ramming my head into a brick wall and I'm definitely getting some troll vibes as well. So, I'll just say this-

      This hobby, these dolls, they're for weird doll people. Sure we're spending lots of money on them but so do people into model trains or remote controlled airplanes. And people who are into those things hardcore? They're weird too. Those guys drop tens of thousands of dollars into moving scale replicas just because they like them, just like we drop thousands into resin dolls. And, like model trains and remote controlled airplanes this is a NICHE HOBBY, not a mass market commodity. No one puts a remote controlled plane on the wall unless they're into remotes controlled planes, no one sets up a model train set in their stylish house unless they're into model trains, and no is going to set up a display of creepy ABJD unless they're into dolls.
       
    4. I feel like it's okay to complain about something you're unhappy with, as well as to not put your money up for it. Since Den of Angels is the largest, most influential BJD community board (in English) then it's understandable that the complaining would take place here. I can understand feeling betrayed by paying a thousand dollars for something and then half your order shows up broken or not at all. But if you feel like the industry as a whole is "doing it wrong!" then you might not be seeing it when people DO complain.

      I know that Dolkot has been a dodgy BJD company for a while. They ship dolls without hardly ANY protection and they often arrive damaged. Their website and use of Google translator is a train wreck for us Westerners. And I've noticed that even though they have released a few new dolls recently, not many people on DoA have made a peep about it. I wonder if that's because after so many delayed shipments and broken dolls people have just lost interest in supporting Dolkot? So that's an example of how East/West cultures make no difference, if you can't support a branch of your business it's going to wither a bit.

      But I do think that because of our love for these dolls we are far to willing to give these artists a pass. Look how long people defended Charles when he stole googobs of money from people... And even still when he is making his comeback some stragglers were ready to pull out the "welcome back!" pompoms.

      So in that sense, there could definitely be a balance in that we, as customers, are enabling the artists' to make their art. If they didn't want to make the effort to support their Western customer base then they don't have to sell to us just as much as we don't have to buy from them. But once they open up a store that accepts Euros/Dollars then they are committed to following through with that side of their business. Just because it's "omg such a pain" to sell to English-speaking foreigners for them doesn't mean it's okay for them to treat us any differently when they are just as readily processing our payments as their fellow Korean's.
       
    5. This is certainly true for HZ where I think the bulk of buyers has been in the home or Asian market. There aren't as many of the dolls here at DoA, but according to one of the dealers, the company had sold well over a thousand by late last summer. DoA represents only a small section of the overall abjd collecting community. I think the OP has a very distorted vision of the business and buyers that is inherently focused on the American collectors even more than Western collectors in general. Many Western collectors might not speak English and therefore might never visit DoA, instead keeping to their respective language sites.
       

    6. Mmmmm.....

      DoA does NOT delete accounts.

      And this is getting really personal. Not very debate-like.
       
    7. It's been personal this whole time, I think :sweat
       
    8. I'll say it again: A good investor knows the history of his/her area of investment like the back of his/her hand. Learn the critical Turning Points and you'll have a better idea of where to direct your investment dollars.

      **speaking from Virtue experience**

      Dwindling, near-death industry? I'll put my Virtue hat on and speak of my experience over 3 1/2 years. When I started as a Virtue in the Galleries subforums, there were 8 pages in the Database after 3 1/2 years of this board's existance (not going back to the Yahoo Group). Now, only 3 1/2 years after, there are 23 pages of Databases. Wow. In the Gallery, there were under 800 pages of picture threads. As of this typing, there are 2244 pages! Similar trend. Studios have come and gone in those 7 years, but the explosion of sculpts and hobbyists says this hobby isn't going down in the near future ... in fact, it probably hasn't even tapped the full potential of the global market yet.

      **back to speaking as a member**

      You keep missing the emotional connection. Small and single artist studios are often barely covering expenses. They keep designing. They keep offering small production lots, all handcast to order. A number of single artist studios have since entered the lower end of the mainstream, which is great for them, but many aren't focussed on profit. It's an odd comparison, but I think it has something akin with breeding domesticated animals. Few breeders make money at it ... that hasn't stopped them from being passionate about their work as they see it ... and there's a considerably longer-than-12-year-history in the world of breeding.

      Some artists create because they can't not create, and they'll keep creating despite their difficulties setting up a perfect business model. I approach this hobby with a wide margin of tolerance and do my best to cultivate patience, because it's a fast road to burnout if you can't do this. It's nice to make money, it helps keep food on the table and a roof over the head, but money and wealth beyond need is not everyone's goal. It's wrong to belittle others for whatever choices they've made. However, you can calmly and rationally use their models to set up your own perfect business, and I'll wish you all luck.

      I recently placed an accessories order with Iplehouse. It got here in 4 days. 3 of those days were spent in shipping. Pretty amazing for a place that was closed, eh? (Iplehouse also restocks many items that are temporarily sold out.)
       
    9. I think it is worth pointing out to Hugo that these dolls are not like most other art pieces or investments. They are not meant to sit on a shelf accruing value. In order to enjoy them, you are supposed to touch them, to hold them, to customize them with faceups, to sew for them, to modify them. They may be gorgeous articulated sculptures, but they are also still dolls and dolls have always been meant to be touched. This new "art doll" craze in which the dolls are not jointed and are not meant to be touched seems completely off-base to me.

      They are not like collectible action figures which people leave in the box as an investment. I would say that if you are only intending to age your dolls until they may be worth something, you are probably not getting the full benefit of them. However, certain comments you've made here indicate that you do enjoy them in ways other than financial. If you want to understand the BJD industry, I would advise you to spend more time bonding with your dolls. When you really connect with them, everything else will be much more clear.
       
    10. I think the problem is that Hugo is focussed on the financial aspect, whereas to a lot of doll owners that is almost irrelevant, once you get the doll.

      I was thinking about this thread today, and I think it might be worth drawing an analogy between dolls and pedigree dogs (disclaimer: I do not think dolls are actually comparable to pets, obviously living things always come first, but I think the comparison might help)

      When you adopt a pedigree puppy, you pay a lot of money for it, and the dealer has certain responsibilities - the puppy should be healthy to their knowledge, well raised, and certifiably the breed you want. They also should behave professionally and have good business ethics. Similarly, when you buy a doll, you expect it to be free from obvious defects, well crafted, and that the company behaves professionally.

      At the same time, after a while, stuff can go wrong. Your puppy might get sick, your doll yellows. This is not the dealers responsibility and there is no point blaming them if they took all standard precautions. Yes, both are valuable and represent a lot of money, but you're not paying for it to last a lifetime. Youre paying for the enjoyment of owning it. These "downsides" come with the territory, one you knowingly bought into, because you feel that what you gain is worth the money. Both are worth less with time, and thats ok because every day that money you spent has in some way enriched your life.

      It is not about the money for a lot of people, it's about how much pleasure and enjoyment having that doll around brings them, not their inherent value. Also, it's mostly about individual sculptors and artists in this hobby, and theyre (as a rule) not making that much money. They're doing it because they love it. Viewing it as a business that ought to be maximised gets this kind of "you just dont GET it" reaction.
       
    11. I utterly and completely agree
       
    12. Locking due to denigration into name-calling.