Why do companies produce dolls in limited quantities?

While I was trying to arrange to order a doll during it's open period on the site someone asked me this, and I couldn't really answer besides the molds probably eventually wear out?

It's true that designing a doll takes a lot of work, but after getting say, a quantity of orders and corresponding payment, sending that number of orders and payment off to a caster, shouldn't the orders of that sculpt be available like in a monthly ordering period until the cast wears out? And even then, a new cast of that sculpt can possibly be made from the artist's prototype.

I'm assuming sanding and assembling are also covered in the price, and I know small studios are in a different position when handling a large amount of orders compared to a large company, but I'm talking about companies with many employees. The only reason I can think of is 1) the artist/company just wants to make a new doll, 2) it's to drive up demand to emphasize the brand of hand crafted eliteness, 3) they legitimately can't handle the amount of orders that would come in on a regular monthly basis.

Any thoughts? This is just my best guess, and I would like to be able to explain this to people not in the hobby.

 

Yeah, I think that's a big part of it, but I was thinking, it might be hard to sell dolls, as such a niche hobby with such a high price (well, SDs at least) so keeping it open all the time makes them go out of business faster, but that doesn't sound right, either. Literally every doll company does this, though, so there's probably a reason in addition to "common practice to manufacture exclusivity." Unless.... are there any doll companies that don't do this?

 

I definitely understand the thing about throwing around the implication "eliteness" about artist products, but I'm not implying malice on the part of bjd companies- both I believe carefully manufacturing a brand is common sense to both stay in business in general and their right in this kind of artish-like hobby. I'm just trying to puzzle out more what's happening with the basic doll store part- from the perspective of a customer who both doesn't know the language/culture of the companies I buy from or the specifics of doll company production. So man, if anybody does know.

For fullsets and faceups, Limited Edition items make total sense.

But just your more standard, bare-faced and unclothed basic doll models? Both bodies AND heads are usually limited once every few months, unpredictably, if ever sometimes. That's what I was wondering about specifically. It implies there's a lot of work going on behind the scenes, but I don't understand what could be so unreliable to the point I have to do complicated research to figure out how to buy anything on the site about what appears to be... casting orders.

This is totally a good faith question.

Edit: For example, Bluefairy has their basic dolls available on a three month rotation, which makes sense if you want to handle orders in an orderly fashion. I think switch used to do monthly orders, too? Wonder what happened to that, see- why are the models that go available and unavailable (when not limited) so unpredictable? No shade, but it kind of feels like artist fiat, or it's strategic to drive up sales by manufacturing exclusivity. I don't think that's bad, by the way, I just kind of want to know.

 

Thank you, these responses are really helpful! Esp @Cuteasadoll, I never would have considered! The fact these questions pop up make sense lol, I'll go search for them. But so far, here's what I can theorize, having not asked directly yet, about larger financially established bjd companies and basic, non-limited (unclothed, no face up) dolls specifically:

The uneven and unpredictable availability of even unlimited dolls is because of the casting process, and how bjds are currently impossible to "mass produce," which seems to be in large part due to the small/niche nature of the hobby and therefore, the niche market of it's manufacturing process- resin casting. I'm guessing right now it's jammed up in availability of casters, limited/fixed capacity of resin casters, unpredictable timesink, and high cost proportional to result.

1. Irregular order periods because of casting process: Resin-casting is still an non-widespread and small-business process, leading to limited capacity of casters with predictably unpredictable delays (surprisingly maybe the worst delays do to not so much as imperfect batches to recast but more practical consideration of cost per limited batch and timing) and other complications, forcing artists to keep doll orders to a specific number, ie limited per that open period, even for non-limited to on fill the batch of orders to quality par and at (employee, boxing) cost, which in turn would affect when a next order period would be available, (sort of like "We can't tell you when we open orders because we don't know when we can open orders (because casting is giving us trouble).") Also, companies/artists taking into account production/delivery delay and what falling behind would mean for employees doing over-time. Also, probably not as covered by the initial cost paid by the customer. <- this last bit is complete presumption.

2. Unpredictable availability because artist/company has to pull it: the company/artist just gets sick of an item and wants to work on something new, replace it, or doesn't want to cast it again, even if it's an unlimited sculpt. Fair. Alternatively, it's financially too much of a pain to keep up if nobody is ordering it specifically, so they just ditch it from their available catalog entirely rather than just be unable to fill a minimum order regularly? (also due to niche nature of resin casting) Anyway, there were no promises to keep up every sculpt available to any period of time to begin with, and the bjd hobby is still more of a "specially sculpted for your arty preferences" art hobby than any kind of mass production. It feels kind of like making music boxes funded by kickstarter kind of exclusive, maybe. I know nothing about that industry either. What this means, though, is the company, even if large, due to a mixture of common practice, manufacturing process, and fiat, wouldn't really know if something will be available again, or when it would even if they planned on opening up an order, so they can never announce it, which is why we have to do a weird amount of research to find out how or when to order sculpts before actually ordering a sculpt. It's also why the "dolls" section of a bjd site more to express the brand style and art gallery like of past work rather than an actual product available for purchase. "It's not available because it's too much of a pain to manufacture, we're not that profitable, and will go way over cost because of that." (or they just don't want to for artistic reasons, or they're trying to make a Limited fullset.)

3. Currently, Limited quantities may just makes more sense: as @bronzephoenix said, considering the difficulty of making a regular order period, just going full ham in making an elaborate artsy fullset available in limited periods to justify that limited period to customers not involved in production has benefits: it's safer both in handling time and production problem time. Also, since this hobby is halfway between "buying at a store" and "commissioning" so using the necessity of limited quantities to it's max might just be practical financially, even for larger companies? In addition, constantly releasing short orders of beautiful elaborate (if limited) fullsets is a great way to keep visible and desirable. However, this reason might be weak because I think making "non-limited" naked dolls available at predictable periods seems to be like it would be more profitable for a company, but at this point I would probably just need to ask someone who actually knows about the whole process. "Because the casting process is so potentially drawn out and problem riddled, it is not practical, and too expensive both in billable hours, backlog, and production cost to keep open ordering periods."

4. Dolls are unpredictably unavailable to manufacture exclusivity: it's not spite, for anyone who would say that! If bjd isn't a mass production hobby, it's a hobby that benefits from this even for 'bigger' companies- like @Ice Mutt says, better to sell 45 orders in one hyped up weekend then 15 over a period of years.... maybe, since I think keeping an order open over a period of years would sell more if it was a successfully branded company, but there's something to it. Also, I feel this aspect is incidental and making the best of the tetchy production process that is the root cause of the way ordering a doll works, though. "We're not mass-production, we're super niche production that prides ourselves on this interestingly-formed-over-the-years standard of quality." .....I think.

Conclusion: even 'big' companies have to function on the same level as the capacity of the resin caster studio? As time goes on, or as the industry becomes more developed/standardized, the manufacturing process might become bigger, smoother, or more common. As a result, the "non-limited" bjd sculpts may start to have more stable availability/ordering period. In addition, maybe actual production cost would decrease for the bjd companies, which in turn could reflect in the prices. @Aramirofgondor, thanks for laying the process out so clearly- dollmaking seems human-intensive forever and considering all that goes into putting even a bare bjd to shipment, even 'big' bjd companies are probably small enough that fulfilling a large quantity of orders it is a huge human-labour-intensive undertaking, and therefore, would take a lot of unpredictable time and money.

I guess there are companies do a type of regular doll available/monthly doll available, and the ones that are very unpredictable are just more smaller, singular artists more vulnerable to these problems in addition to not working with space or helpful labour, and it's just impossible to tell over the internet.

TL;DR: Dolls are available in limited, unpredictable quantities because 1) the casting process has to be done in certain quantities, 2) therefore, the hobby is like ordering custom art made by artists in limited quantities, even "basic" "unlimited" versions, 3) the fact it might end up like a limited custom edition is a good way for these creators to support themselves in a niche hobby and a way to guarantee they can meet production demands/avoid backlog, 4) the company might just randomly pull the head because of low sales or they don't want to deal with production costs, because that's apparently how finicky and niche bjd production is. (It's all "reasonable time," financially possible, "small hobby profit" kind of reasons due to the production process)

This is kind of just based on things we've said here as people mostly ignorant to the process, so all with a grain of salt. And corrections, theories, thoughts, are definitely welcome.

 

I was actually thinking about this too, and I also think China most likely has a much bigger resin casting industry (and therefore, more constant or stable ordering periods.) Btw this is pure guess but I think Ive got at least a bit of something. Back in like 1960s or something Hong Kong and China started developing themselves as the manufacturers of everything from plastics to electronics to every toy and material object ever, and also because of the way business tends to work there (opportunistic due to a lot of things but at least partially because questionable enforceability of gov regulations) there’s probably a lot more precedent to quickly developing a resin caster area of business. Even resin casting would be more standardized, worked out, and cheaper.

Also, the dollar is stronger there, and Chinese dolls are at similar prices- so more capital than a Korean, European, Japanese based company for employee hours and production costs. Mass production would be kind of feasible? Therefore, chinese companies can afford to keep open constant order periods.

One factor Im just drawing a blank on is where resin even gets supplied from- but at random guess, maybe it’s cheaper in China. Im just going to assume a lot of resin casting was done from China to start with lol

I agree still possible to overburden that more convenient system tho, so regular monthly or whatever ordering period is probably just best practice for employee hours/rights, production delay time to ship, and general backlog.

I cant figure a way to ask anyone tho :0

Following this logic, you could guess how a bjd company operates based on what country they are from, based on the development of resin casting business in that country:

Constant ordering periods, cheaper prices, and faster production (if not backlogged) more likely to least: China at the top, and Korea, Japan, Europe, then America at the bottom? Korean companies look to have more regular ordering periods than Japanese companies. This would be better if I could remember more exactly but just to have something to start with.

In retrospect this is probably obvious to people who know something about resin casting

 

Thanks, that's really good to know! So apparently there isn't like a big bjd company at all, anywhere, it's ALL still way more like private commission than say, commercial business at about every level. That really does explain a lot.

Edit: Employee labour is factored in. I don't think there's one doll I've bought that's taken less than about a year to get, I had to wonder why.