The milk has gone sour

5 minutes ago, Yumeiro said:

Knowing that it IS going away is not the same as knowing WHEN it is going

I suppose? I honestly just figured that when he made the announcement, it wasn't going to be a specific date. It was just going to be whenever he ran out of things. *le shrug*

12 minutes ago, Yumeiro said:

Knowing that it IS going away is not the same as knowing WHEN it is going

 

6 minutes ago, ButtonsMcGee said:

I suppose? I honestly just figured that when he made the announcement, it wasn't going to be a specific date. It was just going to be whenever he ran out of things. *le shrug*

The issue here may be the suddenness of the discontinuation without any heads up - say by holding a time sale to clear inventory - and the expected date of December 2020 changing to Oct 2020. 

That said, he might have felt as though he needed to hold the remaining parts back as replacements and decided that meant no longer selling existing stock or causing a run on those parts by announcing a date. That’s just speculation on my part though. 

I think Covid is a legit justification for the date change.

Just now, BeyondTime said:

 

The issue here may be the suddenness of the discontinuation without any heads up - say by holding a time sale to clear inventory - and the expected date of December 2020 changing to Oct 2020. 

That said, he might have felt as though he needed to hold the remaining parts back as replacements and decided that meant no longer selling existing stock or causing a run on parts by announcing a date. That’s just speculation on my part though. 

There's also the fact that he's moving floors in the building right now. 

That might not have been something he realized was going to happen back when he made the announcement about the expected date being December. There has been a mad rush of sales, mostly on chaos and cortex, to try and get rid of everyone extra so that they don't have to move it to the new shop front. That probably included what they had left of the Milk stuff. 

So if we take that into consideration and just assume he didn't know that they where going to be making the movie, the sudden shift in dates makes sense. 

This is just speculation on my part as well. I could totally be wrong. But it's something to consider. And you could be right on him holding back specific parts. After all, they'll be selling C.C. at some point and might need them for her. 

I can be a realist about the discontinuation of the milk color, even though I think as a business decision it doesn’t make much sense.  What really irked me was how combative the post is.  It makes it sound like customers have been holding the workers at gunpoint or something.  I feel like I don’t understand the company business plan at all any more, or the rationality behind decisions other than a desperate attempt to wallpaper over past, shall we say, miscalculations.

2 minutes ago, Gabihime said:

I can be a realist about the discontinuation of the milk color, even though I think as a business decision it doesn’t make much sense.  What really irked me was how combative the post is.  It makes it sound like customers have been holding the workers at gunpoint or something.  I feel like I don’t understand the company business plan at all any more, or the rationality behind decisions other than a desperate attempt to wallpaper over past, shall we say, miscalculations.

Yeah I'll totally agree on that.

The tone of the post is honestly the main/biggest problem with all of this. I'm honestly not sure if it's aimed more at the people buying things, or at other companies. But other way it was overly harsh. I'm not sure if that was the intent, or the intent was to talk himself up. But either way it was uh... not good. Not good at all. 

He’s constantly berating his customers on social media and even on his own site for one reason or another. I’m honestly amazed he’s been this successful for so long with such an attitude.

 

What really gets me is he keeps announcing new same face dolls with a different name nearly once a week, but he can’t find a little extra space for some option parts. Why not rent a bigger space as your business grows.

1 hour ago, Yumeiro said:

Like he started/planned to do with the male dolls... Like once every 4 months, I think it was..?

I didn't know about this fact as I'm quite new in the SmD world, but yeah. To avoid crunchtime or longer periods of work, at the same time it helps to satisfy his community.

28 minutes ago, AliensOfGold said:

What really gets me is he keeps announcing new same face dolls with a different name nearly once a week, but he can’t find a little extra space for some option parts. Why not rent a bigger space as your business grows.

Based on his almost daily news, it seems to me Danny releases almost all the things he thinks about drastically soon because his own hype. I'm not against being hyped with a product (specially if you're developing it) but you should consider a lot of variables before an official release, including how much this project will affect your company. Boring (and maybe obvious) management stuff, I know. So I'll stop here, but you get the point. In case Danny is doing this, I don't feel its reflected in his words.  

Edited September 27, 2020 by Pit

1 hour ago, ButtonsMcGee said:

So if we take that into consideration and just assume he didn't know that they where going to be making the movie, the sudden shift in dates makes sense. 

 

Honestly, I think Covid explains a lot of the suddenness of decisions being made by businesses all over the place.

Even if he did know he was moving a year ago, the requirements of social distancing could have completely altered the plans for the new space, and that new space plan could have been finalized yesterday.

Certainly a factory closing due to Covid is another reality that was outside his control. That has nothing to do with workplace space, but it’s one more reason making Milk skin may have made less sense. Moving the Milk production to another plant might delay other production, or be scheduled too far out to be practical.

Those are just hypotheticals though.

I really have less of an issue with the date change than I do the discontinuation of Milk itself. The date was always something that was going to be driven by necessity. To be fair though, I have already resigned myself to my SmartDoll heads moving onto DD bodies if and when they break, I’m going to have spare bodies as I move some of my girls to F3 bodies anyways, so it’s easier for me to blow off the date than it is for folks who only have SmartDolls and are faced with $1000 purchases to get a new body.

Yeah, again, I don’t that the discontinuation of the milk tone makes sense from a business perspective because while choice in skin tones is amazing and I’m all for it, many, many people who want to buy smart doll for a particular character concept, or to make a beloved character from an anime will want a milk skinned doll.  All you have to do is look at vinyl and resin dolls around the world and which colors sell out most quickly to see the demand for milk skin.

I honestly think much of the escalated vitriol has come from the failure of the cortex line.  I can’t imagine the money and time invested in this for R&D, especially when it’s clear based on outcomes that no one did even a basic business plan for this project, even though it involves considerable capital investment.  If there was such a plan in place, things would not be the way they are now.  Cortex poses a host of problems, including high labor costs for assembly, and excessive storage space.  This adds up to a much thinner margin on the dolls than CJ/Danny seems comfortable with.  But that should have been clear if there were a materials engineer experienced in toy production involved with this process.  They would have been able to point out these things, so either there isn’t one, or that person simply isn’t listened too.  At this point SMD feels uncomfortably like a vanity project, especially with Danny posting on social media how much he doesn’t want customers to buy from him, and that he doesn’t make smart doll for his customers, and won’t make what they want to buy.  That’s a very clear attitude from his post about milk skin.  He is aware there is a desire for milk skinned dolls and doesn’t “give a sheep.”  It also means that his desire to introduce the additional colors of doll skin are no so much based on market research (what do customers want to buy) and rather on “what he has decided personally to make.”  (It also feels bizarrely that he’s taking an exaggerated moral high ground about the production of darker skin tones. I love the dark tones.  I want more dark tones for anime dolls, but their release should be based on what the market wants, not on “what it needs” from a moral position.  When products like these succeed, it’s when someone looks to see that a part of the market isn’t being served.  It’s not vice versa, that things succeed when people decide that this product “should” exist for moral reasons.  I definitely think there’s a market for darker skinned anime vinyl dolls!  I just don’t think the demand is so great that it eclipses the desire for pale/WS/SW/light flesh tone.  CJ seems to be really fond of using moral should arguments these days, which again, isn’t good business practice.)
 

Until cortex crashed in a burning mess, he had mentioned that he planned to only make cortex dolls in the future, and retire the vinyl entirely.  That, along with the push into semi real faces and the pursuit of western IP makes it feel like he may not even want to make vinyl anime dolls any more, which is, uh, the reason that he started.

Maybe my perspective is a little different than a newcomer reacting to all of this since I was there back in the figure.fm days, and when CJ was very new, and the whole western anime vinyl doll community knew one another personally.  It’s not just nostalgia looking back at that time.  I think that his attitudes were noticeably different.

With cortex, I think that the strain of having that capital investment fall through, especially in the time of COVID, has made him even more sensitive and hair trigger than he was.  He wants to find someone to blame for the situations at CJ related to cortex other than himself.  I think he’s petrified of failure, or anyone regarding him personally as a failure, or CJ/SMD as a failure.  That’s a natural feeling to have, and many, many people suffer from it (I do weekly therapy about it myself).  However, the situations at CJ/SMD are not the fault of the customers and buyers.  Vinyl dolls are a luxury item.  They’re very important to all of us personally, but at this point, we have lots of choices of where to get them from, all in various niches.

All of us involved in this clearly liked smart dolls and legitimately want(ed) to own them.  We don’t want anything bad to happen to the people involved in making them.  Generally, customers don’t actively want bad things to happen to the people making the things they love, especially for a luxury good in a niche market from a small company.  To suppose that they do is ridiculous, concerningly so.
 

But the problems related to cortex at CJ are the fault of upper management.  Based on how he presents things, that would probably be Danny directly, unless he’s accountable to some investor who ponied up cash for the capital investment.  Even if that were the case, the actions still don’t make any sense.  If the CJ offices are cramped, it is because of the storage of excess cortex parts, which he clearly states take up much more room than slush mold vinyl parts.  He can’t sell the cortex parts in the way that he wanted to, so now he has a whole lot of inventory that he doesn’t want to sell, yet is taking up a lot of space.  I think that’s why he started offering free bundles to school kids, because that’s a way to get rid of excess stock that you’re dubious about being able to sell, get a tax write off for charitable work, and also hopefully increase brand presence in a new market.

With all of this, it seems like CJ/Danny went into it with an idea that no one had tried to do the things that he was trying to do, whether it was an animatronic, slush cast vinyl, or the cortex bodies.  I’m all for being hopeful and taking chances, but it’s not like we don’t have people in the industry you can directly speak to about making products like this at scale.  They could have easily identified the problems related to cortex dolls before CJ got so far into the project.

The fact is, we like slush cast vinyl dolls.  I am sure that some people want a cheaper alternative or don’t care about the feel of the material, but most of us do.  Volks definitely had the technology available to produce hard abs/plastic bodies for 1/3 scale dolls, but went with vinyl for a reason.  It feels very nice to hold and has beautiful specularity.  Otherwise, the cost for a really nice small hard doll like an Azone Pure Neemo is high just because of the materials involved.  They’re also lovely to hold and they’ve got weight to them.  I love the vinyl doll hobby because our dolls are meant to be played with, not just put on a shelf and admired, so touch is a huge part of it.

People who have never owned a vinyl doll before won’t know that.  Especially if they come from western fashion dolls, even very high end ones (and CJ has often pushed the idea that SMD is a fashion doll).  But the existing market of people who do already own vinyl dolls does know this, because we already own dolls.  It’s reasonable for CJ to try and gain access to new markets, but with his reporting of his numbers, it seems like maybe SMD isn’t super popular in Japan.  That makes sense, because there are many, many competitors for it there, whereas in the west, it’s pretty much obitsu, Volks, and SMD.  The discontinuation of the milk tone is another piece of that.  As much as being aggressive toward western customers, it’s also really aggressive toward Japanese ones, who are a big market for light skinned dolls for various reasons.

It feels like we’re being told “you’ll buy what I tell you to buy” in terms of dolls rather than “I want you to have the doll that you want within reason.”  This community is founded on customization.  That’s what the hobby is, but SMD doesn’t even offer a full custom service like Dollfie Dream Choice, which you would expect if the company was going to be so territorial about option parts and blank heads.  And there seems to be some wild attitude about even giving a SMD girl a new faceup, which is very confusing because these are supposed to be standard issue dolls.  There is not a compelling IP behind their stories, so you would therefore assume that most people who buy are expecting to make the doll into whatever they feel is correct for that doll (like Baldylox’s new Sheryl loving gardening and mori).  New faceups are part of that.

It almost feels like SMD has absolutely lost all touch with what the anime vinyl doll community was about in the first place, what we want, what we like, what we’re interested in.

I want to love smart doll, but I am sincerely concerned about the company’s future.  It seems like they may be hoping for a Hail Mary of western licensing, and a magical western market that isn’t complicated by the wants of anime vinyl doll buyers.  SMD wants to increase the margin on the dolls that they make.  That makes perfect sense, but the truth is, all of these high end toys and figures have a low margin to begin with, because of the time and care that goes into making a luxury product.  People don’t want it unless it’s nice, but making it nice costs money.

 

 

Phew! Managed to snag cinnamon hand pack 3 (still in stock, by the way) and a couple of other items too. (Discontinuing hand pack 3 was a nasty surprise, and out of the blue too. It's one of the two hand packs that I really like!) What comes to milk parts, I made that order as soon as I heard he was going to discontinue milk skin tone. Yes, he did promise that those parts would be available until Christmas, but to be honest with you, I didn't believe it for one second. I mean, Danny Choo selling something that is going to be discontinued on his web site for about six months?! Pffft, no way! XD Too many things can happen in Smartdoll Land during that time.

I'm more unhappy about the cortex situation. I wanted to actually sew and practice wig making for SmD. And vinyl, that will be stained from looking at it isn't my first choice. But to purchase a chaos Cortex set - I need to firstly purchase the whole doll. I don't want cortex because it's cheaper, I'm happy to pay a full price of a final vinyl  doll for the cortex chaos kit, only because that's my preferred shell. 

When I think of discontinued resin colors in bjd, I see it as a regular practice to change resin tone into "new tan" or "new dark". So clients are left in situation, when color matching can be a real pain. So fact of discontinuation of some tone isn't something that surprises me. What surprises me is choice of cutting the most popular tone. Unless he maybe is planning to get a new pale tone, but more pink or peach so they won't match in undertones with DD haha 

 

Yeah, I also hadn’t ordered any milk parts yet because I knew I couldn’t get them without making my first smart doll purchase, which I had intended to do in the next few weeks until I encountered the AP Mona and bought it immediately.  I will often buy option parts and things for dolls I don’t have yet if I know they’re in limited supply, but I didn’t really have that option with smart doll.  I guess I came back to the hobby at a bad time for SMD.  And discontinuation of tones is reasonable to expect, definitely, but like you said, it doesn’t make sense to discontinue the most popular tone.

@gabihime -- sort of...

Im sort of bouncing around to talk about the failure of cortex either in this or the cortex thread, but...

Food for thought, injection molding only really thrives when done in vast ammounts of quantity. for reference's sake I found a calculator online and some ballpark numbers into it, so there is room for error but enough to figure the rough cost side per produced unit out a bit.

the calculated costs I got for a run of 200 pressings, was 135$ per pressed runner. (~27k$ total)

500 sqeezes the cost to 57$ per runner. (~29k$ total)

5000 and its under 10$ per runner. (~47k$ total)

100 is a whopping 267$ per runner, so it seems the minimum this factory would charge is about 27000$ for your product in any case.

So in cortexes case it might have been a case of beeing lured in by "production costs as low as" statements, and I dont really see the company shifting the required ammount of product to make those numbers work in favor of profit margins.

SmD's lack of popularity in japan might be due to the fact that at the end of the day its a foreign thing on the home land front... also I doubt that the japanese customer base is too keen on reading instagram posts where Senpai goes on about roughly in the lines of "I adore wabisabi, but Japanese just want everything perfect" even if it was meant as snarky commentary of orders past gone wrong.

--

Also I am scratching my head with the statements about over worked workers ... isnt that usually a point where you hire new talent in? This is something I just dont get, unless there is some scheming behind this as well -- did already peer into taxation, but that seems to come into play at 50 or so employees.

Edited September 28, 2020 by finnleo

Yeah Finnleo.  I’ve never had to manufacture something at scale, but I do know some figures from scale produced toy lines.  I remember reading somewhere that each new pair of shoes created for monster high or ever after high by Mattel cost about 20K in development costs, which is why when Barbie was hemorrhaging profits so badly in the playline, it was successful franchises which were also cut back hard.  That led to a dip in quality and ultimately the dissipation of consumer confidence and finally interest in the brands.

I do think it’s a situation where stuff just wasn’t considered very well.  How could it not be understood how time consuming they were going to be to assemble, especially if you ramped up production to produce them as an unlimited line at a lower cost?  I think the sunk cost fallacy might be in play here too, throwing good money after bad.  I think it would have been great if the cortex line had succeeded.  Whatever, awesome, new dolls.  Not all dolls need to be made for me personally lol.

And yes.  The comment about staff being overworked was also something Duriel and I talked about, and he noted that CJ/Danny is acting like the only constraints on his being able to produce a million beautiful dolls is how overworked his staff are, but you can hire more staff to meet demand.  Not doing that is irresponsible as a business owner.  Customers are not the people who decide the amount of hours people work.  Even if new staff needed a training period, you could train them.  That’s what companies do.  There is a labor pool available.  But it seems like CJ does not want to hire additional staff, just complain that customers are buying too many products?

I get you on the lack of appeal to japanese customers.  Also, although the clothes for smart doll are nice, they’re also sort of very generic fashion clothes.  Not like the moe aesthetic of Azone and Volks DD clothing at all, but also nothing like actual Japanese street fashion of any kind.  Azone and Volks both produce a lot of designs for vinyl dolls that are basically moe versions of street clothes.  Basic clothes, even ones that are well made, are pretty boring and probably not that exciting for Japanese customers of anime dolls.  We want aprons and school uniforms and maid outfits lol.  It’s more of the “what market is this really intended for” question.

24 minutes ago, Gabihime said:

I do think it’s a situation where stuff just wasn’t considered very well.  How could it not be understood how time consuming they were going to be to assemble, especially if you ramped up production to produce them as an unlimited line at a lower cost?  I think the sunk cost fallacy might be in play here too, throwing good money after bad.  I think it would have been great if the cortex line had succeeded.  Whatever, awesome, new dolls.  Not all dolls need to be made for me personally lol.

There's a few things that can go wrong quickly despite the best of intentions... I recall a documentry about the cost of Lego molds, what I heard was quoted to be 20k euros for the cost of the basic brick mold (subtitles only quoted 2k€), but that cost came from the mold having to be of the highest tolerance possible (since lego tolerances are actually insane if you think about it from a toy perspective). So if they cheaped out with the molds thinking it wouldnt matter, this could have come back biting them with fitment issues and unforseen warpage in just a few perticular parts (that was actually quoted in the bags as a possible failure point), taking extra time to sort out.

And volume calculations is another... If say they thought they would sell 200 dolls of a color palette of 5, thats 1000 sets of parts, but the kicker is the factory might have still charged production rates of 200 because of the color change between sets. so again you thought you got a deal for 1000 but instead something else.

 

43 minutes ago, Gabihime said:

Also, although the clothes for smart doll are nice, they’re also sort of very generic fashion clothes.  Not like the moe aesthetic of Azone and Volks DD clothing at all, but also nothing like actual Japanese street fashion of any kind.

mm, as far as the clothings go ... I only frequent flickr, and the actual japanese posters there seem to do the casual cute thing too (at least notably bottlefairy that seems to have taken over for azure toybox ... oh I feel old now all of a sudden). Though i will admit that dolls can be a form of escapism, hence the fantasy cosplay thing is very prominent too.

Volks and Azone as far as I remember have had both a casual and fantasy line of clothing going for them... in SmD's case its again a choise of just sticking to the casual side of things... (because senpai?). So in this sense if you have a choise between a company that you know is japanese (despite azone openly admitting production for clothes in vietnam), would you chose that, or the company you might not like to deal with (or is difficult to deal with in some circuimstances, as in no smd, no sale for you).

Aaaaah I think I wasn’t maybe clear enough when I was talking about japanese street fashion.  What I was saying is that smart doll doesn’t have any official goods in Japanese alternative fashion street styles, like lolita, fairy kei, mori, (Even gyaru) etc.  It only has stuff that feels like design wise it could have come from most Western shopping malls.  I’m not really talking so much about cosplay here, and this is coming from someone whose entire wardrobe comes from alternative Japanese fashions lol.  Volks and Azone do make cute casual clothes, but a lot of them are basically anime versions of alternative street fashion, whether it’s ruffly pastel dresses, the classic one piece over a pannier, a bunch of layered mori things etc.  I don’t wear the kinds of clothes that are in the smart doll shop, at all.  But I do wear clothes that are very similar to the ones that Azone and Volks produces.  Many people Who collect dolls are fans of Japanese fashion and embrace it for their dolls, because Kawaii is king, and jfashion is generally very kawaii.  Some people have dreams of wearing it themselves but can’t for whatever reason, and so do live vicariously through their dolls.  But this lack of really punchy design sense for clothing is challenging for SMD.  You can always buy clothes from other brands, but then fit is also an issue.  I think the styles of clothes available indicate that the clothing director for CJ either isn’t very familiar with alternative Japanese fashion or simply doesn’t like it.  That’s another thing to put up there with the idea that it’s ultimately a western brand.

2 hours ago, finnleo said:

So in this sense if you have a choise between a company that you know is japanese

Certainly in the US we have this same phenomena, and “Buy American“ is something a lot of folks have held to for decades. Japanese auto brands got a boost when they moved factories to the US for local production, and Lexus is now the number one auto brand in the US.

 

3 hours ago, Gabihime said:

but you can hire more staff to meet demand.

Speculation here, but his issue might be that his demand isn't high enough throughout the year to justify additional hires. His antics could potentially be costing him customers faster than he can add them. It's too easy for people to do web searches for product info on a $600 toy, and modern word of mouth about customer service BS goes global at near light speed.

58 minutes ago, Gabihime said:

Aaaaah I think I wasn’t maybe clear enough when I was talking about japanese street fashion.  What I was saying is that smart doll doesn’t have any official goods in Japanese alternative fashion street styles, like lolita, fairy kei, mori, (Even gyaru) etc.  It only has stuff that feels like design wise it could have come from most Western shopping malls.  I’m not really talking so much about cosplay here, and this is coming from someone whose entire wardrobe comes from alternative Japanese fashions lol.  Volks and Azone do make cute casual clothes, but a lot of them are basically anime versions of alternative street fashion, whether it’s ruffly pastel dresses, the classic one piece over a pannier, a bunch of layered mori things etc.  I don’t wear the kinds of clothes that are in the smart doll shop, at all.  But I do wear clothes that are very similar to the ones that Azone and Volks produces.  Many people Who collect dolls are fans of Japanese fashion and embrace it for their dolls, because Kawaii is king, and jfashion is generally very kawaii.  Some people have dreams of wearing it themselves but can’t for whatever reason, and so do live vicariously through their dolls.  But this lack of really punchy design sense for clothing is challenging for SMD.  You can always buy clothes from other brands, but then fit is also an issue.  I think the styles of clothes available indicate that the clothing director for CJ either isn’t very familiar with alternative Japanese fashion or simply doesn’t like it.  That’s another thing to put up there with the idea that it’s ultimately a western brand.

I honestly wonder if part of this is because of Danny's personal tastes. While he likes anime and tiny bits of kawaii-styled fashion, he doesn't seem to be much into the other Japanese alternative fashions. For the most part, he likes slightly futuristic, or dystopian themes. He also like showing off the doll's body, which means he likes to just give them really form-fitting, tight, plain clothing. Also the (really bad) stories he writes for his dolls all seem to primarily have them in day-to-day, slice of life, lifestyles. Azone and Volks aren't afraid to step more into the fantasy side of things and seem more likely to expand on the more fun styles of clothing. Most of it is also probably because of the fact that he's from... England, correct? I think? Either way, he has a western point of view. There's no emphasis on Kawaii Culture unless you're literally into that kind of thing. 

Also for some reason I do see a looooot of people who do just dress their dolls in really normal looking clothing. They look like just people you'd find on the street, and a lot of the Minifees (Resin) I see are just dressed like Instagirls for some reason. It might also be that that type of clothing is in higher demand. I do really think they should have more Japanese Alternative Fashion choices based on the fact that... you know... they're in Japan. 

Oh man, the trouble with fitting clothes in just an overall problem in both the Vinyl and Resin sides of the community because of how many different body types there are now. SmD is so specific. I found that even the TTYA clothing that I ordered that is specifically modeled for SmD actually doesn't even fit them totally right. (The pants have a waistline that's too low, so when she sits her buttcrack shows. And the waistline was also too loose.)

I agree with your point about because they’re in Japan lol.  Yeah, I know a lot of people do put their dolls in casual stuff and do slice of life, especially in the west.  I’m assuming though that for the Japanese market, the clothes made by Azone and Volks are what people generally want to buy.  I mean, even Liccachan has ridiculously cute clothes, much more so than say, a similar fashion doll playline in the west.  It also happens to be what I want to buy too.  That’s why I like things from Japan in the first place ahahaha.  In that way, it does again feel like a mismatch.  It wouldn’t be so stark if he were headquartered in London making only semi real dolls.  I do think the clothes and stories are to his personal tastes, which is ok.  He can make whatever he wants, I just speculate that it’s another reason why SMD maybe doesn’t have as many Japanese customers.

Doesn't the cost factor in too? I am not completely familiar with Volks and Azones clothing costs, in general, compared to SmartDoll (other than you won't have to pay a ridiculous price for one basic clothing article).

1 hour ago, Gabihime said:

What I was saying is that smart doll doesn’t have any official goods in Japanese alternative fashion street styles, like lolita, fairy kei, mori, (Even gyaru) etc.  It only has stuff that feels like design wise it could have come from most Western shopping malls.

I need to confess this gave me a rather sudden flashback out of Kamikaze girls ... so this probably makes culture japan the Jusco of doll fashion ... urgh.. must.. resist...rewatch... temptation.

I don't mind the casual clothes as much (although I personally tend towards fantasy-ish stuff), but the fact that I could buy a whole high-quality Volks outfit for the same cost as like one pair of SmD jeans or a single top irks me. And Volks stuff isn't cheap, either.

For comparison: a pair of blue jeans on Volks USA costs about $24, while a similar pair on the SmD store costs $89 (not factoring in shipping to me from Japan). If I really wanted "realistic" ripped/worn jeans, it'd be way cheaper to just take a bit of sandpaper to the Volks ones and "wear" them myself. Or I could get an entire outfit set like this with a top, an outer top, bottoms and accessories for $79.

Anyway re: skintones. He could make another light skin tone that doesn't match Volks if he really wanted to. Maybe he could just come out with a pure white one and market it as albino if he really wants to play the diversity card? 

1 hour ago, monkeypizzasonic said:

 

Anyway re: skintones. He could make another light skin tone that doesn't match Volks if he really wanted to. Maybe he could just come out with a pure white one and market it as albino if he really wants to play the diversity card? 

This is literally why I needed a Milk doll for Shura. They are actually an Albino character and the Cinnamon was WAY too dark for them. I tried to be satisfied with the cinnamon doll I bought and just couldn't do it because it didn't look right. At all. (I'm lucky I managed to snag another Milk girl.)

You can bet that if he came up with another pale skintone (Maybe calling it Snow or something other than Milk, or even saying that it's the "New and improved Milk!") that people would be aaalll over it. 

I definitely also think that his anti-modding stance realllly hurt the company in Japan. The Japanese community is very closely adjacent to that of model-building. Japanese fans are more into buying dolls that are customized perfectly to their tastes, from what I've seen. And with all that Danny has done to discourage the modding/customization side of the hobby..That, along with Volks loyalty, and character designs/faces which are more suited to a western/instagram sense of style rather than a cute/moe one...  i'm not surprised that his dolls are not more popular in Japan.

Just imagine if he sold blank heads of his sculpts, that you could choose. that ALONE could energize the customization community... fans are a lot more excited to pay an aftermarket premium if artists can make and sell OOAK heads easily...

Yeah, I would love an Albino skin tone.  I love WS girls.  Although technically only one of my girls has semi albinism, several of them incredibly fair, probably because I am incredibly fair.  I legitimately look like the terror of the cemetery.  People are tempted to throw holy water on me.  I am probably actually a vampire.