Volks USA announces price increase and scheduled closing

Personally, between general inflation and weak USD against JPY, I'm surprised it took this long.

This is what makes the most sense to me. I find the "country average income" argument to be an interesting but curious one. If that was something done all the time I wonder how things would be different.

To put the percentage argument another way, you can look at just your own income if you like. Whatever you make (exact amount doesn't matter), you can afford dolls right now. But you could, and should, be able to afford more than you currently do. If I remember you've said before that new to this hobby so you wouldn't know, but there was a time only a few years ago when VolksUSA cost slightly more than International (if you ignored EMS shipping). Tohsaka Rin was about $510 from international; $528 when I bought her from VolksUSA. VolksUSA just never adjusted their prices from that level as the exchange rate got worse and worse.

 

The dollar/yen exchange rate hovering in the upper 70s is an anomaly / aberration / incorrect from a consumer prices standpoint. In order for the same handful of dollars to buy roughly the same products (on average) in both Japan and the US, I estimate you'd need an exchange rate of ~115 yen/dollar. Based only on my personal experience and nothing scientific . As it is today, the same dollars won't buy you the same meal in both countries; the Japanese meal is going to be way more expensive. There are macroeconomic reasons why the exchange rate is as it is and hasn't gotten unstuck from its rut, but that doesn't mean the rate is justified as what products "should" cost.

 

That extends to Dollfie Dream. The doll that is 59K yen "should" cost about $530 for it to be a roughly equivalent bite out of someone's finances. Up to just over $600 like Rise Kujikawa is still acceptable, although not great. $776 (or $811 like Sakura Shinguuji) is terrible. Nobody wants to pay $776 for a $530 item (before the secondary market even enters the equation). VolksUSA tried to keep prices reasonable for US buyers for two years, but now.. the exchange rate has way overpriced DD at retail.

 

As I said before, I can understand why the price hike was done.. ..I just hope VolksUSA lowers prices later when the exchange rate fixes itself.

This is what makes the most sense to me. I find the "country average income" argument to be an interesting but curious one. If that was something done all the time I wonder how things would be different.

To put the percentage argument another way, you can look at just your own income if you like. Whatever you make (exact amount doesn't matter), you can afford dolls right now. But you could, and should, be able to afford more than you currently do. If I remember you've said before that new to this hobby so you wouldn't know, but there was a time only a few years ago when VolksUSA cost slightly more than International (if you ignored EMS shipping). Tohsaka Rin was about $510 from international; $528 when I bought her from VolksUSA. VolksUSA just never adjusted their prices from that level as the exchange rate got worse and worse.

 

The dollar/yen exchange rate hovering in the upper 70s is an anomaly / aberration / incorrect from a consumer prices standpoint. In order for the same handful of dollars to buy roughly the same products (on average) in both Japan and the US, I estimate you'd need an exchange rate of ~115 yen/dollar. Based only on my personal experience and nothing scientific . As it is today, the same dollars won't buy you the same meal in both countries; the Japanese meal is going to be way more expensive. There are macroeconomic reasons why the exchange rate is as it is and hasn't gotten unstuck from its rut, but that doesn't mean the rate is justified as what products "should" cost.

 

That extends to Dollfie Dream. The doll that is 59K yen "should" cost about $530 for it to be a roughly equivalent bite out of someone's finances. Up to just over $600 like Rise Kujikawa is still acceptable, although not great. $776 (or $811 like Sakura Shinguuji) is terrible. Nobody wants to pay $776 for a $530 item (before the secondary market even enters the equation). VolksUSA tried to keep prices reasonable for US buyers for two years, but now.. the exchange rate has way overpriced DD at retail.

 

As I said before, I can understand why the price hike was done.. ..I just hope VolksUSA lowers prices later when the exchange rate fixes itself.

 

 

 

Your fallacy is ofcourse as i have stated in a previous post, there are people willing to pay 700-800 for a dd in the US. They are driven to the international market because they can't win the us lottery. Your point of no body wanting to pay for a lesser item doesn't apply here since people value dd's differently. Volks sees this, and assuming production size stays the same, they lose nothing except gain some more profit. Heck they can always just chose to sell the dd's in japan only, it will still sell out. Also this income thing again means nothing, a car in some poor countries cost twice to three times what it cost in the us, does it mean their disposable income is higher than the us, no. I remember when rin was up for lottery, the exchange rate back then was still significant because my fate was alot cheaper than international price. The disparity causes two issues for volks; Selling a product lower than what it can sell for and denial of products to intended market due to proxying from outside. They decided to fix it, so be it. It's good to save some money but I'm pretty sure most will agree that the acceptable ceiling for a dd at release is the original price of it's home market.

I'm not sure where you got your numbers, but here are the numbers I found:

 

The average household income in Japan was only 5,475,000 yen for 2009-2010, according to the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare. Source: http://www.mhlw.go.jp/english/wp/wp-hw4/01.html

 

The median household income in the USA was $50,022 for 2009-2010, according to the United States Census Bureau. Source: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/statistics/index.html

 

The percent of income is not that different. Rise (59,000 yen) would be 1.08% of your average Japanese household's yearly income. At $811, she'd be 1.62% of your median American household's yearly income.

 

[Please note: Japan uses averages and the US uses medians, so even these numbers are not an accurate comparison to one another. Average and median are different numbers. Without the raw data, it's impossible to say if the Japanese median would be above or below the US median.]

 

I don't think it's necessarily correct to compare "disposable" income, because you don't know how the US calculates that number or how Japan calculates that number, and if they're using the same method or not. What they include as "non-disposable" income can very greatly, and have a huge impact on the numbers, so without knowing that information you really can't claim it's an apples-to-apples comparison.

 

However, percentages don't actually matter (in my opinion). Just because your average American might earn a little less doesn't mean the product costs any less to design, manufacture, and ship. It doesn't mean the company needs any less income to function. There's no reason price should be tied to a country's average income at all.

 

(By the way #1: The 11,380 number was pulled from a table that says: In billions of dollars (5,801 represents $5,801,000,000,000). So the 11,380 number means there are 11,380 BILLION dollars of disposable personal income for the entire country. Not $11,380 per person per year.)

 

(By the way #2: I finally tracked down the source of the 6,248,304 yen number -- it comes from a survey of only 9,000 households (all with two working adults) in Japan, and is not representative of the average household income for the entire country.)

 

And this is where I apologize for having pulled together numbers too quickly while using pain meds. I appreciate you going to the work of adjusting things.

 

I was trying to refer to SakuraSylph's comments about relative cost, not about my feelings on the cost increase. I don't want Volks to lose money, and I would rather they increase the cost in the US store than on the international site.

 

I was looking at the annual median wage instead of the median income and I referred to it incorrectly. I flipped the correction of the phrase when I was reading through it. The annual median wage was $26,364, which is definitely different than the median income.

 

On the Japanese stats, the English website of the Japanese statistics bureau doesn't mention the sample size. And so, with me being stupid, I assumed it was calculated similarly to the US'. It took me checking on what you said to find this confirmed in Japanese, which Google Translate crudely converted to:

 

Statistics show how household income has declined

December 15, 2011

The Government's Household economy surveys Have Shown That Households Are Cutting back on Their Savings and Consumption Due to the Lowering Household Income in the eleven years BETWEEN 2,000 and 2 010. In this Survey, the Income and expenditures of nine thousand Households Are Calculated every Month. Here, Working with more than two people a Household is Surveyed for the eleven years, Calculating the Average monthly Income and expenditures, and the Savings rate. In eleven THESE years, the total monthly Income of the Household DECLINED by 42,062 Yen 562,754 Yen to 520,692 Yen from . The Household head's Income Fell by 43,008 Yen, and the spouse's Income Increased by 3,168 Yen but was FAR short of Making Up the Loss of the Household head's Loss of Income. Consumption expenditures DECLINED from 341,896 Yen to 318,315 Yen, a Decrease of 23,581 Yen , and the Average Savings rate dropped from 18.6% to 17.9%. THESE statistics Suggest a picture of a Household in which a Husband's Income DECLINED SO His Wife Sought a new Income source which was Still not sufficient to make Up for the Income Loss, SO they were obliged to spend less and withdraw their savings bit by bit.

 

So, I'm sorry I did some poor number crunching. And I hope I didn't offend you too badly.

 

Personally I'm not offended at all. It is the first time that I have heard this certain slant on how a business should or shouldn't increase costs and I've been finding it a lot of fun.

 

~Sister Kyoya

Your fallacy is ofcourse as i have stated in a previous post, there are people willing to pay 700-800 for a dd in the US. They are driven to the international market because they can't win the us lottery. Your point of no body wanting to pay for a lesser item doesn't apply here since people value dd's differently. Volks sees this, and assuming production size stays the same, they lose nothing except gain some more profit. Heck they can always just chose to sell the dd's in japan only, it will still sell out. Also this income thing again means nothing, a car in some poor countries cost twice to three times what it cost in the us, does it mean their disposable income is higher than the us, no. I remember when rin was up for lottery, the exchange rate back then was still significant because my fate was alot cheaper than international price. The disparity causes two issues for volks; Selling a product lower than what it can sell for and denial of products to intended market due to proxying from outside. They decided to fix it, so be it. It's good to save some money but I'm pretty sure most will agree that the acceptable ceiling for a dd at release is the original price of it's home market.

 

Yes, there are some that are driven to the international market (by basic laws of supply and demand), though I don't necessarily buy the argument of Volks trying to gain a little more profit out of the price increase. If anything, it should cost more for Volks to sell DDs in the United States due to the additional overhead of having a physical store (probably not high volume), needing to ship stock overseas, and sharing revenue with resellers (like Kerbey Lane and We Love Dolls). This business model may have made sense when the dollar was stronger than the yen (remember the 120 yen/USD days?) but with the weakened relationship between Yen and USD, the overhead will take larger chunks out of the gained revenue.

 

Apparently Volks views the US market as lucrative enough to maintain this level of business relationship and wants to maintain it. The only way to do so while maintaining a decent income over the bottom line is to raise prices. I've always found it interesting that Volks doesn't have similar business models in other countries, but instead rely on the "international" site run from Japan.

 

It's also interesting that you bring up the example of cars. In my view, that comment justifies the price increase in another way. It's not really to "lock out" sections of consumers, but is purely a matter of the cost of doing business in that particular region. Even if you look at the US auto market, imported vehicles are typically more expensive than domestically produced ones. Your typical Toyota is outpriced by a similar offering from Chevrolet or Ford (lets leave quality aside for now).

 

In other regions, there may be higher import tariffs imposed on goods from other nations, which need to be paid somewhere. The manufacturer usually won't eat these costs out of goodwill, but will rather be passed on to the consumer as a price increase. Even if the consumer were to import the good directly, they still have to pay those taxes to the government.

Didn't know they were doing that >.> Well I hope they are restocked when they come back. It would be kind of awkward to change all the prices on things and not even have them in stock. I know the USA store has no control over when they get stuff, I just hope they get some DD base bodies

Maybe I should take up gardening instead.

:'( Maybe I should take up gardening instead.

I dunno gardening can be expensive too. My husband and I have already spent hundreds or maybe even as much as a thousand dollars on our landscaping and we're nowhere near done yet. Plant prices add up too

:'( Maybe I should take up gardening instead.

I dunno gardening can be expensive too. My husband and I have already spent hundreds or maybe even as much as a thousand dollars on our landscaping and we're nowhere near done yet. Plant prices add up too

Plus with DD you can choose when to stop putting money into them ... I think.

 

~Sister Kyoya

:'( Maybe I should take up gardening instead.

I dunno gardening can be expensive too. My husband and I have already spent hundreds or maybe even as much as a thousand dollars on our landscaping and we're nowhere near done yet. Plant prices add up too

 

Sister K is totally right. my mom is a gardening obsessive, has been her whole life, and i know that what i've spent on DDs does not even compare to what she has spent over the years.

 

who knew gardeners were so hardcore?

who knew gardeners were so hardcore?

Oh man, I just had a horrifying picture pop up in my head of a champion bodybuilder flexing in the middle of his garden in tiny underwear, gardening gloves, and an old lady's straw hat.

 

My eyes, they burn!

 

~Sister Kyoya

so... that would be a Hard GAYdener?

 

yeah, i know, i should be PUNished for trying to say that....sigh.

 

anyway, to actually be on topic, i just ordered some spare MDD hands from Volks USA >.< does anyone know if the price was already raised an i missed out, or did i just get a sweet deal because they weren't raised yet? i have not read every page in this thread, sorry orz.

so... that would be a Hard GAYdener?

 

yeah, i know, i should be PUNished for trying to say that....sigh.

 

anyway, to actually be on topic, i just ordered some spare MDD hands from Volks USA >.< does anyone know if the price was already raised an i missed out, or did i just get a sweet deal because they weren't raised yet? i have not read every page in this thread, sorry orz.

That image will be burned in my mind for a few days...

 

If I remember right it was Aug. 15-20 when they were going to close the store, but I could be wrong.

 

~Sister Kyoya

anyway, to actually be on topic, i just ordered some spare MDD hands from Volks USA >.< does anyone know if the price was already raised an i missed out, or did i just get a sweet deal because they weren't raised yet? i have not read every page in this thread, sorry orz.

Here are the dates for when new prices will take place

Web Store

Closed from August 15th @11:00AM PST

Reopen with New Pricing from August 22nd @11:00AM PST

Tenshi-no-Sumika in Los Angeles

Closed on Saturday, August 18th and Sunday, August 19th

Reopen with New Pricing from Saturday, August 25th

thanks innocent! now i wish i'd ordered some more things than i did at this point tbh.

This does make me wonder if anyone would want to do a "last hurrah" volksusa GO?

While I don't like seeing the increase, I'd rather see it than the store close.

thanks innocent! now i wish i'd ordered some more things than i did at this point tbh.

No problem! You could always still order something by today or before the end of tomorrow since this is the last weekend for the old prices.

 

While I don't like seeing the increase, I'd rather see it than the store close.

I definitely agree with this. It has been really interesting reading all the discussion going on in this thread! But in the end if they had to raise their prices to be more in line with Volks Japan prices then that is how it is going to be. Like you Zukin, I would rather pay a little more for items than having them close the store in Torrance.

 

Being an hour away from store I like being able to go there, chat with the employees, and pick up anything I need (that's in stock) in person. Plus I can inspect things in the store to make sure there are no defects. Even though it has taken so long, I'm still happy I was able to purchase Saber Nero through Volks USA. Once she finally arrives at the store I'll be able to go there and go over her in person. And should there be any breaks they can replace the part or order it right away if they don't have it on hand.

 

In the end we love this hobby so we'll do what we can to support it

I went ahead and ordered some hands for Cirno. Was going to hold off for a while longer but this bit of news made me pull the trigger.

Was surprised they let Volks USA get away with such low prices for so long o.o

 

If I'm honest and I'd say pretty much everyone here that lives outside the US, were at least a little annoyed by the massive difference in price in what they had to pay on the international site and what they charged in the US. ^^; If you live in Europe then you were expected to pay about €650 ($800) for a Saber Alter ver 2, then €60 for shipping, and then another €170 for customs charges bringing it to a total of €880 ($1,080) T_T While someone in the states paid about $682 with cheaper shipping and no customs that I know of.

 

Even with the increase though I think the US will be getting a very good deal with cheaper shipping and very little to no customs so it's not all bad.

nooooo, they should at least offer a cheaper shipping option for small stuff like hands and what not though...

nooooo, they should at least offer a cheaper shipping option for small stuff like hands and what not though...

I agree with this I wanted to order the second DD book when it came out but it was like 20$ with 18$ shipping using the cheapest option they had ; ; I had to wait till I could justify the shipping cost XD

I can easily buy stuff from Volks at their retail location, but it's a bit of a drive...

I don't think the price change so far seems significantly drastic; however, with any product that is sold internationally, the price has to reflect on local region's standard of living which I believe several other posters in this thread has touched on.

 

A good example is the price differences in video game consoles.

 

Current Playstation 3 160GB (as of this post and exchange rate)

Japan: 24,980 yen (~$315.41 USD)

USA: $249.99

EU: 249.99 euros (~311.79 USD)

 

As long as VolksUSA does not increase their prices to match the going rate in Japan or Europe, it should be fairly reasonable given the economic climate.

 

Yukino 2nd Version

Japan: 44,100 yen (~556.82)

Old USA Price: $462

New USA Price: $508