Dollfie Dream Prepares You to Live in Japan

One thing I've thought about recently is that learning how to buy DDs from Volks ended up being pretty good preparation for living in Japan.

 

That is to say, way back when I started into the doll world by adopting my first DD, the whole lottery model for limited edition DDs was a tad mystifying. Why would a company clamp down on sales so much? Don't they want to sell their goods to anyone willing to pay their steep asking price? How can they stay in business with such a complicated way to make a purchase? Those kinds of questions were things I asked myself. You don't see anything like it from US companies, where I grew up, and even the Japanese companies I'd bought from before (those who shipped overseas) were just first-come first-served until Item X sold out.

 

But, despite how strange a concept it was, I learned how to navigate the Volks lottery, learned what was expected and required.

 

Well, now that I've been in Japan for a little while, I can say that I'm glad I did. And not just for Dollfie reasons. See, what was nearly unfathomable in the States turns out to be awfully common here in Japan. Yes, that's right, we have lotteries for DDs, for presale concert tickets, for handshake events, and heck, even for anime merchandise in the convenience store. I've entered, won, and lost lotteries for so many things just since being here already. Knowing what to expect from DD experience made it easier to dive right in and take advantage of other lotteries with confidence, something I might not otherwise have been able to do right away after my plane landed.

 

So, it turns out that Volks is just following common business practices here in Japan. And all the experience you're getting with the various ways to enter for limited DDs is preparing you to know exactly what to expect if you stay here for any length of time. Who knew!

That's not really what happens only in Japan/Volks though. I mean, I haven't seen anyone else do lotteries, per-se, but almost every company and almost all the artists who sell their dolls individually have a set number of limiteds and it's first-come first-serve. It still probably cuts down from profit you could have made have you put them as 'limited time' instead of 'limited number'.

Business is not all about profit, it's also making your products desirable. You can achieve that in many ways and making it a limited edition for a selected few only is one of them. And that's not only just about one doll. When it becomes a habit, people will start following you closely to know of any new updates you'll have on new limiteds and you also start getting a lot of people who will want your product to re-sell it for a higher price, since you'll be a popular company by then with many followers who will want your hard-to-get products.

What I mean to say by all this is just, I don't think it's really a strange concept. ^ ^ It's all about making their business and products more desirable.