Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner spoke to CNBC and Yahoo Finance yesterday, regarding the future of the company. Among the discussion points was the mitigation and contingency plan for the eventual US tariff increase to be imposed to toys manufactured in China.
As a temporary solution Hasbro is planning to pass-on the price increase to the customer and therefore safeguading the retailers.
“We’re having conversations with our retailers and of course we will pass along those costs.”
The company hopes to “effectively pass on those costs” by mitigating the margin internally. But “ultimately, [they] will be borne by the consumer over time.”
In long term, Hasbro is planning to make changes to the products to reduce the cost.
“With time, you can redesign and redevelop your product lines with those tariffs in mind…“
Hasbro is taking action to shift as much production out of China to other countries as possible ahead of this holiday season. About 67% of Hasbro’s merchandise is now sourced from China, down from 90% a few years back and 75% or so entering 2019. By the end of 2020, Goldner expects to have only 50% of Hasbro’s inventory reliant on China.
However, the toy giant is not planning to raise toy prices for the 2019 Holiday Season.
“We certainly want to ensure that we’re not raising prices on products right before the holidays. We would hope we would continue to have a productive dialogue and find other solutions to the situation.”
Increased tariffs will effect from December 15th onward.
Gamerlingual
Shut down. Sorry, guys.
GotBot
Not…slightly….shocked. Thanks Unicron suckers for helping feed the greed to justify business moves like this one. Gross.
Wyldmaxx
If the credit bubble pops then we will be in trouble.
Shmoptimus Prime
VOTE. PLEASE VOTE.
optimusbee
I will abandon my collection if I have to pay Hot Toys prices for a leader class figure.
Chaotic91
Cool, eventually deluxes will cost almost as much as high end figures like Figmas and S.H. Figuarts. At least those figures are worth what they go for and 20 dollars for deluxes is already too much as is.
Driftx3
I don't think people understand economics. If they did, nobody would support these tariffs. However, what people support has no bearing on what this administration does. Get ready to live in a worse economy than The Great Depression.
optimusbee
Would the retail costs stay the same if Hasbro sold their figures directly through Hasbro Pulse?
Rob
Yeah I agree, beyond “oh that stinks we have to pay more money” it’s pretty much impossible.
Blackout32
Well,….i figured it would 1 day go up in price. I'd love to see prices go down to the point of 80's prices. Then i woke up from my dream and screamed no please not those,….i love my figures.
SuperTitanHans
Not quite sure how it’s possible to fully discuss this topic without talking about the underlying politics/policy. You might as well lock the thread.
Red dragon 29
I’m sorry but Hasbro knows you’ll still buy because the unicron is a test to see if collectors will spend 700 cnd For it , so when the next titan comes you’ll see it will not cost 240 cnd it will be 500 because everyone was silly to pay for 700 for Unicron , and 20 cod toy that 30 now will be 40 !!!
Dachande
Had to do a good bit of clean up for rules violations:
3. No Politics, Religion or Abortion
This includes signatures, user titles and avatars. Political jokes and links to news stories with a political nature are also off limits.
Please, no more political talk outside of what is in the news story. Thia is a hot-button topic, so be assured that the thread will be watched to make sure everyone is abiding by the rules.
Carry on.
f-primusunicron
Funny given how tiny and insubstantial most studio series feel, and people still think dotm and foc are the only ones that show the recession,
Also didnt they recently say something about moving out of producing on china( and most of their factories were arleady in Vietnam or somethin since i dont remember when) also they increased way too much the studio series prices even when most figures arent that big or heavy compared to others…then they did it with other generations and such…so this sounds more like an excuse than anything else…
Minibots
Is this some kind of practical joke? Are they for real? A deluxe is already 20$ in the USA and 30$ in Canada. There’s no way the figures are worth more than what they are being sold now.
Neko-bot77
Well, good thing I'm only really interested in filling out my "g1 wish list" anymore… Price increase sucks but 'cost cutting' is scary considering QC issues and thinned out plastic already happening…
optimusbee
Are there more of these?
SuperTitanHans
Don’t do this. Nobody who works at Hasbro could possibly give any such assurance, and it’s uncomfortable to ask. It’s a business. They’ll do what they have/want to do and consumers will vote with their wallets.
Grand Slam
I wonder how many people who can’t scrape together $600 for Unicron are now armchair CFOs or macroeconomists in this thread.
Yes, China for manipulating currency and negatively impacting the entire western world’s workers and the environment at the same time. But those non-Transformers prices sure are important by comparison.