Re: help on Takarafans.com -- Planet Sabretron Discussion Board

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Date Posted: 7/05/05 16:00:28 GMT+10
Author: Goktimus Prime
Subject: Re: help on Takarafans.com
In reply to: Excelonzero 's message, "help on Takarafans.com" on 20/04/05 8:53:40 GMT+10

For more information about Takarafans.com, see this link.

Otherwise, here is a continuation of the discussion spawned from that thread:

"I don't understand why they don't have an english translated version or whole site. ??? I wonder what the sales figures are of Takara released TFs that leave Japan? It must be a reasonably large percentage?"

Obviously not large enough to justify an English version of the page. Takara markets their Transformers for the Japanese market, who are obviously the bulk of their market.

Remember that adult collectors are already a minority in terms of TF consumers (with the majority being children and their parents). So if you're talking about offshore adult collectors, you're looking at a minority within a minority.

During the late 90s, adult collectors represented less than 10% of Transformer collectors (that means 90% were kids). Unfortunately I've not been able to acquire any more TF marketing stats since then, but even if we were to optimistically presume that the number of adult collectors have doubled or even tripled in the last five years, we're still only looking at 20-30% of the market share.

This is why the main TF lines (Armadaverse, Robot Masters et al) are aimed at children and why adult-oriented lines like the Takara reissues and Binaltech are produced in limited quantities. Hasbro produced their G1 reissues in larger quantities and tried to co-target them at children; an endeavour which has since proven to be a mistake, now that Hasbro has had to cancel their G1 reissue line, and we're now seeing TRU slashing the prices of reissues to get rid of remaining stocks. This case alone proves that adult collectors are still a definite minority amongst TF consumers.

So what percentage of Transformer consumers would come from overseas? Say... 20%? If collectors alone represent 20% of the consumer market, and 20% of those are from offshore, then you're looking at just 4% of the consumer market. And that's based on the presumption that the number of adult collectors have doubled in the last 5 years. Even if our numbers have tripled, you'd be looking at just 9% of the overall market.

Now... would you expect a company to go through all the trouble and expense of running their market research in other languages simply to represent 4-9% of the consumer market?

Even if they did, the vast majority of overseas consumers for Japanese Transformers would be from neighbouring countries like South Korea, Taiwan, China/Hong Kong, Singapore etc. I'd say easily 80-90% of overseas sales would be done in neighbouring Asian countries. That would mean that only 10-20% of a 4-9% market share would actually go countries outside Asia. That would mean that even optimistically speaking, we're looking at 1.8% of sales going offshore to non-Asian countries.

The fact that Takara's packaging, instructions, legal text etc are always only in Japanese demonstrates that the vast majority of their sales are done in Japan. This is quite different from Hasbro, where a good proportion of their toys are sold in neighbouring countries, thus all their packaging etc are now done trilingually in English, Spanish and French. And even there, Hasbro's Transformer site is exclusively in English.

So... unless we're also going to push for Hasbro to have their site available in Spanish and French, I really don't see the justification behind insisting that Takara's site being in English.

Furthermore, I could imagine legal issues behind Takara marketing their products in English. When I spoke to Takara about flying over Ono Koujin as a special guest for Sabretron, he told me that anything they would do for Aussie fans would have to be done with the blessing of Hasbro Australia. This was because in Australia, the Transformers property is exclusively owned by Hasbro and Takara were adament that they would not step over Hasbro's rights. If Takara were to begin marketing their Transformers in English, it could be seen as co-marketing their products at consumers in English-speaking countries, which as we know, fall under the jurisdiction of Hasbro. This could be easily seen as Takara stepping over Hasbro's rights. The same could be said if Hasbro were to begin marketing their Transformers in Japanese as well. Takara usually releases a lot of Hasbro-exclusive Transformers domestically as TRU exclusives, that's how most Beast Machines figures were sold in Japan -- my Air Attack Optimus Primal comes from a Japanese TRU. But this is clearly done in concert with Hasbro, and the toys are in no way repackaged, merely with a legal blurb sticker on the bottom of the box. Hasbro Australia did something similar with the limited Target exclusive sale of MP Ultra Magnus. Again, this would've been done in cooperation with Takara, and as far as I know, MP UM was sold in his original Japanese packaging, merely with a legal blurb sticker in English pasted somewhere.

So really, the only time we'll ever see Takara or Hasbro marketing outside of the language of their primary niche market would be if they both decided to release a line together. This has never happened before, and I don't forsee it happening any time in the near future, primarily because each company would want to reserve the right to modify their toy and/or packaging to appeal to their respective markets. e.g.: Takara insists on creating die-cast metal Binaltechs, whilst Hasbro wants to make plastic Alternators. And if you thought European TF packaging looked 'crowded' with multiple languages on them, it'd only get more crowded if HasTak were to create one single line of packaging for all their Transformers in various European and Asian languages. Phew!

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Replies:

Takarafans.com - English translation -- Goktimus Prime, 10/05/05 5:17:20 GMT+10