Kapow!

[Kingoji]

Restocks of Airwave due the 24th. Hopefully that means I'll be seeing him and smokescreen before the month is out.

[Pinwig]

I don't think they're huge. Kapow have 44k likes on FB if that's any indication of reach. I think the guy who runs Star said they have five people working in the warehouse when they're at full capacity but through April/May he was running the show by himself. Star are much smaller than Kapow and don't have a retail shop.

ID have grown loads in the last few years and may be expanding too quickly to keep up with themselves. When they redid their website a few years ago it showed they were spreading a bit because it had become unusable. Kapow and ID have both upped their warehouse capacity in the last few years too, but ID still seem to go out of stock very quickly on most desirable items.

[Rich]

Bigger than I thought, but still pretty small.

[Pinwig]

Yes, not large in comparison to retail generally. They're still single shop/small business scale. I think Star said recently when they were working on getting through the glut of releases held up by covid that they were trying to get through around a thousand orders that would take a week, but that is obviously an extreme spike because of the situation and Hasbro dumping huge amounts of stock on them. Kapow have posted photos before of a full luton size lorry of Hasbro boxes arriving, which for them was a 'big' delivery.

[Rich]

I was just looking at Star’s FB posts after they were recommended in another thread and it mentioned 100 emails a day. I often get nearly that many as a head of year in a secondary school (thankfully I don’t get FB etc! though the kids have got a bit too used to messaging on Google classroom etc since Lockdown) and I have to teach 20 periods a week plus everything else. It does give a good sense of scale.

[browny87]

yeah, hes a real hoot is wayne on FB

[Pinwig]

I really don't get Facebook. I just checked in on the new Kapow news group and can only see dozens and dozens of posts saying THANKS FOR THE ADD with an apparently pinned post buried at the bottom of the list somewhere. Is there a way to filter that so it only shows the posts Kapow make? Otherwise it seems completely pointless.

[Llama God]

Yep, right now it seems utterly futile. This is exactly the sort of thing that should go on their Facebook page itself, and not memes. Just ridiculous.

[Dezzeh]

The group is currently saturated with everyones elses BS, they need to set it so posts must be approved.

[Llama God]

Unfortunately that would require the kind of effort they weren't willing to put in in the first place...

[The Doctor]

THANKS FOR THE ADD. WHEN IS THE THING COMING OUT?

-Ralph

[Kingoji]

I contacted the store directly for an update. They tell me they've just had a massive delivery from Hasbro but they so behind with preorders by now its taking much longer than it should to sort and mail them.
So anything outstanding should at least be in-house now.

[Philip Ayres]

They appear to have now restricted it to just them posting

www.facebook.com/groups/480609446231205/

[Pinwig]

So they're now posting pictures of bits of wood to the main company Facebook feed with a reach of 44k and telling 800 people subbed to a new group which new toys they have in stock.

I'm no expert but I'd say they have that the wrong way round.

[Slack]

I've had a dispatch email for Race track and Astro Patrol

[Llama God]

Well, so far Kapow seem to be doing okay with putting stock updates on their new group. Which continues to beg the question: Why couldn't they just put it on their main page? This really has soured me on them.

[The Doctor]

It is a puzzle.

-Ralph

[Pinwig]

They're still putting preorder info on the main one too though, so I don't get the need for another one.

[Pinwig]

Kapow say wave 3 Deluxes due in this week.

[Slack]

Thank God, I have so many preorders tied into this

[The Doctor]

Quint Pit came and went at a frankly ridiculous £110!

www.kapowtoys.co.uk/new-arrival/transformers-pulsecon-quintesson-pit-of-judgement.html

-Ralph

[Pinwig]

Kapow say on, err, one of their Facebooks, that they're hoping to get Thrust from Hasbro UK.

Actually, ID say the same. Apparently they're trying to persuade Hasbro UK to get a second run done for us.

[Rich]

I guess the reason for the two fb pages is that one is for marketing and one is product updates for regular customers. They may not wish to post all the updates on the main page (unless they have available stock) because they think will get requests to buy stock that they have for dispatch but not for additional orders. I may be completely wrong..

[Pinwig]

That is the intention I think, the problem is that they don't seem to be too sure what kind of product info posts go on which page, so they seem equally split between the two with preorder info for different products going on both. It's messy.

[Bogatan]

I havent been following their posts but that sounds a lot like their email responses. It all depends on who is doing the job at the time.

I know its probably not practical, but one person doing their customer service and media posts would make them an awful lot more consistant.

[Llama God]

Or at least having them, you know, talk to each or something...

[Kingoji]

Still waiting on Smokescreen and Airwave...

[Philip Ayres]

They're still waiting on the rest of their Airwaves....

[The Doctor]

...caused by a sudden surge in sales from Swindon...

-Ralph

[Philip Ayres]

I AM NOT TO BLAME!

THEY'VE SENT ME ONE!!

ONE!!!

AND THAT ONE WAS IN MY W2 SET!!!!

ALL MY OTHER AIRWAVES WERE FROM SMYTHS!!!!!

THEY OWE ME FIVE MORE !!!!!!