Apugo wrote:Dollstudio wrote:As I'm shopping for my first doll (silicone though, not TPE), I've been thinking quality is only going to improve as they improve their blends. But actually they are in a race to the bottom?
I'd would definitely say that the primary reason behind modifying the TPE blends is
not to save costs on the raw material. Yes, even with TPE the raw material is a cost component; but to save more on something that is already relatively cheap is probably not the driving force. Tweaking TPE blends serves rather the purpose to accomodate to the various requirements by customers - softness, elongation, durability and so on. Sometimes these tweaks succeed, and sometimes they fail (like Jinshan's ultra-soft TPE). I think it's more a series of ongoing iterations, trying to figure out the "perfect" blend that works process-wise and economically.
On the other hand, switching to different materials - like European TPE granulate or Smooth-on silicones - would make the costs to produce the doll explode.
Maybe it becomes clearer with a diagram:
- cost-components.png (12.98 KiB) Viewed 2250 times
This pie chart shows roughly the costs components of a current doll. The whole pie is the end customer price; the biggest cost components by far are not the product itself, but additional costs (this diagram is based on real data for an existing doll; please do not ask which one). Depending how and where the doll is delivered, the components shift around a bit; e.g. for the U.S. with their high
de minimis rules, customs and VAT would much smaller or zero, but with Paypal payment, the payment transaction costs would be about 3-6 times as big (depending if only customer pays with PP, or if the vendor also purchases with PP).
This shows that manufacturers have only limited influence over the final pricing, no matter how much they are trying to save on materials, manual labour, end control, packaging, R&D or whatever.
I just want a natural-looking girl.
I just needed to quote this again to second it
Sandro
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