"Temporarily sold out"

quark12000

The new modular, Police Station, is listed on Lego.com as "Temporarily sold out".  Does anyone have any idea when it might be back in stock?  I got a reward point voucher to buy it before I went on the store, and I only have 30 days to use it.

NicksBricks

quark12000 said:

The new modular, Police Station, is listed on Lego.com as "Temporarily sold out".  Does anyone have any idea when it might be back in stock?  I got a reward point voucher to buy it before I went on the store, and I only have 30 days to use it.

I can’t help you with the stock question, but contact customer service about the voucher. They’ve refunded a voucher for me due to stock issues.

CCC

Nobody knows, not even lego. Lego will make it available again with a ships by date when they know. 

Lordmoral

They have a problem with restocking items and I am shocked as you would think that after "getting used" to the pandemic problems they would have 8th restocked a few 2020 sets by now other than the 501st Legion pack.

Brickfan50

It's even worse than you mentioned. When I select the 'New items' I see that 90% of the highly anticipated new sets are either on back order or not available at all.

Police office, Colloseum, Ecto 1, Bonsai, Botanical flowers, Spring Latern Festival... none off these sets are available.

Really @TLG: you're coping with Covid since almost a year, just like the rest of the world. Why can't you simply produce enough sets for us to order? Almost every LEGO shop in the world is closed now so that means that you could re-supply the boxes that usually go to the shops to your distribution centres?
Yeah I know: first world problems - but TLG is loosing a lot of sympathy, at least from me.

bandit778

They may have had a year of coping with Covid but they've been hit by shut downs and limited production like every other factory that produces NON-ESSENTIAL goods.

There has also been a boom in sales from non-AFOL's that even they couldn't have predicted.

It's really not worth getting that worked up about.

Fizyx

bandit778 said:

They may have had a year of coping with Covid but they've been hit by shut downs and limited production like every other factory that produces NON-ESSENTIAL goods.

There has also been a boom in sales from non-AFOL's that even they couldn't have predicted.

It's really not worth getting that worked up about.

100% this.

They had a shutdown of several months for multiple factories.  Given the way that we know LEGO manufacturing scheduling works and how tight and near capacity it is, we could be seeing ripple effects from a multiple-month long shut down for literal years even if nothing else was going on.

But then we had an increase in sales of 14% over the first 6 months of the year, which is already huge and I guarantee you was over likely even the most positive expectations they had, so stock was already going to be lower than expected going into the 2nd half of year year, and now we have to account for the factory shut downs as well.  And to top it all off, there have been mutterings that I've seen around (completely unofficial and I don't know about their veracity) that sales increased at almost double the rate in the second half of the year that they did in the first half of the year.

Either one of these two things (long manufacturing shut down and massive unexpected/unforecasted increase in sales) would be difficult for most manufacturers to deal with.  To deal with both, especially when the former occurs at just the time you need to be responding to the latter to have any hope of dealing with it, would be basically impossible for any company in the world to deal with.  Given the circumstances, I think it's amazing that LEGO is doing as well as they are, and I fully expect that, barring further shutdowns, things will start to smooth out over the next 6 months, and we'll likely be back to normal for the 2nd half of the year.  (Fingers crossed and knock on wood.)

PS.  As I was wrapping this up, I thought of an almost perfect analog to the current situation facing LEGO, which is the video card/AMD CPU market right now.  Both were affected by reduced manufacturing capacity due to COVID and by higher than expected demand, and the inability due to capacity to quickly ramp up the production of goods.  If you look at the situation in that area, LEGO's handling of the situation looks much, MUCH better.  At least you can GET the LEGO somewhere, even if it's not necessarily your first choice of vendor.

SumoLego

I remember the days when LEGO literally produced a pre-determined amount of bricks and sets, and when they were done for the year, that was 'it'.  They had accomplished their sales goals for the year.

Although I am sure they have a much more responsive production schedule (more reactive to higher sales of certain items) they'd rather sell out a lower initial production run and increase subsequent volume if the demand is strong.  Minecraft circa 2012 comes to mind.

Anyway, LEGO is in the business of selling as much of their product to every segment of the market.  And people will always complain up vs. down, left vs. right, inside vs. out, etc., etc., etc.,

Oldfan

I just hope they're paying attention to the wish lists on the shop.lego sites, and won't retire all those backordered sets a year after their initial release per the usual practice, even though those sets haven't actually been available for more than 2 weeks out of that year...

piratemania7

Yes so I posted this in another thread but I bought #80107 a few minutes after midnight and within the hour received an email it was out of stock (even though it wasn’t when I ordered).  I think desire for LEGO or demand or whatever is through the roof so maybe a year ago those that wouldn’t have been up at midnight now are and placing their order.  

The whole out of stock thing just makes me chuckle as people have said lots of these large and newish sets have been out of stock for months or longer.  TLG is doing their best to meet demand but as others stated prior the production facilities were closed for a while and have been running at capacity I’m sure since and are still trying to catch up.  That and the current demand with so many people still at home I’m sure puts us where we are today.

I don’t see the world going back to their office tomorrow so I don’t see demand changing for some time and even when it does you likely have some new people “hooked”.  Production should even out how I have no clue just a guess.

I would think the best thing you can do is when something is in stock that you want that click that order button pronto.

mustang69

What this has taught me is, I am no longer going to wait for a GWP or 2x VIP points before buying a set I know I will get.

This was probably TLGs plan all along ;)

Brickfan50

Thanks very much for all for your comments. My post didn't receive any likes so far, so it seems to be a truly unpopular opinion and maybe should be moved to the other thread :-)
Joking aside, I'ld like to add some notes to clarify why I was upset about this.

In the last months of 2020, TLG has spared no effort to promote their new sets. Each new announcement with a lot of marketing jargon ended with a sentence that the set would be available from a certain date (January 1, January 10 and so on). They also promised great GWP when ordering in a certain time frame.
TLG also sent review copies to all fan sites (including Brickset) with the same availability notice.
If logistical problems were already known to TLG then they shouldn't have sent these press releases and review copies. I believe TLG is perfectly aware of the fact that reviews on fan sites will drive sales.

So my point is that TLG knowingly induced the demand for their products while also knowing they couldn't meet that demand.
I call that bad entrepreneurship: only fulfilling marketing goals and not meeting expectations of buyers.

That's what puzzled me and made me write my original comment above.

CCC

Brickfan50 said:

So my point is that TLG knowingly induced the demand for their products while also knowing they couldn't meet that demand.
I call that bad entrepreneurship: only fulfilling marketing goals and not meeting expectations of buyers.

They can meet the demand, just not right now. And when the sets come back into stock you better be quick and be willing to pay full price. 

quark12000

Well, I ordered the "Spring Lantern Festival" instead, while it was still listed as "Backorder", and almost immediately got an email that it was, also, now sold out.  It really feels like I'm going to get screwed out of the points I've spent a while building up and get nothing for them.

BrickBelt

Brickfan50 said:

Thanks very much for all for your comments. My post didn't receive any likes so far, so it seems to be a truly unpopular opinion and maybe should be moved to the other thread :-)
Joking aside, I'ld like to add some notes to clarify why I was upset about this.

In the last months of 2020, TLG has spared no effort to promote their new sets. Each new announcement with a lot of marketing jargon ended with a sentence that the set would be available from a certain date (January 1, January 10 and so on). They also promised great GWP when ordering in a certain time frame.
TLG also sent review copies to all fan sites (including Brickset) with the same availability notice.
If logistical problems were already known to TLG then they shouldn't have sent these press releases and review copies. I believe TLG is perfectly aware of the fact that reviews on fan sites will drive sales.

So my point is that TLG knowingly induced the demand for their products while also knowing they couldn't meet that demand.
I call that bad entrepreneurship: only fulfilling marketing goals and not meeting expectations of buyers.

That's what puzzled me and made me write my original comment above.

I mean that's been the same for a lot of industries this year. Electronics have been hit particularly hard and in many cases they're being sold at twice MSRP.

pxchris

quark12000 said:

Well, I ordered the "Spring Lantern Festival" instead, while it was still listed as "Backorder", and almost immediately got an email that it was, also, now sold out.  It really feels like I'm going to get screwed out of the points I've spent a while building up and get nothing for them.

Email customer service and they'll refund your points. That doesn't exactly help with getting the set at this time, but you at least won't be out the points.

monkyby87

Brickfan50 said:

Thanks very much for all for your comments. My post didn't receive any likes so far, so it seems to be a truly unpopular opinion and maybe should be moved to the other thread :-)
Joking aside, I'ld like to add some notes to clarify why I was upset about this.

In the last months of 2020, TLG has spared no effort to promote their new sets. Each new announcement with a lot of marketing jargon ended with a sentence that the set would be available from a certain date (January 1, January 10 and so on). They also promised great GWP when ordering in a certain time frame.
TLG also sent review copies to all fan sites (including Brickset) with the same availability notice.
If logistical problems were already known to TLG then they shouldn't have sent these press releases and review copies. I believe TLG is perfectly aware of the fact that reviews on fan sites will drive sales.

So my point is that TLG knowingly induced the demand for their products while also knowing they couldn't meet that demand.
I call that bad entrepreneurship: only fulfilling marketing goals and not meeting expectations of buyers.

That's what puzzled me and made me write my original comment above.

So really you’re just mad that they advertised their products, like every company does? A company is not going to stop promoting their product just because people may not have as great of access to it as they used to. That would be a poor business model. 

Also, I don’t think you understand what the term entrepreneurship means...

mustang69

I was finally able to order the elf clubhouse last week and it showed up yesterday (yay!), the interesting thing is my order shows the Vintage Car GWP as Backordered. I wasnt expecting to get it this order, and I dont remember seeing it when I placed the order. I just found it surprising since I thought the default was "while supplies last".

catwrangler

They really are very good about refunding points. Before Christmas there was a bug on the website that meant it would only give me vouchers for stores/the phone, and neither was a viable option for me so they're sorting a refund now, and the website's back to providing vouchers you can redeem online. 

I don't think it's possible for them to please everyone in this situation. Presumably if they stopped doing press releases and review copies it would damage their relationship with fan sites that drive a lot of purchases, and they'll have an eye on keeping their existing customers engaged for the long haul. The hard truth is there's a limit on what they can make and distribute right now, and as with so many things this past year, there's no way to prevent that from sucking at least a little. 

CCC

I wonder how much the review copies do drive sales now. I see so many reviews of the same set, typically all published within seconds of the embargo listed. Then customer bought set reviews within a day of release. But I'm not sure any of them has actually made me buy a set I wouldn't have otherwise bought. And slowing down "Day 1" purchases might actually be a good thing. If sets are selling out so fast with long out of stock periods, then slower but steady sales might make LEGO look better than sporadic stock availability.

jhuntin1

CCC said:

I wonder how much the review copies do drive sales now. I see so many reviews of the same set, typically all published within seconds of the embargo listed. Then customer bought set reviews within a day of release. But I'm not sure any of them has actually made me buy a set I wouldn't have otherwise bought. And slowing down "Day 1" purchases might actually be a good thing. If sets are selling out so fast with long out of stock periods, then slower but steady sales might make LEGO look better than sporadic stock availability.

Right now it's FOMO. With the production limitations and shortages of product, people are snatching up sets they believe interest them because of the real chance that they will not be able to get it later. Once the situation gets to whatever the new normal will be, I think people who used to wait will still be able to find the sets.

SumoLego

CCC said:

I wonder how much the review copies do drive sales now... Then customer bought set reviews within a day of release.

Driving page views is one of those digital age marketing barometers.  And I'm sure LEGO doesn't mind release day scarcity.  I'm pretty sure Apple bases their entire marketing strategy on it...

quark12000

Starting to look like they're not gonna make any more of the Police Station.

SumoLego

Until next year...

prevere

Stock limitations plus at least here in the U.S., theres a lot of free money flying around.

Bumblepants

prevere said:

Stock limitations plus at least here in the U.S., theres a lot of free money flying around.

So you loaded up on Gamestop shares I take it?

PDelahanty

They seem to have restocked on many sets from the Christmas season, but many of the big new ones have yet to come back in stock or even be available on backorder.  (Spring Lantern Festival and Police Station to name a couple)  I would have guessed that the newer ones would come back in stock sooner and older ones would be slower to restock because I figure Lego would be confident to ramp up production on sets that are clearly in demand because they're new AND will still be available for a while even if they end up over-producing and they have to sit on shelves for a while.  ...rather than ramp up production on older sets that have less demand and maybe only have 6 months to a year left in their lifecycle.

...but I have real FOMO on that Spring Lantern Festival since I know those Chinese New Year sets have a ridiculously short lifespan.  Police Station, not so much.  I know that'll be around for at least 2 years and I'm certain I'll have no trouble getting it a year from now.

quark12000

SumoLego said:

Until next year...

Holy crap!  Seriously?

karrit

quark12000 said:

SumoLego said:

Until next year...

Holy crap!  Seriously?

Considering that the Bookshop that was released last year has only been available to purchase on less than a handful of occasions I believe Sumo is serious.  And even on those rare times it was pretty much only available on backorder.

PDelahanty

...although the bookshop was regularly available in Lego's retail stores.

AllBrick

Can we assume there are more scalpers out there than ever before? 

I can see the professional outfits moving onto large, highly desirable Lego sets after buying all the PS5s and PC hardware. 

It would totally be something they would focus on as the mark ups could be very high. 

lowlead

@Brickfan50 Here's a 'like' for ya =oD

mustang69 said:

What this has taught me is, I am no longer going to wait for a GWP or 2x VIP points before buying a set I know I will get.

This was probably TLGs plan all along ;)

My thoughts exactly when the Ecto-1 first released - better just get it now.  Glad I did, after seeing it on backorder for months after!

datsunrobbie

Makes me glad I buy mostly second-hand or locally at Walmart or Target. The closest Walmart is still not well-stocked, but is back to the level they had before Christmas. Closest Target is also nearly fully restocked, they even had several of the Creator Expert sets like #10262 and #10269 and several of the portrait sets when I stopped in on Sunday.

PDelahanty

AllBrick said:

Can we assume there are more scalpers out there than ever before? 

I think we're seeing this (at least in the United States) with Amazon.  They'll buy up the new sets as fast as they can and then post it for sale as "New" on Amazon at nearly twice the price.  ...and for the parents and grandparents that want to get Little Timmy that set he really wants for his birthday, well the only place they can find it is Amazon, they assume it's Amazon itself selling the set (it's NOT), and happily pay the markup because "that's what it costs."

Yellowcastle2

Maybe this is a stupid question, but why is LEGO limiting current sets from at the very least being backordered?  I’m sure there is a reason but it’s not jumping out at me.

Additionally, identifying a set as “Out of Stock” on the sales page but then clarifying its status as either “Sold Out” or “Temporarily Out of Stock” when you drill down to a specific item is confusing...

PDelahanty

When it says "Sold Out", does that mean it is absolutely never coming back?  I'm wondering if I should take some stuff off my wish list or leave it on there in the unlikely event some happen to show up a few months down the road.

madforLEGO

PDelahanty said:

When it says "Sold Out", does that mean it is absolutely never coming back?  I'm wondering if I should take some stuff off my wish list or leave it on there in the unlikely event some happen to show up a few months down the road.

Typically 'Sold out' means gone for good, at least lately, on LEGO's site. I would say to still keep an eye out at other retailers as sometimes sets do appear as a final shipment gets out.

sklamb

The Brickheadz Nutcracker and the Christmas Wreath 2-in-1 were both marked as "Sold Out" (just like Winter Snowball Fight) for a time, but did become available again; the wreath is now labeled as "temporarily out of stock." (I'm still waiting for my wreath, as it went to backorder before I could get my order in and it's due to be shipped some time in June, I believe!) I think this may be because they are small seasonal sets which will still be appropriate at the next holiday season. In general "Sold Out" really does mean what it says, I've found.

sklamb

I've also been known to leave  "sold out" sets on my wish list to remind me to pick up the instructions, if they include interesting building techniques.

pvp3020

lowlead said:

My thoughts exactly when the Ecto-1 first released - better just get it now.  Glad I did, after seeing it on backorder for months after!

Interestingly, in the UK the Ecto-1 has been on backorder for months, but other online and bricks and mortar retailers have plenty of stock. I guess Lego has an obligation to fulfill retailer orders that were probably placed long before the set was released.

(OK, I'm specifically referring to Smyth's and 'plenty' is a relative term)

Yellowcastle

I’d like to resuscitate my question from above in case any of our smart folks here know the answer: Why is LEGO limiting current sets from being backordered?  I’m sure there is a reason but it’s not jumping out at me.

560Heliport

Yellowcastle said:

I’d like to resuscitate my question from above in case any of our smart folks here know the answer: Why is LEGO limiting current sets from being backordered?  I’m sure there is a reason but it’s not jumping out at me.

I assume a big part of it is the need to schedule production time- I bet the molding machines are more or less constantly in use, so to add another run of any particular set, something has to give. 

Astrobricks

560Heliport said:

Yellowcastle said:

I’d like to resuscitate my question from above in case any of our smart folks here know the answer: Why is LEGO limiting current sets from being backordered?  I’m sure there is a reason but it’s not jumping out at me.

I assume a big part of it is the need to schedule production time- I bet the molding machines are more or less constantly in use, so to add another run of any particular set, something has to give. 

This. They don’t want to be put in the position of devoting too much production to back orders. It would look worse for them if store shelves were sitting empty (emptier?).

Yellowcastle

I guess I don’t see how accepting my order for a product that they clearly intend to continue to sell would make muck up their production runs.  It would seem that the normal practice would be to book a sale whenever possible.

madforLEGO

Yellowcastle said:

I guess I don’t see how accepting my order for a product that they clearly intend to continue to sell would make muck up their production runs.  It would seem that the normal practice would be to book a sale whenever possible.

Yes, but they likely do not want someone to buy something and have to wait 4-6 months (or longer) to get it either (I think the wait times for many sets already is pushing 60-90 days).

Yellowcastle

I guess I can see that.  And perhaps inorganically limiting what I can backorder could push me to buy something else that is actually available...

tamamahm

But some of it borders on ridiculous... Look at the Spring Lantern Festival. Was it even available for 12 hours? It has not been in stock since. To make that small of a run to start with... 😑 
So, either they had issues at that time and could not produce enough sets initially, or they botched estimates. I presume the former, but if the later, being able to order for later deliver, would at least allow better estimate. If the former, well, it still would be great for your customers to still be able to order a set that disappeared thst fast, even if it is going to take a few months.

560Heliport

^ 2078 Bricksetters own #80107 Spring Lantern Festival (and have recorded that fact on Brickset) so I don't think it was necessarily a very small production run; rather, it was a very popular set, so the first run sold out quickly.

Yellowcastle

^ To build upon that, it’s availability is not necessarily equivalent across regions.  So the U.S. might be underrepresented.  Additionally, many of our folks may have also purchased in store.  I can confirm that’s its U.S. online availability has been relatively nonexistent to date.  I have had an alert setup since January and I am also on a call list for my local store.

madforLEGO

I will say that LEGO is likely straining their manufacturing limits, especially shutting down for months, but that was due to unforeseen Covid pandemic. I think people forget that LEGO also has contracts with retailers to deliver product as well, so you may not find a set at [email protected], but find it at Amazon (or Walmart, or Target, etc), because -Im guessing here-LEGO has an obligation to deliver x amount of product to retailers.  LEGO is in a difficult situation here because they need production, but building a new production plant would likely take years and by then the demand will likely go down so they have to just make due with what they have to work with. That being said, maybe LEGO should be postponing more of these sets to be released at this point instead of just releasing new set/line after new set/line (even if planned), and maybe they are and still just have the plants working as best as they can.

Yellowcastle

^ I don’t imagine they can slow new rollouts as that drives everything.  But I hope/wish they will slow end of life dates...