>>7023517I'm not that anon, but I am the Westland employee, and your math is hypothetical. We were losing significant amounts of money for the past 5 years. We actually did really amazing when it came to sales for this Christmas, but not very well compared to over 5 years ago when our profits were like the average budget of a small country.
We had close to 900 stores still open at the time of our final bankruptcy. In the years before that it was over 1,000.
Now think of that over 1,000 stores that were making all their money from only 20% of the product on the shelves. That's 80% of the product at these over 1,000 stores not selling and lingering around for years at a time or having to be clearenced out.
To make this simple, you can't have a business if nobody wants the product. Nobody wanted feminist Ghostbusters, no child asked for them. Nobody wanted toys from failed Hollywood movies like Justice League, hell nobody wanted figures from successful flukes like Wonder Woman, because little boys don't really buy female action figures. And little girls didn't want Forces of Destiny or WWE Superstars, yet for some reason there was a push from toy companies to try and MAKE girls collect these lines when there's no basis to support that girls would want to play with them.
Think about all the shit on the shelves, and all the product that did sell that wasn't on our shelves at the end: TMNT(taken away so the line could be refreshed, though the new take is likely going to alienate the fan base), GI Joe(a big seller that Hasbro took away, because we had trouble moving $80 vehicle sets since the average consumer wants everything at insanely low prices, though Hasbro said that the 50th figures were a hot seller.) Jurassic World(a hot property that Hasbro let go to shit then lost. The new Mattel line would have had a huge display section on par with what Star Wars had and lots of toys like the Colossal T-Rex would have been plentiful and easy to find.)
