Why We Launch Our Action Figures As Pre-Orders

There’s something we’ve been meaning to talk to you about for a while now, and that something is pre-orders. We get a ton of questions about why we launch our action figures as pre-orders, and we totally get it. In the age of Amazon and same-day delivery, why would anyone pay for a product so far in advance? (Although, it is kind of fun to get a gift from your past self, right? )

Okay, drum roll. Here it is: The main reason we pre-sell our action figures is because… we can’t read your mind. No, seriously – it’s basically impossible for us to predict how many of you are going to want a particular figure before we start selling them, and demand varies wildly. We’ve had some launches that only sold a few thousand action figures, and others that have sold more than 100,000. If we ordered 5,000 when we needed 100,000 we’d be in trouble. If we ordered 100,000 when we only needed 5,000, well, then we’d be out of business. As you can see, it’s a bit of a conundrum and as a small company (there are just 13 of us!) we can’t afford to place big bets on production orders… at least for now.  

For us, taking pre-orders eliminates all the guesswork. This way, we know exactly how many action figures we need to make. That’s great for us. But what about you?

Well, think of it as our way of holding your spot in line. Once we’ve received the first shipment of an action figure, we ship them out in the order they were pre-ordered (that’s a bit of a mouthful, but hopefully it makes sense). Basically, if you were the first to order your action figure, you’ll be the first to receive it. We also try our best to keep you updated on shipping timelines along the way so you’ll have a pretty good idea of when to schedule the welcome party.

Once we start to build up some sales history, we can better predict how many action figures we need to have on hand to stay in stock. However, we do sometimes stock out faster than expected and have to ask you to pre-order while we make more. This was often the case with RBG, who smashed not only the patriarchy, but our sales expectations for every shipment that came in last year. Some might say she’s a notoriously good seller.

We know there’s a huge amount of trust involved when it comes to pre-ordering a product, and as such, we take this very seriously. Not to brag or anything, but we’re now a Google Trusted Store. In fact, they trust us so much, they’ll guarantee your order up to $1000.  See here.

One more thing! We will always refund pre-orders with no questions asked, right up until the day they ship. Promise! Just email the friendly team at hello@fctry.com with your order number. Or, if you want to edit your order, change your shipping address, double check that everything’s still on schedule, or even suggest your own idea for our next Real Life Action Figure, we’re always listening – and we’ve got real life people handling every case personally.

If you have any other questions about pre-orders, please drop ‘em in the comments below.

Cheers,

The FCTRY team