Merchandise Suggestion - Take Pre-Orders!
in General
The new medals sold out within a day. It's clear there's more of a demand than the 1500 items that were produced.
We want to buy good merch. However, in the past when Niantic has made merchandise, sometimes you get caught holding the bag for items people aren't as interested in.
So don't guess.
Offer pre-paid orders before production for items, leave it open for a week, then produce the orders. This would allow you to see what people want, and will pay for, and most importantly, how many people want to pay for a given item or type of item.
Stop guessing and always selling out within 24 or even 3 hours. Make more money by simply letting as many people as want to, buy an item. We're willing to wait for production once we've ordered.
Tagged:
20
Comments
Good idea Perringaiden.
I’ve suggested this a couple times in the past. It’s common in the vinyl collecting world, Mondo does it with their posters and I see it often times in group buys in the 4x4 forums I’m part of.
Typical Niantic though, they know what’s best for us and will turn their noses at people offering to help, either in actually offering solutions or good ideas that could become a solution. I know you can’t ever make everyone happen, but how can a company be so good at rarely hitting the mark? 😂😂😂
https://mondoshop.com/products/the-batman-poster - timed release
I would love one too! I was unable to make this time this morning and so I'm out of luck...
For an dedicated player who has never been to any big event this is saddening that you all forget about Ingress vs POGO. We came to community day but the line we saw was for POGO and nothing for ingress...I agree with the above statements perhaps you should have a longer sale time with more merch then the measly few items thanx
I totally agree with this
As above, suggested a number of times, ignored.
This is a key area where Niantic communication would be helpful.
"We looked at preorder idea but..." or "This is something we are going to try."
It's not rocket science.
Come on Niantic, both the Drone Kit and the T-Shirt that has a new design are already sold out. The small Toast plushy is already sold out. I wanted all three of these items, that’s $75.00 in sales. What is the deal? If there are supply chain issues than say so. This is twice now that I’m willing to spend money on merchandise and you sell out in no time. I also agree, please take preorders in order to help prevent frustration from your customers.
The tshirt and toast plushes i understand and agree that pre-order for those would be beneficial. Or a waiting list and then people on top of said wait list have priority to order via restricted link. However for drone kits I've said it before, saying it again. What parts of "limited edition" don't get through to people. It was limited on purpose since it is literally "limited edition" so if they took pre-orders for it then it wouldn't really be limited. The fact they did a second run should make approximately 1500 people happy. Except for people planning to scalp them, that isn't right or fair to anyone.
What parts of "limited edition" don't get through to people.
The point where the sale value of the item doesn't go up because of scarcity, and therefore the company is losing money on a product where they could get far more sales.
The bit I think you're missing is that in Ingress and most games "Limited Edition" doesn't (or shouldn't) mean "Limited Run" like a lithographic print. It means "Once we stop selling this we will not sell it again". There is no "collectible value" to restricting the number of printed cards for Ingress. There simply isn't the scale of collector resale market to justify this.
These aren't your grandad's baseball cards. They're time limited mementoes for someone, or nice gifts at events etc because their 'limited' nature means that new players can get something special because they weren't playing when the items were produced.
Don't apply "comics and collectables" logic to this. "If you don't get that", you'll never understand how swag works in Ingress.
I've been thinking something similar but more evil: When Niantic makes "regular" merchandise, nobody (but me, apparently) wants it, but if they call it "limited edition," it sells out instantly.
They should just call everything "limited edition" -- make even generic junk like faction shirts into event merch. Announce they're releasing "Resistance 2022" and "Enlightened 2022" t-shirts, buy them now or wait until next year's 2023 shirts.
(And probably a little more event merch, while they're at it. Like t-shirts with the medal of the month on them -- I'm sure a lot of you weirdos would have bought a Toast Day t-shirt, and Niantic wouldn't even have to make a graphic designer do extra work.)
When Niantic makes "regular" merchandise, nobody (but me, apparently) wants it, but if they call it "limited edition," it sells out instantly.
What 'regular merchandise' are you talking about? If you mean "Niantic branded" yes, 100%. No-one cares about Captain Doty or the floral print brigade.
If you mean "Enlightened or Resistance Branded Items", we all bought Glider gloves 10 years ago, and are waiting for a second "regular" item, like a shirt to appear.
Simply put, there are no "regular items" for Ingress on the store, except a recently appeared Van shirt that looks awful.
They had a webstore full of faction and Ingress-branded stuff for 2 years, and it didn't sell until the cut prices 50% at the end of 2018. That store went away because agents weren't buying non-event merchandise.
This also was the leftover Google stuff, had extremely limited shipping, and was only available for a short time. Your historical experience doesn't seem to match with everyone else. They were discounting the edge case small stuff, and all the Large and XL stuff sold out in like 2014.
EDIT: I checked the Enlightened one to be sure:
https://nianticsupply.com/products/ingress-tee-enlightened-edition
Sold out in 25 minutes.
DO YOU NOT LIKE MONEY?
Podrían dejar algunos Kits especialmente de medallas para adquirirlas directo en el Scaner sería genial, ya que en esta parte del mundo no podemos acceder al kit 10 aniversario :(
Every time you can have our money, it looks like you do not want our money. How is it even possible? Are you still underestimating the pre-order sizes?
Question is will there be a 2nd run for preorder?
I tried to buy one, but the link to checkout wouldn't work. Not sure if this was a bug on their end, but I'm pretty miffed if it is sold out and it was a mess up on their end.
Considering they make more money WITHOUT the pre-order and instead using individual orders (no 10% off), yeah I think they like money so they limit amount of preorders. It also allows people unable to pre-order to still get the kits when they release 1-by-1
When you’re checking out, you need to click the button “go to bag” and then checkout that way. That’s what I did yesterday at least 🤷🏼♂️
I did that. It kept telling me incorrect link when I did that.
It worked fine for the last kit I bought, but this time no luck... I thought it was something wrong on their end.
Maybe already sold out then? That sucks, I’m sorry :/
I'd like to confirm this is resolved before the next sale. Is there a contact for niantic supply to troubleshooting what happend? Or to at least verify it's working properly?
It must have sold out in 30 seconds then. I was there when it went live, and it would have been in the time it took for me to log in and put them in my bag.
Shipping was also outrageous. Bought the gloves and paid more in shipping than the gloves cost I think.
The new store is much better shipping wise.
I'm still waiting for this to become available. I will definitely buy a few of the ENL shirts.
Yeah, curious they would list them and not have an option to purchase them.
But also, seems like typical Niantic style of communication. They've read our complaints and instead of someone jumping in here and saying, hey, we hear you and we'll get on it, they let us argue amongst each other until we notice they have shirts in the shop.
My shopping experience tonight.
Store X series came available 1-2 mins past the hour. Added 2 to bag.
Checkout experience good with one refresh required due to server load I suspect.
Good interface and shipping was very reasonable.