Bardoon your post addressed more than one topic so I'll reply to it in parts. Sorry in advance for its length.
No worries on the length, man! I enjoy lively discussion.
You're right about that. But we're talking about two time periods here. I'm talking about 2011/2012-ish when the figures were first pulled from retail and moved to online only. You're talking closer to the present where you're quite right that figure pre-orders sell out extremely quick. I assume you're talking about more recently because your mention of Vegeta's YAJ reference price of 14,000 yen ($114) is much more relevant to Scouter Vegeta's current aftermarket price than SSJ Vegeta's. Please correct me if I followed you incorrectly there...
Web Exclusive also allows Tamashii to sell directly to consumers and they don't have to settle for retailers' bulk rates. When you sell your product at a retail store, you're actually not getting as much profit because you've charged a bulk rate for a retailer to buy and bulk-carry hundreds of your product. So a product that might be $5 MSRP is sold to the retailer at $2 each because they're buying bulk (hundreds of stock). They then up-charge the extra and that's how they make a profit. I won't continue explaining because I assume you understand this, this is all supply chain management. Bandai/Tamashii skips the entire retail bit (at least locally in Japan) because they don't have to pay retail distribution costs on their Web Exclusive items (over here with Bluefin and their other international distributors is another story, I'm sure they all get their "cut").
Now the internet has changed
A LOT, but traditionally, companies want their products in stores because that was the ONLY way they reach the consumers. In America, it's still quite important for retail stores (brick & mortar & online retailers) to carry toy-lines and manufacturers view it that way (not for manufacturers to be responsible for selling ALL their product directly to consumers). Somewhere, in 2011/2012, Bandai/Tamashii decided to stop selling DBZ Figuarts to retail stores in Japan and switch to Web Exclusive.
Commonly, the reason a line is no longer carried on store shelves, is due to poor sales and the retailer is not making expected profit off of it and therefore not buying any more product from the manufacturer (Bandai). Both retailers and manufacturers set sales goals that they try to reach. If they don't make them, they will look at what sells and what doesn't and make appropriate cut backs or strategic changes. Manufacturers will look at product and "what sells and what doesn't". Now this is where a lot of assumptions have come in, but ever since I started researching the line, most people say it was due to poor sales at retail stores in Japan. Whether that's the truth or not, I don't know...but that's what I have commonly heard and we don't have sales charts available. Even if they were flying off shelves, somewhere within Bandai...something happened with the DBZ line and their business strategy changed. The common assumption is that sales expectations (though they may have sold "well") were not being met in 2011/2012.
And another point you brought up that's actually really good, but if the "Web Exclusive" label is a strategy for faster profits.....why doesn't Bandai/Tamashii just make
ALL their products Web Exclusives?
The bottom-line is that this is all based on theories. I base mine on the knowledge I gained of how I've seen toy companies function here in the United States and my discussions with toy company representatives here (I had interaction with Hasbro when I was a G.I. Joe collector for many years, worked at retail and dealt with company reps., and attended Joecons where Hasbro representatives during panels and private chats were quite open on whether lines were doing well or not). I'll be happy to share those stories about what they said if you'd like. But in relation to what happened to the DBZ Figuarts line in 2011/2012, I could be right, I could be wrong just as you could be right or could be wrong.
Actually, I'll ask Adam Newman if I make it to SDCC 2015. Maybe he can give us some insight about what happened and why the decision was made.
From what I heard, apparently the D-Arts line is being rolled into S.H. Figuarts.
We can call it whatever, but they are re-releasing the same mold of a Web Exclusive. I'm sure we'd all like to see that with SSJ Vegeta, Trunks and SSJ3 Goku. All the different Tamashii lines are equally marked as Web Exclusives on the Premium Bandai shop.
I think we're running in circles here. But Bandai/Tamashii doesn't gain any monetary profit from the aftermarket other than driving up demand. All the money they made off of SSJ Vegeta, Trunks, SSJ3 Goku was when the figures were first released and that's it. They do maximize their profits by selling directly to the consumers (minus their own costs of running their own shipping department) so why not re-issue Exclusives again when they know their demand is so high? It gives another reason, like you said, for scalpers to buy up all the product again and Tamashii makes money.
I understand it as a strategy to make money quick, what I am stating is why not re-release those exclusives years later as a "special re-release" to make massive profits again like you state? But this is where we run into their "Web Exclusive" policy. If you made Widget A in 2011 and made $10 million off of it after it sold out and I told you if you made Widget A AGAIN in 2015, bump up the MSRP slightly to adjust for inflation, and could easily make $15 million, wouldn't you do it?
Bandai/Tamashii already made their money on Broly before we got our hands on the figures. Any money we paid for the figure goes into the hands of the retailers (unless you bought from Bandai's Premium Shop) who had already paid the distributor (and/or) the manufacturer for the product. I am theorizing how this works based on US companies and unless Bandai functions differently, this is how it usually goes; manufacturers will announce or show off a product, offer its prices to retailers (in this case, through Bluefin) and start taking orders. Bluefin will report to Bandai after a set date and Bandai will manufacture the product based on order counts. In this case, Broly pre-sold VERY well. In some cases, manufacturers will already have a SET AMOUNT of products that they are going to make and that's it (hence why some figures/statues/collectibles are "limited to 1000" for example). This is information we as consumers don't know, but Broly could've had a set amount being made (for example, only 10,000 units...that's it). But usually manufacturers will fluff the quotas with some extras. Retailers are given a bill once their items comes in stock at a distributor and they "pay" their bulk prices and receive their shipments...much like how we pay to get our figures, they're paying their retail fees for their product. It doesn't matter if someone bought 15-20 Broly figures because BBTS, MHToyShop, Amazon, whomever had already PAID Bandai (possibly through Bluefin) for the 500 (this number is exaggerated) Brolys sitting in their warehouse because their order was for that number.
In all seriousness, I do respect your opinion. We do have different perspectives on this and I appreciate your previous response in a mature manner. Thanks dude.