Black Friday / Xmas Supply of Wii & Wii Fit. Already Gone?

[NJ5]

Grampy said:

NJ5 said:

I'm sure the stock for Black Friday is safely stored away in retailers' warehouses.

There is stockpiling going on at several levels (Nintendo, retailers and maybe distributors).

 

I've never understood the idea of stockpiling. From the sellers point of view, a sale is a sale, what difference does it make when. I would think most businesses facing a questionable and almost certainly disappointing season would take any sale they can get, as soon as they could get it.

Can someone explain.

 

There's a number of reasons why stockpiling is done, two of which are:

1- Supply should be higher when demand is higher. During Christmas, demand is higher.

2- People looking to give consoles as gifts in Christmas won't wait a month or two, they need the console there and then. People buying consoles during the year can usually can wait until they find one. Therefore it makes sense to have higher supply during Christmas.

Last year there was a lot of debate about this, with some people not believing Nintendo was stockpiling (there were even bets). Turns out they were stockpiling, and quite heavily as is obvious from looking at 2007 holiday sales.

In 2007, not only did Nintendo stockpile, they even sold part of January's supply in December. They did it by using air shipping instead of the usual boat shipping. This was mentioned in a few articles including this one.

As for the retailers' perspective, other people have already answered it.