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The greatest challenges for doll makers in 2018

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Re: The greatest challenges for doll makers in 2018

Post by Dollstudio »

matt gloss wrote:How many of us want to have to fiddle about trying to seal off a vaginal cavity on a doll we just paid £1600 for?
Sorry I know there are those that want to help but i'm a painter and decorator not a gynocologist...
I understand this demand since I can be a rather impatient customer myself. But I'd suggest to reconsider your expectations to avoid bitter dissapointment.

Dolls are not and probably will never be maintenance free.

Similarily, if you buy an expensive tux, it will require dry-cleaning from time to time, and occasionally you will have to sew on a loose button. Or even with a fancy high-tech bicycle, you will have to change tyres and adjust the brakes. The same way, every doll requires maintenance - some more, some less.

My point is that we need to be given the tools for maintenance - access to spare parts, designs that allow replacement with spare parts, materials with consistent properties. Expecting more than maintainability is - imho - expecting too much.

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Re: The greatest challenges for doll makers in 2018

Post by hollows+fentiman »

Excellent thread and posts Sandro, points which we’d all like to see attention to!

One thing about the SiliconeArt dolls though and the standing option. Is it that silicone can be injected into the molds at different consistencies so the finished ‘body’ has soft and hard parts, so the feet can be much stronger and harder than the breasts for instance?

We all know some TPE dolls are softer than others, which can be quite firm to the touch. Do you think it is possible to mix soft and hard TPE into the same mold so that the feet can be made much firmer and the ‘fleshy’ part not twist off the footplate?

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Re: The greatest challenges for doll makers in 2018

Post by matt gloss »

I appreciate your words and meaning and give respect to your knowledge Sandro and see your point about maintanence with anything we have in our lives.
For me I would find playtime difficult with a tpe ball doll.
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Re: The greatest challenges for doll makers in 2018

Post by LJ69 »

Thanks to everyone that has contributed to this thread.

For me I would love to have improved oral capabilities and improved hands/fingers and improved head/neck (ie no gooseneck) but the most important issue for me by far, is WEIGHT REDUCTION.

As I totally love curvy and super busty women, I am now forced to purchase dolls that are much heavier than my smashed up damaged back/spine can handle. For example I have the amazing OR162i. Magnificent breasts and curvy ass but at 43kgs (of dead weight) she is so heavy and causes me a lot of pain. In reality my maximum safe weight (with my injuries) should really be about 20-25kgs so a doll similar to the WM140D cup (my first doll). But as I totally adore the super large breasted ladies, I am forced to get something much heavier than my body can handle.

Based on this, I would really love to see weight reduction technology introduced as soon as possible. This is of course based on maintaining the quality and durability of the dolls. The durability of the dolls needs to INCREASE not decrease, so any weight reduction would still have to be able to maintain current quality levels.

Take for example my beautiful OR162i doll. A BBW lover's dream doll but at 43kgs, simply too heavy for 80% of TDF members to handle safely.... now imagine a 30-40% weight reduction. This brings her back down into the 26-30kg range which is now in the realms of possibility for at least 50-70% (or more) of TDF members. So in an instant, the market for this doll opens up from approx 20% of the potential market to well over 50% of the market.

50kg dolls (10% of market) - 30-40% weight reduction = 30-35kgs (approx 50% of potential market)
40kg dolls (20% of market) - 30-40% weight reduction = 24-28kgs (approx 70-80% of potential market)
30kg dolls (50% of market) - 30-40% weight reduction = 18-21kgs (approx 90% of potential market)

So this one single change in technology will VASTLY increase the potential customers that can purchase their 'dream doll'. If I had $10 for every comment I have read on TDF along the lines of 'Totally love this doll but I simply cannot handle the weight', I could fly Australia-USA business class for free!

I can list over 10 dolls that I would love to have purchased but could not, based purely on the excessive weight...

PD159 50kgs (best floppy breasts ever made but virtually no one can handle 50kg of dead weight)

CLM155 and CLM160 - two of the sexiest BBW dolls ever made but both about 45kg

WM170M cup - super fit, strong, ripped, muscular stripper/dancer/athlete doll - 41kg....

6YE 165N - masterful design - the fat on the back of the legs and ass look totally realistic and the breasts are brilliant but once again, who can handle 50kg of dead weight - instant erection killer when you try to move her into the next sex position.....

And I have been asking for a super SPINNER doll with big tits and ass at around 130-135cm to spin around and play with - now CLM have just released their SUPER SEXY little 135cm spinner doll...perfect except for one thing..... 53 FUCKING KILOS - are you insane? How can anyone possibly want a 'FUN LITTLE SPINNER DOLL' to flop around that weighs 53kgs? Insanity.........instantly 90-95% of potential buyers are wiped out by the weight..

And (in my opinion) the BEST EVER BBW DOLL EVER CREATED, the YL160J - perfect breasts (very large but not crazy) large waist and hips and super large curvy ass. From all of the dolls to come after her, I still think that the YL160J is the most realistic BBW doll ever created, satisfying both huge breast lovers (like myself) and also lovers of super curvy waists/asses. Now she is 39kgs so not as heavy as some of the Fat Heffas that have been released recently but still, 39kg of dead weight is tough for most of us, hence limiting her potential sales to probably about only 30-40% of the potential customers.

Now reduce the YL160J weight by the proposed 30-40% and BANG - now she weighs about 25kgs and at that weight she is accessible to approx 70-80% of potential market - more than double the potential customer base!

So by making this weight reduction technology available (assuming equal or higher quality/durability) the doll manufacturers can instantly double/triple/quadruple their potential customer base.

If the manufacturers are worried about the sales of the heavier dolls once they release the new weight reduction technology then the answer is quite simple. Offer BOTH OPTIONS, 'OLD' weight technology at a REDUCED PRICE, and offer the NEW technology dolls at a HIGHER price and everyone wins.

So for example, let's say that the weight reduction technology becomes available in May this year. So from June 2018 to the end of 2019 (1.5yrs) offer both the OLD and NEW technologies.

EXAMPLE:
Current price for (41kg) WM170M cup doll is US$1800 (example only - obviously prices can vary)

From May 2018 (or as soon as new technology is available) for approx 1 year (ie Mid 2018 to Mid/Late 2019)
1- OLD 41kg WM170M cup doll price reduced to $1500 in order to sell off current stock
2- NEW technology doll 27kg WM170M cup doll offered for premium price of $2000.

So for the 1-1.5 year transition period:

Customers can take option 1 and still get a high quality doll from a reputable manufacturer at a $300 saving over current prices. This will be great for those wanting a good doll but at a cheaper price. This will in turn also help to minimize the FAKE/COPY dolls that are being sold by shonky vendors. If customers can buy a proper (ie non-fake) doll that is $1500 then it will make it even less appealing to buy a fake/copy doll for $1000. Less chance of a newbie getting burnt by shady dealers/vendors.

If clients want to have the higher quality dolls (ie with the weight reduction) then for the next 12-18mths they have to pay the extra $200 to buy the lighter doll.

So now the customer has 3 basic options

Buy fake crappy doll for $1000
Buy old technology (but still perfectly fine quality) doll for $1500
Buy new technology doll (and save their sore backs/necks with the much more manageable weights) for $2000

Then when the industry deems that the 'time is right' to phase out the old technology dolls (ie probably sometime in late 2019) then the old tech dolls get phased out (or sent to vendors specially selling only the old tech dolls) and then the new tech (lighter weight) doll become the current tech and revert back the the normal $1800 price as per todays current pricing structure.

SIMPLE TO ME - everyone wins..... I know for 100% certain that I would rather pay the extra $200 premium and get the doll of my dreams at a much lighter weight that my body can handle..... this will keep me buying dolls for the next 20 years into my 50s and 60s.



PS - One last thought re weight reduction.... people have all sorts of requests about what their 'dream doll' would be like..... with the 30-40% weight reduction technology, the door is opened even further to people's bizarre and imaginative requests......

What about a super athletic, ripped doll, with super toned body and huge beautiful breasts like the current WM170M (or DDcup for lovers of medium breasts) UPSCALED TO 6ft3in/190cm that only weighs 38kgs?

With the 30-40% weight reduction, the new doll designs are only limited by our imaginations....

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Re: The greatest challenges for doll makers in 2018

Post by Quater »

LJ69 wrote: I know for 100% certain that I would rather pay the extra $200 premium and get the doll of my dreams at a much lighter weight that my body can handle..... this will keep me buying dolls for the next 20 years into my 50s and 60s.
Same here. I am normally fit and strong but want a doll that is easy to maneuver and stash and would gladly pay an extra $2000 or even more for a 30-40% weight reduction.

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Re: The greatest challenges for doll makers in 2018

Post by Dollstudio »

hollows+fentiman wrote:One thing about the SiliconeArt dolls though and the standing option. Is it that silicone can be injected into the molds at different consistencies so the finished ‘body’ has soft and hard parts, so the feet can be much stronger and harder than the breasts for instance?
Combining different silicones is one approach for standing (firmer silicone in the soles of the feet), and also one to accomplish more realism (softer lips than the forehead, firmer fingers than the buttocks…). Other approaches are a different foot plate design and simply a bit bigger feet, or a combination. We are playing around with some of the possibilities over here: http://eu.dsdolleurope.com/node/4109.

To mold a silicone doll, you have a lot of ways to do it. E.g. you can open the form and brush a skin-like silicone into the mold, then close the form and pour another silicone into the mold. This happens at room temperature and takes time, at least several minitues for pouring the silicone and several hours for curing. During this period you can not re-use the form.

With TPE everything is different. Injection molding occurs under application of heat and pressure. In an essay I have read that puring TPE-S takes 80 seconds (though I'm not sure how far these figures are applicable to Chinese TPE). But the turnaround times are much quicker, allowing you to re-use the form more often.

So far, no TPE manufacturer has mastered to blend different TPE variants into one doll. One has tried with debatable success, but vanished from the market a couple of months ago. I don't know if someone else is still researching in this area, but one thing is for sure: the advantages of TPE (quick; cheap; industrialized process) would be mitigated, and the the process would be rather complex. Can it be done? Maybe. Does it make economically sense? I highly doubt it.

To combine materials with different softness, silicone is the road to go. We 'just' need to convince capable manufacturers like Doll Sweet that it is worth the extra effort to enable dolls for standing without screws.

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Re: The greatest challenges for doll makers in 2018

Post by Apugo »

Dollstudio wrote: End customer prices dropped massively in 2017, resulting in manufacturers looking for ways to save costs, preferably without anyone noticing. So the surface remains pretty, but below… nuts are still welded onto the skeleton, and some TPE blends change with a staggering pace, making it impossible to provide repair instructions or DIY repair tools.
...
Within the past year, almost every manufacturer at least once changed the composition of their doll flesh. Did you know that?
As I'm shopping for my first doll (silicone though, not TPE), I've been thinking quality is only going to improve as they improve their blends. But actually they are in a race to the bottom?

Something I would like to see that might actually go hand-in-hand with weight reduction is more realistic proportions. Where are all the C-cup girls? Perhaps more evenly distributed weight would allow for lighter materials to be used for the skeleton? Perhaps even an overall reduction of mass? Don't get me wrong, I like a skinny waist, but some of proportions would not be possible without a starvation diet and breast implants. I just want a natural-looking girl.

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Re: The greatest challenges for doll makers in 2018

Post by Dollstudio »

Apugo wrote:
Dollstudio wrote:As I'm shopping for my first doll (silicone though, not TPE), I've been thinking quality is only going to improve as they improve their blends. But actually they are in a race to the bottom?
I'd would definitely say that the primary reason behind modifying the TPE blends is not to save costs on the raw material. Yes, even with TPE the raw material is a cost component; but to save more on something that is already relatively cheap is probably not the driving force. Tweaking TPE blends serves rather the purpose to accomodate to the various requirements by customers - softness, elongation, durability and so on. Sometimes these tweaks succeed, and sometimes they fail (like Jinshan's ultra-soft TPE). I think it's more a series of ongoing iterations, trying to figure out the "perfect" blend that works process-wise and economically.

On the other hand, switching to different materials - like European TPE granulate or Smooth-on silicones - would make the costs to produce the doll explode.

Maybe it becomes clearer with a diagram:
cost-components.png
cost-components.png (12.98 KiB) Viewed 2202 times
This pie chart shows roughly the costs components of a current doll. The whole pie is the end customer price; the biggest cost components by far are not the product itself, but additional costs (this diagram is based on real data for an existing doll; please do not ask which one). Depending how and where the doll is delivered, the components shift around a bit; e.g. for the U.S. with their high de minimis rules, customs and VAT would much smaller or zero, but with Paypal payment, the payment transaction costs would be about 3-6 times as big (depending if only customer pays with PP, or if the vendor also purchases with PP).

This shows that manufacturers have only limited influence over the final pricing, no matter how much they are trying to save on materials, manual labour, end control, packaging, R&D or whatever.
I just want a natural-looking girl.
I just needed to quote this again to second it :!:

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Re: The greatest challenges for doll makers in 2018

Post by nukeno »

This is depressing!

Meaning that the same dolls we get, are selling for less than half the price on the Chinese market.
This means they could easily improve the quality and even double the price if necessary on export dolls,
and it would only increase end customer prices about 25 to 50% because shipping is by far the biggest fix cost?!
And there is no way to change that, because you have to ship each doll separately. No vendor can order
a cargo container full of dolls and have it cheaply shipped by sea. TPE or silicone dolls are no mass produced blow-up ones,
they are "custom" made and would not withstand the exertions on the sea route.
Would it not make sense to produce "locally" in Europe and the US instead? Or at least do assembly and the injection molding here
and only get the skeleton parts, eyes, wigs etc from china? The injection molding isn't that labour intensive (expensive),
only doing the make-up/details and fabrication of the skeleton is.
You would probably expect to get better quality and customer service for about the same price this way...
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Re: The greatest challenges for doll makers in 2018

Post by Apugo »

nukeno wrote:This is depressing!

Meaning that the same dolls we get, are selling for less than half the price on the Chinese market.
This means they could easily improve the quality and even double the price if necessary on export dolls,
and it would only increase end customer prices about 25 to 50% because shipping is by far the biggest fix cost?!
And there is no way to change that, because you have to ship each doll separately. No vendor can order
a cargo container full of dolls and have it cheaply shipped by sea. TPE or silicone dolls are no mass produced blow-up ones,
they are "custom" made and would not withstand the exertions on the sea route.
Would it not make sense to produce "locally" in Europe and the US instead? Or at least do assembly and the injection molding here
and only get the skeleton parts, eyes, wigs etc from china? The injection molding isn't that labour intensive (expensive),
only doing the make-up/details and fabrication of the skeleton is.
You would probably expect to get better quality and customer service for about the same price this way...

Think of what that chart would look like for a U.S. manufacturer, then. The $5,000 dolls from Abyss (Realdoll) and Private Island Beauties might have a higher difference in quality than one would think.

Using FedEx's quick rate quote tool, I found shipping a 150-pound box across the U.S. to cost a few hundred bucks, while shipping from China to the U.S. to cost $2,000. That can't be right obviously, but I think it gives us some idea of where our money is going.

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Re: The greatest challenges for doll makers in 2018

Post by nukeno »

Apugo wrote:Using FedEx's quick rate quote tool, I found shipping a 150-pound box across the U.S. to cost a few hundred bucks, while shipping from China to the U.S. to cost $2,000. That can't be right obviously, but I think it gives us some idea of where our money is going.
It certainly would help if the manufacturers would make a deal with their logistic partners or at least deal with them directly. Instead they are using "shipping agents" (is that the right term?), some kind of middle men, which are handling the shipping and custom declarations and so on. Those take a piece of that pie too. If a manufacture would ask (let's say) DHL: "We are shipping X hundred boxes (this tall and heavy) to Europe and Y hundred to the US each year. Please make us an offer!" They probably would and it would probably lower the price dramatically. They could even they: “If you store the boxes in an upright orientation the whole time, so the dolls inside don't get damaged, you are allowed to handle them with lower priority.” Meaning, when ever DHL has space left in one of its planes, let's say within a week or so, so the customer doesn't have to wait too long (or he has to pay extra), they fill it with dolls. DHL would be happy if they could spread the load like this and plan ahead. Instead of shipping 50 dolls at one day and 0 the rest of the week, they could ship 10 each day of the week.
But I guess, that is just not how they are doing business in China... :(
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Re: The greatest challenges for doll makers in 2018

Post by SynthetikReality95 »

Half the pie is shipping? I can see that.

Feelin bad for y'all vendors now though, I didn't figure the margins were that low :(

Oh, personally I would LOVE to see an American company start making TPE dolls, or Jinsan just open a branch here, with a factory. Would cut out so many problems.

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Re: The greatest challenges for doll makers in 2018

Post by Apugo »

However they are being shipped, I have to think it is in the most efficient way possible. No way have they not taken a long, hard look at bringing down their biggest cost. Right?
SynthetikReality95 wrote:Half the pie is shipping? I can see that.

Feelin bad for y'all vendors now, I didn't figure the margins were that low :(

Oh, I would LOVE to see an American company start making TPE dolls, or Jinsan just open a branch here. Would cut out so many problems.
Why aren’t there more American manufacturers, anyway? Most listed on TDF are out of business. Because dolls are more popular in Asia, maybe?

Thanks to being founded by Puritans, even now America is sexually repressed compared to much of the world.

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Re: The greatest challenges for doll makers in 2018

Post by SynthetikReality95 »

More and more Americans are getting into dolls though. At the moment, the only mfgs. here are Silicone... but it's not like we can't make TPE dolls. Yeah, the labor costs may be higher (higher wages), but you'd cut out alot of the shipping, so it may not cost that much more. We have the formula for TPE already, it's used in a ton of other applications. Also, some TPR/TPE sextoys (The big one being FleshLight) are made right here in the US.

It just depends on demand. If something happens to US/China relations, or there was a huge tariff imposed, or just if RealDoll decided to diversify their market a bit, we'll have US made TPE dolls. Matter of time.

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Re: The greatest challenges for doll makers in 2018

Post by ZZZZ »

Dollstudio wrote:Image
Would the shipping be less expensive if the doll was the same size, but half the weight?

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