This week the Good Smile Company, makers of the Figma and Nendoroid figure lines, announced that from here on out they would be working Nintendo’s Amiibo business strategies into their own figure selling process.

Good Smile’s president Aki Takanori spoke to Anime Maru about the company’s new direction. “We here at Good Smile were dissatisfied with our current model of creating figures based on preorders that go up months in advance and tailoring the amount of stock according to how many people want to buy the figures. We weren’t sure how else we could market the figures though, until we saw the success of Nintendo’s Amiibo line. Their figures sell out almost instantly and there’s huge demand for them. It was clear to us that Nintendo was a master of supply and demand.”

Executives at the Good Smile Company have completely overhauled their production to fit their new model. “The first thing we’re doing is making sure that we’ve already made all of the stock long before we actually gauge consumer interest. When deciding how many of any given figure to make, we will instead work off of our assumptions of how popular any given character is. For instance, Doraemon is a classic anime character beloved by all, so we’ll make sure the stock of his new Nendoroid is at least 25 million units. Comparatively, newer, less established characters such as Chiyo Sakura and Yukino Yukinoshita will still get figures, but we’re thinking of only making around 500 figures for each character. Should we run out of stock of those figures, we’ll also be selling cards with the figure’s picture on them, which is basically the same thing. However, we have no plans to do restocks for the figures, anyone who wasn’t devoted enough to get a figure as soon as it went on sale clearly doesn’t like the character very much.”

While Good Smile intends to continue making figures from a broad range of anime, they intend to seriously pull back on the numbers of figures from franchises they’re not confident in. “Apparently this Hestia character is pretty popular, but she’s still pretty new, so we’re not certain anyone really wants a Nendoroid of her. I’d guess there are maybe 100 people who’d actually want that figure, but just to be safe we’ll be making 75 figures. After all, we wouldn’t want stores to be overstocked, they’ll be needing that shelf space for our brand new Astro Boy line with everyone’s favorite characters like Professor Ochanomizu and Police Inspector Nakamura.”

Fans have reacted to this news by camping outside the headquarters of the Good Smile Company, where they will be selling half of their Nendoroid Hestia stock on its release date, July 7, 2016.

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