What gets me is this is like 4 or 5 conversations I had with different consulting clients over the years, but on speed.
You can’t alienate your oldest and most loyal customers / fans….
as you alienate entire groups of potential customers / fans….
as you clearly patronize to many new potential customers / fans ….
as you dump an insane inventory of “new product” onto the market *….
as you clearly cut quality….
as you ignore clear data showing a strong downtrend in sales and profit margin….
and, in spite of all of this, plan to keep doing more of the same for another 8 years* ….
…and expect to stay in business.
And don’t just look at Box Office. Lucas made the vast majority of his money off the merchandising. In 1977, Star Wars was seen as such a big risk that in order to get the then eagerly awaited “The Other Side Of Midnight”, theaters where made to order Star Wars / A New Hope as well. In exchange for taking a massive cut in fees for directing, Lucas got to keep the merchandising rights.
In one year, the sales of Action Figures grossed about $100,000,000 before even Empire Strikes Back came out. It made Lucas a Billionaire.
While I seldom bother with anecdotal evidence, I looked around some toy departments and overstock / discount stores after seeing some YouTube videos.
Hasbro and other companies have dumped a ton of money into the right to make Star Wars toys and “collectibles”. From what I saw, they will never make this back- a lot of inventory is either gathering dust or being slashed in price by 50 to 75%. It also looks like some major chains where made to buy large inventories in order to get any of the product at all.
Only to start dumping it into stores that are little more than oversized “Bargain Bins” for fast clearance. Remember- these companies and stores pay tax on that inventory as it gathers dust. Every square foot of shelf or warehouse space taken up by a product not selling costs the company money like a tenant not paying rent to a landlord.
I can promise you that the big fees paid by these companies will not be paid again when it comes time to sign up again. If they got half as much the second time around, I would be surprised. Don’t even get me started on the strings they will want attached.
In short, the current management of LucasFilm have damaged the income potential of their main brand (Star Wars) for the foreseeable future. This is not just damage to one income stream, but now multiple.** The full impact of the damage on the brand is yet to be felt.
I can only see a few possible outcomes in the long run for a company this stupidly run. Clearly, Kennedy and others at the top are total morons.
1: Going bankrupt, assets picked up for cheap at liquidation.
2: Surviving, but as a shadow of their former selves.
3: “Shutting down” for an extended period of time for a total and radical redesign of the product as well as how (process) it is designed, made and marketed. Expensive and not without risk, but it is possible. In reality, you are “cannibalizing” the best assets (human and otherwise) of the “old” company to build a “new” one.
Clearly #3 would have to be done with a whole new leadership. Current management needs to be fired en-mass and replaced 100%.
The other two are your best possible outcomes with the current management. #1 has a variation where the brand is “dead” but comes back as a sort of “Zombie Brand” that is just stuck on any old crap by whoever owns the relevant IP. (RCA is a brand this happened to after it sunk everything on a single bet.) The best example of #2 in the USA is Schlitz Beer. Went from the second biggest brand to nearly non-existent in record time.
It is not just the Solo movie that is failing, but the entire “Star Wars” brand.
Kennedy is a worse leader than the captain of the Titanic. Wow, now I need to apologize to the late captain of the Titanic !
Frank V.
(edited for mistakes, I do like to shoot from the hip sometimes)
* No kidding, LucasFilms has a “roadmap” that goes deep into the 2020’s almost to 2030. They plan a pace of a film every year !
** There is yet another stream of income from marketing and IP rights I skipped over to keep this short, I was already going long.
JustAnotherGuy 1 year, 8 months ago.
