Pulse launched last week and one of the concerns was how this may be a threat to retailers who sell Hasbro items. It came up in the investors presentation with the following question from Eric Handler:
I am intrigued by go to market pulse initiative. How do you balance being a global consumer products company with thousands or retail doors and how do you balance that in terms of not threatening those retailers with the go to consumer initiative.
To which Hasbro replied the following:
We have a unique take about how to approach and connect with our fans.
As everyone knows we have hundreds of thousands of doors around the world, our offering is really broad. When you look at what we are doing with Pulse, it's really a content and product initiative targeted at the fan economy. Its increasing our direct relation with consumers but in a very focused way and it will give us an opportunity to test and learn many things we can then bring to our partners globally. It's really not meant to be taking something for ourselves. It is allowing us to be the tip of the spear to foster these relationships and what we learn from this interaction will be shared with our partners around the world.
The quote above includes some shortening and it can be full heard slightly past the 2 hour mark of their investor presentation which can be heard
here.
This definitely answers a few questions fans had. The fact that this is more fan focused than Hasbro Toy Shop would explain why toys like Cyberverse have not moved over to Pulse.
From this we can gather that the US collector market (meaning anyone reading this article) is significant enough to warrant investing in an interface to serve fans but not big enough for Walmart or Target to fear any loss in sales from Hasbro selling directly.
We could have guessed that, but it was fun to have at least one question that's been asked openly on these boards before answered by Hasbro's top executives.
Also, for those looking for a mission statement for both Pulse and the new Studio Select line, John Letter wrote a letter that was sent along with the new Voyager Combat Hero Megatron. You can read it below:
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