Mystery box 2014 and future.

YoYoExpert Site Improvements
1

Hey all :). So my girlfriend and I had quite a few problems with the way the mystery boxes were run this year, and in my understanding they’ve been run in previous years.

We both felt very strongly that it wasn’t respectful of our time. I was to sit at the computer for four hours to wait for a countdown that could come at any time. I ended up getting one, but it was quite a hassle. I feel that there are far better ways of doing the box’s that would respect the customers more and still fulfill the same purpose as the current system. I’m not sure exactly what that purpose is but I’m going to try to figure it out. If YYE could post with the exact purpose that would be great!

So purpose one seems to be random. Who gets the box’s are the people who happen to be at the computer at the countdown time/the people who manage to get one before the small stock vanishes.

The second purpose I see is to have the people who are committed getting one. This could also be viewed as the people with free time getting one. The people who sit there for four hours waiting mostly get one. Except it’s my understanding that some people did this and still failed. So no matter which purpose there was both elements of commitment and luck that got you a box.

Now onto other options that will still fulfill both purposes but be, in my opinion, better.

Fulfilling just the first purpose, randomness. Have a lottery! Have an entry time of a couple days and have a random draw of who gets them. You enter your credit card info and they charge you if you win, plain and simple :slight_smile:

In fulfilling just the second purpose, the current system actually does that quite will, although there is still an element of luck no matter what as I said. If they really wanted it to be all commitment it would look a lot more like: “we’ll post the countdown for all the box’s in the next three days between 10AM and 10PM and you don’t know when. Watch for it!” I don’t approve at all of the system they used this year and certainly not of this system.

If they’d like to fulfill both commitment and luck, which makes sense. They could do something a lot more time respect friendly. Perhaps a lottery that you can only enter for a random ten or fifteen minutes every hour, and you can get one entry of yourself in the lottery every hour. The people who are more committed would get more chances in the lottery and the people who aren’t/don’t have as much free time would still stand a chance.

I personally vote for a straight up lottery, but I do like the last option as well.

If anyone would enlighten me as to the systems they used in past years that would be great!

Let me know what you all think and YYE if you see this post please respond with the actual purpose you had for the marketing technique you used this year. Thank you all!

P.S. YYE you are an amazing business, one of the best I’ve ever encountered and please know that my negative opinion of this years mystery box system has not impacted my positive image of your company in any way. Keep doing what you’re doing!!!

1 Like
2

I didn’t waste time trying to get a Mystery Box since I didn’t want one.

My thoughts:

Last year, YYE went through some “Growing pains” After being nailed to the point of what amounted to system meltdowns, the merchant server was upgraded to handle us insane throwers with money to spend when a big drop of choice goodies happened. CLYW, OD, VsNYYC, General Yo are just a few that come to mind. The Mystery Box was another one.

This new strategy used this year I don’t feel was perfect, but as I didn’t participate, I was largely immune to it. I think the concept was to minimize server load and keep buyers engaged and tied to their screens

All I can say is from a business perspective, you gotta take chances. Not everything works. What is important is what is learned.

With high-demand drops, there’s always going to be issues. Not everyone can get it. CLYW’s(5 minures or less for most runs, I had to scramble to get that AC and I had to settle for the top-dollar Yogi, which I gotta admit I really love how it looks), OD’s, NsNYYC(the Skywalker final run drops went fast), General Yo(KLR came and went in 5 minutes or less). The Mystery Boxes are no different: You snooze you lose. Or, in my case: if your data connection sucks, you’re toast. I got lucky a few times last year! YYE also had some insane bundles earlier this year with YYF that mostly sold fast. Combined with the National YoYoDay sale, the July 4th sale, that YYF promotion, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, YYE has had some insane sales this year.

I had a meeting with a client scheduled a bit ago. I chose to re-schedule it so I could get the new CLYW drops at the CLYW store. I’ve made up excuses to be up in my computer room at my house at dinner time so I could take advantage of YYE sales and drops.

Anyhow, not everyone gets a mystery box. There are only so many to go around. Based on the success and reaction to the mystery boxes since I’ve been on here since May of 2011, I feel fairly safe in saying that they will be back in 2014.

How about this for an idea:
Let’s say there are 100 mystery boxes.
90 go for direct sales via the scheduled drops.
10 get held for lottery.
You can only register for the lottery within a specific time window after the run/block sells out. You can enter after every block, but you can only win once, and only enter once per block.

At the end of the runs, the lottery is drawn, winners are selected and they have 24 hours to make payment(or accept the draw results) or alternates start getting drawn. This repeats until all boxes have received orders to ship.

Then again, it could have been done this way so the staff didn’t have to be up all night inserting packing slips in boxes and slapping shipping labels on them, while making pretty stacks for the 53-foot postal truck to show up and take it all away the next morning!

3

Seems like an easy way to do it would just have a number of releases like this year and just announce the exact time of the release beforehand. With 8 releases it seemed fairly silly to only be given an 8 minute window. It worked out well for me since the one day I was sitting behind a computer screen all day anyway was the Facebook day but I still thought it was a bad system.

4

Well, I feel that due to demand, the Mystery Boxes have always had short windows anyways just based on the buying frenzy that hits when they drop.

If all of them were dumped out at the same time on Black Friday, I am willing to bet that within 15 minutes, they’d have all sold out anyways. I’ve seen it happen with other item drops as well, so I am not unfamiliar with something being released and then selling out within 5 minutes or less. When I snagged the first run AC’s, I had to go with my 3rd choice, which turned out to be the most expensive colorway. Between checking out/completing payment, items became sold out. I got lucky.

It’s like anything else: If you’re not there, you’re not gonna get it. Be prepared is all I can say.

Another thing is: Time zones. Not all East Coast drop times work well for everyone, and that’s just the United States, seeing as how we have differences of up to 6 hours between East Coast and Hawaii, not to mention the avid buyers world wide. Yes, YYE is United States based, so it makes natural sense that release times be centered around the “home turf”.

Take your idea of multiple pre-determined and posted drop times. Vary the drop times, say, each day, the drop moves another hour, either forward or backwards. Either way, yes, do post times so people can plan for it.

It’s times like this that make me happy to be self employed as I can call my own hours!

5

I still feel a lottery would be the best way. Perhaps having different time windows in which you can enter the lottery as I said before. The more we talk about it the more it just seems like the best route to me.

6

I just see it as, the mystery box is either worth your time, or it isn’t. If it is worth your time, do what it takes to get one…but if not, pass on it. Once that decision is made, it’s easy. For me, I decided that I wanted to get one, and I was going to do what it took to have the best chance at it…win or lose.

They did so many drops, that there were different times to accommodate different schedules, and four different days and means of receiving notice. There could not be any more ways to accommodate people’s time than offering them day or evening, for four days in a row, and allowing different means of receiving notice.

I just think that if someone couldn’t set aside some time to shop, the same as they would for a big sale at a brick and mortar store, they didn’t deserve to get one. For several of those drops, the notice came half way through the time window, so they didn’t even keep people waiting the entire time, for the ones I followed anyway.

I think that a lottery, from a business perspective, does not yield the same results as a promotion, several days long, involving social media. Part of the fun of it, was trying to get one. Waiting for the drop, and trying to check out is the fun of the process for me. A lottery takes away from that fun and adrenaline rush. We want a bargain, but there has to be some benefit to YoyoExpert and YoyoFactory for offering such a bargain. A lottery, from a business perspective, would not offer the same gains. I don’t think it would be as much fun either. There has to be a win/win for both the customer and the business when an idea with that much savings is considered. The way they did things this year was definitely a win/win.

4 Likes
7

I’m with TA on this one. It was mere luck that I was at the PC when the countdown happened for the one box I got. I did not really go out of my way to be on the lookout. It just happened. luck and fun is the name of the game. because even if you are there for the timer sometimes lag and other you just don’t get to place the order in time.

1 Like
8

I agree w/TotalArtist. If you want the deal, make the time. It’s the same as any other product drop. Any time a new, limited release comes out, the announcement is made, and be there or be square.
(speaking as a layman on this)

1 Like
9

I see what TA is saying, and it makes sense. I guess I feel the time windows were too large. Four hours is a damn long time to set aside to try to get a savings. I would have been much more into it if the time windows were an hour. I still feel like it’s disrespectful to peoples time. If you look at it in terms of hourly wage, if you make it at the first drop and wait two hours that’s about $40 an hour you earned. Which is fairly solid, but that hourly rate drops very quickly if you miss just one or two drops. It about halves each time you miss a drop.

I know I personally spend my days with fulfilling things in one way or another about 80% of the time. Sitting at the computer waiting for a savings isn’t fulfilling to me though. At least not in any of the ways it usually is, it saves me a bit of money but I don’t see that as inherently valuable.

You pointed out about commitment, about how if you decide you want one you fully go for it. That’s where my lottery system with one entry an hour comes in. You work as hard as you can to enter the lottery every hour, maybe through different social medias. I would honestly find a lottery more fun, as you get the adrenaline of gambling and of wondering the entire week if you’ll win. It’s been pretty proven that people love gambling.

I’d also like to state here that I probably won’t be buying one next year at all. It was fun this year, I’m glad a got a couple more throws to learn more about my preferences which is mainly what I wanted. And I learned that my preferences are very specific and I don’t expect to ever get a throw I’ll really really love out of one. I’m just trying to improve it for everyone else next year.

10

^I dont like the lottery Idea at all here are my reasons

  1. there are little kids on this sight that are trying to buy these(im not little) and I dont think its a good idea to have little 6 year olds gambling to get a mystery box (yes I read Ty whatever his name was pos)and he even called it gambling like 2or 3 times

2.I loved the way YYE did it this year it was so much fun my hands were shaking during check out it was awesome.

I know 2 reasons isnt a lot

I completly agree with what TA said Im just adding this on

11

If you don’t like it don’t get it it’s that simple. Don’t complain about it because there many other people who are willing to commit and wait the 4 hours to have a chance of getting them. I think what they did this year was great because it made people work a little harder and the people who were willing to work harder got them.

12

Gambling isn’t inherently a bad thing, and they certainly wouldn’t call it that when they did the marketing technique. In fact it’s a very natural thing for humans to love. Kids play go fish, which involves quite a bit of luck, and gambling, and of course memory. But any card game satisfies that want within us to give our fate over to something partially uncontrollable and see how we fair. We love this right from three years old to 100 years old. Some of us end up having a problem with it, and liking it too much, but most of us don’t :slight_smile: Also I’m sure that all six year olds have heard of a lottery and that most of them will have participated in one of some kind.

I’m glad you loved the way it was this year!

Joralco, please don’t tell me what to try to change and what not to change. That’s like saying the starving people all over the world don’t affect me so I shouldn’t try to change it. Granted this is much less extreme. But it seems that you’re afraid of me changing it from the way you like it, and are lashing out in order to get me to stop. In terms of the two actually arguments you stated I feel I’ve already addressed those multiple times in my posts. If you have any questions about my point of view or opinion please ask! :slight_smile:

I’m sorry if I came off as complaining here. I didn’t mean it that way, I simply meant to point out some issues I saw with the system for YYE to consider.

13

Ok I see what your saying I wouldnt mind it being different I just like the way it isbut when it all boiuls down to it YYE gets to decide how they want to do it

14

Indeed :slight_smile:

15

First of all dude I didn’t even get a mystery box so all that bs about having it fit my way all crap. Second you can’t compare a yoyo store with starving children in Africa they are totally on different sides of the spectrum. And third you are complaining and your complaining isn’t going to make yye change they way they want things to be run.

16

I totally didn’t “get” the drop strategy, but I didn’t try too hard to understand because I decided to pass on it this year.

But what I DO get is that this is a marketing piece that happens to also move some overstock. It wouldn’t make any sense to do it in such a way that doesn’t capitalize on the marketing opportunities! I think they did a great job this year vs. last year, and I don’t think too many people would be grievously upset if they did it the same way next year.

17

Sorry I made you angry, I certainly didn’t mean to. I’m done arguing with you though as it appears you’re seeing this very emotionally and I’d rather not escalate the situation any more.

It looks like my girlfriend and I are in the minority here. Perhaps our schedules are more full than everyone else. She’s a grad student, and although she didn’t want to get a box she was certainly looking at it through her lens of being very very busy. I’m a writer so every hour I can spending working is fabulous. I did have the extra time to get a box but was sacrificing other valuable things for it that I wish I didn’t have to sacrifice.

I think I’ll have her look at the thread to see if she can find any other ways to say what I’m saying in a way you will all be able to understand better.

18

I have no issue with what you said in the first place.

First, you’re bummed you didn’t get a Mystery Box. Lots of other people are too.

Then you went about making some suggestions. After that, it was supposed to be some reasonable, calm and possibly productive discussion and idea brain-storming for consideration for the powers that be.

The bottom line is always going to be the same:
There will be more demand than there are mystery boxes. This is the same as with any other highly desired product drop, regardless of brand or model.
Regardless of which ideas are explored, there are gonna be unhappy people.
If you snooze, you lose. While it’s not exactly “the early bird gets the worm”, those who make the necessary efforts stand a better chance of getting the prize.

Honestly, what happened later on is where I had issue with stuff being said.

Personally, you saw an issue. You offered up suggestions and ideas. None of your ideas actually give anyone a better change at getting the mystery boxes, so in effect, your ideas just provide more methods to perhaps score one without having to be on the store site at the moment stuff drops. I’m not discounting any of your ideas. All your suggestions have some degree of merit to them.

The whole purpose of your thread was to make some suggestions.

19

I acrualy he did get a mystery box he said so

EDIT actualy (I cant beileive I screwed that up )

20

Yep, I did :slight_smile: