The RLC – From Bad, to Better, to Worse

The RLC – From Bad, to Better, to Worse

Written by Matthew's Dad

First, I want to say thank you to everyone that supports and encourages my son. It’s amazing to see how far he has come over these years.

As you are aware, my son is an avid collector and I do all I can to help him obtain many of his amazing pieces. He does a lot of work and research on these cars to put together videos that, not only make you aware of the product, but get a little background info and history.

I wasn’t sure on how to word all this, so I figured I break it down by categories.

 

The RLC (Hot Wheels Collectors - HWC) Website

From everything I have been told, the RLC site started off for the collectors. It was a way to satisfy the “adult” collector while allowing Mattel to bring in some additional revenue.

So when I first signed up and started to buy the cars for Matthew (remember, I had to do it because you have to be 18 to be a member of the RLC) things were not that hard to get and there was not much traffic on the website.

 In fact, I remember the year before I actually signed up I was able to buy him the blue Mustang Boss 302 and it didn’t sell out. One arrived in the mail, he opened on video and after he said “Dad, it’s still available… buy as a many as you can, please! Trust me!” So I bought a few more… if your curious, look up the current price on eBay here.

Then the next couple years, things started to get harder to obtain due to the website. We would see the “gears of death” when trying to buy something. Then they said they fixed it because they added a splash page. Then we would always worry if we could get in, and even if we did, we often saw the “gears of death”.

All the complaints to fix the site were flowing constantly. Sell outs would also generate other complaints that Mattel wasn’t making enough product. As collectors, do we want more product? For resellers that answer is NO. For collectors, the answer varies, but the general consensus is that most would rather have the product and sacrifice the limited quantity.

Last year brought about the switch to Shopify. Collectors started screaming… BOTS!! I’ll address this later.

But despite the Cookie Datsun fiasco (which was NOT Shopify’s fault but the IT team at Mattel), most sales went smooth.

Shopify seemed to be the answer… the website quickly went from bad to BETTER.

 

 

Maximizing Profit

When I first heard that the RLC was offering two types of memberships I thought ok, they are just branching out to accommodate those who don’t get the car but want to be in the “club”. Then I heard it’s unlimited membership… but wait not only is it unlimited but you can join at any time throughout the year… as long as you pay the $10? Well ok then, that’s definitely a marketing strategy to maximize profit.

Anyone in business knows that the goal is to maximize profit. This quickly explained the $10 club fee. It also helps to explain why this “club” is unlimited. As we talk to many of our friends and see endless postings of people upset, stating that Mattel greedy and money hungry… just remember. The goal of their business is to make money.

But then at what expense? Will the members remain loyal? Does Mattel care if the long time members remain loyal? It seems clear that they are shifting to market towards a different crowd… but do they even know which crowd? Some may argue that this crowd is the resellers…. But you’ll never hear Mattel say that.

The bottom line, as long as they make X amount of product and they sell out, then it was successful no matter who bought it.

 

Collectibles

Have you noticed the latest craze? All collectibles are selling out! So it’s not just Hot Wheels… and it’s not one person hyping Hot Wheels! What hypes Hot Wheels up is the guy telling his buddy he bought a $1 car and sold it for $50. Just like baseball, basketball & Pokemon cards, the “hype” for collectibles has risen since Covid started. Shoes and watches have also been part of this trend… even hypercars! With many people not traveling, not spending money on gas or other things, it seems like they are buying more collectibles. Let’s see how long this lasts.

 

BOTS

I keep hearing people saying BOTS, but do these people know what a “BOT” is and how it works? As an avid shoe collector, I fight with bots constantly. Us “manual” users are at a true disadvantage and bot protection is a joke. If you are part of a good discord or “cook group” they find out which protection is being used and patch up the bots minutes before the sales.

If you want to know all about bots in 2020, here is a YouTube video.

The bottom line, botting is not easy and it’s not cheap. Prices range from a few hundred to several thousand. Many have monthly fees or yearly fees attached and the most popular bots are sold out.

Next, you will need servers and proxies…. Watch the video if you really want to know what all that is… basically the bot might use up more computer power than your computer can handle. You also need different IP addresses if running many tasks.

Mattel now uses Shopify and that’s heavily botted. There are more Shopify bots out there than any other. In fact, there is a dedicated bot just for the HWC site… I will not be sharing that link, so don’t ask for it!

Does captcha prevent bots? NOPE. It just slows them down a bit, but a bot will still be much faster than any manual user.

Which leads to the question: Are the RLC drops botted? Last year, maybe a little, but nothing to make impact because membership was limited. This year, the true Botters already know that they can double their money on each RLC drop, so YES RLC DROPS ARE BOTTED HEAVILY. If Botters are willing to flip $220 shoes for $250 and are able to cop 20+ pairs, then they are excited about every RLC drop. You can do the math if they flip 20+ items. I was watching a YouTube video where a well known Botter copped 60+ pairs of UNC Air Jordan 1’s… retail $180, resale $400+. She was running 7000 tasks (basically that’s 7000 profiles/people/accounts). Oh and remember, on these shoe drops, it’s 1 per household… with RLC at 5 per household, hmmm, that's a no brainer for a seasoned Botter. In case you are wondering, it is easy for the Botters to get more than 5 because there are ways of spoofing your address, credit card info and email.

 

Back to the profit topic with business – if you produce X amount and sell them all out, your sale was successful no matter who bought it.

 

Number of Members

As of today, we know that there are over 50,000 members. Someone posted a hack on the message boards so you can find out the total members. This number will only grow with unlimited memberships.

Back to the topic profit with business - If you are selling a membership for $10, would you rather have 20,000 members or 120,000 members? That's free money!

 

What the Future Holds

I cannot answer this question. Are there options Mattel could have taken? Sure, but those would take time to develop and/or NOT maximize profit. Did they have this time to think of other solutions? Of course they did! Collectors have been saying we want more product and access for a few years. The solution they came up with was giving them the access without the product.

Perhaps Mattel wants to be like Nike, Supreme and other companies that have “hyped” drops? This means that they are catering to a completely different crowd than the older RLC members. One thing to remember though is that Supreme, Nike, etc. have weekly drops with a variety of products.

Back to the topic profit with business-  wouldn’t you want to take advantage of a trend to make more money? But remember the solution they came up with, if you can’t provide more product, just provide access for $10!

The title of the article posted on the HWC site sums it all up… “A New Age Dawns”. We know that this site is officially no longer for collectors, but as a money machine for Mattel.

 

THE SOLUTION

My initial thought is to just provide a subscription based model. We keep hearing this cry from the message boards and our fellow collectors. People are willing to throw money at Mattel a year in advance for product! I also think this will allow Mattel to get a better idea of how many to produce and thus ALWAYS have a “successful sell out”.

I know many insiders do not want to do this because it will disclose product, be too difficult, etc. But with technology now, it seems like it can be done. They would need to plan out a year in advance and we are willing to buy into this. We buy the selections car now and then wait a year anyway, so this is not much different.

I know Matthew and I would love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to post a comment.