Catching up...
But what if mommy had the money and spent it on magic beans?
That's her prerogative. She does not owe you either cake or ice cream.
Therefore, when "it's a business" is used, it shouldn't be knee-jerked mocked.
Agreed. Some may overuse it or misuse it. I do not.
Chasing margin above all else.. is not the only way to be successful.
Completely agree. And I know very well that Disney, eBay, and most other big companies do what Wall Street tells them to do to make their stock prices (sometimes artificially) inflate.
And I employ firsthand what you said in my own (very small) business. I sell many records for $2 and $3 that I could sell on ebay for $10 to $20. In fact, I have many customers who buy them for $2 and $3 to sell on ebay for $10 to $20. But the flip side of that is I have many regulars who come in week after week and are so happy that they were able to find something for $3 that they know would be $12 plus shipping on ebay. The loyalty is worth the price difference. And the happiest sound for me is a customer gasping when they are digging through and find something they love and thought they'd never find. I paid probably 50 cents for it, so I made my margin. I don't need to squeeze every bit of margin on everything (although I do on maybe 10% of the stuff that comes in, or at some point, it becomes irresponsible to the business. I'm not really Willy Wonka, I have to remind myself of that sometimes in order to pay the rent.) But my overriding philosophy is you can't expect people to go treasure hunting through the crates of records if there are no treasures to be found.
That said, I would caution against romanticizing the business side of Disney too much, and also acknowledge the difference between running the first and only park at the time vs. an international mega-corporation of theme parks, etc. etc. One is very different from the other. You can take a lot more risks with your first big experiment.
What part are you having trouble with? If "Disney is a business" is always the correct answer than there must be some sort of universal correct answer Disney is following.
You're awful at debate. Few things are so black or white. You were responding to this:
"Apparently a lot of people here need to wake up to that fact because they think it's all about altruism and artwork, purity, fairy dust, super fans telling a company what to do (and that what they do is "wrong") because the super fans have some imaginary claim over the legacy.
When someone starts naïvely whining and crying about "why can't Disney just fix everything at the same time?" Out comes the appropriate business argument."
And your answer in no way addressed the post to which you were responding.
The big difference is that I can articulate reasons for my assessment relating to model, posture, build quality and even animation. That's a wide swath of the metrics on which a figure would be judged.
You think you can, but you haven't. And you overvalue your own opinion in the equation.
