How Sideshow runs “launches our customers can trust”

Sideshow is the market leader in a category of products most people have never experienced—high-end, limited-edition statues and figures.

Celebrating 30 years, Sideshow, doing business at Sideshow.com, makes hand-painted, hand-crafted, museum-quality collectibles of characters from Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, and more. Their attention to detail and unmatched quality has attracted a global customer base and even led to their work being featured as props in television and film (if you’ve seen ‘The Big Bang Theory’, you’ve seen their products).

“Our tagline is ‘Let Your Geek Side Show’,” says Chris Pirrotta, Sideshow’s VP of Digital Experience. “Our goal is to go beyond mass-produced pieces of memorabilia and create collectibles that connect people with the characters and brands they’re passionate and nostalgic about.”

“When you sell high-end items, you need to deliver a high-end experience,” Pirrotta continues. “And when you’ve got passionate customers, you must deliver a launch experience they can trust.”

As Sideshow’s customer base grew, so too did the technical challenges of meeting customer demand. Their limited-edition drops attract large and sudden traffic spikes, causing the occasional site slowdown, or even crash. We sat down with Pirrotta to hear how Sideshow overcame these challenges and how they now deliver smooth, fair, reliable product launches using Queue-it.

One of Sideshow’s biggest product launches was the life-sized replica of The Child (Grogu, also known as ‘Baby Yoda’) from the popular Star Wars TV Show ‘The Mandalorian’. The adorable character had taken the internet by storm, and Sideshow was in the privileged position of releasing the most authentic and detailed version of ‘The Child’ available to the public.

“It was one of our most popular items ever,” Pirrotta says. “But it crashed our site almost immediately, and next thing we knew, we were international news. That type of exposure isn’t necessarily bad, but we knew it was something we could only be forgiven for once. How could we build trust and excitement around our releases if we couldn’t provide a professional experience? We’d just look like amateurs.”

Historically, Sideshow has always had high demand for their limited-edition items. But no single category of product consistently challenges their servers like those from Hong Kong manufacturer, Hot Toys.

“Hot Toys are world-renowned manufacturers of hyper-detailed sixth scale action figures from the most popular TV and film releases,” Pirrotta told us. “Their products are normally only available in-person in Hong Kong, but we have the exclusive authority to distribute them online in the Americas and Europe. The online demand in these areas is through the roof, and FOMO plays a significant part in the story.”

“With that fear of missing out comes sudden traffic spikes,” Pirrotta explains. “We kept finding ourselves scrambling to keep our servers online during popular launches. And the servers weren’t the only challenge; we also didn’t have mechanisms for fairness. Add into that equation the probability of bots and the occasional cheaters, and we often found ourselves struggling. We needed to solve these problems to maintain our professionalism and meet the expectations of our customers and partners.”

The Sideshow team tried to improve their launch experience using several tactics. Like most, they looked at scaling their systems—a costly and challenging ask for limited need. During high-traffic product releases, they would shut down the overall function of the site to focus just on the single PDP being released—to the detriment of their significant traffic to other portions of the site. They also segmented customers and communications to limit traffic peaks.

“But ultimately, these solutions either didn’t work or upset customers,” Pirrotta told us. “We have very passionate customers who we highly respect. When they miss out on the one limited-edition collectible they want, they get pretty upset. So we knew we needed to do something to ensure our launches were fair and technically consistent.”

The Sideshow team implemented Queue-it to improve their launch experience in mid-2023, and “we’ve never gone down since,” Pirrotta says.

“Queue-it enabled us to properly schedule high-demand sales, which itself was a huge improvement to the user experience. But it also added a significant level of professionalism to our overall launch execution. It’s simply seamless, fast, and reliable.”

Now, when Sideshow releases a new product, they announce a specific time of release to ensure customer clarity and opportunity. Early visitors access a branded pre-queue with a countdown, designed to build excitement. When the release goes live, queue numbers are assigned randomly to all visitors, determining their place in line—ensuring a fair process for all.

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Sideshow's pre-queue & queue custom themes for The Joker Hot Toys product launch

This process not only ensures fair access, but it also ensures optimal site performance by giving the Sideshow technical team complete control over traffic flow.

When they launched the coveted Obi-Wan Kenobi Hot Toys figure, for example, visitors showed up in spikes of over 500 per minute—as shown in the green line (total inflow) in the chart below.

But as the red line (max outflow) shows, the Sideshow team used Queue-it to ensure the site never exceeded its max throughput of 200 new visitors per minute.

“Now, when our customers access our launches, they can trust us to handle the traffic. They can trust our site to be fast. They can trust our launches to be fair. Queue-it creates an overall professional experience that works exactly as advertised.”

Chris Pirrotta, VP of Digital experience

“Sales-wise, Queue-it helps us sell more in a shorter timeframe,” Pirrotta says. “We also get accurate stats on how many people showed up to a special release, which further helps us inform future customer demand decision-making.”

Since implementing Queue-it, Sideshow has run over 30 successful product launches. And with 24/7 protection enabled, they’ve had more than 122 million visitors pass through Queue-it’s safety net, with the waiting room automatically kicking in to protect the site dozens of times.

“The 24/7 protection gives us that extra peace of mind that we won’t have issues if traffic unexpectedly spikes. It also means we have clarity into specific reasons for a traffic spike. With the GO Queue-it Platform we can visualize whether it is a bot attack or an amazing organic opportunity.”

“As VP of Digital Experience, I absolutely love Queue-it’s ease of use and commitment to fairness,” Pirrotta says. “We can now confidently say everyone has an equal opportunity to get these limited-release items. When you use industry-leading tech from the industry-leading company, you can guarantee a fair process for all.”

The Sideshow team has seen first-hand the impact of creating a fairer launch experience.

“Queue-it has helped us eliminate customer complaints related to our launch experience. It’s empowered us to run product launches our customers can trust.”

Chris Pirrotta, VP of Digital Experience

“What’s really revealing is that we don’t just see the impact through our customer support requests or social media—we can see it first-hand,” Pirrotta says. “Our customers livestream our launches to hundreds of viewers worldwide, and we watch those streams to see exactly how they’re experiencing the launch. It’s a real-time look at how they interact with our queue, allowing us to confirm their experience aligns with our lofty expectations.”

Sideshow is a fun company, so they keep their queues fun, too. Pirrotta says. “We love customizing the queue pages and tailoring those to specific launches. We try to be informative and fun with our real-time messaging. You know, when we have a Spider-Man launch, we customize it to say, ‘How’s it hanging, Spider-fans?’”

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Sideshow's Spider-Man pre-queue & queue with custom copy & exclusive promocode

“The themed queue also allows us to incentivize customers while they wait," Pirrotta says. "Since our queues are limited to the product launch page, we can offer special codes or discounts to those who are waiting in line. These codes have generated an additonal $23k in sales in just one year.”

With their launches under control, the Sideshow team is back focusing on what they do best: connecting passionate pop culture fans with the products they know and love.

Pirrotta and his team are continuing to explore ways to make the most of Queue-it during their big brand moments by engaging their customers and capitalizing on the traffic.

“As we look for new ways to enhance our launch experience, one idea we’re exploring is embedding livestreams directly on the queue page during product drops,” Pirrotta says. “I’ve gathered inspiration from other Queue-it waiting rooms, particularly around custom themes and how they enhance engagement. The potential to use the communication pane to create a more interactive and personalized experience for our customers is exciting. With Queue-it’s ongoing support, we’re eager to explore these possibilities and continue optimizing the overall experience.”

“Queue-it is one of those rare companies that’s as invested in our success as we are. They sat with us through our first ten events, offering us insights that would have taken months to figure out on our own, ensuring each launch was better than the last. It was a truly collaborative experience and relationship.”

Chris Pirrotta, VP of Digital experience