Post
by Duke of Plaza-Toro » Mon Mar 07, 2011 11:34 pm
Oh dear... well I hesitate to post this as I don't want to sound like some whining hard luck story, but equally I don't want anyone to mistakenly reinforce the impression that Eureka are some sort of uber expensive rip off merchants by deliberate design.
Yes - from the UK and USA perspective we realise that our figures have now become prohibitively expensive, but it should be stressed that nothing has changed here at Eureka.
We have not had a price rise in almost five years.
Just two years ago our figures retailed for about the same converted price as a Perry Miniature and we were markedly cheaper than a Foundry.
The current situation is entirely down to the major shift in the international currency exchange rates - driven by the GFC and (not to put too fine a point on it) the criminal incompetence of USA and European financial institutions. While your economies have gone down the toilet, ours in Australia has remained ‘regrettably’ stable and strong and the currency exchange rates have shifted dramatically, reflecting this.
People are, of course, perfectly within their rights to complain publicly about the cost of our figures when ordering from overseas (free speech and all that), but all we ask is that you keep in mind why things are the way they are.
So now that you have to pay a king's ransom for your Eureka figures, what can we do about it? Well, I'm afraid it's not just a simple matter of cutting our prices. Margins are not high in this business as it is and our wages, rent, and metal costs in Aus are still the same as they ever were (...actually the last two have increased steadily over the last few years and we've absorbed them). All I can say to our USA customers is to urge you to talk to Rob at EurekaUSA. He's a great bloke and I know he will do his best to look after you on price if you order regularly and in reasonable quantities. Meanwhile, for those ordering directly from us we do have some discounted unit deals (usually to be found at the end of each listing on the website - which, as I type this, it rather occurs to me that they may go unnoticed there, so I will look into making them more prominent ...) and we also have a customer discount scheme. For every au$75.00 (before postage) you spend you get a coloured discount card included in your order. Collect four of these and your next order gets 20% off. Alternatively - all single orders we receive of au$300.00 or more (before postage) get an instant 20% discount. Yes, it's still a lot of money for you to spend to qualify, but we are trying to ease the pain where we can. Hopefully the world’s troubled economies in Europe and the USA can gain some traction over the next couple of years and we can get back to something like ‘normal’. In the meantime, we are left treading water.
OK - I’ve taken up more than enough space on Barry’s forum with this sob story and pushing our discount schemes, but I just wanted to clear the air a little. Eureka is attracting a sprinkling of adverse comment around the web regarding costs at the moment and I don’t deny it hurts Nic and I when we read it, but we really have very little room for manoeuvre. In the end, if people want us to continue expanding our French Revolutionary Wars project and retain the high quality of sculpting (sadly Alan Marsh doesn’t work for free) this is how it’s going to be for a while.
Yours sincerely
John Chadderton
Eureka Miniatures
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