Sheepman wrote:
I agree wholeheartedly with your comments on Eureka, I too love the sculpts but the cost is too prohibitive for me. I read the explanation from DTP and understand his comments but could someone explain why (and I'm not in anyway a businessman) the lads down there cannot sub-contract the casting in this country and thereby sell them at a more affordable price, ...
...If DTP reads this then he will hopefully put me right.
Dave.
Sheepman / Dave – love your figures (even if they aren’t ours!) and anyone interested in the 1792-1802 period is a man after my own heart.
On the ‘casting under licence’ issue you brought up. Why don’t we do it? Well, perhaps for the same reasons few other miniatures companies like entering into these types of arrangements. They are often problematic.
These ‘under licence’ deals are almost entirely based on trust – not exactly a sound basis for a reliable business model! (And there have been a few horror stories over the years). The first question for the parent company is whether or not your subcontractor is honest and transparent about the quantities he casts, sells and what he finally pays you in royalties. And secondly there’s the issue of quality. Is your subcontractor doing your product and your hard earned reputation justice? Is he always using good quality metal; is he taking care to keep mould lines and miscasts to a minimum – or is he just churning out masses of rushed, poor quality castings? What is his customer service like? Despite our modern world of multi media communication it is still difficult to monitor these things from 10,000 miles away.
As a result these deals are comparatively rare and unpopular. At Eureka we have a few long standing arrangements with some UK companies like Museum and Irregular Miniatures (and of course Tony Barton entrusts us with his entire 15mm product line) but only because Mr Eureka (my boss, Nic Robson) has close, well established relationships – friendships even – with the proprietors of those companies going back over many years. Even if you are ‘known’ and ‘respected’ within the miniatures world (as Nic is) most companies are still understandably wary. Over the years I know Nic has approached a few very well known UK miniatures companies and enquired about casting their lines under licence in Australia with a view to increasing their sales in Aus, NZ and SE Asia. He has always been met with a polite refusal.
Those are the core issues. There are other things that swirl around – such as the x 2 cost of making (and maintaining) the duplicate sets of multiple moulds that are needed to sustain two separate arms of the same company, but the above covers the main points.
Now as it happens, having said all the above, our UK representative Ian Marsh at Fighting15’s DOES cast a limited number of our lines under licence! However, I’m not sure how much our UK customers might benefit from this as Ian is a free agent, running his own business (selling ranges other than just ours), and as such he is at liberty to set his own retail prices. We cannot therefore guarantee that Ian will always pass on any saving he creates from casting in ‘his own back yard’. That’s between him and his local market.
In summary – I suppose what I’m trying to get across here is that casting under license deals are very difficult to set up (and costly – we’re still in the middle of a GFC remember), potentially problematic to monitor and maintain for the parent company, and they don’t necessarily guarantee customers the same quality product or even better prices. Our minds are not closed to the idea in principle and if the right circumstances came along it could happen, but we regret these things are not as straight forward as they might at first appear.
Sorry for the long post – but you did ask!
Sincerely
John Chadderton
Eureka Miniatures