Monday, February 24, 2014

Let´s get serious!

Alright, I´m back with the promised pics. Unfortunately, there´s not much new to show yet as I´m busy finishing the next batch of figures as I´m writing this. I´ve two figures done but one still heavily WIP. All three are additions to my Insurgent support weapons and I´d like to present them together. So bear with me, but it will probably be tomorrow before I´m that far.

Meanwhile I have my German Machinegunners ready to go. Two MG3 and two MG4 poses for some diversity in our Bundeswehr ranks.



The grey guy is the latest addition, the two white guys left and right should be recognised by my long-time followers ;)

I´ve also used the good light this morning to take better pictures of my Taliban Support Teams:


Unfortunately, the grey putty does not lend itself well to photography... Looks slightly better than my first attempt, but in reality they are just so much better :(


Anyway, let´s get serious:  These figures will be cast together with my Israelis and will soon be available for purchase. Soon means in a few weeks, once the casting is done, all administrative stuff is handled and all basic work on my website done. I´m taking this step to make casting the figures worthwhile. There are two potential paths to bring the figures to a larger audience without incurring massive losses:
First option is to only cast the figures once enough interest has been gathered. This means gathering a lot of intel and building up and maintaining the right contacts. While it minimises my financial risk, I´m probably losing out on the time aspect. Furthermore, it´s technically not legal for me to sell figures for profit without a proper registration as a businessman. And I´m not releasing all the figures without any compensation for my work. I´m not asking for much, but there´s no free lunch.

Soo, the second option is taking the financial risk and starting up a small business, investing some venture capital to have the initial stock of figures cast. This still requires gathering interest and potential customers - marketing and stuff - but has some positive aspects. Good thing is, it´s perfectly legal, it allows people to just buy stuff without complex transactions like articulating their demand on the right spot like option 1 - and they can buy stuff anytime they want, not just when I´m gathering people who want to support my newest project.  It allows me to build up a proper presence and a reputation in the market. And after crunching the numbers up and down and up again, I´ve come to the conclusion that the financial risk is rather limited for me, as I´m not paying a penny for commissioning the masters, but do them myself. If things fail, I can write off the initial investment, close things down and move on without incurring losses in the thousands.

The implication is: All the figures you´ve seen in the past months will be available through my new webshop very soon. This includes all Israelis, my Generic Insurgents and both of the Teams I posted above. I´m still working on the website and it will take some more time to get it finished. The figures will be sent off to casting within the next week if nothing bad happens.
With some cautiousness, I´d estimate that the operation will be ready to go on-line come Late March / Early April

If you´re already sure to buy stuff, give me a heads-up in the comment-section so I don´t run out of figures on the first day. ;)

Cheers,
BG

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