I think this is the latest in the year I have ever done one of these. I am very much in a sort of hobby phase with the business. Sales continue to decline across the board, costs continue to increase across the board…morale oscillates accordingly. I work all the time, and sadly…I am getting old lol. I don’t really have the energy or time to do very much marketing, or proactively run a ton of KS’s or anything like that. I started the business in my late 20s…crazy how time passes. I had a lot of good intentions last year, and I thought I would accomplish XYZ…but the reality is I work a gazillion hours, and I don’t have much gas left in the tank anymore.
This year, we pushed out 3mm Imperials, Early Bronze / General bronze age 6mm, and Merc Team Kukri for 6mm scifi. There will be at least one more release for this year, most likely 3mm Fantasy Undead, as I really wanted to push those out this year. When it is all said and done, I basically will only have managed quarterly releases this year, which is pretty bad considering the backlog of stuff I have, somewhere around 20 projects or so of varying size. Some of the slowness in releases is driven by labor resources, availability of moldmakers, etc. The other is sales driven. For example, my new releases this year, combined, have grossed about $1,310.
Let’s see, 3D printing…honestly I go back and forth on converting to a print farm. I do truly believe that miniature businesses incorporating it into their business model is truly the way to go. That said, I don’t really like 3d printing all that much. Doing it for yourself is fine, fun even, but producing a ton of minis up to a quality you might want to sell? Pretty annoying! It also produces a ton of waste, microplastics, gross chemical byproducts, there is no part of it that is fun time. Again, printing for yourself, kind of finite and manageable. Doing it as a business, whole other scale of problems. When it comes down to it, I don’t make much / any money anyway so it really has to be something I don’t actively hate doing. I DO have a 3d-printer buying problem though. I have 6 of the things at this point, its crazy. If another large box arrives at the house, I fear my wife’s reaction.
Okay what else…good news, positives! I think I finally settled on a printer + resin combo where I am satisfied enough with the results to print straight for production molds. I do still need to pass the hurdle of actually getting the prints to produce a mold successfully, which could result in a failure for many reasons that I’m not sure a moldmaker doing contract moldmaking would even be motivated to address, but for now, just having the prints I will take as a big win. Pics below!
The littlest wights!
This is a big win because mastering costs + 3D printing costs are bonkers and are really annoying from a logistics standpoint. So we basically save on time, money, and hopefully no more filing and cleaning master castings till my fingers bleed and I go cross-eyed.
And just to close, people reading this may wonder why I bother staying in business, or maybe they think I am kind of down on the endeavor. I do it because its awesome. Because as I am sitting and filing the mold lines off of a little 6mm late landsknecht pikemen, I am thinking about how paintable the sculpts look and how great they will look based up (which I will never have time to do, but who cares!). Even if next year is a total disaster, and I only get two or three releases in, it will still be awesome. Do you see the pictures I posted above? How can you not get excited? Bronze age lion centaurs in 6mm? Cobramen? 3mm skeleton hordes? Next year is going to rock. Except for work, that is going to suck and devour my soul. And the geo-political instability/horrors…and probably a recession. But miniatures though, the miniatures will be awesome.
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For all your Dark Realm, 6mm scifi and 6mm fantasy needs:
http://www.microworldgames.com/
