Reading over last year’s update, it was a bit of a downer. I will try to make this one more positive/ fun.
I thought it might be interesting for people to hear what my top items and lines were over the past year and a half or so. Top 5 items with % of total sales dollars: Dwarf Mega Bundle (2.3%) Ratkin Mega Bundle (2.2%) StahlRitter Standard Infantry (1.76%) Wood Elf Army Bundle (1.72%) Microwasteland Vehicle Sampler 1 (1.51%)
So, items that were released like 8 or 9 years ago remain my top sellers, which is great, it would just be more great if I could decrease my dud ratio. Its tough to find other products with the same sort of longevity to grow the business into the future. Something else to notice, the investment to earnings ratio on the items listed above, WAY not the same, and that is the power of the Epic proxy. A single 3-pose pack of stahlritters grossed not that much under another item that was a $3k+ investment.
The individual products don’t really paint the whole picture though, as the high dollar items like the bundles tend to be pretty spikey. The below are my top 5 lines period over the past 1.5 years: Renaissance (10.45%) Dwarf (8.44%) Undead (6.73%) Orc (6.1%) New_Terra (5.51%)
That’s it for retrospective sales numbers. I unfortunately can’t give solid timelines on any new releases for various reasons. Everything is pretty much guesstimates, which are often wrong.
Definitely the new 6mm Undead are coming out this year, as I physically have half the molds with me right now. They will be out next month, the remainder will follow in maybe 3 months time, aka, whenever the moldmakers send them to me.
Elves…archers and spears are ready for release, but I have been holding off since I don’t have the command models ready. My ability to release these this year will depend on whether or not I can get some of the casting issues resolved.
Next army up for sculpting is the Kingdom of Light crusader army. If the sculptor keeps to the schedule he has been on the past few commissions, I don’t expect to have them in hand till the end of the year. I really need to get an additional sculptor for the 6mm Fantasy stuff to speed things up a bit.
3mm scifi – Team Kukri will either come out before or after the Elves. Probably before because they will not take a ton of molds to get done. After that I need to get some concepts done for the line and see where that takes me.
Fantasy naval - Orcs, Elves, Imperial humans, and Dark Alliance fleets sculpted. Just had some issues resolved with the Elf ships, and I got the first of the Imperial masters and the orc escort masters in hand the other day. Tons of art being made for the rulebook. I was hoping to avoid Kickstarter, but the Dwarves didn’t really sell the way I needed them to by a large margin. Kind of torn between running a Kickstarter for the models sans rules or just waiting till the rules are 100% finished to launch the Kickstarter. Option 3 would be to just release all of the fleets at once and not really care about what they make. I work long hours in my day job, so option 3 might be the way I go.
6mm Dieselpunk: I will shoot a little update in the dedicated thread, but lots of stuff going on in the back end. Looking at 3 complete armies at launch. Again, a Kickstarter probably makes the most sense…but it will be at least 6-8 months before everything is ready to roll anyway, so there is time to decide. Microwasteland – I should have a set of modular monster trucks, big war rigs, and another Denizens set out in the Fall. Maybe some additional infantry sets too, if the schedule works out.
Lots of other random stuff and ideas for future releases. I have dabbled a bit into 10mm Fantasy, but the sculptor I was going to use just isn’t available anymore, makes it kind of not feasible since my existing sculpts in the scale are CAD and I want everything to be done by one person so it doesn’t look hodge podge. There are also a ton of makers out there doing stuff in the scale, some of which either have Kickstarters underway or soon will. Makes me feel the entry into the 10mm arena isn’t all that necessary. I can’t really compete with a company that is run by a sculptor, they are just able to execute a lot better and easier. I am going to do 6mm Bronze age in a big way, as it is a personal interest, and the Renaissance stuff has seemed to sell okay. I wanted to start doing some Chinese historicals too, but I think Rapier might be going in that direction, I don’t want to horn in. We’ll see over the next 6 months.
Would love to do some Ghibli-punk inspired airships and 2-3mm scale vehicles, I think it could be an interesting line. Probably towards the end of the year there will also be some experimentation with CAD designed 3mm fantasy strips. They might be too small, even for me, I’ll definitely post up some test prints, even if I decide not to move forward with a full line. I was thinking of some really exotic warbeasts and war engines a la Chronopia empires, sort of like the same scope and scale as some of Adrian Smith’s HATE artwork. Even in 6mm you can’t get that sense of mass…kind of like an ocean of infantry punctuated by some giant creatures, that sort of thing.
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