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Anyone have any questions about working in the industry?
I may be able to answer, or ask someone who knows, maybe give an inside point of view?Not even sure if anyone has any questions or cares?
But hey, you never know…
So when I say questions about the industry I was not really thinking about divulging that sort of intimate information to the world.
More about the industry than my own financial situation.However, it varies by product, factors being complexity to make that product and the time to make that product for an order as well as the raw material cost.
Some resin models are big and easy to cast, some are small and difficult, some are small and easy some are big and difficult.
Take a typical resin piece, let us say it uses £1.00 of resin to produce.
Let us assume it is an easy one pour model.
I may charge say £3.00 retail for that.Let us say I have a much smaller and much more fiddly piece that costs 10p of resin to produce.
By the same logic as above I would charge 30p retail.
However, I would not be happy spending all day casting at 20p profit per item when I could be casting the other one at £2.00 profit per item.
So that smaller more time-consuming item would say be £1.00 at retail rather than 30p.A much larger margin than the other, but it has to be, to be worth my time.
It could be the difference between say making £6.00 per hour and 60p per hour.Metal cast models tend to be more set in terms of margin as I don’t make them in house.
I normally double the cost to me for the retail.
So a model that costs me £1.00 to produce I sell for £2.00.
That is not always the case but gives you a rough idea.
Hand painted terrain / models again varies on the complexity of the paintjob and the size of the model.
I’d be happy to take a stab at those too, though it’s up to AB if that should go in its own thread instead?
Nope, this topic is fine.
Especially with me working on a set of rules that will be not be free, unlike my last ones.AB – I’d be interested in some talk about different materials (resin vs metal etc) from the perspective of people doing the sculpting and design.
In what sense?
Resin is more time consuming to cast.
A mould of 6mm figures will get me 30 metal figures cast in a matter of minutes.
A single resin building could take say 10 minutes or so.
If someone wants 30 resin buildings, you could be talking a day or two, unless I have duplicate moulds made.If you muck up the metal casting, you melt it back down and start again.
You can’t do that resin, though I will sometimes chop up a miscast resin model and drop it into a mould of a bigger resin piece.
I have sent out Crom’s Anvil models that have small 6mm sci-fi hovercars inside them!I don’t sculpt the people myself, but I have asked for corrections and they are done.
I understand that green stuff may be harder to correct as that cures as you go, but some sculpting materials need to be baked to cure, as such they may be easier to fix?Buildings are different, depends what sort of cock up you make.
Cut the doorway in the wrong place and you may well have to start that wall again, not such an issue if the first thing you did was the door.Casting in metal requires spin casting equipment and so on.
Resin casting requires no special equipment, however to avoid air bubbles and holes appearing in resin (not an issue with molten metal) then a pressure pot or a vacuum chamber or similar is needed.
I do not have either so carefully try to poke the bubbles out before the resin sets, if any holes do appear and I deem them unsightly I will fill them with green stuff.
If they are too bad I will not sell that model.Resin moulds wear out more quickly than metal ones.
I have yet to need to replace a mould for my figures, but have replaced many many resin moulds.Most of my resin buildings break even after a few sales.
I sculpt them myself, make the moulds myself and cast them myself.
Figures however take many more sales to break even.
Don’t think my Crom’s Anvil figures have broken even yet..
Hence why with both AB and CA I make more resin items.
I actually think if the industry was more open and transparent about it in the long run they would be able to increase profitability as customers would more readily see value.
I am not sure, the amount of people I have encountered that begrude a painter charging a rate that equals minimum wage is plenty.
Quite a lot of people seem to think that as it is just time, and no real significant materials then it should be very cheap.Same with rules writing, comments along the lines of “yeah but it actually cost you nothing except a pad of paper and a pencil” when people sell PDF rules…
I can’t imagine those people doing 3 months of work at an office for nothing…
And unfortunately, budgets that people are willing to spend on wargaming are far less than the budgets people are willing to spend on software developers
I am not saying that someone doing 50 hours of figure painting a week should get the same that someone doing 50 hours of coding a week should get, but that they should get something.
It does not seem unreasonable that you should get at least minimum wage for your work, regardless of what that work is.However plenty of people out there do think it unreasonable that games people earn money for their time spent working.
Do you see consistent growth in figure sales? Is that growth dependent on bringing out new ranges. IE: do you grow because you have the same grognards buying more new toys, or is there new blood buying into your older ranges constantly?
Ah, so new products are key to growth.
I have not made any new products for AB for over a year and sales have remained consistent, a combination of regulars coming back for more and new people.
Crom’s Anvil is growing, reaching new people.
Growing a business is hard, you need to be everywhere all the time, what works best is people talking about you.
It is time consuming to be on all the forums/sites yourself.
I used to promote AB in 6mm groups on FB.
But there are so many groups, many full of the same people it became of dubious value to post the same thing in a score of groups to the same people over and over.
So I mostly let others talk about me on FB.When bringing out a new product I find it valuable to reference older ones.
With Crom’s Anvil I have started for the Simurgh range to use one of my Character Models as a sort of sales person.
It highlights the new model he is promoting as well as the figure range he is part of.People like to know that a range they want to buy into will be not die.
For historicals if you have all the known troops available it is not such an issue I guess.
But for sci-fi / fantasy there is always room for another version of something, and as such I feel it best to keep adding to that range, that way the range is alive and will attract both new people and draw the old one back in.I also think (from my years in B2B and retail sales as much as this) that people buy from people.
I have certainly lost sales because of what people perceive about me and I have definitely gained sales for the same reason.
How much in terms of overall sales are lost/gained due to my perceived online identity I am not sure, but it does have some effect.
The other day, while searching for reviews of something, I came across one of the “chan” sites where one of my older titles had been uploaded with something like 3000 downloads of the file indicated.
Uncool.
I have also found my free rules uploaded to similar sites, people can be arses and plain weird.
Oh and the latest trendy rules can help.
If someone brings out some new fancy WWII rules and you sell WWII models, expect a spike in sales if you do some promotion.
TWW, AB and CA are my sole sources of income.
I have no other job, but I do not make a living from them.
I bring home enough to pay for the monthly food shop and a bit extra.However the flexibility it gives suits the needs of our family and especially those of my daughter.
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