GARAGE KITS - pricing discussion

[Anton Phibes]

I used to go to Wonderfest every year. I used to buy lots of resin kits. Spent a whole lotta dough on them. But,as I grew older, and the prices went up---I had to quit. I just couldnt spend the money on them anymore. I also no longer go to Wonderfest.

I also dont buy pre-painted Sideshow or Bowen....or nearly anything anymore really. Because everything has pretty much been priced above my individual ability to afford them anymore.

If and when I get the money---possibly at tax return time--I may try to buy John's Norman Bates kit. But thats about all i can splurge on.

I just cannot see paying out the money they command nowadays.

A lot of guys "on the inside" trade paint slinging skills, other kits they produce, sculpting skills, etc to advance their collections. But if you had to pay cash for everything...you, too, might think "I would love to have that....but cannot afford it."

I am not saying the market won't last at this point....but it certainly limits the base of buyers to those with higher levels of disposable income.

[XOFACTO2]

I may try to buy John's Norman Bates kit. But thats about all i can splurge on.

Nicest thing that's been said about me in weeks.

[boondocksaint]

I may try to buy John's Norman Bates kit. But thats about all i can splurge on.

Nicest thing that's been said about me in weeks.

Don't get used to it

[XOFACTO2]

Don't get used to it

Not based on recent history.

[armandodlc]

And that is concerning Anton...It makes me worry for our hobby.

[tay666]

I just cannot see paying out the money they command nowadays.

A lot of guys "on the inside" trade paint slinging skills, other kits they produce, sculpting skills, etc to advance their collections. But if you had to pay cash for everything...you, too, might think "I would love to have that....but cannot afford it."

I am not saying the market won't last at this point....but it certainly limits the base of buyers to those with higher levels of disposable income.

A lot depends on what you are looking at.
Sure, there are lots of high end - high priced kits out there right now. But, if there wasn't a market for them, producers wouldn't be making them.
There are also a lot of very reasonably priced kits out there if you look around.
I spent $425 on 7 resin kits at WF last year.

Sure, there are lots of kits I'd love to have, but I have to be realistic. So, I either limit my purchases to lower priced items, or I sacrifice several purchases to make one big one.
Any hobby can be expensive, it's all in how you approach it.
So, I don't see the buying base being limited by kit prices as much as it is limited by people who actually want to build and paint kits.

[armandodlc]

Good points Trevor. It all comes down to budgeting I guess. We all have to be judicious with our wallets.

[griffin]

You should see what a good large scale radio control plane goes for once you have it ready on the flightline. At least with my resin kits I don't have to worry about it all being made into a pile of scrap in a heartbeat. I have seen thousands of dollars retail not to mention man hours rekitted

[armandodlc]

Yea, I have a couple of friends who used to be into RC cars and planes, and that's what they said. I wouldn't be able to do it man. Putting all that time, effort, and money into something and then seeing it smashed in a mishap would suck

[Jesse321]

You know it constantly surprises me how all the armchair quarterbacks seem to know everything about this hobby, so let me be the one that gives folks a little education from the producers side of the table.

Lets start at the beginning.

You have an idea (awesome), you want to make it into a kit (great), oh wait … you can’t sculpt (darn it), so you hire sculptor.

Lets just say for #$#$#$# and giggles that the sculptor wants to charge you $1,500.00 for a basic simple 1/6th scale figure of your idea (lets call him/her character X) to do the sculpt. And trust me that’s a lowball number, but lets just use it anyway for the sake of this example.

3 to 4 months later (if your lucky) sculpts done (YAY) … now you move on to molding and casting of character X.

OH WAIT, you don’t mold and cast (darn it), now you have find a caster.

You find Joe Blow, and lets say for the sake of argument that the molding of character X is $750.00 (again a lowball figure), so now you’re into this project $2,250.00, and you haven’t even made your first cast yet.

Now lets talk about castings, lets just say each casting of character X is going to run $50.00 and you want to start with 30 castings. BTW, a good caster will get about 50 castings to a mold, as long as he doesn’t burn it out at one shot and lets it rest after 3 or 4 castings. If you do it all at once, you’re lucky to get 20 good pulls before the rubber heats up to the point that it starts to melt and degrade. But again, lets say for the sake of argument that this caster knows what he’s doing and you get your 30 castings. $50.00 X 30 = $1,500.00, so at this point you’re out of pocket $3,750.00, before your first sale.

$3,750.00 divided 30 = $125.00 that’s your BASIC cost of goods. Keep in mind that doesn’t include shipping back and forth, packaging materials, boxes, box art, and GOD FORBID your time unpacking, sorting, repacking, etc. etc.

Since this is a simple 1/6th scale figure, let’s give the producer a little advantage (hey, we're nice guys, we deserve it right?) and upscale the price a bit and say that instead of $150.00 which you should charge, you’re going to charge $175.00 for the kit. $175.00 X 30 = $ 5,250.00.

That means you’re going to have to sell 22 units, before you see your first penny of profit from this project. But hey, this is a fantasy world right? So lets just imagine that that you sell all 30, that’s $5,250.00 – $3,750.00 = $1,500.00.

That means in the BEST possible scenario, with absolute lowball figures and nothing going wrong, the best you can hope to make is $1,500.00 on that kit, for months of work.

And keep in mind there are still other costs discussed above that would drain those profits, and it doesn’t take into account sculptors who take your money and go AWOL, casters who go MIA for weeks and months at a time, those that don’t show up at shows that were supposed to be bringing your goods to sell at said show, packages that get lost by USPS, damaged by FedEx and UPS that then have to be replaced … all of which I’m personally dealing with right now BTW, so they’re not very uncommon occurrences, storage of the kits while they sell, travel expenses incurred to attend shows., etc. etc. And don't even get me started on the subject of recasters!

Now take those mythological $1,500.00, subtract all the additional costs, factor in your time chasing down and dealing with sculptors, casters, figure out the amount of hours that you’ve put into the kit, and divide that into an hourly wage … you’d be lucky if you made minimum wage, just for the privilege of having to deal with an often times disgruntled public. I don’t know if anyone here has ever worked in retail, hospitality, or food service, but I can tell you most times people SUCK!

I don’t know about anyone else, but I value my time, thankfully I have a good job, where I make a pretty decent living, so I often wonder why I even bother spending the amounts of time that I do in this hobby, when I could be spending it on one of my bikes.

As matter of fact, after typing all this, I think I need a few hours on my bike.

[Bubba]

Awww dang... Someone took the cork off the fork, AGAIN...

[root]

Jesse321
you are on the money with expenses but you forgot one very important thing.
Consumables. And they will break you if not figured in.

As I mentioned in my other post I swing a hammer part time for a income.
So for me things that are consumable are coal, sandpaper, grinder disks, saw blades, ELECTRICITY!!
And I pile of other things. Sometimes tools, yes they wear out and break even the good ones.

Any and every person that makes and sells something MUST, figure in consumables or there will never be any type of profit margin and more then likely a LOSS in the business.
My list doesn't sound like much above but it can run well over 200 bux in one shot to tool up for a project. and repeat the consumables list once or twice a month adding or subtracting different items.

What "consumers" don't know is what we the" makers and fixers of things" do know.
The time, though, and energy, that goes into making and fixing things.

I have a good income in the medical field as does the wife. but we both have " hobby incomes" mine is a commercial forge in the back yard.
Her's are her rental properties. Don't even get me started on the rental stuff, doing taxes we see that we gained less then two months profit on one unit in a year. Due to expenses and two forced evictions.

Fact of the matter is unless YOU are the person bringing a item to market or providing a needed service you are a consumer and probably have no real idea what is put into making something happen from nothing.

I strongly urge anyone out there that thinks it's easy to hurry up and get to it. Then show all of the artists on the board here in the monkey bars section what it is YOU have created and are now selling to pay bills or fund hobbies.

Sorry to be a new member ranting on a forum/BBS I am new to.
But I do GET IT! I do make and fix things. And I do do it for the enjoyment and MONEY.

RANT off.
Rich

PS: the guy that said he was only going to buy the one piece from Xfaco2 due to funding gets it.
He is living within his means. As we all should. No sour grape syndrome there.

[Jesse321]

Rich ... I couldn't agree with you more, I just wanted to give folks a quick and (somewhat) clean math equation, so they can see what the so called "profit margins" of these sorts of things really boil down to. There's are quite a few more costs, such as advertising in magazines, paying for artworks, banners for shows, just to name a few that will eat into that imaginary $1,500.00, that I didn't even bother to touch on.

Also, most folks don't see the hours of work that lots of producers put into cutting and sanding off mold sprews or brushing off excess flashing with wire brushes, so that people get the best kits possible, and yes, all the tools to do those things also cost money as well.

[miluzzu]

As someone who does home improvement work, I know all about bitching, moaning and crying over price. When I do a side project, I probably charge around half of what the big boys would and I still hear whining.

[Anton Phibes]

I may try to buy John's Norman Bates kit. But thats about all i can splurge on.

Nicest thing that's been said about me in weeks.

I must've slept through whatever conversation took place,lol. I do plan on getting Ole Normy though. So keep that in mind. Probably end of February beginning of March.

The last Wonderfest I attended with a pile of cash was in 2007. I went back in 2008...and that(I believe) was my swan song. But I didnt buy anything that year. Just looked around. I dont have any pictures saved from 08 forwards, so that was my fianle. But in 08, when the economic collapse occured...I guess I may have re-evaluated my collecting a bit.

My 07 purchases were Kenny's Teenage Werewolf, Steven Ritch Werewolf, Wolfman 43 and my dad bought Wolfman 41. It was loads of fun, and I think all those kits were about $150 each, maybe $175 for Wolfman 41.

But as the prices of EVERYTHING have gone way up (groceries, gas, etc).... my wages stagnated, eventually decreased, and what I was able to afford simply diminished beyond the pale.

Do I still love this stuff??? Surely!!! Can I afford to do what I used to? Nope. But its a combination of things. Not just because price points increased....but a perfect storm just seems to have occured. So--I enjoy the things I have. Like John's Hideous Sun Demon, and the magnificent IT! Terror from Beyond Space, my older kits, and, eventually, the Norman Bates kit.

To me: everything is too high these days. Not because someone is bathing in a pile of money like Scrooge mcDuck every day either. Its because everything is upside down these days.

[tay666]

To me: everything is too high these days. Not because someone is bathing in a pile of money like Scrooge mcDuck every day either. Its because everything is upside down these days.

That I can agree with 100%
After 10 years at the factory I am working at now, I am finally making a little bit more than what I was making back in 2003.
The only reason I have disposable income at this point is because my kids are grown and moved out, and my house is paid off. I'm paying 2015 prices with 2003 wages.

[Tim Fortuna]

As someone who does home improvement work, I know all about bitching, moaning and crying over price. When I do a side project, I probably charge around half of what the big boys would and I still hear whining.

Amen brother! Usually when people hear I'm a plumber I just tell them I'm to busy to do side jobs. It's cheaper to stay at home and paint.

[armandodlc]

Completely agree with you Anton... as Jesse says, its a clean math equation, and it all boils down to money.

Jesse, all I can say is I feel your pain a hell of a lot more than you might think. As a physician in today's managed care and Obamacare world, I am an absolute expert at having my labor undervalued. When a star basketball player makes 20 mill a year for playing a game that he happens to be very good at, and I get paid 300.00 for an appendectomy by Medicaid after training for 18 years to be able to do the procedure with a minimum of issues and have the patient leave the hospital doing well in 24 hours, well, you can imagine my frustration. And that doesn't even factor the rigorous and involved little hoops insurance companies make you jump thru to actually get paid for your services.

Yes, I can see how you resent when people might say your kit is expensive. I get it man! And I think your summary is very informative, and I daresay must reading for any fan of the hobby. But, as you emphasize, its all in the numbers, and what you described and Root reinforced is basic capitalism! It's the system we live in. Business ventures of any kind involve risk, and profit may not arrive initially. Again, all I am saying is that a polite conversation about the price followed by a quick transaction should not be construed as an insult. It is simply business. I think obnoxious customers and the ongoing recaster problem have created an atmosphere of frayed nerves in the community and have made many of us overly sensitive. Thats all. Peace...

[Jesse321]

You REALLY don't want to hear my opinions on the state of our medical system or the salaries of sports figures, but guess what, both of those are the results of "basic capitalism" too.

[armandodlc]

LOL...you'll get no argument from me here my friend. But despite that, Im a capitalist thru and thru, so I guess its what we have to contend with.
At any rate, on to more pleasant subjects. Are all your kits up on your website now? I wanted to peruse the Halloween ones, as well as the Zo kits. I'm thinking of picking up the scarecrow and the one with the kid trick or treating.