The year in review
Monday, January 3, 2011 at 11:30AM Wow, I have a lot of unfinished kits. It’s been my intention to slow down and author fewer but better kits. We’ll see how that goes.
This coming year at least, will still see a lot of kits to offer as I clear the decks. Some will have more priority than others as we keep trying to understand what folks want. The trains were a decided hit so there will deffinitly be more along those lines. I am also designing a set of models that are not aimed at model railroaders but at the crafting crowd and I want to see if I can make some sense of all the scifi gaming stuff that I did but never released. We are making a sincere effort to make Clever Models a stable, going business. Not an easy task in this economy. On the other side of the curtain, my animation business has taken a big hit. Ordinarily, I would have extra funds to pump into CM (clever models) when needed. Instead I’ve been forced on occasions to pull funds out. That’s not good for a small business but we are holding on. To say we are thankful for all of your support is an understatement. I’m not talking about what you have purchased but about all the good words you have spread. It’s no surprise to anyone that modeling in paper is an underdog position, but we are slowly winning the battle. Hardly a month goes by that you won’t see an article in the magazines about what you can do with paper and isn’t that amazing. Well, it is amazing but it shouldn’t be surprising. You all are ambassadors of paper models. Every time you build something your proud of and show it off, it takes a brick out of the wall and helps us grow stronger.
With the apparent demise of Paper Creek, there is a real shortage of quality paper models. Even though there are more players, the quality is pretty sad. We don’t fear competition. We do what we do to the best of our ability. I want other paper companies to be successful as long as their product moves the genera forward. Why do companies who put out an inferior product (boy I’d like to name names) apparently out sell us. I don’t know this for a fact but based on their ad budget they are either selling or going broke.
Advertising is likely a key issue and we just can’t afford it right now. Your word of mouth support is more valuable then ever. I don’t want to sound too negative. We are surviving and our kits are evolving, getting better all the time. However, we didn’t grow last year. Sales were flat even though we dropped prices and added quality.
I am optimistic going into this year. Some how we will get advertising going and we have a few promotional ideas to try out.
I have a lot more to say about this but even I get tired of reading my ranting, so I’ll sign off for now, but let me say this.
I intend to be on this blog a lot more. One of the highlights here are the pictures of your builds. Please keep sending them and most of all thank you for “getting it and spreading the word.”
Peace out. (my daughter says that)
Reader Comments (3)
This is a very interesting post from you.
As a result I have a interesting story for you. Many, many years ago I was in the communications biz. Long befor cell phones and such. Anyway we had a rental and service company that specialized in data communications.
To add to our line we decided to develope a word processing unit that could communicate in boudot, ASSIC and Epsidic codes. As a result we developed a unit that could translate all. In addition we disigned a "modem board" that connected to WU, Intl Telex and world radio stations. That meant that we could send and recv at speeds from 60 cps to 2400 cps. At the time this was unheard of.
Well needless to say this was one very expensive toy. We did place many units with firms like Merc, J&J, Chase, etc however once we did that we ran out of a market. Well we stood around and scratched our heads and tried to firgure out what was wrong.
In a word "price" was the problem. Not only to the customers but to us to design and build such a product.
Now that we had a manucaturing facility we had to feed it products to build. Naturally we would never again attempt to build anything that sophisticated. What we came out with was a familly of productucts that were add on options to existing Teletype machines and such. Also some low end power supplies. All of these products sold for $50 or less.
Walla, sucesse! Our little factory was kept busy and no one was laid off. In fact we made more money with these low end products than the high end stuff.
In time TRW purchased the operation.
I do understand your delimia. And I know you are reaching out for more biz. Perhaps if you turn out a whole bunch of simple but low priced items and kept them available for awhile the rewards may be substantial.
Consider not only selling from your website but explore using E-Bay. Two reasons to use E-Bay. Beat the prirates at thier own game and the exposure. Again, you need to be low priced to discourage the priates.
By the way, I love the expression "Peace out"
John
You are the first I've read to mention the demise of Paper Creek. I went looking to see what was new and could not access the paper creek site, then a cursory search turned up nothing and a quick scan of a few forums likewise, nothing. Is there anywhere that explains what happened or can you say more? Just curious.
I have built a freebie model from Scalescenes and documented that build on a thread at The Gauge forum. I look forward to purchasing a model from you sometime this year.
Galen
Scale scenes makes a great product though a very different approach from us. I'm afraid all our other competitors just don't cut it. (a little paper model humor)
we would rather have competitors that would raise the bar for paper models in general.
thom