warboss wrote:

scipio.au wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:The only thing I dislike is on "Hassle".
It's like they wanted him to have the iconic "three-hole" balaclava that has been popularized in films about special operations/counterterrorist forces.
But then decided not to have the nose hole. it makes the small gap for the mouth look...out of place to me.

Just putty the hole up. Most modern operators' balaclavas just seem to have the eyehole anyway.

Just the one? You'd think they'd have two for better depth perception.

I like the take on the zombie apocalypse scooby gang though.

SickSix wrote:Hamlet is going to get his other paw put on right? Or is he holding it up because it just got blown off by an IED?

grey_death wrote:I think I'm in on those spec ops dudes. Battlefield 3 miniatures anyone?

Padre wrote:Nice detail, and the movement and posing of the feet is fantastic, very effective.....

BUT...

Why on earth would SF operators be carrying their rifles / SMG's with the stock over the shoulder, and not tucked into the shoulder ready to fire?

Methinks something wrong here...

Padre^.

Why on earth would SF operators be carrying their rifles / SMG's with the stock over the shoulder, and not tucked into the shoulder ready to fire?

1: CODINGS DONE for SUMMER BONUS TIME. GOES LIVE GMT 5pm.

2: NEW CATEGORY CREATED IN 'MINIATURES' FOR SUMMER BONUS TIME SO ALL BONUS PACKS GROUPED TOGETHER. This will become visible when it goes live. Limited quantities of these packs

3: 30 individual codes will also have discounts applied of between 25 and 50% directly to them.

4: FREE GOODIE BAG to all orders over £50 (that means once the VAT and Shipping is applied and you have completed payment)

5: FOD Loyalty cards put your card number in the comments box and get something extra!

Something that I have always been happy to do throughout our time as HF is to share with the customer how much things cost. This isnt something that i do to make you 'feel sorry' for us, i genuinely think that the majority of customers don't realise how much it costs to release figures.

The advantage to having an in-house sculptor (Kev) is that technically I don't have to pay him for what he makes, i just smile sweetly at him, buy him some more beer and encourage him to play Battlefield so he stays happy and compliant to my wishes! Every now and then i slip him some wages if he is moaning...lol! This does mean however that we are able to produce a greater quantity of figures overall than a lot of companies who have to commission sculptors to work for them. For the sake of this note i will include what Kev would charge for making each figure within the calculations.

Firstly we have a brief exercise in the production methods we use.

1: Kev makes a green. It either then goes to be made into transitional metal castings (a) or it goes straight into a rubber mould (b)....

a) Transitional resin is a resin that can be put into a rubber mould and vulcanised to form the cavitities out of which the metal figures are made via spincasting of hot pewter. Castings made by this method are usually of a higher quality than
those that are made from metal masters as there is one less stage of vulcanisation and therefore no loss of detail.

b) If a green goes into a rubber mould to be vulcanised, the castings from this mould are used as masters and go into another mould to make a production mould.

Costings, okay here we go.

Take a look at the image below. I have picked one of the cheapest moulds, the figures are simple and single-piece.



Three figures are shown. Kevs freelance rate for these would be approx £1000. Two moulds were needed for the resins which comes to £40. 14 transitional resin castings comes to £70. Now add the VAT on top of that and you the picture you see represents a basic outlay of £1332.

Next stage is posting to the caster. Thats about £10

The caster charges £60 plus vat (£72) for the mould.

We need an initial 30 spins of this mould, the green will take a few spins to 'bed in' before we can get 8 good masters for sending off to the next production mould. This will cost us about £6 per spin giving us an outlay at this stage for castings of approx £180 plus VAT (£216).

Shipping of these castings back to us is about another £10

So outlay is now £1332 + £10 + £72 + £216 + £10 = £1640


What do we have to show for that?
We then have about 200 production castings of Hayden (b) and 200 castings of Hayden (c) to sell. Each of these figures will retail at £3.34 plus VAT (£4.00)

Immediate revenue generated if all figures are sold at RRP (with VAT added on) = £4.00 x 400 = £1600
However not all figures are sold at RRP. So we have almost covered our initial outlay if we sell at this amount.

but we don't.

Uk and Eu webstore sales we get £4.00 for each of them (but dont forget we have to give 66p of that to the government for UK VAT)
Non-Eu sales webstore sales we get £3.34 for each of them
UK and EU sales to a retailer we get 60% of £4.00 ( they get 40% discount) so we get £2.40 for each figure
Non-Eu sales to a retailer we get 60% of £3.34 (they get 40% discount) so we get £2.00 for each of them
UK and EU sales to a distributor we get 50% of £4.00 ( they get 50% discount) so we get £2.00 per figure
Non-Eu sales to a distributor we get 50% of £3.34 (they get 50% discount) so we get £1.67 per figure.

Some distributors want 60% or 65% discount, we dont do that! 50% almost kills us. The above figures show why we don't use a lot of retailers, we couldnt afford to really.

*******

The extra sting in the tail not yet factored into this is running costs including the workshop, Alarm system, internet, phone, staff wages, the further stages of production to sale which is quality control, bagging, bases, labels, plus cost of sale (web fees, secure server, webhosting, webmaster, terminal hire, charges levied by the bank, Corporation tax, PAYE, Card processing charges, paypal charges, packaging....the list goes on and on. All of that has to come out of the revenue generated by the sales of the figures. Even a popular-selling figure may take a while to recoup the initial investment into production.

So next time you bemoan a 3p or 10p rise to a small manufacturer..........maybe you will remember this note!

Daggermaw wrote:

Why on earth would SF operators be carrying their rifles / SMG's with the stock over the shoulder, and not tucked into the shoulder ready to fire?

Three reasons.

1. When patrolling for extended periods of time having your rifle pulled into your shoulder gets extremely tiring because your arms are holding the rifle, not your body.

2. When moving at the double if your rifle is tucked into your arm and you trip there's a good chance you'll dislocate your arm if the rifle jams into the dirt.

3. It keeps the rifle "unlocked" from your body making it easier to move the rifle and your body to engage targets that are not in front of you.

When I was overseas the only time I would actively pull my rifle to my shoulder was when i was aiming to fire, or anticipating firing very soon, similar to being in over watch.