Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

CT GAMER wrote:Gotta love Dakka/nerds:

People rage endlessly day after day about how evil/stupid/etc. GW is for not letting anyone know what is coming out, and yet when companies tell you exactly what they want to release and give you a chance to help make sure what you want will come out people again rage...

Good times.

Fantastic post.

Byte wrote:The death throws of the IPO. Get public funding without losing ownership... brilliant!

We're not there yet. An IPO can raise 10s or even 100s of millions. Crowdsourcing generally raising enough to finance a single project. The amount of money we're talking about so far with Kickstarter isn't enough to get a stock promoter to look at it as far as getting an IPO going.

Not seen that kickstarter website before so a just had a interesting read of it, I cant say I like the concept tbh and I do agree with Byte, they can get funding with no security imo it doesnt show a good business plan. The amount of companies that fold or are forced to scale back after rapildy expanding is quite a lot, you have to learn to walk before you run for a reason.

The reason I say the above, in regards to the reaper bones kickstarter, as mentioned that is a lot of models for 100dollars, around 199 models that i just quickly counted, times by the 7498 current backers at 100dollar level. That is around 1.5million minis that they have to send out, I dont know anything about reaper but could they make that many minis within a few months? the tooling costs labour cost etc it would be interesting to see how many minis they usually sell per year to compare.

Someone mentioned the orks and that they would never of been made but nearly every start up company faces having to raise start up capital on there own or leverage it. Just had a quick look and tbh didnt like the look of the models or the pledge promise, if he gets from to 5k from 4k he will make a shaman, 1k for one more model?

 CT GAMER wrote:
People rage endlessly day after day about how evil/stupid/etc. GW is for not letting anyone know what is coming out, and yet when companies tell you exactly what they want to release and give you a chance to help make sure what you want will come out people again rage...

Congratulations on missing the point entirely. Previewing upcoming releases and constant begging to fund upcoming releases (with no security, even) are not synonymous.

Again, if GW did kickstarters to gauge interest in lines that are not currently on the schedule, then the players would more or less be responsible for armies being out of date.

If GW said "raise 100k in preorders and we'll update army X", it would put the power in customers hands as to what gets updated, at least in some way. I suggested earlier that GW should have a sidebar development team to deal with it, so that the kickstarter armies don't mess with the already established schedule.

If people are willing to pay for something now, why make them wait? Their interest may wane, making that future update sell less. If there isn't enough interest, then keep the army shelved until it's scheduled release date if it has one.

To go even further, companies could start doing kickstarters for models based solely on their CAD files or greens, stating that X amount of money on preordering the item will cover the cost to put it into production. Right now the arguement on releasing new plastics is the cost of the molds. That cost has to be explained to shareholders. Box X costs 10k to produce the mold, meaning we have to sell Y amount of boxes before the cost of the mold and overhead is covered, and before we actually see return on the investment. But what if the cost of the mold was already paid for in preorders? Now the only up front cost would be design. It's an interesting idea at least, even if the logistics of it aren't entirely accounted for in my little post here.

Except GW's target audience is 15 year olds, I don't see many of them investing in kickstarters.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Except GW's target audience is 15 year olds, I don't see many of them investing in kickstarters.

GW has to have at some point realized that updating Space Marines will only get them so far. 15 year olds are the hit it and quit it type. Most of them "outgrow" the hobby.

You do make a good point that GW could likely care less what veterans think, even though we've given far more money to this hobby than 15 year olds.

I can tell you that Reaper doesn't target 15 year olds, and their Bones KS is well over 1.5 million dollars so far. Perhaps that might be a wake up call for GW. Veterans have money. If they didn't they wouldn't be playing long enough to become veterans.

I do think the statistics of Warhammer players would be entertaining. Seeing the average starting age, average time playing or collecting and so on. Of all those 15 year olds that start, how many continue past age 17? Or how many continue post college? How much money did those children generate over the course of their involvement?

Clearly this data will be rather impossible to accurately measure, as gaming stores don't track purchases like Game Stop does.

 marielle wrote:
It's an interesting question.

The FLGS loses sales from the people who have funded the kickstarter, and potentially stands to lose out if it stocks the 'new hotness' that fails to sell.

The FLGS also "loses sales" from all sales made on the internet/online/mail order. Period. Kickstarters really don't effect that dichotomy at all, being essentially a form of online sales. Though it's questionable as to how many sales my newly found FLGS "loses" when I buy stuff he doesn't actually stock anyway. - i.e Warlord Games, Plastic Soldier Company, Grindhouse Games, West Wind, etc. Could he order most of it in? Probably. I could then wait just as long or longer and pay 50% more in many cases. Not his fault, but local distributors' markup is a real bitz.

To me, all those Kickstarters by reputable companies seems like a lazy business plan. I agree that this Kickstarter business is good for people who are, you know, starting.

But to have a reputable company beg its market for cash seems weird.

MarkyMark wrote:
Not seen that kickstarter website before so a just had a interesting read of it, I cant say I like the concept tbh and I do agree with Byte, they can get funding with no security imo it doesnt show a good business plan. The amount of companies that fold or are forced to scale back after rapildy expanding is quite a lot, you have to learn to walk before you run for a reason.

The reason I say the above, in regards to the reaper bones kickstarter, as mentioned that is a lot of models for 100dollars, around 199 models that i just quickly counted, times by the 7498 current backers at 100dollar level. That is around 1.5million minis that they have to send out, I dont know anything about reaper but could they make that many minis within a few months? the tooling costs labour cost etc it would be interesting to see how many minis they usually sell per year to compare.

Someone mentioned the orks and that they would never of been made but nearly every start up company faces having to raise start up capital on there own or leverage it. Just had a quick look and tbh didnt like the look of the models or the pledge promise, if he gets from to 5k from 4k he will make a shaman, 1k for one more model?

Agreed here as well. That's an awful lot of Minis to send out for a medium-sized company.

 frozenwastes wrote:

@nkelsch - I'm hearing a lot of hypotheticals and non-specific claims without identifying the projects you are talking about. I'm not seeing anyone else in this thread or anywhere else expressing what you're on about. Care to elaborate with real details? Links would be good to include as well.

The numbers are in. For all the big projects that go into the hundreds of thousands like Reaper or Mantic did, Kickstarters get funded more often when they are smaller, more modest projects. Your claim of bigger companies sucking away the money just isn't lining up with reality. The smaller and more modest projects are now more likely to get funded, not less.

He's clearly talking about Mantic, and from the tone of his post he has a big issue with them personally. I do see us hitting the saturation point from the bigger companies, I'm pretty much there myself now, and once Sedition Wars/Reaper are paid for, I'll (probably) really only be looking at smaller projects unless something amazing comes out of the woodwork and takes my fancy for awhile. Relic Knights failed to wow me, Space Balls might get my interest. We'll see. Other than that it's smaller projects like Bruno's Pirate Orcs on IGG, Studio Miniatures Zombies on IGG, etc. I'll follow the DreamForge one with interest and decide later, since I already have 2 Resin mechs sitting around in their original mailer packaging.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Alkasyn wrote:
To me, all those Kickstarters by reputable companies seems like a lazy business plan. I agree that this Kickstarter business is good for people who are, you know, starting.

But to have a reputable company beg its market for cash seems weird.
----
Agreed here as well. That's an awful lot of Minis to send out for a medium-sized company.

A Kickstarter is much cheaper than a business loan. Just think of the interest they save. Reaper is going to hit 2 million dollars. Imagine the interest from a bank on that kind of scratch! That's why it works for smaller yet established companies. Neither Reaper nor Mantic will be making much or even any profit on the figures, but that's okay since their drives have both been about investing in their companies' infrastructure. The true reward for them (aside from a big publicity splash, word of mouth and especially in Mantic's case - getting more armies visible on tables - will be in the future when they have all these molds paid for and can produce the figures for next to nothing and watch the profits tart to roll in. Reaper's plan also involves moving Bones to Texas from China. That's what this is helping to pay for. Additionally, their stretch goals are now $100k apart. That's how they're funding all those miniatures.

However with a bank loan you don't need to send out all those minis, so you actually have all the money to play with - advantages and disadvantages to each...

Pretty sure I'd rather have free and clear funding that actually sells product in the process, which also doesn't include interest on a loan. Sending out the models isn't nearly as big a headache as taking out a loan.

 Aerethan wrote:
Pretty sure I'd rather have free and clear funding that actually sells product in the process, which also doesn't include interest on a loan. Sending out the models isn't nearly as big a headache as taking out a loan.

From my experince in running a part mail order business and having a large business loan on another company I would much rather have a loan, even though the banks are a PITA and havent adhered to their requirements sending out that many parts and in their case making those parts that will be a headache, it will also interfere with the everyday running of the company

MarkyMark wrote:

The reason I say the above, in regards to the reaper bones kickstarter, as mentioned that is a lot of models for 100dollars, around 199 models that i just quickly counted, times by the 7498 current backers at 100dollar level. That is around 1.5million minis that they have to send out, I dont know anything about reaper but could they make that many minis within a few months? the tooling costs labour cost etc it would be interesting to see how many minis they usually sell per year to compare.

The owners of Reaper in a youtube interview mentioned they can currently product about 75,000 metal miniatures, including packaging them per day. And casting metal miniatures is way more labour intensive than unpacking a shipment, sorting it and mailing stuff. So I think they'll process them in a month or so.

Just had a quick look and tbh didnt like the look of the models or the pledge promise, if he gets from to 5k from 4k he will make a shaman, 1k for one more model?

Do you know what it costs to hire a professional freelance sculptor? Have a professional mould made?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Agamemnon2 wrote:

Congratulations on missing the point entirely. Previewing upcoming releases and constant begging to fund upcoming releases (with no security, even) are not synonymous.

One of the things that business people learn than employees don't is that those that ask, get. Those that refrain from asking because it might be considered begging don't get anything.

Crowd funding is about someone having an idea and finding those who like the idea enough they want to put some cash into it. It's not venture capital where you try to buy th company.

It is however, previewing potential upcoming releases, so CT Gamer's point was quite good.

9,500 minis per hour, impressive, yet arent these plastic minis?, funnily enough 1.5mil minis over 40 hours a week is 9375 mini's

So in that month they are going to make these they will be using 99% of their company to supply just these products to be sent out leaving 1% to service the rest of their retail base on that basis a little more then a month imo thats purely on the production side, for the delivery side it will be something like 62,5k to 70k minis sent out a day something like 350 packages per day

Also I havent seen anything mentioned about transparency
that is one major thing with bank loads you have to open your books to them have a business plan made up and sometimes you have to leverage something (home, business premises etc) to me a company doing that believes in their product, this way (and feel free to correct me as Ive said i have only seen this kickstarter website today) there is no transparceny no secruity nothing its not even a pre order as you are being awarded these items and basically giving the company money


As to the comment about professional scultpure and mould he is able to do another mini for 1100, just 400 over the 700 requested for the 4 ork minis, so 1k for another mini on top does seem ok to you then?

MarkyMark wrote:
So in that month they are going to make these they will be using 99% of their company to supply just these products to be sent out leaving 1% to service the rest of their retail base on that basis a little more then a month imo thats purely on the production side, for the delivery side it will be something like 62,5k to 70k minis sent out a day something like 350 packages per day

They're going to be swamped, but I think they'll manage better than some would.

Also I havent seen anything mentioned about transparency
that is one major thing with bank loads you have to open your books to them have a business plan made up and sometimes you have to leverage something (home, business premises etc) to me a company doing that believes in their product, this way (and feel free to correct me as Ive said i have only seen this kickstarter website today) there is no transparceny no secruity nothing its not even a pre order as you are being awarded these items and basically giving the company money

Great point and you've got a good handle on it.

Kickstarter is the wild west of small business funding. Wilder and woollier than venture capital.

As people mentioned, it's all about building trust and developing relationships. Because if something goes wrong, I don't think the backers have any real recourse.

It doesn't mean that it's wrong to crowd source, it just means its a risk. I don't think the Reaper one is a big risk. Some of the others though, might be.

As to the comment about professional scultpure and mould he is able to do another mini for 1100, just 400 over the 700 requested for the 4 ork minis, so 1k for another mini on top does seem ok to you then?

The 700 is for setting up the reproduction of sculpts that already exist. The shaman will have to be sculpted. Also bear in mind, that the 1100 has to also cover sending out the pledge rewards for that 1100 worth of pledges.

Like I said I dont know much about reaper and my ramblings about if it goes wrong or having the production and labour capacity to meet this demand isnt purely on them but other companies that may look at the success of the fund raising and follow suit, and that has been a very good success based purely on the amount they have raised.

Agree on the risk side and the Reaper one does look ok but I cant say if it is well thought out or not as it has no information on exactly what they are going to do with the amounts over the target amount.

IMO I would much more trust a 'crowd funded studio' that charges sculptures to produce miniatures, purely to do the production side of the business and then the scupltures have a different price basis for funders imo that will help promote invonvation and help more risker ventures

Zombicide and Sedition Wars got you a boat load of extras, some of which that wouldn't exist without the kickstarter.

Zpocalypse went from single scuplts for a handful of figures to unique scuplts for all the heroes, more zombie sculpted, threw in the first expansion for free, and added s free kickstarter exclusive expansion, dice, dice tower, etc..

Reaper Bones is dropping the cost per model to below $.50

How this is not all full of win is beyond me

 frozenwastes wrote:

Great point and you've got a good handle on it.

Kickstarter is the wild west of small business funding. Wilder and woollier than venture capital.

As people mentioned, it's all about building trust and developing relationships. Because if something goes wrong, I don't think the backers have any real recourse.

It doesn't mean that it's wrong to crowd source, it just means its a risk. I don't think the Reaper one is a big risk. Some of the others though, might be.

Absolutely. Buyer beware. Look before you leap. Know who you're dealing with.

There are things you need to know before you give anyone any money. You are becoming 1 of X backers or investors. What are you getting out of it? Can you trust these guys not to fail?

For Reaper, you bet I'd trust them. Some Joe-Blow wanting to get $$$ to open a game store in Hicksville, Iowa? No thanks...

 kronk wrote:

 frozenwastes wrote:

Great point and you've got a good handle on it.

Kickstarter is the wild west of small business funding. Wilder and woollier than venture capital.

As people mentioned, it's all about building trust and developing relationships. Because if something goes wrong, I don't think the backers have any real recourse.

It doesn't mean that it's wrong to crowd source, it just means its a risk. I don't think the Reaper one is a big risk. Some of the others though, might be.

Absolutely. Buyer beware. Look before you leap. Know who you're dealing with.

There are things you need to know before you give anyone any money. You are becoming 1 of X backers or investors. What are you getting out of it? Can you trust these guys not to fail?

For Reaper, you bet I'd trust them. Some Joe-Blow wanting to get $$$ to open a game store in Hicksville, Iowa? No thanks...

As some have said reaper may be a medium sized company, but they have been around for a very long time. I trust reaper will do everything they promised with this KS. They have provided a much needed service to just more than warhammer sized armies. Yeah some of there sculpts are crap, with the majority of them being pretty awesome.. GW is not the end all of miniatures, they are a large player for sure.. This KS will def open the doors for them to not only bring the operation home (US), but to expand a line with amazing figures..

MarkyMark wrote:
Like I said I dont know much about reaper and my ramblings about if it goes wrong or having the production and labour capacity to meet this demand isnt purely on them but other companies that may look at the success of the fund raising and follow suit, and that has been a very good success based purely on the amount they have raised.

If I started a modest kickstarter and ended up with hundred of times the number of miniatures I thought I was going to have to make and ship, I'd be very worried about meeting those goals. It seems pretty common that any Kickstarter that over funds by a large amount has delivery delays on their pledge rewards. I think Reaper will be a bit late as well-- nothing huge, but a bit late.

IMO I would much more trust a 'crowd funded studio' that charges sculptures to produce miniatures, purely to do the production side of the business and then the scupltures have a different price basis for funders imo that will help promote invonvation and help more risker ventures

Renendra, the plastic tooling and injection moulding company, does exactly what you're talking about. Mantics earlier plastics, Perry Miniatures, Victrix and others-- they use Renendra to make their hard plastic miniatures. There's been so much business going their way that they're booked solid with a huge waiting list.

 frozenwastes wrote:


If I started a modest kickstarter and ended up with hundred of times the number of miniatures I thought I was going to have to make and ship, I'd be very worried about meeting those goals. It seems pretty common that any Kickstarter that over funds by a large amount has delivery delays on their pledge rewards. I think Reaper will be a bit late as well-- nothing huge, but a bit late.

...except that funding "goal" is, in the case of KS projects like Reaper's or SW for example, a fiction, nothing more. Reaper has publicly stated they've planned up to 4 Million in pledges. This is a company owned and run by (admittedly former, but capable) accountants, AFAIK. they'll know what they're doing
CMoN might not have planned for ~$950K for SW, but they damn well planned for a couple hundred K; they publicly stated that was needed to break even...

 frozenwastes wrote:

If I started a modest kickstarter and ended up with hundred of times the number of miniatures I thought I was going to have to make and ship, I'd be very worried about meeting those goals. It seems pretty common that any Kickstarter that over funds by a large amount has delivery delays on their pledge rewards. I think Reaper will be a bit late as well-- nothing huge, but a bit late.

The story going around is that Reaper had stretch goals prepared going up to 4 million. The company is run by a pair of accountant brothers. Check out their stretch goal maps. I believe Reaper has everything prepared and aren't making it up as they go along by any means.

edit - beaten to the punch!

The other side of the coin is actually CMON/Soda Pop. I think they would have planned for Relic Knights to be doing far better than it actually is, and will have a lot less cash than they'd hoped to play with.

Wow all is I can say if they make 4mil now that is a lot of minis!, and that sort of money would be hard to come by via bank loans not sure if the us is the same as uk but here we can view their accounts, (we being the public their being any registered LTD company) I wonder what reapers previous yearly revenues are and what they would be valued at.

Is the bones mini range backed up by a good rules system?.

Thats something like 25k to 30k kickstarters investing money.

And thanks for that frozen, never heard of Renendra and they are pretty local to me!.

I was going to say this the other day but didnt get a chance the boss's and the finance people will be rubbing their hands, the factory foreman and labourers will be going how many mini's! it seems the bosses and finance are the same, Good luck to them I think they may need it to keep all those customers happy and it may be quite a balancing act

MarkyMark wrote:
Wow all is I can say if they make 4mil now that is a lot of minis!, and that sort of money would be hard to come by via bank loans not sure if the us is the same as uk but here we can view their accounts, (we being the public their being any registered LTD company) I wonder what reapers previous yearly revenues are and what they would be valued at.

Only companies that are publicly traded on a stock market need to report publicly. Privately held companies the world over generally don't have to do that.

Is the bones mini range backed up by a good rules system?.

The Pathfinder RPG recently eclipsed Dungeons & Dragons as the best selling RPG and it uses miniatures.

Reaper has dabbled in rules design in the past, but I think they know their core business is making miniatures and other people can make rules.

And thanks for that frozen, never heard of Renendra and they are pretty local to me!.

They make good stuff. I especially like the plastics by Warlord Games.

I was going to say this the other day but didnt get a chance the boss's and the finance people will be rubbing their hands, the factory foreman and labourers will be going how many mini's! it seems the bosses and finance are the same, Good luck to them I think they may need it to keep all those customers happy and it may be quite a balancing act

I've worked for some companies about the size of Reaper in the past and if they can keep a good level of morale going, the production and shipping staff are going to have a lot of fun. I remember one time we had a massive order and I ended up leaving my desk (accountant) and spending three or four days helping to pack, label and ship massive amounts of glass statues. We had pizza parties, dinner brought in, all sorts of stuff. The owners even had a daily dinner for everyone's family so anyone working overtime got to spend some time with their family at the dinner break. The president of the company even rented a small bus and drove around picking everyone up for the dinner. When they arrived at the beginning of dinner, 20+ children suddenly swarmed into the warehouse.

This type of massive project can be a lot of fun at a company if the morale is good and it's all a team working together.

As I said above I own two companies, both are LTD (privately limited company) the information for those and any other LTD company in the UK can be accessed by the goverment website companies house using the webcheck feature, you have to pay a token amount to get the info but anyone can access the directors details, the registered company address and the accounts that have been filed in the companies history, so it is pretty public here in the UK. Also it is a legal requirement to fill your accounts with companies house each year

While that is true for some companies I have worked for a number of start up's in the telco industry during the boom of the early 2000's which where a wonder to work for, champers in the office etc, then I have worked for some start ups after the bust of the telco industry and the amount of overtime I did and responabilites I had because the boss has promised things we just couldnt deliver in the time frame seeing as he worked in another office on the other side of the country he was detached from the core of the company.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just noticed the estimated delivery time for bones KS is March 2013 so they should have plently of time to be ready for the deliverys, not sure if the estimated delivery date is varible or set for everyone