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Hello all, I'm starting a business selling my own terrain kits, it's called Platerrain. The kits contain roughly 1 A3 sheet of 5mm foamboard and all pieces will be labeled and have tabs for easy fitting together. All kits are hand drawn and cut from the foamboard and various designs will be available, all for £5. I'm new to the selling world and I'll post pictures here soon and links to my ebay auctions! Thanks for reading.

BTW so far I only have made a fantasy altar(based on warmachine) but i am going to create fantasy/futuristic buildings aswell. Wish me luck on my venture into sales!

Good luck, but this would all be a lot more convincing with some pictures

Yeah. Pictures would be nice.

Prototypes are on the way, tomorrow I have school so I'm going to ask my tech teacher if I can use the foamboard lasercutterwhen she's in her room at lunch, if she says yes I can make in Tuesday daytime and have pictures up my Wednesday at the latest. For my first piece I'm thinking a 2 story open backed building with various windows.

Good luck.

But, hang on, are you using school property to make cold hard cash?

Hell yeh, if I'm allowed but I'm a trustworthy hard working pupil and she likes me AND she's the head of tech so I'm looking at it optimisticly. And I've drawn up the templates and designs it will be a three story building and each level will have three windows 4cm squared each. It's really shaping up, everything hangs on tommorrow to be honest, otherwise I'll have to hand cut everythng and it will all take longer. Now I got to go design my company logo. Thanks for all the support.

Hmm, always on the look out for some good Terrain. If you make any good Death Gua-sorry "Diseasesd sci-fi warriors" stuff I might be tempted.

Urmm none of my terrain will really be themed as stated it's foam board/core not plastic moulds so it's not really for detail just for cheap terrain that is to tabletop standard and can be played with. The inspiration is that I always find myself pissed off when looking for terrain/buildings and all I find are the same expensive buildings that are about £20 a piece simply because of texture, therefor I thought I'd help out other people on a tight budget that just want a nice fun game with interactive scenery. If your a serious gamer who likes his opponents models to all be expertly painted and likes everything perfect then this isn't the right page for you.

Okay guys, so the update is that I haven't yet had chance to talk to my tech teacher yet, we had an english exam we weren't told about so we didn't have tech and I was ill today. I'm hopefully going to find her tomorrow so I'll post the latest then. Onto production, I currently have 3 design templates completed and more coming on the way, firstly there's the building I was talking about in my earlier post, that's already been explained. Secondly I have made a sheet which has 4 identical small rooms on it. Basically each consists of a 3 walled room with a roof, the walls opposite eachother have windows and the back one has slots to bang in these wierd shaped sort of thingys I designed, they're simply there for show. Which brings me onto my last piece, the altar which I mentioned in my first post, the design has changed a bit in size and style from my original draft which I built for myself.

Little lord Fauntleroy wrote:Hmm, always on the look out for some good Terrain. If you make any good Death Gua-sorry "Diseasesd sci-fi warriors" stuff I might be tempted.

This next bit of info should please Little lord, when I finished drawing up the template for my altar I realised I had quite a big patch of space unfilled, I remembered his request and decided to fill it with a statue of the Death Guard logo. So that concludes my post today, I hope to get back with you tomorrow with good news about the laser cutter business, buhbye.

Edit: I almost forgot, if your a warmachine player your in luck because most of my terrain pieces(so basically not buildings) will have special rules or missions which you can use with them if you fancy a change, these will most probably be found on the back of the rules or something like that. Any preference to which template I make a prototype of first guys?

Bad news, quote: You can't use school property to make profit. I don't know what I'll do now, I might have to try cutting them all by hand but it will take a long time. :/ Any suggestions?

scarskull5 wrote:Bad news, quote: You can't use school property to make profit. I don't know what I'll do now, I might have to try cutting them all by hand but it will take a long time. :/ Any suggestions?

Who would have thunk it?

Were any of the designs going to have artwork or some kind of over print or are they just foam-core plasticard shapes?

Just shapes i drew up in 2D design, one piece was going to be scored with the death guard logo but that's it, why what were you thinking?

scarskull5 wrote:Just shapes i drew up in 2D design, one piece was going to be scored with the death guard logo but that's it, why what were you thinking?

GW would have come looking for you with the soap and wet towels...

They are very protective of what they consider their IP, you shouldn't use clearly identifiable GW logos or icons.

True I never thought about that.

As MGS says do not use identifiable logos or icons. GW or otherwise.

The whole Idea has potential, do plenty of research. Get some costings and start to tap up family, friends and maybe the Princes Trust or other group that gives grants or help and advice to young entrepreneurs.

Your school should point you in the right direction.

What should I be looking up costings for in particular?

Sorry, just the first thing that came to my head.

Since you do not have access to school equipment you would need to buying gear in? cutting it yourself?

How will you promote your terrain?
If you get sales how will you handle them?
Will you post your terrain out? what's the cost per unit

Money, time, effort are all costs.


Whatever you do to handle your product has a cost attached to it money, time, effort. If you don't know your costs how do you know what mark up to add and how much money you need to make?

I understand this my parents own an ebay business from home, the only problem I couldn't figure out is how to make them, because laser cutters are like £700+ each and that's money I just don't have. I would cut them myself but it seems impractical as it takes lots of time and I might make a slip up and cause bad feedback etc, yhat's why I was looking for other methods but it seems none are available. I looked at the princes trust but a grant from there wouldn't be an option as you need to be at a risk of less than 5 A-C GCSE's or something, which I'm not really. Not to brag but I'm good at school so that's not going to happen.

Do I get you right:
You are at school and you want to start an internatioanl company from your pocket money?
And your first plan to use the school as your factory building hasn't turned out as you thought?

My first advice: Hold the reins and reduce the pace at bit.
It is okay and realistic to assemble a foam terrain piece at home and sell it on ebay. Many people do it currently without calling it "a new terrain company". Foam terrain is simple terrain with generally few details and low realism, so easy to do. Ziterdes makes higher quality foam terrain, but the best terrain is clearly made out of resin or plastic. I won't give you examples here so not to discourage you.

Best start is to show a test piece hand cut and get some first feedback here. Sell one or two pieces on ebay to test the market. Remember: Even Microsoft started small

The aim is not to make scenery, but to make identical scenery kits so people can build themselves, such as cities of death scenery for example. Second not particularly international.

Kroothawk wrote:Do I get you right:
You are at school and you want to start an internatioanl company from your pocket money?
And your first plan to use the school as your factory building hasn't turned out as you thought?

My first advice: Hold the reins and reduce the pace at bit.
It is okay and realistic to assemble a foam terrain piece at home and sell it on ebay. Many people do it currently without calling it "a new terrain company". Foam terrain is simple terrain with generally few details and low realism, so easy to do. Ziterdes makes higher quality foam terrain, but the best terrain is clearly made out of resin or plastic. I won't give you examples here so not to discourage you.

Best start is to show a test piece hand cut and get some first feedback here. Sell one or two pieces on ebay to test the market. Remember: Even Microsoft started small

What he said.

Before you invest $700 in a laser cutter, make some models by hand and try to sell them on ebay or elsewhere. This way, you will learn if:

A. People are willing to pay you enough to recoup your expenses.
B. Feedback on your finished product from others suggest that the idea sucks or not.

Best of luck! Let us know if you start making some test models and post them on ebay or some other avenue.

I'll have to begin work on it tommorrow. Any idea out of the 3 I told you which you would like me to make first kronk? And also it would be the kit with tabs and such as they're much cheaper to post and such.

Or, if you just like making some patterns, I'm sure people would appreciate some free templates posted in the modeling and painting forum. It doesn't make you any money right now, but you could get feedback on your designs and over time get good enough that maybe you can market them.

And I've drawn up the templates and designs it will be a three story building and each level will have three windows 4cm squared each.

This one sounds the most interesting to me. Something simple.

The Alter idea has promise, but sometimes you just need a couple of regular buildings.

Can you supply any info on the cutting machine?

Make/model etc

kronk wrote:

Before you invest £700 in a laser cutter,

Fixed it for ya.

Is that a wing-ding font...

Kane wrote:Can you supply any info on the cutting machine?

Make/model etc

I wasn't looking at any one in particular, just browsed on ebay and the prices were £700+. I just need one that cuts through 5mm foamboard. I'm not sure how they're fueled or anything, I think it's Co2 gas canisters.

Again, you might want to think about posting some mockups or examples before you go to the trouble of costing really expensive machinery.

Pics would be good. And you definantly dont' have a 'company' set up, I think true companies pay tax and such.
And it'd want to be good scenery as well, I presume your a kid of say 12-14, I fit in the middle of that bracket and can't make crash hot scenery, so if your skills are like mine, maybe do a small project first and see the reactions you get, then start thinking bigger.