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So what should they do to save their reputation/business?

Give honest portrayals of the quality of the work you will receive and charge appropriate prices for it. Don't charge premium prices for a sub-par paintjob when your customers could go elsewhere and get a premium paintjob for the same or even lower prices.

Focus on churning out basic table top level work for affordable prices. That's the advantage of having a bunch of painters on staff, that you can churn out an army of decent quality reasonably quickly. And don't offer premium services if you aren't willing to provide them. Which means you are dedicating one painter to the whole project, who will maintain communication with the customer throughout the process.

And ALWAYS deal with unhappy customers. Miniature wargaming is a small enough community to where you cannot afford to have bad services.

And focus on actually running a solid, consistent business. The problem with all of these ridiculous "premium" services were that they were massive, expensive distractions dreamed up by someone who is disconnected from the day to day needs of his business and clientele.

If I hit the lotto any time soon I'll buy it just to shut it down so they stop perpetrating fraud on uninformed customers.

Mandelbonder should buy the business

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Mandelbonder should buy the business

Pretty sure he must be on the board already

What exactly happened with Blue Table Painting, I'm not really in the wargaming community loop but I thoughtthey were good, albeit not great, commision painters. I've seen some of their work on Miniwargaming and it always looks good.

Dreadclaw69 wrote:Mandelbonder should buy the business

Have an exalt Sir,

Seriously though, they ought to lower the price.

 Jaceevoke wrote:
What exactly happened with Blue Table Painting, I'm not really in the wargaming community loop but I thoughtthey were good, albeit not great, commision painters. I've seen some of their work on Miniwargaming and it always looks good.

They do occasionally do ok work but thats it. The big problem with them is they claim do high quality work when in reality the best they do is probably table top quality (not table top+ or showcase just base table top). They charge too much for what they do and they have terrible customer relations. Ticking off your customers as much as possible is not a great idea when providing a service. The guy running blue tabletop painting is also... uhh he does not help with the PR and relations part.

ClockworkChaos wrote:

 Jaceevoke wrote:
What exactly happened with Blue Table Painting, I'm not really in the wargaming community loop but I thoughtthey were good, albeit not great, commision painters. I've seen some of their work on Miniwargaming and it always looks good.

They do occasionally do ok work but thats it. The big problem with them is they claim do high quality work when in reality the best they do is probably table top quality (not table top+ or showcase just base table top). They charge too much for what they do and they have terrible customer relations. Ticking off your customers as much as possible is not a great idea when providing a service. The guy running blue tabletop painting is also... uhh he does not help with the PR and relations part.

Ah, I see. But for people that play fantasy and 40k they should be used to that by now right? (joke) Thank you very much for the clear and concise explanation

 Jaceevoke wrote:

ClockworkChaos wrote:

 Jaceevoke wrote:
What exactly happened with Blue Table Painting, I'm not really in the wargaming community loop but I thoughtthey were good, albeit not great, commision painters. I've seen some of their work on Miniwargaming and it always looks good.

They do occasionally do ok work but thats it. The big problem with them is they claim do high quality work when in reality the best they do is probably table top quality (not table top+ or showcase just base table top). They charge too much for what they do and they have terrible customer relations. Ticking off your customers as much as possible is not a great idea when providing a service. The guy running blue tabletop painting is also... uhh he does not help with the PR and relations part.

Ah, I see. But for people that play fantasy and 40k they should be used to that by now right? (joke) Thank you very much for the clear and concise explanation

Then there was the Tenebre incident, which due to an NDA is no longer explained on youtube, but we have a nice thread about it on DakkaDakka, give it a read, just bring popcorn

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/618082.page

And it basically amounted too BTP charged a fortune for a MASSIVE job, spectaculary failed to even finsih it, then claimed Tenebre was in the wrong for reviewing it,

Basically, BTP offers acceptable table top quality paintjobs, but charges the price of a premium job and passes it off as one. And they're not guaranteed to finish the work before shipping the models to your, nor are you guaranteed to even get the paintjob you asked for. And if you send miniatures back to have them touched up, they're liable to sell your miniatures on their store claiming the customer didn't want them anymore.

The only reason they haven't had problems before is that Shawn did a very good job of marketing and basically bullying customers into not badmouthing them.

This is on top of being generally crappy to his employees as former employees have testified.

colour me happy, if they go under it will be sad for the people that work there, but better for people like me who will get a little more business, dog eat dog world

 Grey Templar wrote:
Basically, BTP offers acceptable table top quality paintjobs, but charges the price of a premium job and passes it off as one. And they're not guaranteed to finish the work before shipping the models to your, nor are you guaranteed to even get the paintjob you asked for. And if you send miniatures back to have them touched up, they're liable to sell your miniatures on their store claiming the customer didn't want them anymore.

The only reason they haven't had problems before is that Shawn did a very good job of marketing and basically bullying customers into not badmouthing them.

This is on top of being generally crappy to his employees as former employees have testified.

Their acceptable table top prices as you call them are around $10 for a 25mm model such as a space marine. They certainly do not pass it off as a premium paint job. BTP has always been quite open about what their levels look like through videos and by posting ALL their work for the public to see.

Of course they guarantee to finish the work before shipping the models. They could not have been operating so long if they didn't.

They will happily redo ANYTHING if you send it back. Pretty good after sales service. They will not sell your minis! Really????

Shawn bullies and is crappy to his employees? Come on, every company has had staff who dislike their boss for some reason or another. Sometimes people just don't get along. There was a supposed BTP staff member on this thread talking about poor management, but he didn't claim that Shawn was a bully or a crappy person.

Shawn bullies customers? Again, a company will not last a week if it 'bullies' customers. This business has been operating for many years. No?

This issue with BTP has really gone a bit crazy. How did it get to the point where people are wishing that a man's business fails? Maybe you would wish that kind of misfortune on someone who has really wronged you in a terrible way. Has Shawn or BTP done this to you to justify this?

captainharlock wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Basically, BTP offers acceptable table top quality paintjobs, but charges the price of a premium job and passes it off as one. And they're not guaranteed to finish the work before shipping the models to your, nor are you guaranteed to even get the paintjob you asked for. And if you send miniatures back to have them touched up, they're liable to sell your miniatures on their store claiming the customer didn't want them anymore.

The only reason they haven't had problems before is that Shawn did a very good job of marketing and basically bullying customers into not badmouthing them.

This is on top of being generally crappy to his employees as former employees have testified.

Their acceptable table top prices as you call them are around $10 for a 25mm model such as a space marine. They certainly do not pass it off as a premium paint job. BTP has always been quite open about what their levels look like through videos and by posting ALL their work for the public to see.

Of course they guarantee to finish the work before shipping the models. They could not have been operating so long if they didn't.

They will happily redo ANYTHING if you send it back. Pretty good after sales service. They will not sell your minis! Really????

Shawn bullies and is crappy to his employees? Come on, every company has had staff who dislike their boss for some reason or another. Sometimes people just don't get along. There was a supposed BTP staff member on this thread talking about poor management, but he didn't claim that Shawn was a bully or a crappy person.

Shawn bullies customers? Again, a company will not last a week if it 'bullies' customers. This business has been operating for many years. No?

This issue with BTP has really gone a bit crazy. How did it get to the point where people are wishing that a man's business fails? Maybe you would wish that kind of misfortune on someone who has really wronged you in a terrible way. Has Shawn or BTP done this to you to justify this?

Hmm... you have only five posts...

Anyways, it is total customer bullying that got him to where he is. Shawn acts and commits to his business akin to a snake oil salesmen. That is why it has come to this point. I am with Grey on this.

Anyways, that is also why I can see why others wish what they wish against his company, BTP.

Not sure what only having five posts is supposed to imply? I can most certainly assure you I am not working at BTP, as I live in a completely different country.

How is he selling fraudulent goods? And if he offers to fix any errors for free, why should anyone be labeling him a fraudster?

Mostly because BTP don't work (can't work with their apparent practices, actually) to some of the standards they say they can. High resolution, clear photos are lacking, to the point of being a misrepresentation.

A secondary and contributory factor is the lack of WIP communication or evaluation of projects with the clients; this leads to differences between the product and the clients' expectations.

Edit: The 5 posts thing is merely an indicator that you've not really been 'around the block' so to speak, or that you're a sock-puppet account (we've seen those before, but not from BTP I think).

winterdyne wrote:
Mostly because BTP don't work (can't work with their apparent practices, actually) to some of the standards they say they can. High resolution, clear photos are lacking, to the point of being a misrepresentation.

A secondary and contributory factor is the lack of WIP communication or evaluation of projects with the clients; this leads to differences between the product and the clients' expectations.

Edit: The 5 posts thing is merely an indicator that you've not really been 'around the block' so to speak, or that you're a sock-puppet account (we've seen those before, but not from BTP I think).

Saying I will sell you a Jaquar and giving you a Pontiac is basically what I meant by the Snake Oil line. Winterdyne's post above basically explained it in the best possible way. He also followed Ten's thread since the start.

In other words, if you claim a high standard and you give me a model that looks like garbage, when I paid for a high end model, you lied. Why don't you take a gander at the Ten thread, which ironically enough could be labelled the reason for this sale in the first place. That incident was the straw that broke the camel's back after all.

To be fair, BTP's pricing and turnaround times for the 'higher end' stuff are unrealistically low - nobody's really been paying for a higher end model - they've been sold a higher end, but were paying for reasonable tabletop and receiving just-passable to mediocre tabletop work.

The low comparative pricing alone should have been a sufficient warning sign, however, a lot of sales bluster can convince those that haven't the time to do proper research that they're going to get something better than is possible in the timeframe and budget.

An outfit like BTP (or indeed Golem over here in the UK, Den of Imagination, or any other multi-person studio) should both work on you paying a slight premium over what you might for the standard of work in order to receive service from an established, reliable business set up to operate efficiently and quickly. They both have overheads to cover to keep the business going - advertising, rent, light, heat - none of these are free, and the money has to come from somewhere. Painters need to be paid and work needs to flow to keep them employed or interested in remaining part of the cooperative.

This sort of setup doesn't scale very well - the owner/operator is never going to get rich off it - you can't accelerate the work (much) without dropping the quality, even by operating production line working with multiple people on a project, and adding multiple-person projects can actually destabilise the organisation if one critical person walks.

Problems arise when you try to scale it up, and I think this is what's really done for BTP in the long run; simply trying to do too much work for too little revenue in too short a time has cost them their better artists, and those that remain simply don't seem able to hit the higher standards.

BTP delivered a 'display' quality model to Ten with unpainted skulls dangling from it. They also did a lot of OSL all over them he didn't ask for and none off the blood effects he paid for. It was legitimately depressing since he did pay for the level just below 'Golden Demon quality'.

And you illustrate my point perfectly.

He was *sold* high quality on some models. That, I don't dispute.
He did NOT pay for display quality. Trust me on that, I do display quality. Cheap, it ain't. Fast, it ain't either.

I actually got sent a copy of the quote / schedule by Tenebre, and he actually got pretty much what he paid for, overall. IIRC, my quote for the army would have been around triple overall, with some models being at least 5 times what Ten paid.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
The expectations of staff for future career goals are hardly a subject to try and hold them to account on this thread. If this person came onto the page to say 'yes, I'm worried about my future', the idea that you should sit there and berate them for having poor employment goals is arrogant and asinine. I personally hope they can secure decent jobs elsewhere (hopefully for more money) and wish them and Gately's family well, despite his glaring idiocy in running the company into a ditch.

I hope he can find gainful employment soon. I am just curious, here I was taught you typically do not stay with a job or company for more than acyear.

The generally accepted wisdom isn't that you change employers every X-number of years, but change jobs.

If you work for the same employer, say a small banking company, for 20 years, it's only a negative if you stayed in an entry level position the entire time. If you started as a teller, became an FSR, then a Senior FSR, then branch manager, and finally Asst. VP of Operations, nobody is going to say your career would have been better if you had 2-4 different employers over the same time.

captainharlock wrote:
Not sure what only having five posts is supposed to imply?

How is he selling fraudulent goods? And if he offers to fix any errors for free, why should anyone be labeling him a fraudster?

It implies that you are a puppet or a shill, which may or may not be true. You are definitely White Knighting in error.

BTP clearly failed to deliver on any of the things that they promised: timeliness, quality, effects, scheme, etc. They took money for that. In any courtroom, that is fraud, plain and simple.

winterdyne wrote:
And you illustrate my point perfectly.

He was *sold* high quality on some models. That, I don't dispute.
He did NOT pay for display quality. Trust me on that, I do display quality. Cheap, it ain't. Fast, it ain't either.

I actually got sent a copy of the quote / schedule by Tenebre, and he actually got pretty much what he paid for, overall. IIRC, my quote for the army would have been around triple overall, with some models being at least 5 times what Ten paid.

Tenebre definitely did pay for display quality. He paid somewhere between 5 and 10 thousand for the miniatures.

BTP charges equivalent to other painters who are selling display quality paint jobs, but delivers only table top quality.

It doesn't matter how much money he paid. He had a Forge World army that he gathered together from many different places. The models alone are expensive, and he paid quite a sum for those. Cost didn't seem like it was his primary concern.

He paid for what he assumed was quality. Also, from the videos, he wasn't the most frequent patron of commission painters. He went for the company he thought was reliable and well-advertised and didn't get the quality. I'm sure that if BTP didn't exist, he would have been fine with paying more to another company for the quality that he expected. Should I be happy if a painting studio takes the low-low price of $1 per army to just literally dunk my stuff into paint? No.

All the people mentioning that the quality matches the price are missing the point. When someone commissions a project, they pay for what they assume is an advertised level of quality. BTP's nebulous levels of quality seem to change, and people get burned.

He paid around $8,000. A suitable high end tabletop finish (with me) would have run way north of $12,000 and actually pushing to display / competition quality would have run it to closer to $18,000.

You need to do one or more of the following:

Go back and read the list of models again - I stressed at the time that it was an ENORMOUS job. I seem to remember estimating it at around a year's turnaround, with at least several months of corrective measures to try and fix up from the standard supplied.

Check more reputable painters (Matt Fontaine, myself, Tommie Soule, Den of Imagination etc) for display quality rates on something like the Llamasu. BTP charged $250, which is low end of the ball park for high end tabletop. On that particular model, yes, Tenebre got burned as it wasn't even completed properly.

I would'nt even paint it to 'tabletop' for that (but my tabletop is most people's display). To actually do a competitive (as in painting competition) job on it would be closer to $750 or more. I'd be upset doing this sort of work and NOT getting a GD finalist.

Seriously up your idea of 'display quality'. By this I mean GD finalist squad sort of level.

BTP does NOT charge the equivalent for display quality.

winterdyne wrote:
He paid around $8,000. A suitable high end tabletop finish (with me) would have run way north of $12,000 and actually pushing to display / competition quality would have run it to closer to $18,000.

You need to do one or more of the following:

Go back and read the list of models again - I stressed at the time that it was an ENORMOUS job. I seem to remember estimating it at around a year's turnaround, with at least several months of corrective measures to try and fix up from the standard supplied.

Check more reputable painters (Matt Fontaine, myself, Tommie Soule, Den of Imagination etc) for display quality rates on something like the Llamasu. BTP charged $250, which is low end of the ball park for high end tabletop. On that particular model, yes, Tenebre got burned as it wasn't even completed properly.

I would'nt even paint it to 'tabletop' for that (but my tabletop is most people's display). To actually do a competitive (as in painting competition) job on it would be closer to $750 or more. I'd be upset doing this sort of work and NOT getting a GD finalist.

Seriously up your idea of 'display quality'. By this I mean GD finalist squad sort of level.

BTP does NOT charge the equivalent for display quality.

What he paid was still way more than what would have been required for the quality he received, even if you believe the ridiculous assertion that he didn't actually pay an amount fitting for display quality.

Seriously, you can get display quality for the price he paid from many reputable painters. BTP didn't even deliver table top quality. They delivered the quality you'd expect from a 12 year old newbie.

You're not exactly expressing any evidence we should believe your assertions when they're clearly false. You just come across as a BTP puppet at worst and an ill-informed White Knight at best. And the prices you are charging are on the very expensive side.

He asked what it would cost to have his army painted to the same quality as another army that BTP showed, and BTP quoted $8k. That was the agreement that was broken.

Whether you would have charged $12k, $20k or something else is immaterial. Same with what those other guys charge - completely irrelevant.

He was quoted a price for a standard of quality, a price that he paid, for which he received substantially sub-par work. If you had quoted $8k, and he paid, then you would be on hook to deliver to the standard as quoted. Simple as that.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
He asked what it would cost to have his army painted to the same quality as another army that BTP showed, and BTP quoted $8k. That was the agreement that was broken.

Whether you would have charged $12k, $20k or something else is immaterial. Same with what those other guys charge - completely irrelevant.

He was quoted a price for a standard of quality, a price that he paid, for which he received substantially sub-par work. If you had quoted $8k, and he paid, then you would be on hook to deliver to the standard as quoted. Simple as that.

This exactly. Exalted.

The argument does not matter and is not really relevant to this thread as this is about blue tabletop painting selling its store ect. Point is they do not deliver on what they say regardless of price. Kind of like a bait and switch. Doesn't matter what you are switched for, it is still crooked regardless of cost difference. At the end of the day its still a dirty practice to partake in.

Now about them actually selling the store, honestly if someone else were to actually take over that was ethical and competent I think the table top community would benefit from it as a whole.

Thanks.

In business, it's important to clearly say what you're going to do, and then follow through by actually doing what you say. If you can't do that, you're done. Simple as that.