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Hi there. Just asking if there is a viable market to make and sell smaller scale terrain to ie craters etc for 28mm and flat pack buildings such as factories, manufactorums and possibly branching out to casting there after.

Ebay is a good bet.

I mean as in would people be willing to purchase said terrain

Depends on cost, I like terrain. But it all seems so expensive, so I stick to building my own.

cookiesk8r wrote:
I mean as in would people be willing to purchase said terrain

The short answer is always yes.

The long answer is generally maybe.

The blunt answer is unfortunately, sometimes, no.

Yes, you can make and sell terrain in all sorts, periods, scales, materials and price points. There are many companies that specialize in that and a good number of them do it full time as their day job and haven't managed to starve to death yet.

Whether or not you can get into a competitive market depends on the quality, price and designs which you hope to sell. You need to set yourself apart from a few dozen straight retail companies and maybe a dozen or so custom companies who are out there right now...and that doesn't even include the few hundred weekend warriors who sell items they make in their free time either on eBay, through webstores or on direct commission work.

With the price points, you have paper models on the low end of the spectrum coming from companies like World Works, slightly above that are die cut card. Then you move into laser cut wood, vacuum formed plastics, plaster castings, injection molded plastics, resin and finally custom work (with custom sometimes being cheaper than resin depending on the size and scope of the product). Within all of that you have everything from 3mm scale all the way up to 1/35 scale or so and from Ancient Persians all the way through to the 41st millennia or however you want to look at that.

That isn't to say that you don't have gaps in the market - there are plenty. You can also do what other people are doing, just do it better (cheaper, faster, better...).

Occaisionally though, you just have to be realistic (or be told by someone who is being realistic) and the answer might be no, or at least not yet. Some very enthusiastic people decide to start making terrain (or some other aspect of the hobby like commission painting) and they are deficient in some way when it comes to doing commercial work. They might not be fast enough, skilled enough, priced right for the level of detail they produce or they might just be in the wrong location. Sometimes they are things which they can solve through practice over time or by improving their processes to lower costs. Other times it is out of their hands and there is no reasonable way to deal with the problem.

Sean gives and excellent summary.

Basically - yes, of course, that is why there are a lot of other companies doing it.

But it all comes down to can you offer something that someone else is not;

either in terms of;
* specific price / quality point
* pieces that are not being made by anyone else

If you are trying to do something on the side, for fun, creative outlet and occasionally make some money at it - see what you want to make that you are good at, and see if anyone else is doing it.

If you are thinking of starting a real business doing it (i.e. investing a lot of capital or quitting your day job) do a ton of research AND make sure you have a good business plan.

best of luck!

Back in the old days GW didn't produce much terrain and it was encouraged (indeed an integral part of the hobby) for players to build their own scenery. These days GW really supplies everything the players need. It's not uncommon to see a 40k game being played with 100% GW terrain. Its to the point where recently we had a player bring some cool sci-fi buildings he had made down the the local game store and a bunch of the younger players questioned "if it was legal" to use these or not!

I think anyone getting into the scenery business had a bit of an uphill battle at this point:
-I know Flames of War has its own scenery range. Also, WWII scenery is a fairly saturated market.
-Infinity has some terrain designed for it and many people use 40k or other sci-fi terrain for it also.
-Dust Tactics has an in house range of scenery (and taps into 40k / generic sci-fi / WWII also).
-Fantasy is almost as swamped as sci-fi.
-I don't think ancients or Napoleonic / Civil War has a big enough market. There are also fairly entrenched terrain producers in those fields.
-Naval miniatures don't need much scenery.
-Space combat (X-wing is hot right now) doesn't need much scenery either. Perhaps there is a demand for some well executed asteroids or maybe some space station parts / defence towers?

Perhaps Warmachine scenery is a market waiting to be explored?

Walls are always popular. Short ones for standing behind, tall ones for buildings and ruins.
Not a lot of bridges out there.
Roof parts are lacking.
Things like street signs, street lights that have a sci-fi / gothic look.
Don't ever recall seeing a check-point such as guardhouse and attached barrier arm.
Statues. If you could produce a reasonably priced statue that would fit in with 40k I think they'd sell. Different sizes - things like imperial governors in robes.

The only way I would buy terrain is if it is unassembled, unpainted, and out of my current building skills. If you can make, cast, and package something like that, then sure, theres a market. By out of my current building skills, I mean that the model I buy must offset the time it takes me to build my own. Something simple like ork barricades work because they consume bits that I would use for something else otherwise. Buildings work, but only if they have a level of detail that would be tedious to incorporate otherwise. Even then, I probably wouldn't buy it unless it was unpainted and unassembled.

Want an idea for something I would buy? Modular bases. I'd like 1 foot square bases several inches thick, with a sunken trench system in them. There are several things similar to it, but nothing that thick.

Unless you can mass produce, I don't see any way to make money off scenery.