I have just arrived home from AMPS, and firstly let me say that the organizers of this show did a bang up job. Full marks for what appeared to me to be a very well organized event. AMPS First VP Roy Chow: WHAT an enthusiastic, non-stop smiling guy. I want to know what he mixes in with his breakfast cereal each morning, as I want some!
As mentioned on another posting, the event site was amazing, SO MANY COOL VEHICLES from WW2, including an Sdkfz. 251 Ausf. A, for goodness' sake! And everything nicely presented.
LOTS of model entries, 500 to 550, I believe was the figure, and 1/48th entries were in the high 30's, which was great. And there were some absolutely first class entries in our scale as well, including 3 WW1 tanks which were extremely well done (Gasoline kits) by a very pleasant fellow who I had a chance to chat to, but whose name I failed to write down (curses!). And a killer Tiger 1 and a very nice Stug III on a nice base with soldiers marching by, and a very nice Polish Firefly, and.........and, and my memory is mush, so you will have to await the pictures that I took, which hopefully turn out, and I will email them to the correct folks for posting on the site within the next day or two.
As mentioned, the AFV Club Sdkfz. 251 Ausf. C was there in test shot form, and it is SUPERB. The only thing missing that I could see was the tracks, and I realized this too late to ask the company rep whether or not they will be rubber band or link and length. I am guessing the former, but hope to be proven wrong. But seriously folks, the detail on this baby is very good, Skybow-esque in fact.
I attended the presentation given by the CEO of Skybow, and his translator. They said they were having some issues with the 251, but sincerely hoped to have the kit on the market in Taiwan by June. Also the Sturmtiger as well, which looked equally nice in test shot form, and of course will be based on the Skybow Tiger 1 chassis, which is all good news.
We were warned not to ask "trade secret" type questions, but I felt daring so did anyway, and was surprised to receive detailed answers! Firstly, while the firm has been in business since 1990, it has yet to make a profit on the second kit released onwards. The firm needs to sell 18,000 kits for any given model to "break even". They initially release 6000 kits in the first production run, and then do additional production runs as demand requires. Yes, they are running in the red, and what keeps them going is the fact that they do "Taiwanese Military work" for the Government. The CEO is a modeler, his wife works for the firm, and he is committed to the hobby. As he said in his best English, "Please buy our kits so we can keep making new ones".
The cost of tooling a 48th kit is 80% of the cost of tooling a 35th kit, yet they can only sell the 48th scale kits at half the retail price they charge for the 35th kits. So from a business point of view producing 48th kits is a big risk for AFV Club. The CEO said they had "a couple" of new 48th kits in the pipeline after the 251 and Sturmtiger, but how fast we see them will TOTALLY depend on sales of the Sturmtiger and 251. If we as a community fail to buy these two kits in quantities deemed by AFV Club to represent "good sales", then the next kits will end up at the end of the line behind new 35th items. REMEMBER: ALL their kits lose them money, but some lose more than others. Let's not have the 48th items be big losers!
I told them I personally would buy TEN Sdkfz. 251 kits, because I believed that the After Market folks would do conversions for the kits to allow for the other variants. The Sturmtiger I must admit, isn't likely to get as many sales from me, but given that it is based on the Skybow kit, it isn't as expensive to produce as the 251 full kit.
I talked to the owner of Hornet, the British firm that does superb aftermarket resin "heads and hands". I said that we really needed him to do some heads in 48th, to replace the "soft" ones from Tamiya. He said "no chance", and his reason was informative: he has plenty of sales from his 35th line, and since it would take the same amount of time to produce 48th heads as 35th heads, and he can sell 35th ones for much more than 48th, "it simply wouldn't pay for me to do 48th" when I have all the business I can cope with in 35th. This is basically the same argument used by Formations for not doing any more 48th Sherman parts (that and the fact that their first three sets "didn't sell").
Tamiya reps: the head of US Sales gave a presentation. He stated 70% of Tamiya sales (both plastic and RC) are in the "Asian" Market, Europe is 16%, the USA 10% and the "rest of the world" is 4%. Sales of 48th vehicles in the USA are not great, but "okay", but doing well in Asian, where homes are smaller! Of course it depends on the model released, but this is an overall peak at the firm's sales. And Mr. T is TOTALLY responsible for the subject matter of every release, and he decides on what gets produced in which scale. At the moment, he has decided that the 35th market is saturated, and so decided to launch the 48th scale armored vehicles line. And no matter what you might think about the metal chassis, this is Mr. T's personal idea, and so we will continue to see such parts. New kits are coming in 48th, to be announced in time for May's Japanese hobby show. No idea what they will be, but apparently we will continue to see new releases for the foreseeable future. The firm is privately owned by the Tamiya family, the firm is apparently profitable, and Mr T currently thinks 48th is a great scale for armored vehicles. And who could argue with that!
1/48th Modelers: I met Sean Brzozowski, Chad Lebo, Phillip Young, Alan Vandam, Bruce Culver, "Uncle Pete", and his friend Mark, plus of course Winston from Wings and Treads, plus a couple of others whose name I wrote somewhere, but can't locate at the moment (apologies). ALL first rate guys, and all producing great models (those who brought them for the contest). It was my pleasure to meet and chat with each and every one of you. Stay in touch!
... were mine: GASO.LINE A7V, St. Chamond, and Whippet. I also had a 1/48th GASO.LINE Staghound and their Stalinetz tractor pulling 203 MM tracked Russian howitzer (my favorite gun of all time).
And from what I saw I am pretty sure the AFV 251 will sell just fine. Not sure 18,000 kits fine but I will likely put at least a tiny dent in that number.
Gland you made it home safely. I got a similar response from the guy at Hornet except he told me he wouldn't consider doing something unless at least 10 people approached him on the topic. Then he added that his eyes can't handle doing anything in 1/48 scale.
I talked to another manufacturer of figures that was at the show and asked if he would consider turning some of his 1/35 scale into 1/48. He said if someone foots the $600 bill to make the master, he will make some. Don't know if he was serious.
Thanks for the report, Andrew. That's all very interesting industry news, especially about the operating margins for AFV Club. That will make me think twice about every one of their new releases.
I'm especially excisted about the new announcements from Tamiya coming in the next month! Ah, there are so many tanks to hope for!
Hi Andrew, it was nice to meet you at the event, and agree with your observations from the manufacturers, plus the vendors. I also talked to all of the vendors present about 1/48th, and found that many do not want to carry, or produce anything in 1/48th because of 1. lack of demand, or 2, lack of people purchasing the item.
The models were impressive, but I have one question about the classes of competition. I am used to IPMS where just about every scale is represented, and competed against each other. With AMPS all scales compete against each other ie; 1/72, 1/48th, and 1/35th. With the amount of surface space to detail, I believe a 1/35th will defeat a 1/48th hands down. Why not separate the classes where all of the 1/48th subjects would compete against
each other, sounds fairer to me.
The museum part was fantastic, it was hard to believe that almost the entire exhibit was brought over from Belgium, their loss was our big gain. I strongly urge people to visit the museum if they are near Auburn In.. The only draw back was the quality of the lighting, it was actually dark in many places. Photography was also difficult due to trying to photograph "German dark gray" vehicles in a dark museum. Many of the photos taken with my digital camera are so dark it is hard to discern what the vehicle is. Any way I took some 800 digital photos during the two day event.
Last thoughts; had a good time, took too many photos, spent too much,
and had a fantastic time. Cheers, Alan Vandam
Alan, the models at AMPS contests are not judged against each other. They are judged individually against a standard; the categories are to organize the classes so similar models are judged to the same standards. There are levels for beginner, intermediate, and advanced modelers, and winners progress to the masters categories. That way, modelers of similar experience and ability are judged by that level of standard. The standards become tougher as you go up the difficulty and experience levels. The result is that modelers are judged more fairly and more people get some reward for their hard work. The 1-2-3 winner take all approach used elsewhere often results in good models getting no recognition, and has tended to result in modelers not taking chances. Many of the winning models are often visually boring, with "safe" paint schemes, little or no PE, many out of the box, but they are technically perfect, with no errors in building - that is what wins, but the excitement of the old days, when people often took chances, was more fun. Yes, it is possible for every entry to receive an award, but that award must be earned by meeting the judging standard - it's NOT "everybody who shows up gets an award." I'll take the AMPS system any day......
I forgot to mention, for those unfamiliar with AMPS, and their contests, that the awards are medals for Bronze, Silver, and Gold levels of achievement. In a category of 20 entries, 3 may not get an award, for they didn't meet the standard for Bronze; 8 might get the Bronze, 5 might get Silver, and only 4 would get Gold. These are only sample results, but they express the idea.
For my first contest, I found this system of "judging" very interesting and didn't fully appreciate it until the awards ceremony after several people got medals for a given class and category.
There seemed like there was an army of judges working very hard at this for almost the entire event. The judges also give you some suggestions on what could be better which will be extremely helpful in the future.
All around this was a very positive experience from a newbie standpoint, and the most valuable thing for me from a modeling standpoint was seeing the level of quality at this contest. This system really makes you want to do better and fosters increasing quality.
Thanks for this report, and to all others as well. Reading about the economics of the hobby is very interesting. 18,000 just to break even. Doesn't sound like so much when you have a global marketplace, but split it out by the same figures as Tamiya, and it's 12,600 in Asia, 2880 in Europe, and a meagre 1,800 in the US, or 360 for each state. Now, is there 360 1/48 modellers in YOUR state? I don't think there are 360 1/48-ers in all of the UK, personally...
18,000!!! I must go and check my own figures again!!! But, if you rely on a supply chain to distribute your products, the numbers can really stack up, not only in terms of investment in design and tooling, but in terms of margins to all the others links in the chain between the producer and the end purchaser. I remember when I worked in a model shop, I noticed the buy-in price of a simple kit (no names, no pack drill) was a few pennies MORE than the retail price. Asking the manager why this was so, he explained the buy-in price was for a box of a DOZEN kits! In other words, the retailer was buying a kit for maybe 12 pennies, and selling it retail for 100. (You can work out how long ago this was!) Unfair? Not for me to say, but the cost of manufacturing those twelve kits was only a few pennies as well, provided they made 100's of thousands of the things, and continued to sell them for 20 or 30 years.
But it takes a good bank balance, or at least a good relationship with your bank, to fund the set-up of such a product, to manufacture, box, store, advertise, distribute and so on, and to wait months for invoices to be paid, to pay employees salaries, rent, power, insurance, goodness only knows what else, and then wait years for any real return on your investment.
Me, I'm going to stick to selling direct, and making my kits by hand, where the investment is in 100s of pounds, rather than 100s of thousands. Maybe I'm a coward. I'll certainly never be rich. But I don't need the worry that such massive investment brings! And anyway, my wife wouldn't let me...
One thing that AFV Club's reps also let slip was the cost to them of the moldings being made. He said US $120,000, which if you divide by 18,000 gives you $6.67 they need per kit sold.
Looking over at my favorite Asian web site, I find that the new AFV Club 1/35th scale Centurion in IDF markings is US$23.
Here in the USA, wholesale to the hobby shop is 60% of retail. If for argument's sake this is the same in Asia, then the retailer pays US$13.80 for the kit. Out of this amount, his distributor took a cut. And AFV Club has wages to pay its employees, rent on the office space, computers and other office supplies, etc. Each cutting into the price, so that $6.67 sounds like a true figure.
And this is when they sell 18,000 kits to break even. Now if AFV Club's sales are equivalent to Tamiya's, 10% for the USA, that is 1,800 or 36 for each of the 50 states in the Union. I can assure you they can't sell 36 1/48th anythings in my state, even with me buying 10!
So the model firms have a tough path to hoe, it would seem. This said, I will do my very best to help them along!
Thanks Bruce I think i understand what you are saying, I will just have to observe it more next time before I make my judgements. It was just sort of strange seeing the 1/72 "braille scale", competing next to a 1/35th subject. Lots of good looking models though, and I thought 1/48th was well represented. Cheers, Alan Vandam
