WBritain
Master Sergeant
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2005
- Messages
- 1,307
Hi All:
I have just had a call from one of our great UK retailers voicing some concerns about the tardiness of the catalog in the UK.
First let me apologize for the delay, it was not intended of course to go down this way (as actual matter of fact, just by pure luck the UK has usually "beat" the US by 2-3 weeks with the catalog the last few years - we use a great local printer in Iowa for the US version and for two years running the printer, there is only one guy, broke his leg, I made sure this year his SKI pass was PULLED before we sent our catalog over!!!)
Bachmann is working to get it printed and out but hit some unforseen delays at their local printer. The UK price list was done and ready days ago, so at least we could send that out, but WB and Bachmann decided to look at it one more time, and ask the question - was this the time to take prices up 2 GBP roughly per figure or could we find someway to try keep it less than that? This of course led to some hard decisions, could we both afford to make less money and would it be worth it to make our UK collectors happy? The answer was yes, so the good news is we have kept increases to a minimum, the bad news, it meant a further delay in the price list as well.
On top of all this, we have had another hard push at taking quality up another notch, getting deliveries in on time and sculpting one of the most ambitious years worth of figures we have ever done. This all costs money. So where to give?
Sadly as you have seen, service had to give.
I am a very service driven person, as many of your know. So this is not an easy thing for me to admit.
While we will of course work to get our service back to where it should be I would ask some of our collectors to please bear a few things in mind:
1) We have a great group of UK retailers, the strength of Britains depends on the strength of the them, this delay is not of their making and they should not be penalized for not having catalogs and images up yet, they will in the next couple weeks and they will, as always, be ordering heavily and stocking what you need. I would ask that you continue to support them.
2) W. Britain is still the only manufacturer that prints a proper catalog, many of our collectors love this about us, but it does mean we are not as immediate/coordinated as other manufacturers that release over the internet on a certain day. Many like to have the cold hard copy in their hands. This of course requires a little more patience.
3) As mentioned above, in the last eight years we have taken quality up markedly and have tried very hard to hold pricing, in some cases well under others.
4) To hold pricing, this means we do not have a staff of hundreds, dozens or even enough to fill up two hands! We have four folks in Iowa, including me. I'd love another marketing person, sales person and graphics person (same goes for Bachmann), catalogs would be on time, the Standard would be early!, all our packaging, figures etc. would be flawless, of course our figures would be 32GBP or $38 each then.
So, net net, I have taken the decision to keep it lean and put our money into quality, sculpting and variety. Have I made the wrong decision? Patience vs Value?
Thank you as always for your support.
Richard
GM/MD- W. Britain
I have just had a call from one of our great UK retailers voicing some concerns about the tardiness of the catalog in the UK.
First let me apologize for the delay, it was not intended of course to go down this way (as actual matter of fact, just by pure luck the UK has usually "beat" the US by 2-3 weeks with the catalog the last few years - we use a great local printer in Iowa for the US version and for two years running the printer, there is only one guy, broke his leg, I made sure this year his SKI pass was PULLED before we sent our catalog over!!!)
Bachmann is working to get it printed and out but hit some unforseen delays at their local printer. The UK price list was done and ready days ago, so at least we could send that out, but WB and Bachmann decided to look at it one more time, and ask the question - was this the time to take prices up 2 GBP roughly per figure or could we find someway to try keep it less than that? This of course led to some hard decisions, could we both afford to make less money and would it be worth it to make our UK collectors happy? The answer was yes, so the good news is we have kept increases to a minimum, the bad news, it meant a further delay in the price list as well.
On top of all this, we have had another hard push at taking quality up another notch, getting deliveries in on time and sculpting one of the most ambitious years worth of figures we have ever done. This all costs money. So where to give?
Sadly as you have seen, service had to give.
I am a very service driven person, as many of your know. So this is not an easy thing for me to admit.
While we will of course work to get our service back to where it should be I would ask some of our collectors to please bear a few things in mind:
1) We have a great group of UK retailers, the strength of Britains depends on the strength of the them, this delay is not of their making and they should not be penalized for not having catalogs and images up yet, they will in the next couple weeks and they will, as always, be ordering heavily and stocking what you need. I would ask that you continue to support them.
2) W. Britain is still the only manufacturer that prints a proper catalog, many of our collectors love this about us, but it does mean we are not as immediate/coordinated as other manufacturers that release over the internet on a certain day. Many like to have the cold hard copy in their hands. This of course requires a little more patience.
3) As mentioned above, in the last eight years we have taken quality up markedly and have tried very hard to hold pricing, in some cases well under others.
4) To hold pricing, this means we do not have a staff of hundreds, dozens or even enough to fill up two hands! We have four folks in Iowa, including me. I'd love another marketing person, sales person and graphics person (same goes for Bachmann), catalogs would be on time, the Standard would be early!, all our packaging, figures etc. would be flawless, of course our figures would be 32GBP or $38 each then.
So, net net, I have taken the decision to keep it lean and put our money into quality, sculpting and variety. Have I made the wrong decision? Patience vs Value?
Thank you as always for your support.
Richard
GM/MD- W. Britain
