WINGNUT WINGS LANCASTER!!!!!!!!!

[DeanKB]

2 hours ago, cbk57 said:

Coffee, maybe checking ebay too often.  Everything is for sale in the end.  There won’t be a shortage of these things.  If there should be a shortage.you can have mine.  I won’t be buying until there is a surplus and prices come down a bit.  I am confident supply will exceed deman over the next few years.  After these have been out 5 years, then their maybe some scarcity.  In the near term there will be plenty to go around.,

How can supply exceed demand over time if WNW only produce in relatively small runs? 

[cbk57]

41 minutes ago, DeanKB said:

How can supply exceed demand over time if WNW only produce in relatively small runs? 

Easy the pool of buyers for 1/32 Lancaster bombers is fairly small.  My guess is that WNW will run at least a couple thousand of these.  

 

Take a look at the Felixstowe, that is still available after quite a few years on the market and has not sold out.  I think WNW will make more of the Lancaster than the Felix.  We do not know how large their production runs are but they will make enough to meet or exceed initial demand.  I know there are many who are enthusiastic but we are reading and reacting to a very small number of very vocal enthusiasts.

 

A lot of people will choose not to buy because they perceive the price too high, that will knock some buyers out alone.  

 

You will loose another pool of buyers because they don’t have a place to put it.  

 

The key demand for the Lancaster as I stated above is going to be the hardcore enthusiast that is going to buy more than one.  They will soon realize they have too many and models will trickle back onto the market and prices will come down a bit, a bargain hunter will find good deals.  

 

You can look at the sales demand for most high demand kits, wether WNW or Tamiya and they follow a similar market pattern.  

 

Now eventually you will be proven right as kits come out of inventory, get built, damaged, started and not finished or ruined by environmental factors, so after a time prices will rise again and exceed initial retail cost.  I think that time is 5 years out at the minimum.  I think you believe that point sooner.

 

Here is another what if to throw in:  The website says the movie is to come out in 2019, to what extent is this model going to be a massive movie promo that will help sell tickets to every IPMS member and their friends on the planet along with copies of DVD’s etc of the new Dambusters movie.   The whole cost of this project may in fact be underwritten against the cost of the movie from a tax standpoint.  I know if this movie ever sees the light of day, I will be going, I suspect every member of this forum that is abmbulatory will be going unless stranded on a desert island during the entire movie release period.

 

Sorry about the posts I really am enjoying the conversation.

Edited October 23, 2018 by cbk57

[LSP_Kevin]

Wingnut Wings would have to sell (and therefore produce) at least 5000 Lancaster kits to break even on the tooling. A kit of this size and complexity represents a massive investment, possibly stretching to 7 figures, so limiting the production run doesn't make economic sense - unless they really are going to cost a thousand dollars each. And this will also be one of the few kits the company has produced that will have competition in the marketplace, so I suspect this will be treated as the flagship release that it is, and won't be any kind of limited edition precioussss.

 

Kev

[Jan_G]

13 minutes ago, LSP_Kevin said:

Wingnut Wings would have to sell (and therefore produce) at least 5000 Lancaster kits to break even on the tooling. A kit of this size and complexity represents a massive investment, possibly stretching to 7 figures, so limiting the production run doesn't make economic sense - unless they really are going to cost a thousand dollars each. And this will also be one of the few kits the company has produced that will have competition in the marketplace, so I suspect this will be treated as the flagship release that it is, and won't be any kind of limited edition precioussss.

+1

I think there will be quite big market for these as this is their first step into WWII planes (and maybe the last one). Many modelers will buy them just as a stash queens. Price won't be the issue, when we take into consideration that there is still market for expensive full resin kits. 

Great times for us 

jan

[Tony T]

I'd guess tooling costs of 500,000-600,000 units of dosh and average sale price of 300 units of dosh times-two editions for somewhere between break-even and a gross profit of 100,000 units of dosh. 

The third run, say 1,000, of a new edition like a Tallboy or Grand Slam will mostly be just profit. As will all the decal sheets they release.

And that's not counting any merchandising tie-ins, hobbits with dambusters baseball caps etc etc.

And not a licensing syringe anywhere. 

 

I still reckon a run of about 1,000 of each boxing. But others know the true costs better than me.

 

Tony

 

 

.

Edited October 23, 2018 by Tony T
correction

[DeanKB]

1 hour ago, LSP_Kevin said:

Wingnut Wings would have to sell (and therefore produce) at least 5000 Lancaster kits to break even on the tooling. A kit of this size and complexity represents a massive investment, possibly stretching to 7 figures, so limiting the production run doesn't make economic sense - unless they really are going to cost a thousand dollars each. And this will also be one of the few kits the company has produced that will have competition in the marketplace, so I suspect this will be treated as the flagship release that it is, and won't be any kind of limited edition precioussss.

 

Kev

You are assuming WNW are profit driven, which is debatable.

 

If WNW let multiple kits sell out, I'm not sure why they would change their policy for the Lanc? Yes, they'd make more money - if they sold them - but they'd make money by making more D.VII's, Albie's, RE8's, W.29's, Triplane's, Pup's & Gotha's, for example. Or making a Fokker Dr.1. 

 

Plus, the development costs, to some degree, are sunk, as the driver was PJ's Dambusters movie, so perhaps WNW won't have to cover them all, even if it was profit driven.

 

Finally, PJ may be looking to offset some of the development costs against WNW profits. The movie looks to have ground to a halt, whereas the costs for a WNW kit could be claimed pretty much straight away, and the costs may well be substantial. A great deal of the movie research to build the full size replicas, could be utilised in building the model, if not the vast majority.

 

Still, time will tell, I suppose.

 

[DeanKB]

1 hour ago, cbk57 said:

Easy the pool of buyers for 1/32 Lancaster bombers is fairly small.  My guess is that WNW will run at least a couple thousand of these.  

 

Take a look at the Felixstowe, that is still available after quite a few years on the market and has not sold out.  I think WNW will make more of the Lancaster than the Felix.  We do not know how large their production runs are but they will make enough to meet or exceed initial demand.  I know there are many who are enthusiastic but we are reading and reacting to a very small number of very vocal enthusiasts.

 

A lot of people will choose not to buy because they perceive the price too high, that will knock some buyers out alone.  

 

You will loose another pool of buyers because they don’t have a place to put it.  

 

The key demand for the Lancaster as I stated above is going to be the hardcore enthusiast that is going to buy more than one.  They will soon realize they have too many and models will trickle back onto the market and prices will come down a bit, a bargain hunter will find good deals.  

 

You can look at the sales demand for most high demand kits, wether WNW or Tamiya and they follow a similar market pattern.  

 

Now eventually you will be proven right as kits come out of inventory, get built, damaged, started and not finished or ruined by environmental factors, so after a time prices will rise again and exceed initial retail cost.  I think that time is 5 years out at the minimum.  I think you believe that point sooner.

 

Here is another what if to throw in:  The website says the movie is to come out in 2019, to what extent is this model going to be a massive movie promo that will help sell tickets to every IPMS member and their friends on the planet along with copies of DVD’s etc of the new Dambusters movie.   The whole cost of this project may in fact be underwritten against the cost of the movie from a tax standpoint.  I know if this movie ever sees the light of day, I will be going, I suspect every member of this forum that is abmbulatory will be going unless stranded on a desert island during the entire movie release period.

 

Sorry about the posts I really am enjoying the conversation.

Interesting theory, but not really supported by classical economy models, not by WNW's pricing structure, nor by what I've seen of WNW prices on EBay & how they change over time.

 

In my humble opinion, WNW kits hold their value better than any other mainstream manufacturer.

[LSP_Kevin]

25 minutes ago, DeanKB said:

You are assuming WNW are profit driven, which is debatable.

 

Not at all. I'm just assuming that they don't want to take a 7-figure loss on the project. We keep bleating on about how much money Peter Jackson has, but he won't have it for long if he's happy to blow vast amounts of it on projects like this. Wingnut Wings might not be as profit-driven as most kit manufacturers, but there's little future in operating at a continual loss, either. This is why they raised prices a couple of years ago, and canned the free worldwide shipping. You can't bleed money forever before it starts to hurt.

 

Kev

[cbk57]

47 minutes ago, DeanKB said:

Interesting theory, but not really supported by classical economy models, not by WNW's pricing structure, nor by what I've seen of WNW prices on EBay & how they change over time.

 

In my humble opinion, WNW kits hold their value better than any other mainstream manufacturer.

Not a theory at all I checked the sales history of the big kits on ebay, if you look at the Felixstowe and duelist combo, actual sales prices are less than retail  The Felix is often going around $220.00.  There are high land low outliers but they are consistently less than retail.  The small kits sell closer to retail but the big ones are a bit under.  It is all there under advanced search and sold items.  I think the post above with a run of 5000 very likely.  In the end there is not going to be a shortage of Lancasters for a long time.  I know you don't believe me but we will know soon.

[Markjames1968]

Bearing in mind that all previous WNW releases were announvpced with no more than a couple of months untill they wrere on the shelves, do we think the Lanc will be actually nearly 14 months away?? From what ive seen it looks much closer.....

[Mark_C]

1 hour ago, ScanmanDan said:

It is my option that a lot of these kits ( and the HK kit) will sell,
and remain forever entombed deep within the dark vaults of many a modellers stash.

 

Exactly so.  Many of us have become de facto collectors, rather than model builders.  I know I'm one.

[The Dude]

Good times for us 1/32 builders, I would have never guessed when I started building 1/32 scale back in the late 80's or early 90's that we would ever see a single 1/32 4 engine bomber let alone 3! Bring it on, my bench awaits the HK and WnW Lanc kits!

 

Edited October 24, 2018 by The Dude

[LSP_Ray]

2 hours ago, LSP_Kevin said:

 

Not at all. I'm just assuming that they don't want to take a 7-figure loss on the project. We keep bleating on about how much money Peter Jackson has, but he won't have it for long if he's happy to blow vast amounts of it on projects like this. Wingnut Wings might not be as profit-driven as most kit manufacturers, but there's little future in operating at a continual loss, either. This is why they raised prices a couple of years ago, and canned the free worldwide shipping. You can't bleed money forever before it starts to hurt.

 

Kev

I agree. People like Peter Jackson don't get rich by not caring about money. WNW might not be considered a cash cow by him, but I bet tickets to his next movie he wants it to at least pay for itself.

[chrish]

1 hour ago, Mark_C said:

 

Exactly so.  Many of us have become de facto collectors, rather than model builders.  I know I'm one.

I’ve given up collecting de factos I was running out of storage space and never going to use them.... I do still collect models though.

[Robthepom]

8 hours ago, ScanmanDan said:

  I see nothing wrong in this and pass no judgement on those with deep pockets and / or large collections of unbuilt kits.  It should be recognised that the marketing of kits is about getting you to buy the kit, not the finished model.  Far more kits are bought then ever get actually built.  All manufactures are, in part, selling you the idea or dream of the finish model while actually selling the kit.

 

This is a very astute comment, and one i had not really thought about until i read it, my personnel stash is growing and growing mostly with high end kits, and my build order is becoming more varied with every kit i purchase, but when i buy the WnW lancaster i intend to build it straight away........................haha yea right