WNW

[cbk57]

If the article that started this post is true and accurate, I am under the personally that it is completely accurate, as it is consistent with other credible information we have including from Richard Alexander himself.  I am most disgusted with Peter Jackson.  I feel like he left the emloyees in a really bad place.  These people produced an exceptional product under the terms he gave them, i.e. no limits make a great product, then he let it all go and them all go on a whim.   Personally I would like to see the Sir removed from Peter Jackson.  

[Mark_C]

14 hours ago, Radub said:

Well, here is a suggestion: why not make a separate forum section called, I don't know, "News about the fate of WNW company" or something like that, dedicated exclusively to nothing but the fate of WNW. That way the forum can coral such repetitive threads into one place. This way, the people who need their "daily fix" of WNW speculation can find all they need in one place. The other people who do not want or care to read the same thing told in many different ways can avoid it. To regulate matters, appoint one of these insistent people who keep bringing this subject to the fore as moderators for that section of the forum only. That way they cannot shout any longer that "moderators" deny them their "right to express opinion". Let them scratch that itch until they hit raw bone!  

Radu 

 

 

Or you could, you know, just not click on threads that are clearly about the subject?

 

Just as people don't need to keep posting stuff over and over, other people can stop complaining when they're not actually being forced to read said stuff.  Restraint could be exercised by both sides.

 

[LSP_Mike]

When WNW first appeared, I bought the LVG and Bristol.  I knew nothing of the line other than they were WAY outside the usual WWI subjects. I figured what the heck, if they stick around, there may be some interesting kits, if they go under, I'll have two cool kits.

   Now, I have close to 60 WNW kits. Not one of every kit; they don't all interest me. As my friends say: "an interesting selection." I'm sad to see them go, but it is what it is. I accept it at face value. Sorry for the employees to be treated shabbily, but that seems the norm anymore. I'll build mine, maybe sell a few, but I bought them to build.

[LSP_Ron]

Folks,  I've just given this thread a huge hair cut.

 

Let's pls keep the personal stuff out of this.

 

Ron

 

 

 

[Dave J]

1 hour ago, LSP_Ron said:

Folks,  I've just given this thread a huge hair cut.

 

Let's pls keep the personal stuff out of this.

 

Ron

 

Thanks Ron! 

[Dave Wilson]

Thank you Ron. Your actions are greatly appreciated.

 

Dave Wilson

Gold Coast

Australia

[Radub]

8 hours ago, Mark_C said:

Or you could, you know, just not click on threads that are clearly about the subject?

 

Just as people don't need to keep posting stuff over and over, other people can stop complaining when they're not actually being forced to read said stuff.  Restraint could be exercised by both sides.

 

 

You misunderstand. I want to read about what happened to WNW. And I am not alone. The "problem" is that there are a bunch of people (if you read these threads you will see who they are) who keep opening new threads claiming to have "breaking news", yet when we open the threads we discover that they contain exactly what we already know, stuff that has already been said in many other threads before. And to top it up, none of this is "original content", they are mostly copy-and-pasted stuff from other forums, which many of us frequent anyway. The backlash is not against "talking about WNW". The backlash is against the bait-and-switch "latest news" threads. 

Radu

[GrahamF]

You don't have to be an Einstein to work out what went wrong, basically they were expensive and not many people are into biplanes and the shops are full of unsold stock, the Lancaster was the last throw of the dice and they got it wrong because HKM released theirs.

Turning up for the first time at Telford with their un finished Lancaster was an act of desperation at the very same time as HKM's launch which personally I thought was a bit unintegrous but probably water off a ducks back to a Chinese company.

I have a suspicion that the moulding system they were using/hiring was some super cool thing that takes CAD data and turns it into tooling 'hands off' so that was obviously very expensive too.

 

Graham

[cbk57]

18 minutes ago, GrahamF said:

You don't have to be an Einstein to work out what went wrong, basically they were expensive and not many people are into biplanes and the shops are full of unsold stock, the Lancaster was the last throw of the dice and they got it wrong because HKM released theirs.

Turning up for the first time at Telford with their un finished Lancaster was an act of desperation at the very same time as HKM's launch which personally I thought was a bit unintegrous but probably water off a ducks back to a Chinese company.

I have a suspicion that the moulding system they were using/hiring was some super cool thing that takes CAD data and turns it into tooling 'hands off' so that was obviously very expensive too.

 

Graham

I could not agree more, WNW was tooling some really obscure stuff, like the latest Gotha kits and some of their other more obscure choices, with little chance of commercial success under a premise that turned out to be false that the money was no object.  I know the Lancaster was exciting on here but, I think it was still a commercial albatros.  The HK version is much more rational from a cost standpoint.  The WNW kit is way over the top in terms of detail molded inside and out which had to lead to enourmous cost that could not be recovered from kit sales.  They also failed to move consistently beyond German and British subjects.  More of the key French aircraft would have helped their cause, then they had these weird ideas of doing limited editions of all their kits and that once sold out there would be no more.  Only at the very end did they start doing what they said they never would and release a bunch more Albatros kits and Pfalz DIII variants including boxings with no decals.  Then there was the whole dogma about WWI only to the exclusion of anything that might help them make money.  I think you can look at their kit list and see plenty of dogs in there that should have been more spread out with higher revenue kits interspearsed more regularly.  I fully support their idea of releasing some obscure but important aircraft but they strung too many of those together in the last few years.

 

I feel most not for us modelers but the employees who lost their jobs.  That group put a lot of passion into that work and it is a real shame to see them just thrown away along with their work.  I feel the employees of WNW delivered on their mission and then some, it just happened that the mission was irrational and not workable in the long term.

[Juggernut]

If one reads the very last couple of sentences in the article, you might be inclined to think otherwise:

 

Quote

While Sir Peter Jackson has offered no comment on why Wingnuts has been closed, a comment he made to me in 2010 for a feature article I wrote then about the company is perhaps noteworthy.

“I’m determined to keep the hobby aspect going, which is why we are not driven by market forces and profit – it would then become something I don’t want it to be” he said at the time.

 

[John1]

1 hour ago, cbk57 said:

The WNW kit is way over the top in terms of detail molded inside and out which had to lead to enourmous cost that could not be recovered from kit sales.  

 

What??  I don't see any difference in detail between WNW's level of detail and that provided by most other higher end outfits such as Tamiya, ZM, etc.   Decent detail and some PE.  What is so revolutionary (and costly)  about that?    Or are you suggesting that if they dumbed down the level of detail / accuracy to HKM or Hobbyboss/Trumpy levels that would have been what it took for them to be profitable?

 

What set WNW apart from other high end kits was the superb instructions.  Nothing else.  

Edited May 18, 2020 by John1

[Dave Williams]

1 hour ago, GrahamF said:

You don't have to be an Einstein to work out what went wrong, basically they were expensive and not many people are into biplanes and the shops are full of unsold stock, the Lancaster was the last throw of the dice and they got it wrong because HKM released theirs.

Turning up for the first time at Telford with their un finished Lancaster was an act of desperation at the very same time as HKM's launch which personally I thought was a bit unintegrous but probably water off a ducks back to a Chinese company.

I have a suspicion that the moulding system they were using/hiring was some super cool thing that takes CAD data and turns it into tooling 'hands off' so that was obviously very expensive too.

 

Graham

I’m not sure that they had dug a hole that was too deep to get out of.  Sure, few people were clamoring for a Gotha G.1, and some kits didn’t sell well, but many others did and are sold out.  Many of their other recent releases, like the Albatrosses and the “aces” kits, which included some sold out aircraft like the Sopwith Tripe, seemed to be big sellers, with little new cost to WNW.  Plus, it’s likely the Fokker Dr.1 would have been a big seller.  Seems like they could shelve the development of everything new except the Dr.1, and reissue some sold out kits like the W.29 as a way to raise cash without spending a lot and starting to knock off some of their debt (if that is the real problem).  But, I don’t know if that would be enough.

[cbk57]

Look at the canning 

12 minutes ago, John1 said:

 

What??  I don't see any difference in detail between WNW's level of detail and that provided by most other higher end outfits such as Tamiya, ZM, etc.   Decent detail and some PE.  What is so revolutionary (and costly)  about that?   

 

What set WNW apart from other kits was the superb instructions.  Nothing else.  

Look at the canning effect on the exterior, also look at the engines, they are substantially more detailed than the Tamiya ones and include such things as wire harnesses in plastic.  Also the interior has a lot more detail and engraving than is typical of Tamiya.  I have a TAmiya 1/32 Spitfire on my bench right now and WNW went even more over the top with its surface detail and interior detail than Tamiya did with their Spitfire.  Then you have to get all of that stuff to fit together, yes they have done it on a test shot or two but we don’t know what the real buildablity of these things was or if the tooling was producing parts that were not hopeless warped broken etc.  One of my minor criticisms of WNW kits was that in their effort to make superb detail their structural integrity did suffer.  Take the wing and landing gear attachments on the Fokker DVII.  Those nubs were super tiny and I did receive parts on my kit that had to be improved as they had minor defects in those struts.  

[John1]

14 minutes ago, cbk57 said:

Look at the canning 

Look at the canning effect on the exterior, also look at the engines, they are substantially more detailed than the Tamiya ones and include such things as wire harnesses in plastic.  Also the interior has a lot more detail and engraving than is typical of Tamiya.  I have a TAmiya 1/32 Spitfire on my bench right now and WNW went even more over the top with its surface detail and interior detail than Tamiya did with their Spitfire.  Then you have to get all of that stuff to fit together, yes they have done it on a test shot or two but we don’t know what the real buildablity of these things was or if the tooling was producing parts that were not hopeless warped broken etc.  One of my minor criticisms of WNW kits was that in their effort to make superb detail their structural integrity did suffer.  Take the wing and landing gear attachments on the Fokker DVII.  Those nubs were super tiny and I did receive parts on my kit that had to be improved as they had minor defects in those struts.  

 

Didn't sound like you were referring to the Lanc exclusively, a kit that wasnd't that close to seeing the light of day.   I've got the WNW D.VII and the Albi Va.   Nothing in these kits is "over the top" in terms of detailing compared to what I've seen from Tamiya's newer releases.   In fact, I'd argue that in some areas (the engines and the PE fret for example), WNW's details are a bit crude.   

 

If WNW was losing money (and no one on this site will ever know for sure), it was probably due to the fact that WW1 in general isn't a very popular genre and WNW's subject selection left a great deal to be desired.  I also highly doubt that if they just offered up a few French subjects, everything would have worked out ok.   At the end of the day, not many people out of the LSP population had the remotest interest in WW1.   Maybe if WNW had thrown out a few WW2 subjects, they would have been cash cows to fund the weird stuff (how many people really wanted a Felixstowe - seriously?). Alas, until someone opens up WNW's books to the public, everything on their demise is just uninformed speculation (including my rant above). 

Edited May 18, 2020 by John1

[cbk57]

I was not really referring to the Fokker and Albatros engraving so much.  The Albatros DV series were among the first kits they did.  While the detail was not crude it was not as sophisticated as some of the newer releases.  The dash board detail was a little shallow in my opinion.  that is why we saw early on WWI bezels released fairly quickly for those that wanted to upgrade those bits. Where the Albatros deviated was the tolerances for fuselage fit and wings were exceptionally tight.  The engine detail carried on for a long time so stayed somewhat consistent.  However when you look at even that early engine, yes it could be improved but they put in scale wire tubes(for lack of a better word) for the spark plug wires that were too fine to possibly run wire through(might have been scale correct though, not sure there), and had marking holes to drill them for individual wire leads.  That is some pretty fine detail.  

 

The later kits were getting more wire detail, look at the dash on the Sopwith camel with engraved wire detail.  On the Fokker DVII look at the super tiny replicate numbs where the landing gear and the wing spar come together.  Those things had narrow points not more than 1mm to support the planes structure.