Why are so many people keen to see the end of resin?

[kenshin620]

17 minutes ago, Overread said:

The other issue isn't just the cost of the raw material itself, but its up and down value. China doing a bit order can suddenly raise the prices world wide for a period of time, then they go down then shoot back up again. That makes it very hard to forecast your finances if your core raw material is jumping around. Plastic and resins at least have a more stable value, that they are also cheaper as a raw resource is an additional bonus.

 

Plus for GW they produce their models in enough volume that the extreme high costs for their moulds is worth it for the long term investment. Resins and metals are more critical for a lot of smaller companies who don't yet have the market to support vast volume sales to make plastic moulds a worthwhile investment option for them. For those smaller companies their reduced bulk of a company can also help them when it comes to variable finances - its rather like a fishing boat vs an oil tanker. The oil tanker has far more money and power, but once its set on a course its very hard for it to change and often as not it might rely on its bulk and power to just plough through things; whilst a smaller company/boat can duck, dive and move with the changes - though can run the risk of being swept under. 

Well that and also making plastics is difficult since very few companies other than GW makes it "in house". (they own their plastic maker right? I assume so given the sheer amount of plastic they produce. I mean technically GW makes theirs in china right? But they have their own special supplier? I forget how that works.) So theres the element of control.

Many English/European companies rely on Renedra to make their plastics, which can run into some bottleneck problems if a good number of them submit designs at the same time. Others rely on chinese manufacturers, which of course is its own can of worms (the infamous Wargames Factory story which was absolutely hilarious when it seems they were better under chinese leadership, before getting absorbed by Warlord).

In fact the only time I can think of an american plastic figure maker was the pyramid scheme of the ex wargames factory people who were totally not con artists ?

Unless you count the "spin cast" resin makers, but those are garage level of operations....and that also didn't pan out well. RIP troll forged.

 

So unless your name is Bandai, you'll have to deal with a 3rd party manufacturing company.

 

I'm getting off topic! Uh.....I just wished the Jabberslythe wasn't a huge hunk of resin! There! ?

[Overread]

Games Workshop only ships in the plastic, they produce all their plastics in-house in their Nottingham factory/HQ. They've got the injection machines, the moulds and everything right there, which does mean that their production overhead is greater than if they outsourced to China or India or other such countries; but it also means that they are totally in control over production and quality control (many Kickstarter companies have had nightmares with factories overseas which can make great master/example castings, but then drop the ball when it comes to mass production - esp since miniature wargamers are a very high grade market; little mistakes get noticed whilst on things like cheap toys they'd simply be overlooked by many. 

 

I think the only things GW imports from China/elswhere are their printed materials like books and card inserts (although I seem to recall they might have bought their own card printing machine semi-recently). They have paid a small fortune from their recent year of phenomenal sales to build a new factory (I think it won't be online till some time next year) to help them overcome their current production shortfall and let them expand more smoothly - which is going to be great because I think its going to secure the future for a lot of the "minor/specialist" games. 

 

I think finecast, at least in its early days, might have been produced outside of GW. I think this might be where they had their own quality control problems in  trusting another company. I can't recall if this is fact or one of those net-facts that is repeated enough its gained traction as fact without verification. I also don't know but I'm fairly sure I recall reading that finecast is certainly all in-house now. 

[King Taloren]

Well as a quick point out. The malign sorcery and endless spell models and most of the easy to build with the color variants are coming from China. So GW is using a third party for model production of some of the items they know are going to be big movers while they wait in getting back to full production power in Nottingham.