Upcoming price increase

[Bezmozgu7]

I understand the need for the price increase and greatly appreciate the price stability of the past 13 years. Will the increase affect the Terrain Maker line of styrofoam hexes as well, or just the miniatures? Thanks

[GHQ]

Thank you for the kind words of support, and understanding! We wanted to take a minute to cover a few things that have been brought up. The price increase will take effect July 1st. It will be similarly proportional (about 20%) across all of our products- it may not be to the penny, but will be proportionally a similar amount. The larger ships have not had their prices raised with at least the last two price increases. They are currently priced at the same prices that they were in the early 1990's, so it is possible that they could be slightly more than a 20% increase (there aren't a lot of things out there that have been the same price for the last 25 years). We are planning to have a summer sale. At this point no date has come down from above, but it is likely to be in August like it normally is, and the discount will likely be 15% off of orders over $50.

Thanks again for your support!
GHQ

[av8rmongo]

Thank you for the prompt reply.

[cwsmp]

I understand the need for the price increase. It's too bad I live in Canada and with the present dollar exchange I also have to add another 20-30 percent. This makes it a lot harder to purchase. As a 30 year customer I will continue to buy, but the amount that I can buy will have be based on the dollar exchange.

Thanks GHQ for providing a outstanding product for years, and I know you deserve
the price increase. Hopefully our dollars can get closer in value to allow your Canadian
customers to continue enjoying your miniatures.

[scopemaster]

Hi GHQ, thanks for holding the line so long, under stand why so I have no issues not the big of increase , NOW , MAYBE WE CAN PLAY THE GAME OF THIS WEEKS SNEAK PEACK IS? THAT IS SO COOL AND KINDA GETS THE OLD BLOOD SUGER DROPPING MORE THAN IT SOULD FOR EXTRA EXCITMENT ok I am borring.
But how about it Pretty Please

[JasonAfrika]

Dear GHQ, We all would much rather pay an extra buck per pack than have you decrease production or even worse...go out of business. BTW, GHQ Fans-what other company do you know so graciously and almost apologetically anounces a price increase? I can't think of any. GHQ, I hope you are around for 50 more years! Thanks for being such a customer friendly company and producing such great products.
Best Wishes, Jason Pasquale

[CDP]

I too share the same percentage increase in price as my Canadian cousins. But accept that is the way it is. Also since GHQ are increasing the quantity of new models per year I am happy to pay a bit more to cover the costs of the manufacturing of the new models.


GHQ keep up the good work.

[stenna00]

I have no problem with the price rise. I will still buy them. I don't know how the price rise will translate into UK Sterling, probably £8.50 a pack. On the plus side, the value of my collection has just increased by 20%.

[DAK]

I don't have an issue with the price increase for a product of such quality. I appreciate the fact that Items are seldom deleted from the inventory and the miniatures are always improving and expanding. I would rather pay more than have items that don't sell very well deleted from the inventory in order to try and make ends meet.

[Noble713]

As others have said, price increases are unfortunate but understandable. I'm still gonna keep buying your stuff (as an aside, I was a huge Warhammer Fantasy and 40k player but GW priced themselves out of my range LONG ago).

However, some of these comments are a little disconcerting:

How did we come up with this price? We put our 2001 $8.95 price into a US Department of Labor CPI calculator, and that’s what it says is the equivalent price in 2015.

You're not using microeconomics (calculating price elasticity, supply/demand equilibrium, fixed/variable cost equations, etc) to find your optimum price and quantity?

However, we know that most of you will understand that all of our miniatures are designed by hand under a microscope, all of our models then go through a very time consuming process that is done by hand (also under a microscope) to get them ready to go into our production molds. Our production molds are all made by hand. All of our production castings are made by hand, and quality controlled by human eyes looking at each casting, and then the parts are all put into packs with human hands. In addition, this is all done in the USA, and paying First World wages.

Will GHQ make any moves towards automation? CAD software for miniature design. A 3D scanner to compare the production-ready piece to the original CAD design prior to molding. Hell, especially the packing/shipping process would almost certainly benefit from a few robots. If you can increase productivity without necessarily cutting your American labor force it might make it easier to ensure another 15 years of price stability despite inflation and increasing raw material costs.

[33YearsGHQ]

I tend to agree with Cama, 3D printing has its place and as it gets better it will be able to fill some role in the development of miniatures (things like buildings, bridges etc...). But it will be a long time before they can print in fine enough detail (for a reasonable price) to be used as masters. Plus, you cannot just take detailed schematics and scale them down to 1/285 or 1/2400 - there is both science and art in creating GHQ's masterpieces. 3D printing will be a nice supplement to GHQ's traditional methods, but tit will not replace it (at least not for many years).

[GHQ]

Once again, thank you for all of your support and understanding on this issue! We have been keeping our eyes on the advances in 3-D design, and printing, for over 15 years. At that time we even bought one of the very early 3-D printers just because we wanted to see what this technology was all about. As a couple of people have noted, the technology just hasn't advanced to the point where it is as good as what can be done by hand. We may not be aware of everything that is going on, but trust us we are trying to stay abreast of developments. As for casting production models, from what we have seen there is nothing that is even close to being able to make models anywhere nearly as detailed as ours in metal, or in plastic (not that we have even thought about switching to selling plastic models). In our opinion die-cast metal models of any scale, and plastic models of any scale cannot create the extra fine details that we cast into every one of our miniatures.

Making small scale models is not just simply a process of taking something and shrinking it down. We are the first to acknowledge that some details from the prototypes are omitted, and some are designed oversized. We do this intentionally because we are highlighting the aspects that make each vehicle be recognizable as the the prototype. It's part art, part science how we go about doing this. Because we do this you are able to immediately recognize what the vehicle is, and which variant it is- all by quickly looking at a 1" long vehicle!

Thanks again for your understanding, and support!

GHQ

[StarCruiser]

Some high-quality resins can do a good job when used for casting and are somewhat cheaper than pewter alloys.

I doubt that resin would be as durable since it tends to be brittle...

[GHQ]

It's true, resin can make a very high quality casting. A couple of the big problems are that it is very difficult/time consuming to produce large runs of casting, and another big problem is that resin doesn't have much give to it, when pushed it snaps rather than bends. It also doesn't have the heft to it that a metal miniature has. There is a higher perceived value that most people get when holding a metal miniature in their hand that when holding a plastic/resin/polyurethane miniature.

We appreciate all of your thoughts and suggestions. We have been doing this, and thinking about this, daily for 48 years. We try to stay up on new technologies, and advances in old technologies. Please believe that there isn't anyone who wants to make our designs, and production methods, as high quality and cost efficient than all of us here at GHQ.

Thank you for your support,
GHQ

[John Secker]

Ugh! No resin, thank you very much! It's a nasty, scratchy material, much less easy to work with than metal. I have just spent an unhappy few minutes scraping "flash" from some resin scenery - compared with cleaning up metal models, it's slow and difficult, and the end result is never really smooth. As for any serious conversion or accessorising, if it involves cutting into the resin then forget it.

Resin does have its place - for example scenery - hedges, walls etc where rough edges and approximate shapes are not important. But for the kind of beautiful scale models that GHQ make, I really don't think resin is in the same league.