Change to Pricing on Custom Orders

[Orcs]

Hello,

I have just seen your change in pricing.  Everyone seems happy with paying basically 25% more for a custom order.  In  my first order I purchased figures from the league of Augsburg and a second order was for flags.  In the miniature order I ordered a  bag of 30 standard bearers..  Now would this fall as a custom order.  I am asking because you offer one standard per command group.  The flags you sell both have a Colonel and regimental standard each needing a standard bearer.  Also I purchased two ready made arimes one allied and one french.  In the ready made armies I have pikemen included with no pikes.  So to me it is not a ready made army since I have to buy the pikes. 

Best Regards,

Jean

Hi Jean

Welcome to the Forum.

Leon may well be along later to explain and correct me., but I will attempt to explain.

The reason we are all happy with paying 25% more for a custom order is two fold.

Firstly many companies will not do custom orders at all, certainly not to the level that of  Pendraken.

Secondly it is the additional time and cost taken to produce a custom order:- 

A spin of a mould in the casting machine takes about 2 minutes and probably produces the contents of a single pack.  In the case of the command pack LOA9 (Command Standing) the Standards are only 20% of the castings.  To produce your pack of 30 standards therefore requires the mould to be spun 6 times.  This obviously increases the cost of casting by 6 times ( Labour, Electric , wear on the mould etc).  The other 80% of figures are useless and have to be thrown back into the melting pot.

So technically the cost of a custom order should be several times that of a standard pack, so at 25% extra we are still getting a very good deal. particularly as the ability to custom order saves us money in the end.  If you had gone to another 10mm company that I know does not do custom orders, you would have had to buy 6 packs of command to get your 30 Standard bearers. You would then have had 150 excess figures.

Cheers

Orcs

[Techno]

Welcome, Jean.

Cheers - Phil

[jean1951]

Are we favoured with  new female gamer in our midst? (Whatever happened to Marie, btw?)

Afraid not.

Jean

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Moaning

[jean1951]

Hi Jean

Welcome to the Forum.

Leon may well be along later to explain and correct me., but I will attempt to explain.

The reason we are all happy with paying 25% more for a custom order is two fold.

Firstly many companies will not do custom orders at all, certainly not to the level that of  Pendraken.

Secondly it is the additional time and cost taken to produce a custom order:- 

A spin of a mould in the casting machine takes about 2 minutes and probably produces the contents of a single pack.  In the case of the command pack LOA9 (Command Standing) the Standards are only 20% of the castings.  To produce your pack of 30 standards therefore requires the mould to be spun 6 times.  This obviously increases the cost of casting by 6 times ( Labour, Electric , wear on the mould etc).  The other 80% of figures are useless and have to be thrown back into the melting pot.

So technically the cost of a custom order should be several times that of a standard pack, so at 25% extra we are still getting a very good deal. particularly as the ability to custom order saves us money in the end.  If you had gone to another 10mm company that I know does not do custom orders, you would have had to buy 6 packs of command to get your 30 Standard bearers. You would then have had 150 excess figures.

Cheers

Orcs

I do not think that Leon has to reply.  It is a business decision for the better of the company.  Everything that you put forward is true.  Rare are the compagnies that do custom orders, the cost of producing etc.  I am quite happy with the service received so far, can´r complain really.  Which does not mean I have to agree with everything.  I find if you voice your opinion for or against it is beniifical to all.  I have always thought that the main problem was command packs.  My feelings is to have three mould offiers. standard bearer and drummer.  The rank and file one mould per different poses.

Mind you in you comment whre they do not do customs then  you have to 6 packs to get thirty standard bearers the other option is not to do the project.

Best regards,

Jean

[Leon]

I have just seen your change in pricing.  Everyone seems happy with paying basically 25% more for a custom order.  In  my first order I purchased figures from the league of Augsburg and a second order was for flags.  In the miniature order I ordered a  bag of 30 standard bearers..  Now would this fall as a custom order.  I am asking because you offer one standard per command group.  The flags you sell both have a Colonel and regimental standard each needing a standard bearer. 

Thanks for the message, your bag of standard bearers would now count as a custom order, so it would be £6.00 for the 30 figures, instead of £4.95 (or £5.00 instead of £4.13 as you are outside the EU).  As Orcs says above, to get 30 standard bearers we have to spin the mould 5 times and throw away the other figures, so it is 400% extra spins/time for us, but only 20% extra to the customer.  Still not a bad deal!

Also I purchased two ready made arimes one allied and one french.  In the ready made armies I have pikemen included with no pikes.  So to me it is not a ready made army since I have to buy the pikes. 

I've popped a reply through to your email as well, the army packs are more 'starter' packs so they've got a nice selection to get your army started. The pikes aren't included as lots of folk prefer to either use their own wire, or something different like brush bristles, etc.

A spin of a mould in the casting machine takes about 2 minutes and probably produces the contents of a single pack.

Yep, spot on with one spin producing a full pack, sometimes with a couple of spares which we can keep in the spares trays for future use.  It's about 4 minutes per spin, so 15 spins per hour, producing roughly £75 worth of product.  Sounds quite good until you consider that a 28mm company can put 15 figures in a mould, so 15 spins per hour = 225 figures per hour.  At £1.20-£1.50 per figure these days, that's a pretty good output!

My feelings is to have three mould offiers. standard bearer and drummer.  The rank and file one mould per different poses.

The moulds are all setup to produce one pack, so a pack of LoA infantry has all the poses in the same mould.  Splitting the moulds into individual poses would mean you'd have to spin 3 or 4 moulds to get enough of each pose to make a pack.  You would of course have more than one complete pack, but if you've only sold 1 then you've got 3 more sitting in stock waiting for someone to buy them.  We don't have the space for keeping stock unfortunately.  Plus that would mean a lot of moulds!  There's about 1500 of them already, so splitting the poses would mean 3000-4000 moulds!

[jean1951]

Leon,

Thanks you for the reply.  Not really worried with the price increase for custom orders.

Best regards,

Jean

[Shutuphippie]

Fine with me - all makes sense and very logical.

I'm just happy I can get custom bits now and then..........  *cough* just sent you an email asking for a couple of bits for ECW  to be added to my latest order

[Leon]

*cough* just sent you an email asking for a couple of bits for ECW  to be added to my latest order

All received, I'll drop you an email reply when I'm back in the office tomorrow.

[d_Guy]

Yeah, salt, sugar, penicillin, arsenic...who cares? It's all white powder anyway....

Sorry, just noticed this. While the intent is proper and understood the chemist in me requires that I say that while sugar and penicillin can take a white powdery form, salt (NaCl) is crystalline and arsenic is a grey metal.

[ErHo]

I appreciate the open book explanation of costs vs all the resources and time that goes into it, and its more than fair.

I hesitated on a custom order, but its not the huge hassle I had imagined!

Hopefully next month I'll get around to ordering more Dragonmen for my HQ unit and fairy bitz for my Gnomes

[Leon]

Hopefully next month I'll get around to ordering more Dragonmen for my HQ unit and fairy bitz for my Gnomes