Hello everyone,
I can finally say that the GSE items will be restocked this coming Friday April 22nd.
All GSE as well as accessories will be back in stock, except the open baggage cart for which I am making a newer version of it, so the baggage carts will be updated and a new type will be added in the near future.
I had a lot, and I mean a lot of trouble to get the photo etched parts right until I was able to find the cause and also got the chance to improve them. As it happens when you are forced to change the method you used to do things, a time for fine tuning is always required, yet after all these years.
Obviously I am not happy having the GSE items such a long time out of stock, because I don’t want to have an empty shop and people feeling disappointed about it, but it takes me a big deal of time and patience to have things completed, specially when you have elderly under your care who do not care much about you needing time for work.
These have been very stressful days for me, but I still love doing what I do and I will continue with the production of these items. Some time ago I mentioned having restock monthly, but I think it will be even better to produce more units of a certain item if the stock drops to X quantity.
I am also learning as a “businessman” to run this as best as possible, for this reason I am also going to be working on some changes in the shipping methods. I want to stop using the medium or big envelopes simply because I don’t feel safe about them, I feel the need to add a lot more bubble wrap which ends up sometimes costing me extra money to ship for the extra weight, that is one reason, but the main one is that I feel safer shipping goods in a box.
I will be adding two new box types, so these will be called “small”, “medium”, “big” (the currently small one) and the “large” (the currently named big).
This will ensure that the new type of packaging will arrive as safe as possible, because as you know, I am progressively dropping the plastic blisters for some specific items and making new cardboard boxes such as these:
The Commander FMC15 will be shipped with this new product box since it seemed to me the blister was too small for all the parts to be properly placed.
These new product boxes will include a 6mm thick foam sheet in order to protect the contents.
As I mentioned before, not only one has to learn to make/design/produce what you actually sell, but these changes in the shipping methods will also require some time and tests before I can set them in the shop.
The online platform I am using does not have the shipping methods very well programmed in the coding, in terms of product dimensions / package dimensions, it does not understand how much products fit in a specified box size, so several adjustments in the settings need to be done.
I will do my best to have this new type of shipping (small-medium boxes) set up for Friday, if not, all will be as it is for now.
The small envelope will still be used for certain items.
Lastly, one of the changes I will be doing for the next batch of new 1/144 figures will be this:
The upcoming restock of the figures will come as presented in the image above, they will be attached to their supports and will require their removal. This is similar to what plastic kits are, but for this particular production method, smaller supports are required.
They are actually very easy to remove, so it won’t be a big problem, if one can paint such small figures, one can also remove the supports.
These are things that I feel I need to do because of how time consuming it is for me to actually cut one by one and package them. I ended up cutting and packaging 400 figures for the passengers only, so you can understand a bit better why sometimes it took me so much time to restock things.
That is all for now, I will be writing another entry prior to the restock to inform about the shipping changes (from envelope to cardboard box).
Take good care everyone.
Best wishes,
Guillem