Question about Studio 27

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Leftkeys
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Re: Question about Studio 27

Post by Leftkeys »

Egad, a dying hobby? No way. I am a counter culturist, then. Taking inspiration from Miko and VR2 I am upgrading my work space, adding some new tools and I’m going to aspire to high end projects. Not sure I’ll ever succeed, I’m 70 now, with a stash I’ll probably never finish (but which I somehow keep adding to), but I’m going to try. I love the process, prep, polishing, assembly, painting. And when you get the parts right, they’re little jewels. Like the Borrani wire wheels. They may be a pain to make, but geez, they’re awesome when done. And I am inspired by you guys, this is an unbelievable group, I’ve made new friends, found awesome new techniques and I learn on this forum every day. Just placed an order with Wim, too. And a lathe, milling machine and 3D printer are being considered.

The one suggestion I’d make is that I sense the best among us have drifted away from posting WIPs on this, using blogs, Facebook, etc. I think this is still the best forum around for our hobby, and if you’re dedicated to alternative technologies, maybe there’s a way to show some of the WIPs you do without undermining your own businesses or blogs.

I have Bodo’s work bookmarked, Dave’s Porsches, Miko’s 956!! Uli’s 917 treatise. I treasure these and I promise to post my stuff, such as it is, and I hope all of you will do the same.

It’s so important!

Bill
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Re: Question about Studio 27

Post by JamesB »

Well, that's a virtuous circle process. Bill, posts as yours are also so inspiring for the rest :D
That's a good thing: we eep up motivating each other. :wink:
On the topic itself, sure not a dying hobby. But there are good reasons that may lower the sales of big numbers plastic kits.
Anyway, there'll always be someone making a nice 1/20 resin car 8)
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Marc
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Re: Question about Studio 27

Post by Marc »

:wink: thank you JamesB!
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Re: Question about Studio 27

Post by Corpsegrinder »

jjy wrote:
daveyman wrote:1/20 is still my scale of choice. It's the best compromise of detail/size for me. Surely the thing is that there are less and less cars that NEED kitting now. What's left now are very niche items and, whilst interesting to a few people, would there be enough interest to turn a profit.
Majority of the kits released, whether plastic or MM, have been the major teams, ie. Ferrari, Lotus, McLaren, Williams. But even within this group there are still some holes in lineup. But sometimes the bit more obscure car with interesting designs or livery is appealing, ie. ARROWs, March or Osella, etc. Anyone else find appeal in some of the backmarkers?
Agree 100% with both of you. I definitely prefer 1/20 scale over 1/12, actually to me even 1/43 is better than 1/12 , I just do not like the big scale. And about backmarkers, I am all for it, if only they were in plastic I would buy all the Osellas, Minardis, Eurobruns and such...and I suspect I am not the only one, if these kind of kits will ever be released in plastic they would sell out quite quickly. About the situation of S27 I admire they had the guts to cover smaller teams too, but I have heard too many times from others that the quality is too poor and requires a lot of work (I guess for some models more than others) so I wonder if it's worth the money. And I despise that they have an online shop but no one to reply when submitting any kind of inquiry.
"In my days, the drivers used to go out after a race and chase girls. These days, they thank Vodafone" - Sir Stirling Moss

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Re: Question about Studio 27

Post by SBEST »

Me, I prefer 1/12th mostly due to ease with sight. The 1/20th is fun. But the biggest barrier to me doing anything is the lack of time to pursue building. So, that being said my purchases have dwindled. And my sales have dwindled due to the onerous shipping price from States to Europe.

Far as the Hobby is concerned I think there will still be some building. How much is hard to say. The slowing of S27, Tamiya, and Fujimi appear to be indicators.


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Re: Question about Studio 27

Post by stubeck »

jjy wrote:
jaymtford wrote:I've noticed its been much harder to sell some of my 1/20 resin kits the past few years versus 4 or 5 years ago.
I used to buy kits in the USA quite regularly, in fact a lot, and yes I've purchased from you too... Trouble is I haven't bought a kit from the US of A or Canada for getting on for 15 years. Why??? Some sellers are taking the preverbial WE-WE, they're charging extortionate Postal costs to send out of the USA. Some WON'T even post out of the USA full stop. If a kit is for sale, say at GBP £150.00 the USA seller is charging nearly the same again to post to the UK and Europe, lets be kind and say GBP £100.00... some are even charging a further up to 20% if I choose to pay by PayPal... SUB Total GBP £250.00... then once in UK, I have to pay Customs, Inland Revenue, VAT Tax, Royal Mail handling charges etc etc etc. This has cost me what I've paid to the seller another GBP £250.00 plus maybe up to 20% ... SO!!!... we have a grand total of GBP £500.00 sometimes GBP £550.00 for a 150 pound sterling model kit. The same has happened to me from Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland (not in Euro). But it's not all negative there is a small band of American sellers who INCLUDE customs & import charges in the price, so I don't get slammed here in the UK. My Amercan freinds tell me that they don't get stung if they buy abroad...
But you're right what you say about the MFH 1:12 kits:

Unfortunately the cost of shipping from US is what it is. It's just that expensive to ship international from US. I once tried to ship a box of 6 baseball caps to HK (approximately 2lb). The cheapest ship rate was $45.00 USD. This way more than the value of content! That said you can understand why some US sellers don't want to ship overseas. Now if you sell through ebay you can bulk-ship through ebay and it can be reasonable.
Consumer shipping prices have gone through the roof. I used to be able to sell a kit, charge $5 for shipping and make money on it. Now if you charge less than $10 you're likely losing money. But what you're dealing with is ridiculous, 100 quid to ship a model? 20% extra for PayPal? I've never seen close to that here. I did make a few purchases through Yahoo Japan and didn't realize until after that shipping is charged extra...and they won't combine items either. That hurt, but still was not double the price to get it here!

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Re: Question about Studio 27

Post by jjy »

And about backmarkers, I am all for it, if only they were in plastic I would buy all the Osellas, Minardis, Eurobruns and such...and I suspect I am not the only one, if these kind of kits will ever be released in plastic they would sell out quite quickly. About the situation of S27 I admire they had the guts to cover smaller teams too, but I have heard too many times from others that the quality is too poor and requires a lot of work (I guess for some models more than others) so I wonder if it's worth the money. And I despise that they have an online shop but no one to reply when submitting any kind of inquiry.[/quote]

Unfortunately the chances of finding an Osella, March or Minardi in plastic is very slim to none. They definitely wouldn't find enough buyers to justify ROI required to invest in tooling. Our only hope would be a resin kit made by cottage manufacturers such as Studio 27, which leads us back full circle to the origin of topic. Seems Studio 27 is only periodically re-releasing older kits but in general not producing any new F1 subject. Are they on the way out? MFH hasn't produced any 1/20 in a while focusing on 1/12 kits and 1/24 non F1 subjects. There are some small obscured Japanese makers but they seem to be focused on mainly serving the Japanese market. Unless the Brazilian makers take interest in some of these back markers we'll have to scratch build our own. As for service and quality and response time sounds like maybe owner(s) of Studio 27 is losing interest model business and moving to different source of income?
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Re: Question about Studio 27

Post by Steffen_T »

Good to see I am not the only one who noticed the lack of new releases by studio27.
Some time ago I went through their archive to find out when the last new 1/20 kit was released by them and I think the result was the Ferrari 643 which was released in spring 2018 IIRC.

In the past I critizised studio27 on a few occasions, still I have to say, I love their products. Each time I critizised them it happened because of mistakes or problems which I considered to be avoidable.

I don't think they are out of buisness. They still release new 'flat' addon stuff like PE-sheets, carbon-decals or replacement decals. But the lack of new 3D-products led me to the idea, they may have lost one of their main developers. The recent release of Tamiya's Toyota TS050 surely didn't help them either and I think this might be an explanation of their problem:
Each time a plastic-kit previously released by studio27 as multimediakit gets announced studio27 is loosing a part of their investment.
With Ebbro even releasing midfield cars like the Lotus 91 and Japanese related cars like a Formula 2 Brabham Honda the risk has increased significantly for them.
I think they might have stopped developing new kits because the market is too unpredictable at the moment.
Should Ebbro, Beemax and the others stop releasing new kits I think we might see a renaissance of studio27.

About the future:
I don't think we will see this hobby dying. But, it will change and we are right in the progress:
Smirkoff and Willster are offering 3D printed parts in their shapeway shops, Tyrone has build a RB14 using 3D artwork from a computer game! I am sure we will see more 3D printing related builds in the future. I could even imagine a 3D artist of F1 game models might like the idea to get his work 3D printed and could join us this way.

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Re: Question about Studio 27

Post by GGSF1 »

I think it would be great to have this kind of company producing kits again. I started watching Formula 1 in 2003, so even if I plan to build some cars from before that because I think they are so iconic to be considered a must in any collection, the cars that I'd like to build most are the cars from then on, but the amount of plastic models from that period is really low. Some Ferraris from Fujimi and Tamiya, the Ebbro McLarens, the Tamiya Red Bull, a Sauber and a McLaren from Fujimi and that's it. There is also something from Revell, but that's a different scale and there are not many either. So unless this kind of company exists there's no chance to build Alonso's winning Renaults, the Brawn GP, or any Minardi, Jordan, Force India, Super Aguri...

However, for someone like me who is relatively new to the hobby there are reasons for not buying this sort of kits. At the beginning you just need practice, so going for a kit that is much more expensive than a plastic one and more difficult to build as well doesn't look like a great idea. That limits the market to more experienced modellers, who are who buy most of the kits anyway, but I'd say for the business to be sustainable it has to attract new people.

Is that related to the decline of the hobby? Well, I have to draw conclusions from what I see on my city, I would say it is happening. 10 years ago you could find paints and kits in toy shops in shopping centers, today, finding them outside the few hobby shops that survive is just impossible. And while it never was at the level Japan is, where a non specialized shop like Yodobashi Camera has a hobby section with more items than any hobby shop in my city, I'm sure at some point in the past it was better than it was 10 years ago.
Steffen_T wrote:About the future:
I don't think we will see this hobby dying. But, it will change and we are right in the progress:
Smirkoff and Willster are offering 3D printed parts in their shapeway shops, Tyrone has build a RB14 using 3D artwork from a computer game! I am sure we will see more 3D printing related builds in the future. I could even imagine a 3D artist of F1 game models might like the idea to get his work 3D printed and could join us this way.
I completely agree with that. Years ago I came across a website where a Japanese guy described how he had scratch built a 2005 McLaren by using a machine to cut some material that looked like wood. I saw that and I thought it would be great to be able to do a similar thing, especially as I was learning some basic 3D modelling back then, but the technology used didn't really look too accessible. Now, there are people in the forum selling 3D printed parts, and it's not too uncommon to have a 3D printing shop nearby. If this keeps progressing like this, in a few years printing a full model car might be affordable for everyone, and if this happens then we'll be able to have any car in our collection.

Leftkeys
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Re: Question about Studio 27

Post by Leftkeys »

Well, that's a virtuous circle process. Bill, posts as yours are also so inspiring for the rest :D

Well, Thanks James, first time the word “virtuous” has ever been used in my case....

:lol:
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