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Anyone familiar with my Shapeways shop will have noticed a constant stream of modifications to products over the last three months and some more significant changes to it as of 4th February: a couple of dozen of my products have now disappeared from the "shelves", some others have gone up in price whilst others have gone down. The first thing I want to say is don't worry if something you like seems to have gone - it will be back (some time!) And don't assume that everything is bad news because I can promise you that changes I have been forced to make to my models on costs grounds, have very often resulted in technically improved models and even better value for money. To explain all of the reasons for this would take some time, but in this note I would like to give you an insight into the single most significant factor that has impacted on my range of classic aircraft and military vehicles recently, and that is "per item minimum charging":
In the main I am explaining the situation as regards Fine Detail plastics but the broad principle applies to others as well. Also, I am having to go back in time a little to paint the picture of how things have evolved...
To understand what has gone on, it might help to imagine a single product comprising a set of three gaming dice. Prior to the spring of 2017 the printed cost of these dice was simply based on the volume of material. So, if one dice cost 1$ then the set of three cost 3$. But in May 2017 Shapeways abandoned this too-simplistic approach to pricing and introduced a "more sophisticated" regime that tried to reflect all of the factors actually involved in producing our dice including just for instance, how they have to be arranged and supported in the printer. Shapeways also decided that they had to reflect the cost of handling multiple items (or sets) that make up a single product: the more items in a set, the more work they have to do to produce an order for it. Consequently they added a "per extra item" cost of 1$. So lets say our dice are of average size and complexity and did not end up with any change in material cost (which was quite possible). We nonetheless now had the "extra item" charges of 2 x 1$ to add, so the cost of our set of three dice now went from the original 3$ to 3+2= 5$.
Okay, an immediately obvious thing to have done, was to sprue our dice together so that Shapeways actually had only one item to produce for the set. If the extra material cost involved in the spruing was say just 1$, then we could have at least restricted the price increase to 3+1 = 4$ . BUT dice are very precise things and have to roll precisely! So we decide that the impact of a sprue attachment point on each one could not be tolerated because no matter how well we cleaned it up, it could affect the randomness of how the dice rolled. Therefore the new May 2017 price for the set of three dice stayed at 5$.
Sadly though, the May 2017 price changes did not give Shapeways the true representation of costs that they were searching for and in October 2018 they went for another bite of the cherry. Amongst other things they decided that the "per extra item" charge of 1$ simply did not address the issues they have with handling items: there is a significant handling cost involved per item regardless of how small it is. So this time they introduced a "minimum cost per item" of 7$50 (5$ for S&F/versatile plastic) whilst reducing the price for the material. Accordingly the price of our set of three dice now rocketed from the 5$ to 3 x 7.50 = 22$50 !
However, in an unusually considerate move, Shapeways only applied these new prices to new products released from 22 October 2018 onwards. For products already on sale by that date they postponed the changes until 4 February 2019, to give shop owners some opportunity to adapt to higher prices, if they could. The only thing now to do for the set of dice was to combine it somehow - at least then the price could be kept to the minimum 7$50.
Now, you will know that I do not actually have any dice in my shop but I do have many sets of very small scale models and kits of parts where spruing would at least be very difficult and at worst would completely ruin the look, no matter how well they could be cleaned up. So I decided that wherever possible, I would opt to hold sets of models within a cage so that the printer "sees" only one item but which can be simply snipped away without affecting the structure of the models held within it at all. Furthermore, because the material pricing had actually become much more reasonable, whilst adding the cages I decided to add strengthening and extra detail where desirable, that had been too expensive with the "gold dust " price of FD plastics previously. Finally, and again specifically with regard to Fine Detail plastic models, I thought that I could not miss an opportunity to split them wherever practical so as to minimise the blemish that the support material (wax) gives to the surface finish wherever there are undercuts. (So some of my smaller airships for example are now split around their mid point, with each half arranged vertically in the printer, smooth side up.)
The result has been that since the end of October, I have spent every available moment in caging sets of models (and enhancing them wherever possible) to avoid very large price increases arising from the implementation of the "minimum cost per item" charging. It has involved a tremendous amount of work and I mourn the loss of time that I could have otherwise been spending introducing new models to my shop. BUT, I was determined to modify as many models as I could before 4 February to remove price rises that I am sure would have frightened many people away. I didn't get the job completely finished in time and so have removed some models from sale pending the necessary modifications.
Every cloud has a silver lining... and whilst I certainly never welcome price increases from Shapeways, I do believe that this time, in taking steps to avoid them I have actually made a lot of advances and improvements to my range of products. When you have a moment look at some of my military vehicle sets, the flying boat sets and barrage balloon sets to see the better value many of them now offer. I am also really pleased with the consequential improvements to things like my US NAVY ZPGs in 1:1250 and the British North Seas and SS Zeros. All of these benefits arrived out of my fight to adapt my models to avoid the extraordinary price increases. Gradually I will be reintroducing older models with similar improvements and very soon I will be back to introducing more brand new models to fill the gaping holes still in my ranges of the airships, flying boats and military vehicles that I know that you want to see filled.
This note has become much longer than I intended: if you are still with me thanks for reading it through to the end and
Happy Modelling!
Derek
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