Weekly Trek podcast interview with Ben Robison: https://twitter.com/weeklytrek/status/1557367604410458114?s=21&t=xXGZXDrZJBlcmp7YZVPHKA Some key points: 1. Eaglemoss will not come back from the ashes. 2. High business was responsible for the collapse. Selling the model lines, including obscure ships, and books was and IS profitable. 3. If there’s a fully painted, ready-looking model prototype, it means that model is already sellable. Because the units are now produced in bunches. 4. Because the lines are profitable, one or several companies might acquire a license and start selling the existing stock. 4.1 This is not guaranteed. 4.2 The likeliest lines to continue are part works like Build the Enterprise-D. 4.3 If the Starship Collections resume, hero ships may stay in production. Out of stock would not be produced again to restock. A company continuing the line may produce hero ships from legacy shows and potentially hero ships from new shows.
Ben Robinson interview at Trekcentral: https://trekcentral.net/cbs-supportive-of-star-trek-starships-collection/
Yeah, because they could sell everything for full price, discounts were very rare. Come one, do you really belief that? It's more likely to attract companies to get on board.
I'd have to agree with @Final*Frontier , if all of the newer stuff they'd started doing was profitable, they wouldn't have gone out of business. Stuff like obscure ships probably sold fine when they were part of the regular subscription collection. However, when they went to the larger sizes as part of the Discovery collection is also coincident with Eaglemoss starting to focus more on website sales. People were likely more tolerant of the occasional weird ship when it was small and $20 as part of a subscription, but not interested in purchasing a large version sold seperately for $55. I'd bet they saw minimal website-only sales of the dozens of weird Disco Klingon and essentially identical-looking Section 31 ships. Those ships would have been better accepted if they'd just included them as part of an extension to the regular subscription. (Presumably they went bigger for the entire Disco collection because Discovery herself would have been laughably tiny if original collection-sized, but she could have just been a special.)
They had 20%+ sells every second month. All companies with that amount of sale campains i know are now gone... I assume all the diecast stuff they started 2015 with the Enterprise D were not really on long term stable feet. Than Covid came and it was over... The toy market for kids collapsed in the last years since kids are not playing with analogue toys nowadays. Consumer behavior changed alot in the last 25 years since internet started. Maybe subscription systems don't work in 2022.
I'm sure sales aren't what they were in the 80s and 90s, but I've still never met a kid who didn't play with toys...
These models are not toys. I can’t imagine many kids are buying them and swooshing them around (though I have swooshed my Defiant on more than one occasion.) They’re aimed at adult collectors. Worth noting that Eaglemoss have a ton of licences, and Trek is just part of the overall picture. The company hasn’t gone bust just because a few of the Trek ships didn’t sell.
I knew you would post that ^^ We all know that these are models and not toys for kids... It was an example for consumer behavior changing! Eaglemoss is gone because it wasn't economically since the last decade. And companies they want to attract will see it in their books. The toy market is doing really bad. And it goes worth and worth from year to year.
I try to be “the glass is smashed” but after the interview I’m desperately hoping for the 32nd Fed ships again. Was the Matrix Nebuchadnezzar a finished prototype?
These are more likley geek wishes. Eaglmoss can't live only from some hardcore collectors. They need Sci-fi movie enthusiasts and others. How bad eaglemoss models did in the last years could be seen by the very low discount prices for their models @ zavvi, too. ...shelf warmers...
The problem is too many options, resulting in a lot of product going unpurchased, and stores limiting selection to not get taxed on sitting product. The diversity of products on the shelves seems to be going down.
The issue seemed to be the move from a subscription model to the focus on their online store. With a lower-priced monthly deal, people are more likely to accept everything, which means a more guaranteed income. With the higher priced subs for Disco and the XLs in the store it was much easier to skip stuff and only buy the things you really wanted. That's when you started to see deep discounts and stock hanging around. I believe they took a similar approach with other product lines, like Doctor Who.
The subscribers always took a back seat to the main store from day zero. We always got our shipments months (sometimes years) after they were available on the store. No amount of pleading of pulling some of the store's inventory to catch us up with the rest of the world ever worked. Really, the only reason I stayed a subscriber was the savings on shipping. 'Cause I'm a cheap bastard like that.
And my (main) collection is complete. Just got the Promellian Bottle Cruiser () for 33 with free shipping, and they also had a shuttle for 21, so I added that
Honestly, if it were subscription only there would have been zero chance I bought a single ship. Unless it was something off eBay/Amazon, etc… no way would I have wanted “Kes’ Shuttle” or another version of the Nebula Class ship.