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Originally Posted by stone eagle
Boy talk about mixed emotions and thoughts....
As I have said before I have no problem with the one statue I did get from ARH (Arkhala Forever) and it was made in China. It did take some time to arrive though. Were I get frustrated is in dealing with all the excuses as to why my Valkyrie is taking years past it's due date to arrive. I hope I will be pleased when I finally get it from China. If it can be believed my latest email from them says it will be an improved model with better paint application than what ARH could do in house.
As a side I have no problem with Arkalogik and his work with ARH molds and feels he does a great job in filling the void (no pun intended) in helping collectors obtain statues.
The question is who is telling the most accurate side of the issue and which one does a customer believe? ARH's side of China statue is an improvement or the side where USA made statues are better made and painted......
Also if ARH has time to sculpt and paint a quality "new statue" why can't they just do what was promised and paid for in full several years ago and complete the back orders first then do the new statues and busts?
It seems like those of us waiting for years will have to wait even longer to get what we paid for but based on their website those who order today one of the new busts etc. will get them in just a couple of months? (or will the new customers be next generation of people getting the delay excuses?)
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So just to clarify a few things here. In the past almost all of the ARH studios statues have been manufactured in China.
When I first met Arahom he hired me to do all the molding and casting and a lot of the repairs for ARH studios and I had never heard of ARH Studio and was not at all familiar with their history. I had years of experience in the resin kit market making molds and casting statues of my own original designs but not the pre-paint statue market.
After I was hired Arahom decided to try and manufacture a limited number of AP's (Artist Proofs) which mean they would be made in the US at ARH studios and not in China. He told me to hire a team of 8 people to begin production. Unfortunately, ARH studios is based in a very small town called Nampa, Idaho and after a month of putting out help wanted ads we could find no one with any experience building or painting statues. Our only option at this point was to hire the most artistic people we could find locally and try and train them to help with the casting and building and sanding and painting.
Long story short is that as hard as we tried we could not compete with the prices in China and Arahom was only paying people per piece and because we required the highest quality most people either could not meet our standards of quality or they simply took so long in what they were doing that Arahom and myself ended up going back and having to repaint them and repair them ourselves.
Arahom is very picky and after trying this for a few months it simply did not pay off and the amount of statues he thought we could make just did not happen. It eventually got to the point that Arahom had to let everyone go from the studio and I continued to help him for free to try to keep ARH studios alive and bring us out of this hole because I knew the quality of the products and I had developed a friendship with Arahom and there was no one else around to help him.
He was able to also get Louis to come aboard and really clear up almost all of the customer care issues and and over several months of barely skimming by and a lot of long hours and answered prayers ARH is finally back on track and will soon have all those orders fulfilled.
While we were able to fulfill a handful of those first AP orders we did not fulfill them all. Arahom now has The Huntress with cats, Valkyrie, Eve and a couple other statues statues that were originally AP's that will be produced in China to get everyone their statues eventually. At this point the busts is really the only thing that Arahom is taking new orders on and painting in the US on his own.
Because I stuck by Arahoms side and have helped him out through these times he allowed me to sell kits to try and recoop some of the time and money I spent out of my own pocket helping out ARH. I am only selling a handful of these old statues and so it is not going to make any difference on the market price. Many of those editions never even sold to their limited number anyway so me selling 5 or 6 statues out of these old molds is not going to effect anyone. I mostly make money re-painting statues and repairing broken statues and building dioramas.
The resin kit market is mostly smaller statues in 1/6 or 1/10 or smaller so the big 1/4 kits are harder sells. Arahom and myself have talked about possibly re-releasing some of the older 1/4 kits in smaller kit scale so we will see what happens with that!
So anyway the point is that I believe Arahom had every good intention in selling these statues and being able to make them as in house AP's but in the end the cost of manufacturing in the US was just too high. This is what slowed everything down but I can tell you that eventually that Arahom will make sure everyone will get the statue they ordered in one way or another.
