Quote:
Originally Posted by Arkalogik
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.
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It all depends on what kit market you are trying to sell to.
1. The classic garage kit builders, or
2. The custom 1/4 scale custom builders.
Going to be honest, both groups are laced with people that are well aware of ARH's reputation. The 1/4 custom guys, most of them started in this forum. And some of the top kit producers also started here. But I kind of agree with you on going smaller scale. You might actually get some interest from the resin kit group with 1/6-1/5 scale pieces. You will have to compete with some artists and producers that already saturate this scale.
I would buy some of these female pieces as kits, but as long as Araholm is associated with them, I wouldn't go near them, or even contemplate buying one. I won't support that lunatic.