mately other items as well. It’s all on a bit of

a long road, and it is not completely clear

when things will be made available to the end

user, but hopefully things are streamlining

well. In any case, the Brassins will change in

their packaging, where the rather clumsy

blister packs will go by the wayside and will

be replaced by boxes and bags. The most significant upgrade comes with the production

of decals. Right now, we are in the process

of picking out a new production system that

will replace the current silkscreen method in

use. Our goal is to print decals with the sharp

edges and register that is achieved by Cartograf with the thickness, characteristics and

price of Eduard decals. For now, it looks as

though this is on a good road to someplace

nice and test prints are looking pretty sweet.

We’ll have some samples available for inspection at Nuremburg as well as at Prosek.

If all goes well, the new equipment will be

brought online in the second half of the year.

So that we are not too bored, we will be moving our warehouse in the summer. What we

have now just is not big enough and it’s beginning to get in the way of expanding and

by extension, efficiency. We’ve reached the

limit of its potential. Our goal is to move it to

someplace more useful and to modernize its

operation. It promises to improve the speed

with which orders are processed. Generally,

we reached the potential of the warehouse

back in 2016 and hit a point of stagnation

in 2017, maybe even with a bit of a decrease

in capability, but rebounded by some 5% last

year, but it’s clear that things are in need

of a significant change. It’s also clear that

when we do revamp our warehouse and its

operations, we need to go into it full tilt and

head first, even at the cost of dropping out

of order processing for a few days. I am not

yet sure exactly when this will be, but I will

INFO Eduard - January 2019

inform you in time. This will also be related

to one other change that we are preparing to

make, and that is to initiate a new information page called EDUARD ONLINE. This will

essentially mirror our Facebook page. This

is designed to cater to modelers who don’t

have Facebook and don’t want it and are not

tech savvy and are so cut off from our endeavors and information about them. This new

page should solve this issue to at least some

extent and will, of course, be linked from our

main page www.eduard.com. We would like

to see a working prototype through the first

half of the year.

We are getting close to the end of this issue’s introduction. I won’t keep you much longer from what you’re really looking forward

to. Just a quick touch upon this year’s shows

and events. At the end of January, we’ll be

in Nuremburg. We’ve got a bigger stall this

year, somewhere on the corner of an isle in

Hall 7, and the stall number is C57. It will carry a distinctive American theme and I hazard

a guess that you’ll understand why. Our now

traditional press conference is slated for Friday, February 1st, at 1400h in the Stockholm

hall on the second floor of the press conference centre NCC Ost. The language of choice

will be English, but do not worry about that,

our English is understandable to even those

with English as their native tongue. We also

be taking part in model shows, as usual. We

will begin with Prosek, where you’ll be able

to inspect the Fokker D.VII OAW and a bit

of the Mustang, as well as a sample of the

new decal production effort. This will be followed by Mosonmagyarovar in Hungary and

if there should be a show in Koprivnice, we

are considering attending that as well. Next

in line will be ModelBrno which again, this

year will be under our direction with the

assistance of KPM Brno. In August, we’ll be

at Chatanooga where we also want to have

our Mustang and we are doing everything

we can to ensure that we have something

of this item to show off. After our return from

America, we will be off to Plzen, and this will

bring us close to E-day, again held at Lyse nad

Labem, again to Saint Winceslaus, and again

with the Mustang and this time with three

kits dedicated to the Czechoslovak Air Force.

In November, you can expect us at Telford

and Bratislava with an attractive selection of

new items and another Mustang. All of these

events will have their associated Afterparty

sales. At the end of the year, we should hold

our traditional Novemberfest, but to be perfectly blunt, we are strongly contemplating

taking this event from the end of the year to

its beginning. This would bring it to the spring

of 2020. The thinking behind the move is the

hectic nature of everything between E-day

and Christmas, to the point where we are still

recovering. It appears that next year will be

no different, and probable worse, given the

planned move and upgrade of the warehouse. Spring tends to be a bit mellower and the

first show tends to be at the end of March, so

the beginning of that month looks like a good

candidate to hold Novemberfest. Actually,

a Novemberfest in March sounds like a pretty

cool idea, no?

I am hopeful that your expectations of us

are being met. I put in a lot of spoilers here,

but at least you know what to look forward

to. Thanks for reading all the way to here!

And also thank you all for your year-round

support, and I wish you all a healthy, happy

and prosperous 2019.

Happy Modelling!

Vladimir Sulc

eduard

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