EDITORIAL

Good evening, Dear Friends,

Last year, for pretty obvious reasons, I left out

my annual yearend report for year that had just

then passed, but this year, I am making a return

to that tradition. As I had mentioned in January’s

newsletter, overall sales last year dropped by 5%

as opposed to the year previous. This was mostly reflected on the sales of model kits, which

dropped by 13%. However, at the beginning of the

year, the outlook was a lot more grim than that,

given that in January, 2021, sales of model kits

were down some 50%, and down by 19% overall.

Over the course of the year, things steadily improved, and losses were gradually reversed. But,

last year was not a simple year. Right from the

spring, the supply chain issues came into play,

and the worsening of availability of materials

went hand in hand with their costs. The reasons

are well known and our industry is not separate

from the rest of the economy, so I won’t delve on

details that you can access elsewhere. The rise in

these costs, together with the need to replenish

stock of plastic sprues for the manufacture of

kits naturally led to upward pressure on expenses, and this was also complicated by the need

to use subcontracted suppliers for our recovery.

This was relatively expensive. Despite this, preliminary stats appear to indicate that 2021 will see

us in an overall positive territory.

MODELS/KITS

We replenished nearly 55 % of the destroyed

stock of plastic sprues that on December 19,

2021numbered nearly one million, currently giving us 550,000. With these, we have been able

to partially replenish our range of kits, which

today amounts to about eighty active items and

accounts for new kits as well as reissues. Prior

to the fire, we had almost 180. That, with a significantly reduced stock of kit component items,

we were able to achieve 87% of sales reached

with our pre-blaze range is a major success. The

reasons that made this possible stem from not

only the fact that a large percentage of our range

was made up of new releases in 2021, which naturally achieve higher sales figures than stock

older items, but also through the composition

of these new kits utilizing new innovations introduced to our production methods. The reconceptualized Weekend kits are doing markedly

better than their as originally conceived cheaper

cousins. But a major role is being played by the

new format for the Limited Edition kits, which

has thrust these from the outskirts of the market spectrum to its very centre, making them the

main attraction of our range of kits as a whole.

The Limited Edition line has gone through its

own reformation, and they faithfully cover some

specific historical theme, are very enlightening

in its connection to it, they describe historical

events and provide a good spectrum of modeling

subjects in terms of schemes, all coupled with

interesting fates of not only the aircraft, but of

those that flew them as well. All of this comes

together to produce, and offer, an attractive product. That this can work extremely well, we only

need to point to the Spitfire Mk.I, Mk.II, and Mk.V.

Together with today’s release of Spitfire Story: Southern Star, we have released five kits in

the Limited Edition line, including one covering

American Spits, ‘Eagle’s Call’. These are further

complemented in our range by four ProfiPACKs

and a Weekend Edition kit. The end result is that

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by the end of 2021, 30,149 kits have been sold for

17.5 million Czech Crowns. But all of these contain 47,898 sets of plastic sprues, or complete

kits. The best selling of the Spitfire kits was Spitfire Story: The Few, which sold 7,535 pieces, and

as such, became our best selling single kit out

of our range, ahead of the second place P-51D

Chattanooga Choo Choo with 6,422 sold items. In

third place, we have the 1:72nd scale Tornado GR.1

Limited Edition kit “Desert Babe” with 6,295 sold.

Worth mentioning is that in fourth place was the

TORA TORA TORA! Zero new release with 5,706

sold, that is a number that continued to grow

through January. The market share from sales of

model kits for 2021 came to 41%, making it, from

a sales perspective, the most significant component of our range. In all, we sold 152,784 kits in

all of the ranges.

Any talk of our current breed of kit needs to

include mention of the decals. Over the past

three years, there has been much discussion

surrounding these, often through negative comments. It took a fairly long time for these to

become accepted by modelers, but even to this

day, there are calls for a return to traditional

decals, first and foremost to those produced by

Cartograf. I have to say that without our new decals, the types of kit that we produce today would

not be possible. Due to the sheer size of the

sheets themselves, we would need to maintain

a massively expensive stock of these sheets to

cover demand. Thanks to our printing capability,

we can afford the luxury of decreasing the stock

we maintain, because the printers we have allow

us to print sheets on an as required basis, and in

a timely manner. This carries a massive advantage that also pushes the envelope in terms of

creating interesting camouflage scheme options

for every kit we develop. I have the impression

that most reviewers are unaware of this. Reviews typically focus on the quality of the plastic

in a kit, including fit and ease of assembly, and

the marking options are usually hurriedly dismissed with a description of the schemes offered. It seems that any obvious effort of coming

up with schemes that are historically significant

and accurate, printed to an extremely high quality standard, and accompanied by exhaustively

researched notes, is either ignored or not realized by the reviewers. Should it really be taken so

much for granted? Do you find this type of attention to this part of the model in every kit you buy?

Quality plastic carries a lot of weight, but in and

of itself, does not carry a guarantee of a quality

overall product.

Accessory Sets PHOTOETCHED, MASK

and BRASSIN

Interesting numbers are also offered by a look

at the statistics from the sale of photoetched

brass sets. These are sets that have over the

span of a few decades been deemed on the road

to their demise and eventual obsolescence, and

despite several predictions as to what products

will bring about said demise, they have hung on

tooth and nail and are even slowly growing. Personally, I think that there will always be parts

that the photoetching process will be the most

viable for their production, especially given pre-painted ones. Typically, these will run along the

lines of seatbelts and REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT

tags and also typically, these tend to be bestsellers. In the most popular scale of 1:48th, such

a set, 49009, has sold an incredible 10,087 pieces, not counting the Big Ed set of which it is

also a component. For a photoetched set, that is

a very good number, but it’s not even the most

impressive. The seatbelts sets, also in 1:48th

scale, have performed even better. American seatbelts (49001) after the inclusion of last

year’s stats, sit at a total sales figure of 17,772,

German seatbelts (49002) have sold 16,712, plus

the bomber set a further 5,439 pieces. Seatbelt

sets for RAF aircraft have sold 12,712 pieces, and

Japanese aircraft seatbelts, divided into two categories covering the Army and Navy have sold

a total of 13,440 sets (49004 and 49005).

There are also some record holders amongst

AFV sets that may be considered a surprise. The

most sold item is that of barbed wire, which is

a highly popular item also in the real world. The

total number of 35638 Barbed Wire I (8m) set is

6,641. The second best selling set is the Zimmerit set for the Tiger I from Tamiya with 4,717 sold.

Also, a bit of a surprise comes in the ship line,

with the general sailor figure set in 1:350th scale (Cat. No.17501) coming in at 7,169 sold pieces,

while, perhaps not so surprisingly, the set for Tamiya’s Bismarck, also in 1:350th scale, comes in

second at 4,107 pieces.

Turning to masks, I was personally surprised at

the results for the set covering the Airfix Beaufort Mk.I in 1:72nd. Its 803 sold pieces represents

the best selling accessory item of all production

ranges among last year’s releases. It’s also not

the last of the interesting numbers to be reported. Also interesting is the high number of 723

sold Camel seats. Although, in this case, it is necessary to add that this is a little gem of a piece,

looking like it came out of a fairytale workshop

with liberal sprinklings of fairy dust. Not as surprising is the third place captured by the Space

set for the F-4B Phantom II from Tamiya in 1:48th.

INFO Eduard - FEBRUARY 2022