EDITORIAL

Good day, Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Chinese coronavirus has hit Europe,

and the world, and things are happening

that even a few weeks ago were not anticipated. I have no illusions about this

epidemic situation avoiding our industry, or our firm. The latest news describes waves of people in stores buying

everything in sight, and naturally, this

doesn’t include hobbyshops. It would

be nice, however, if modellers took the

hobbyshops by the same storm, in order to arm themselves with enough

kits and needs to overcome any supply problems, but I fear that modellers,

as a whole, are more than well stocked

with kits and supplies for years to come,

even without the fear of an epidemic.

On the other hand, it is true that,

even without COVID-19, that through the first two months of the year,

we reached our production capability

on a couple of fronts. At the moment,

under conditions of rapidly expanding

sales, deadline extensions had to be implemented, mostly in the Brassin line.

This manifested itself into our e-shop

as well, where the processing of orders

had to be delayed due to the shortage

of resin components. For all those that

are affected, I apologise. I am trying to

work out a solution to the problem, but

I fear that there is no quick fix to this

situation. Increasing production capacity is currently not an overly easy implementation in our country. But, we are

certain that a solution will be reached

and put into effect, much like last year

with kit production and decal printing.

Our customer support has also found

itself in a complicated position. Petra has gone on a long term leave and

won’t return before the end of March.

Customer support has been taken over

by two other ladies, Alena and Jana.

They are doing their best to maintain

the process, while implementing some

procedures to effectively deal with all

issues and requests of our customers.

And that’s not particularly easy. Truth

be told, it is often very difficult to come

to a solution to the full satisfaction of a

customer. In order to try and streamline

the communication process, we will be

putting up a form on our site. In order

to process a complaint, the form will

need to be carefully filled out, as well

as an inclusion of the problem description, and proof of purchase of the item in

question. In some cases, the customer

will be asked to turn to the retailer from

where the item was bought. There is an

increasing number of cases where cus4

eduard

tomers purchase a kit with damaged or

missing parts from, for example, E-bay,

and are asking us to replace them. We

are willing to do this, but we cannot offer it up for free, because we do not consider these issues from the side of the

modeller as our responsibility. After the

New Year, there was also an increase in

the frequency of complaints regarding

our decal sheets, in terms of missing or

censored swastikas. These sheets mostly come through German retailers, who

remove them in compliance with German laws. The removal has been done

with typical German precision, and not

only have they been removed from the

national markings of aircraft, which we

have probably grown somewhat accustomed to, but also from the kill markings

of Allied aircraft. An example of this is

the Mustang, where after its introduction, there was a spike in the returns of

decal sheets with removed swastikas. In

this case, unfortunately, the censorship

basically degrades the value of not just

the sheet, but of the entire package.

The blacking out of these swastikas

has also been performed on the boxart

and in the instructions. This is, in a way,

a pretty heroic endeavour, because the

number of these itty bitty, teeny weeny swastikas in each kit can go into the

dozens. We have gotten several emails

recently, that quite angrily question why

we would sell such distasteful censorship. Well, we don’t. This is not our initiative, and it’s implementation is not in

our hands. Unfortunately, it is also beyond our capability to limit this practice.

About the only thing we could do is to

issue a special version of the kit(s) for

Germany, which would include marking

options that carried no victory markings.

And I can’t help it, I just have to add that

them Germans would love that! For

now, about all we can do is recommend

all customers enquire about the state of

the product they are purchasing, especially from German sources, at the time

of their order. In every case such as this,

we will direct the customer back to the

retailer that sold them the item. We will

not be sending out replacement sheets

on their behalf. And as an aside, many

complaints point to the kits being shrinkwrapped, which is taken to be proof

of originality, but this is simply not the

case. We do NOT shrinkwrap our products, and this is another practice that

is out of our hands and in those of the

retailers.

Today’s new items are everything

except boring. This applies first and foremost to kits. It’s probably redundant

to note that Desert Babe is pretty much

sold out. This has been written about

for the last couple of weeks. I will just

add that this name has been applied to

the Limited Edition kit of the Tornado

GR.1 in 1:48th scale. The plastic originates from Revell, and the kit includes

our usual accessory bits. Photoetched,

masks and resin round out this tried and

true concept. The wheels and seats will

be in resin (Brassin) and the decals are of

our own production, and are very nice

indeed. The marking options are important, as they explain the name of the kit.

In Desert Babe, you will find eight marking options for the Tornado GR.1 from

Operation Desert Storm, the first Gulf

War. The British called this Operation

Granby. All of the marking options follow the pin-up girl theme. You may suggest that with this item, we are essentially beating a dead horse, that this has

been done so many times before. And

it has. But not like this, and I am convinced that we are offering what the modeller wants. In any case, there was a bit

over 2,000 of these put together, and

retailers have taken about 1800 of the

total. There were 212 left in our webstore at www.eduard.cz, and they are available from today, and if you want one

of these, be quick about it! There are

only fifty Overtrees available. Another

150 kits, built from reserve mouldings

of the plastic to cover potential returns,

will be issued in a special edition with

a poster and a pin. This special edition

will be made available around the middle of March on our e-shop, and will

be connected to a special event that will

INFO Eduard - March 2020