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shows in suits and dress shoes, and not in jeans
and t-shirts like they do today. I bought a pair
of American boots on Michigan Avenue and had
them cleaned by him, and he greeted me every
morning. It was just great. Everyone we needed
to talk to was at the show, but unlike Nuremberg,
the public was invited to attend and sales could
be conducted there. So, among others, members
of the Czech community, which is large in Chicago,
attended the event. There I met Johnny Vojtech,
and Jules Bringuier lived in Chicago at the time,
for whom we worked on Classic Airframes kits,
who brought me to Chicago for the first time in
1993 and to whom I will be eternally grateful for
everything he taught me. Father and son Sojko,
who worked as toolmakers at Monogram, used to
attend regularly. They were responsible for all the
beautiful kits from Monogram that I admired and
I wanted to match them. They were as proud of
their efforts as they were of their Czech heritage.
Europeans used to also attend, with a regularly
present Airfix stand there, the old Airfix, before
Hornby bought them, Esci was there because
they belonged to the same company as AMT and
Ertl, Canadian Hobbycraft used to go there, and
Japan’s Hasegawa and Tamiya could be found
there, too, among others.
Japanese related business interests also took
part in the show, such as Mr. Ono, the founder
and owner of Beaver, which is still our Japanese
distributor. Mr. Ono also had a booth there several
times, where he once exhibited figures by Hajime
Sorayama and caused quite a stir when a girl
scout leader came to his booth to see what the
members of her troop were looking at. Then she
started screaming terribly, and the result was
that the organizers ordered Mr. Ono to cover the
sensitive parts of the figures. So he stuck pieces
of paper from those poisonously colored notepads
on their breasts and in their laps, making the
figures even more tempting targets for all the
scouts present. If you don't understand what this
is all about, google Hajime Sorayama, it's totally
worth it. In the evening, Mr. Ono taught me how to
eat lobster properly and Chuck Harransky from
Squadron Signal introduced me to American
chicken noodle soup, while explaining to me
how the model business is done in America and
what we need to do to succeed there. In Chicago,
our cooperation with Hasegawa started when
Mr. Horiike came to me and told me that we, the
‘old guard’, should work together more to better
face the new competition. It was like he elevated
me to nobility!
None of us knew then that this world was
coming to its end. American modeling firms fell
victim to deindustrialization. In the late 1990s,
they began experimenting with transferring
production to Asia, first to Korea, and when Korea
became more expensive, to China. That was
the beginning of the end, with the new century
American manufacturing companies began to
struggle, fail, change hands, and fail again until
they disappeared from the scene altogether.
The exhibition itself shrank to a half of one hall
and finally ended for good. The last time we
were there was sometime in 2014 or 2015, and
we even took off to go and check out the U-515
submarine museum during the show, because the
exhibition was already very quiet and there were
not many people. Unfortunately, it also affected
business. The decline of brick-and-mortar stores
is gradually continuing, the model shops are
becoming more and more an on-line affair, and
this is true all over the world. Today, we only have
four distributors in the United States, but two
of them are new. Three years ago, we had two
business partners in this market, and the share
of the American market in our overall turnover
dropped to 16%. So it is not such a tragedy, because
in financial terms it is still about twice as much
as it was in 2010. Rather, it reflects how business
has developed in Europe and especially in our
domestic market. Since 2000, the share of the
Czech market in our total turnover has doubled
from 13%, last year being up to 27%. I rather
suspect that it is similar in production, where two
main locations of plastic model production have
been created. One is in China, and the other is in
Eastern Europe, primarily in the Czech Republic
and Ukraine. Both of these differing geographic
locations cooperate intensively, which can be
seen especially in Poland, whose producers of
plastic models intensively use the services of
Chinese production facilities.
Despite the sad end of the RICHTA fair, our
participation in it had a great influence on
the development of our company. Eduard is
connected to America more than anyone can
imagine, and for me personally, the interaction
with the American environment was and is a great
education. Not only do I try to approach problem
solving in a somewhat American way, but we have
also learned from developments in American
companies. While they were deindustrializing
and starting their Chinese experiment, we were
building our own production base and building
Eduard as an independent entity, independent
of external suppliers of key components. I know
that even in Europe it is considered an outdated
approach, and when I talk about how Eduard
works, that all of our own production is done
in-house, I get a lot of raised eyebrows. But I am
sticking to my guns. I remember what happened
to those who got rid of their local production base.
The companies that drive the development and
modernization of our field today have their own
production base. It's Eduard, Tamiya, Trumpeter/
Hobby Boss (that's one company), HKM, Academy
and ICM. I may have forgotten some players here,
and to them, I apologize. I am still going through
a bit of jet lag! But, I digress….
New releases for August
The impact of the IPMS Nationals in Madison on
our new releases for August will be plain to see.
We wanted to bring some attractive new items to
the event, so there is naturally a strong American
flavor here. The intended ‘show stopper’, and
EDITORIAL
INFO Eduard
7
August 2024