Is it even worth me answering this? Terracognita seems to have made his mind up, regardless of his lack of grasp of facts. Not sure why he's so angry about this when he's not one of the people affected. He doesn't have a dragon pre-ordered but seems incensed that other people have chosen to put their faith in me delivering their dragon. Tell me, Terracognita, do you have even the vaguest idea of the casting process involved in such a big kit? DO you? Because Ian at Fenris has been doing casting for 20+ years in all sorts of areas from wargaming to film and tv work and even he has been surprised by how difficult this kit is to get out of the moulds. Thinking a thing will work and getting it to work have turned out to be two very different beasts. And that, my friend, is the be-all and end-all of it: this thing turned out to be far more difficult to get cast then anyone anticipated. That means costs go up, which means the budgets i was working with for three years evaporated. Not a lot I can do about that.
I haven't taken £40,000 of people's money. Maybe half that, over 3 years. I wish I had taken £40k, then I'd still have enough left to pay for Ian to hire a guy JUST to cast dragons. I put most of the money aside for dragons, but unfortunately that money was wiped out by the need to resculpt and remould the dragon when it proved too difficult to cast after all.
I'm the first to admit that this thing has become a fiasco, a nightmare of epic proportions and a millstone around my neck and will happily talk about it with anyone concerned. I have issued refunds for two people out of the list of 220+, People who have waited since January 2009 have received their dragons and told me that it was worth the wait, which is both reassuring and unbelievably patient of them.
Yes, there have been issues outside of work that have affected work, what world do you live in where this doesn't happen? Not the wargames industry, I'm certain. At the small end of the scale, whihc is where Heresy is, work and life are the same thing. There is no getting away from it. You do it every waking moment that you can.
For instance, I am selling my house - and the bulk of the equity tied up in that is going towards getting more dragons in. Sadly, the house still hasn't sold after a year and three months on the market thanks to the downturn in said market. At some point it will, and that will help enormously. I am also investigating ways of taking some of the workload off Ian and help speed things up. I've tried to get hold of Ed at Trollforged to see if I can persuade him to do some bits, but he's snowed under with his own work, and his own real life job. I'll be trying my hand at learning resin casting for myself in the New Year. I will investigate other options too, as they crop up.
Yes, the Dragon is still up on the cart. I tried taking it off and got emails form people asking where it was all the time. That page is mainly there to keep those people who have shelled out already in the loop. I don't really expect people to buy one given all the warnings on there, but some people still want to. And every time someone orders - which has been three times in the last year, if you must know - I contact them and make sure they understand that this is not something they're going to get soon. I explain that the Dragon is proving difficult etc and offer them an immmediate refund. So far they all seem to be happy with this. You're not, but then you aren't £100 out of pocket.
If I could do it all again, obviously I wouldn't have given in to the demand at the time and put the deposit scheme in place. I wouldn't even have bothered with the Dragon at all, I would have concentrated on other things. But people asked to give me money towards the eventual model and I foolishly obliged. It's been an abject lesson in What Not To Do. But here I am with a big list of models to get out to people and the answer is out there somewhere as to how to fill it. How do CMON get their dragon produced? No idea, wish I did. China somewhere, probably. You can solve anything in this industry if you start from a position of wealth and funding. At the end of the shitty stick that Heresy and Fenris are dangling from, things are different. Ian is doing his best but has his own problems to deal with on top of my Dragon. I respect that, you don't. We spent an hour on the phone just this morning discussing casting and how we could alter things so that stuff works better for both our ends.
I've spent ten years building up trust with my customers, based on good service and honesty about my situation at any given point. Heresy has never been massively profitable. Those Dragon sales weren't in addition to my regular sales, they were money that people spent instead of buying other stuff. Which is why i don't type this from a gold chair, being fanned by slave girls and throwing coins at passers by. I am well aware of how much I owe my customers and unlike other companies who are in it for the money and have no qualms about disappearing with the funds I am not that guy. I would rather sell my house, lose my mortgage and spend that irreplaceable money on fulfilling my obligations than walk away and rip people off.
So for now, why not shut up, and see how it goes. You've done plenty of bitching online already. If it all goes tits up and nobody ever sees another dragon you can crow about it and point people to this page or the one on Frothers. Meanwhile, I can do without having to spend ages typing this sort of answer out again and again to people who aren't even directly affected.
