Here we are, the second day of the New Year (2008). Yesterday, I closed out the orders from the last minute rush on the Holiday specials. There are just a few more open ’07 orders; one is for some 30mm Napoleonic Cavalry (I need to finish up a couple of new masters for this one). Can’t remember the others off the top of my head, but one contians some obscure items that I just need to cast, and then spend a little time cleaning up.

We did have a few shipping mishaps in the holiday rush. At least 3 packages have gone missing. Since they were all mailed at the same time, I’m going to assume that there was some Post Office mix-up. Two of these weren’t a big deal (other than to the folks who are getting them late). The other irks me a bit more, as it is the second time it has gone missing. The first time it got lot internally. (Read as: I lost it in the shop/shipping room). This time, I don’t know – I do know that I have to recast the pieces – Customer is not too happy about this (and neither am I). So that will likely be tonight’s project (not sure I can knock it out in a single night; custom pieces, 1 of each at a time), but we shall see what I can do…

Overall the past year wasn’t as good as we had hoped for. Some has to do with life’s little speed bumps, and some has to do with slow sales. The life’s speed bumps issues (from last year) should be behind us now; and we are hoping that 2008 will be a better year as far as those types of things are concerned. The slow sales; well I see this as two general problems: first with all of the things that derailed us from getting things done last year we didn’t have the time (or energy at times) to make the types of pushes for new business and sales that we should have. Secondly, in general I think spending was down for hobby related purchases (non-scientific research shows that many people cut back on hobby spending for a large part of 2007). Well, bottom line is that we fell short of our sales goals by about 17% – so far, with work booked for 2008 we should be 25% ahead, so if we can keep that up, we should be able to recover form last year’s shortfall.

In a review of sales from last year I found a nice surprise in the increased sales of figures in the Bloodaxe line. If you toss out the Hawaiians (sales were worse than flat on these) the line witnessed a strong growth in sales. I am sure some of this growth has been due to the release of some of Lance’s newer work (Russo-Japanese War for example). If we look at 30mm sales we see that the numbers are down quite a bit; perhaps many of you have finally completed your 30mm Napoleonic armies?

Overall, the year for us was a mixed bag. Slower sales, but in the last quarter we were seeing an increase in sales; so things may be looking up… No doubt that our acquisition of the Resistant Roosters line helped things quite a bit. With the last quarter momentum, we are hitting 2008 at a good pace. If this keeps up we should be able to sweep the last of 2007 out the door and focus on the many new things we have planned for 2008…