Posted 08 August 2016 - 09:30 AM
I am not a Deep Space Nine fan, so the Yridians thing is also lost on me, but I apologize if I come across as untrustworthy and only giving info for money! And I've been the face/voice of the company for five years, so if anyone's defensive, it's me. Maybe Chuck gets a little in Ask DST, but I don;t think he's particularly defensive. If anything he knows what sells and what hasn't, and takes individual comments as opinions to be responded to as such.
I don't come here to dismiss opinions or be secretive, I come here to dismiss inaccuracies and provide information, because this seems to be one of the more active Trek message boards out there, at least as far as merch goes. But I do wonder how many people visit overall -- it may just be that we few people are highly active. If anyone can suggest a MORE active (or more populated) Trek board, I might check it out, but I wonder if message boards are the best place to discuss DST releases, which have fewer regular updates due to our current frequency and volume.
People should feel free to say whatever they want here. This is not my forum, and I only come here to answer questions, but when one third of the questions are rudely stated and the other third are less questions and more graphic suggestions, you guys don't really NEED me here. People can travel to the DST FB page or Twitter for answers and bring them back, I'm always there. I may come here less frequently, not to punish, but because there is nothing to say besides arguing about hypotheticals.
Or feel free to ask Chuck about line direction if you have concerns. The only thing people write in to Ask DST about are "When will you make a Voyager/K'Tinga/Prometheus/Vengeance/JJPrise"; nobody asks any questions that might merit a real answer. We recently scrapped an entire Trek Ask DST because the questions were all redundant, having been answered a million times. But maybe a monthly Ask column is not the best forum, either.
But I'm glad I finally know who David Ellis is on here!
A few thoughts:
Obviously we make things for consumers to purchase, and we want them to buy them, but we were founded by Diamond Comic Distributors, and they are our exclusive distributor. Since then, our primary customer has been comic shops and specialty stores, although we also sell to biggish chains. Our entire existence is predicated on sales to retailers, not direct to consumer, and if it does not have much interest from retail, then we are not going to develop as many products as we do for a license that retailers are hungry to stock. We'll still make items because we know fans want them, but we are not going to over-produce and we are not going to rush. We are not planning on changing our entire being, hiring staffers and overhauling our e-commerce business just to "make Trek work." We'll still do the occasional one-off item that we can sell straight to consumers, but it will probably never be our focus.
And I never said we had problems with the factory. I said we were still working on items at the factory. Working on something to get it right is not the same as a "problem." These things take time, and I know that people here notice when small details are not right, so we take our time. The electronic starships cannot be compared to Eaglemoss starships, and Select figures can not be compared to ReActions or Titans. They're just different products. You can compare Select to 1:12, if you like, but even those are two very different types of products, with different manufacturing challenges.
And saying that we've been having the same problem for ten years implies that nothing has changed, or that we have not fixed things we did not like, or that it's even the same people or factories working on it. IF we're working longer on items, it's to make sure we do not need to revise, correct or overhaul them in the future.
And what is a "mock up" of the Reliant and our next two ships after that? We showed 2-D (actually 2-D printouts of a 3-D rendering) or the Reliant, but we have not fully rendered three ships in anticipation of the 50th. Or do you want some kind of 3-D version? That's called a prototype, one that we are finalizing for approval and display as a representation of the final product. People seem to think that creating a 3-D file of a ship, outputting it, painting it, designing and applying the decals is the easy part. It's not, its just the first hard part. To do something faster -- output an unfinished and unpainted version, or re-paint someone else's Reliant model -- would not represent the final product, and would not be useful for approvals, or for convention display, and would waste time. Nowadays, "mock-ups" are made digitally, so we'd be putting a photo of a ship inside a photo of a box.
As far as your choice of preferred 50th anniversary products, a Captains Box Set of action figures? Captains Chair action figure box sets? Legacy of Spock action figure box set? I can only assume the actual contents of these line-ups, but if they involve new sculpting/tooling, then we're sculpting and tooling new figures as we speak. If they're all re-packs, then I"m not sure why we need to celebrate the anniversary by re-packaging something that came before into a more expensive set. Why not make new things? I have heard criticism of our re-issues, including our ships and our Retro figures, so I would think new products and characters would be preferred. BUT they take time.
If retail interest ever changes, or our license ever changes, we can change, too, but hopefully those that appreciate our products can wait for them, and those that don't can find joy elsewhere. .
