I am currently on paternity leave until September 9th.
Whilst the store will remain open, and you will still be able to place orders, please understand that they won’t be fulfilled during this time. My return will also be phased, so orders will take a little while longer until I’m back at work full-time (note that this store is not my full time job anyway!).
Ben.
OK, so the title sounds a bit ominous, but it is true – I owe my customers, and those who were potential customers, an apology. I’ve been terrible at responding to enquiries and tickets raised on orders where items were missing or broken. I certainly won’t offer an excuse. Whilst I devote perhaps one day a week to MCM, that should have no bearing on my customers – they shouldn’t have to wait weeks for a response.
This isn’t a particularly new problem for me – I’ve always struggled with the organisation side of things (something made sense of by a diagnosis of ADHD) – but the scale of it had got out of hand. I let a pile build up and every time it got bigger I found it harder to tackle. Harder to even start tackling.
Finally, today, I have responded to everyone who has raised a ticket in June and July. Any tickets concerning order dispatch from May and earlier have been deleted – either they will have arrived or the customer has sent a follow-up enquiry. Not ideal, but I had to introduce a cut-off just to be able to tackle this self-imposed situation.
Now that inbox is empty, I should have no problem responding more promptly.
European customers: There is a bug with the tax plugin I have to use which causes problems with orders which contain lots of lines (i.e. independent produts). If you are affected, please raise a ticket and I will work with you to find a solution.
Unfortunately, the only solutions to the actual problem involve either moving to a different IOSS agent, or a different web host. Both are costly and require research, so aren’t likely to happen very soon.
The store side of my business has seen a large decline over the last couple of years, following considerable growth during COVID lockdowns and for some time after. I can’t deny that the growth the store experienced allowed me to become somewhat complacent.
I’m now trying to figure out how best to manage the store going forward. 3D printing, initially through Shapeways, allowed MCM to become a reality. I moved to in-house 3D printing over the years, though still only as masters for resin casting. Now, in the shadow of Shapeways going into administration, the democratisation of 3D printing poses questions for my own little store. I can’t justify holding stock of all my products anymore. I firmly believe cast resin is the superior material for miniature modellers, but I can’t maintain the range in the same way going forward. 3DP resin is a good alternative, and I am working on a way to provide many products as STL files.
This is not a small task – I want to release as many products in one go as possible. Whilst I can provide downloadable products on this store, I need to seriously consider other storefronts where hobbyists go to find STLs. MMF et al. The reality of these storefronts is that I need to have a large proportion of my range available in order to make any kind of profit. This means cataloging, organising, supporting many files. I’ll get there, but it will take a little while.
In a few weeks, my family will be welcoming our second master crafted miniature. This will take me away from the store (and work generally) for a few weeks. I may close the store temporarily during this time. This is probably the best way to provide good service to cusomers, rather than leaving a zombie storefront up and not processing orders. Hopefully, I can keep the site viewable so people can still browse. As a self-employed person, there is no formal paternity leave available, so that period may be shorter than I would like. Perhaps I’ll be able to process some files between feeds!
Anyway, I’m trying to do better with the store, work, and life in general. Thank you for bearing with me.
Ben.
I’m finally adding a bunch of ancillary hobby products to the store, as well as some Bushido-related projects. There will be many more products to come which are designed for Bushido, such as faction measuring widgets and steppers, but finalising designs and adding them, to the store takes time! So here’s part one of the release. Hopefully the majority of other products will be available before Christmas.
I’ve added several Gamegenic products: from basic and affordable workhorses, to hard-shell shoulder bags, zip-up folders, and magnetic convertible boxes with interchangeable coloured parts.
Bushido cards are a little smaller than those in your typical collectible card game. This can mean baggy sleeves. I dislike baggy sleeves, and so should you! Inner sleeves can be a good solution.
I’ve used Ultra-Pro’s Pro-Fit inner sleeves for Bushido since Risen Sun came out in 2019. The downside of inner sleeves is that they tend to be thinner in order to fit inside a regular sleeve. These inner sleeves from Gamegenic are double the usual thickness and great for Bushido.
Many of the terrain items I have been working on for Bushido have been designed, or scaled from 3DAW designs, to fit on an area described by card sizes. That is, a fairly large element may occupy an area equivalent to two cards on the board, many will occupy that of a single card, and some will occupy some proportion of a card. This aim behind this is to keep the size of all these elements easily understood and follow the example set within the ruleset, and seen with products such as the Ice Patch and Tilled Field, where many in-game effects which create terrain do so by placing a card.
The first of these is the Ideal Terrain element. Card-sized is my largest recommended area for this type, and I plan to add at least one smaller variation.
Finally, and after many iterations, the folding objective ruler!
Personally, I find measuring to the centre of a scenario objective to be pretty irritating, so I’ve made this handy folding ruler to make setting up for objective scenario games as easy as possible. They double as movement rulers, and can be used to deploy either 30mm or 50mm scenario objectives by following the engraved instructions.
More to follow in a few weeks, I hope!
Ben.
I’m now stocking some excellent Ultimate Modelling Products… products. UMP have sourced some of the best acrylic polyurethane primer out there from Badger in the US and, in support of the growing range of MCM decals, I’ve also started stocking their decal solutions. Similar to Micro-Sol and Micro-Set, UMP have 3 strengths to choose from, depending on the difficulty of the surface and thickness of decal.
Hello there. I’ve been a bit shit the last few weeks, and I apologise if your order has been affected. It’s been a string of hurdles – illness, family support stuff, toddler stuff, family vomitting carousel – all one after the other. None massively affecting on their own, but I guess it all added up in terms of depleting both time and my mental resources.
Here in the UK, industrial action is being taken by members of The Communications Workers Union (CWU), who work for Royal Mail and Parcelforce Worldwide.
There may be disruption to letters and parcel services on the following dates:
I’ve got a bunch of cool Bushido-related stuff in the hopper. Some finished, some in various states of work-in-progress, I’m fighting with myself over how many I launch at once – more later, or fewer sooner with follow-up release. There’s also a whole load of work to be done adding them and their variations to the store backend!
Thanks,
Ben.
Ah, such exciting topics for a blog post!
Those of you who reside in the EU will be happy to hear that MCM is now registered to collect your VAT through the IOSS scheme. Registering a (very) small business is comparatively costly, and requires a monthly fee, but I’m hoping it will prove worthwhile so that those customers don’t get stung at customs. You will know at checkout exactly how much you will end up paying.
No doubt you know your local rates, but for clarity they can be found here.
If you are in the EU MCM will collect VAT on behalf of your country at point of sale for all sales up to £135, including shipping. Orders of greater value than £135 will not have VAT collected until the parcel enters your country, and you may find it is subject to additional duty & processing charges at that point. Worth bearing that in mind when considering a large order! If you do find you order exceeding that value, please contact me as I may be able to offer a discount in addition to the automatic free standard shipping.
As for shipping costs, these have been re-evaluated for all shipping zones based on the price changes which have been in place with my provider for around two months now.
GB & European customers will note many price increases . This is due to MCM needing to charge VAT on shipping costs. I’ve not been doing this for several years and have been absorbing those costs myself. I’m sorry that I have to pass these costs on now, but I have kept these increases to a minimum.
Royal Mail have now divided Europe into 3 zones. For the most part costs are very similar between each zone, and I did consider keeping them as a single zone – but I want to be ready to react to any future changes they make.
EU customers please note that, due to the way product prices are entered into the store and VAT is calculated, what you actually pay for shipping may vary slightly from what is listed on the shipping information page. Don’t worry though, you’ll be given the accurate amount at checkout.
So, many prices have gone up due to VAT being added, but I have been able to bring some down and minimise others.
I am working on updating the shipping system to take weight into consideration because customs forms already require me to have a weight value for every item in the store. I am slowly working through adding those weights to every product – a time-consuming task! Once that is done, I should be able to work on the shipping calculations. All of this is to say that the new MCM shipping prices are temporary. I don’t know when I’ll be done – lots of day job work to do right now – so don’t wait on ordering hoping they’ll come down. I can’t guarantee they will come down on average anyway, but they should more accurately reflect every customer’s order.
I promise my next post will be about more exciting things!
Ben.
