Sign Email to Revell About making Pickups

[Aaronw]

I think that would be a fantastic idea. They could collect data directly from their customers, and adding a poll page to their websites would cost almost nothing. In fact, I emailed a couple of the kit manufacturers with that exact suggestion about a year ago.

Never got an answer.

You brought that up before and I still agree with you that most of the model companies really fail to take advantage of the internet. Two recent exceptions:

Eduard a mostly WW1 aircraft model manufacturer from the Czech Republic now puts the instructions, and full color painting guides online. Now a modeler can see the instructions to get a feel for the kit prior to buying it, can print the instructions if they lose the ones in the kit, they can also see the paint schemes in color instead of the typical grey scale found in most kits.

Italeri has recently put a request on their website asking people to give them the models they would like to see as well as asking questions about their current models (most recent Italeri purchase, favorite Italeri model etc).

Edited March 3, 2010 by Aaronw

[stewart]

That is true Harry, which is why if they don't believe it would be in their best interests to tool new kits, they should sell some more of the older kits (and perhaps tinker with the tooling for some of them), since there were so many cool kits that are now hard to find. Perhaps (and I know this was mentioned elsewhere before) they should have polls on their webpages asking consumers what kits they would like to see being sold.

Edit: Oh darn us! (From SAE forum)

That is a great idea. They should put polls on their sites. By the way, you guys are okay, it just that some people here are over analyzing the situation. Maybe there is not a market for this stuff and maybe they won't do anything like this. However, it will not hurt to try and that is all I am doing. So thanks for the encouragement and no hard feelings to anybody.

Edited March 3, 2010 by stewart

[Harry P.]

You brought that up before and I still agree with you that most of the model companies really fail to take advantage of the internet. Two recent exceptions:

Eduard a mostly WW1 aircraft model manufacturer from the Czech Republic now puts the instructions, and full color painting guides online. Now a modeler can see the instructions to get a feel for the kit prior to buying it, can print the instructions if they lose the ones in the kit, they can also see the paint schemes in color instead of the typical grey scale found in most kits.

Italeri has recently put a request on their website asking people to give them the models they would like to see as well as asking questions about their current models (most recent Italeri purchase, favorite Italeri model etc).

That's exactly right. Kit makers all have websites... why not take full advantage of that and make your website work for both the customer and for the manufacturer? Eduard and Italeri have the right idea... why can't Revell and AMT and the rest see the value of interacting with their customers directly via their respective web sites? At the very least I expected an answer, but I didn't even get that. Just an automated "thank you for contacting us" form email.

[ruckusryan]

Btw did you add my name to the list? Just wondering.

Yes I have added your name.

[Jon Cole]

Perhaps we should instead petition the model companies to use their web sites to gather information from us, the consumer?

More importantly, would the model building community make it worth their while?

E-mails.... too easy to ignore.

Snail mail... probably more effective.

Like that will ever happen.