Quoted Text
Raymond
Thanks for fixing my orders with substitutes so they can be closed up.
About the items that could not be had from Hobby Boss and Tamiya. Are they are out of production? I am especially surprised at how difficult to find the particular Tamiya scissors for a reasonable price.
There are several Hobby Boss kits I would like to obtain too. HB still list on their website so they cannot be Out of production. LM lists 1 week possible restock. I hope LM will upgrade /change these estimates as I find it very unreliable. I understand LM has no control over the inventories of the factories, but those estimates are misleading to customers.
Dear Tony,
No one will ever told us whether the item is out of production (except Eduard). Plastic kit production industry is a very unique business where the reproduction of the kit sometimes never know until it get out.
With our own production experience (kinetic), the item will never get discontinue unless : the mold get damaged, the kit is selling very bad. The income of produce the kit never cover the reproduction cost.
Therefore, each maker will maintain it policy in reproduction in secret. The reason is simple - push the distributor to stock the item. But the question, we have too many items to stock and too few customers to buy. Therefore, sometimes, the OOS item suddenly repop at the will of the maker. Recently, the Tamiya Lancaster just surface where it disappear from the marker for 5-7 years.
Also, the reproduction of the kit take some time slot. It may not be able to get this month but next month. But only the maker will know. If you ask me the availability of a Kinetic kit, I can tell you, but others....
The stock status indicator is the "best guess" that we done in the past by the brand/maker. It seems surely it does not meet the accurancy demand. We are thinking to provide a better estimation of the availability by check the last goods arrival vs the last intended purchase.
At last, not every brand that we can deal with the maker, many of those are still via distributor to obtain. Therefore, one more layer of information flow may needed.
Regards
Raymond
