Rob Ervin, owner and operator of Formations Models, has announced that the company will be ceasing to operate.

Now only rarely, have we covered the end of a manufacturer. However, in the case of Formations it's a significant story, one whose importance to the hobby will be a major loss.

The best thing is to give Rob a space here to explain the rationale:

Formations is ceasing operation as of July 29, 2011. All orders that have been placed at this point will be processed cast and shipped as quickly as possible. We will not be accepting any additional orders and the on-line store has been shut down. More announcements will be made soon about our future plans for the company. If you are an individual or company that might be interested in acquiring the Formations product line, masters, name, and domain name, please contact me via the e-mail address below.

I want to express my appreciation to all of our valued customers that have supported us over the last 8 years. We hope that any immediate need that you may have for our product can be met by our dealers. I will establish links to our dealers below on this page as quickly as my time allows, hopefully later today. If you have any questions, please contact me on my personal e-mail

[email protected]

Please be patient with me for a response, I will be quite busy over the next few weeks with new responsibilities. There are so many people that I wish to express my gratitude to that it is difficult to even start the list. But let me just say thank you all for your support and encouragement and for helping make the last 8 years among the happiest of my life.

Sincerely,

Rob Ervin

Formations

Speaking personally, in the few dealings I had with Rob, he was one of the most patient, helpful and all-round nice guys that i've had contact with.

Since Formations has been in business, the quality and range of the M4 Sherman in Styrene has improved so much that perhaps there is less need for the conversion sets, upgrades and enhancements that the company offered. Therefore, Formations itself found less business in its 'core' product-lines.

One of the real legacies of the company however, was to make modelers more serious and demanding about accuracy - reflected in the releases of manufacturers such as Tasca and DML which have increased the quality of the available M4s to a level of accuracy (and choice) previously unimaginable.

Whatever Rob decides to do in the future, we, at Armorama definitely wish him the best and it would be churlish not to thank him for the work he has done on our behalf!