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Message: <blockquote data-quote="3catcircus" data-source="post: 3370220" data-attributes="member: 16077">The labor costs for a US-based game developer/designer-type to create the stats for the skirmish game and/or the rpg stats are far greater than labor costs for someone in China to paint a mini.  As to costs of the minis - I don't think it costs 2 cents per mini, but, for the assumptions I made, it probably costs 2 cents per part, with the average mini made up of 2 or more parts.  I'm not in the injection molding business, so I'm hoping someone who is could vet the accuracy of the estimator I linked to.For the following assumptions, that estimator I linked to indicates that total costs are 7 cents per part, with tooling costs (i.e. the molds) being 4 cents per part:1.  A lower commodity material (styrene, propylene, etc.)2.  A run of 50,000 cycles.3.  16 cavities per mold.4.  Highly complex pieces (due to the detailed nature of a miniature's features)5.  1 in. x 1 in. x 28 mm tall.As to development costs/NRE costs - yes, once the stats have been generated, they can be printed thousands of times.  However, the same can be said for the minis - once developed, the molds can be used for thousands of cycles.I guess then that the questions are as follows:1.  What are the development cost of the sculpts vs. the rpg/skirmish stats?2.  What are the recurrent costs to actually produce each mini (Which that estimator indicates is 7 cents per part.)  Assume 3 parts per mini = 21 cents per mini.  Assume that secondary operations (painting the minis) costs 1.1x the bast cost, per that second link I cited, and you come up with 23.1 cents per mini.  Are these accurate assumptions and estimations?3.  What are the packaging costs?4.  What are the transportation costs?5.  What are the import duties?Finally - look at what and where the costs can be cut.  I think the areas are the following:1.  Eliminate stats and stat cards.2.  Eliminate the plastic packaging for each mini (and the plastic goes away for stat cards since they don't exist.)3.  Eliminate the checklist of minis in each box.4.  Reuse molds and sculpts where possible.How much will this save?  Is it enough to offset the supposed inability to make a profit from non-random packages?There are certainly other potential savings.  Use J-I-T shipping and eliminate distribution costs by selling directly to retailers.  If I know that I will be placing an order for x cases of minis each week, as well as x number of books, then Amazon.com-esque shipping methods can be used.You could easily have a parallel product line.  No-frills non-random, and then random packs for skirmish use.More importantly, I'm not asking for a box of 10 orcs with the exact same pose.  Whether the mini has a spear or a bow, a shield or not, makes no difference.  I just want to buy a single box of orcs instead of 7 boxes to get the exact same 10 orcs.</blockquote>

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