"Heads Up ! How Much to Charge?" Topic

My little company (Kings Mountain Miniatures) is about to release 30 odd packs of heads in various AWI headgear.
Each pack contains 8 heads, which can be used with the new Over Mountain Men or to do conversions of existing figures.

My problem is that I don't know how much to charge per pack.
So, I need some help here. I know what each pack costs me as far as casting is concerned, but that doesn't include the small fortune that I paid to the sculptor or the cost of shipping from England.

I was thinking that 8 bucks per pack would be reasonable, with a sliding discount scale for larger purchases.

So what would you be willing to pay per pack? Even if you don't dabble in AWI you can venture an opinion. Thanks for all your help.

First question: what scale?

Not sure what I would pay, but I wouldn't pay $1 USD per head. That's just me though.

Scale is 28 mm.

Well Redoubt seems to charge .50GBP to 1.00GBP for a pack of six heads.

link

All The King's Men sells 54mm metal heads at 3 for a dollar in bags of nine.

Well, first work out how much they cost to produce (metal, power, other overheads). Then work out how much time it takes per pack and cost that in at whatever hourly rate you consider you need to make it viable. Add the amount per pack you have allocated to costs such as getting figures sculpted. From these, you can work out a minimum cost per pack.

Anything above that is a bonus, anything below that don't bother! Really, though, the costings are the important bit – you have to be getting back your investment plus an acceptable profit or it isn't viable.

Incidentally, wy are you shipping from the UK if they are your figures and you are in the US? Why aren't you getting everything done in the US?

It sounds like you had these sculpted as one offs?

Manufacturers often make them for their own uses so they can do head swaps. So it gets them a whole new sculpt where they can just use a new head. So they do a little sculpting but can sell a whole new packs of 28mm. The heads are then cheap to do on the side.

Selling just the heads will be hard because sculpting for just the heads is pretty expensive.

Follow Garrison and see what you come up with.

Let me ask this question. How much will a pack of the over the mountain men cost and will the heads be included in that price or will the heads cost extra? Not knowing your costs to have them made for me I would say $8 USD for a pack of 8 heads is very expensive and I would not pay that amount.

Don't need to know what you paid for it, what it's scale is, how many they are. All YOU need to know is how much it costs you to buy one pack from your producer. If You'e the original manufacturer then you know your material and labor costs. Add up Material Cost + Labor Cost+ Overhead. Overhead is everything else that you have to amortize into your cost to cover your expenses for things ike, electricity, heat repairs to the mold capital expenses, blah blah blah. This is almost always calculated as a percentage of labor. In this business, that's about 500% That gives you your cost of goods. Then there's the cost of sales which is shipping and postage which is a known factor, packaging, add on 5% % and your markup, which is what you'd like to walk away from after all the bills are paid from the sale of the product.

So, plugging in the costs.

Material (lead-pewter) I guess that's about 25 cents. Probably WAY over pricing.

Labor (pretty much to spin the mold, take them out of the doughnut, clip them off the sprue, finish them up. Figuring mininum wage at about $7.50 USD an hour, should take 15 minutes tops, so that's 1/4 hour so that's $1.88 USD.

Taking the overhead percentage of 500% times the $1.88 USD that's $9.40 USD. So $.25 USD+$1.88+ $9.40 USD = $11.53 USD That's cost of goods. Now Cost of sales. Add on 5 percent for packing, probably $66. USDcents for postage, that's .57 cents for packing, 66 cents for postage, that's $1.23 USD added to our cost of goods and cost of sales is $12.76 USD. Now you generally want no less than 40% and prefereably if you can get it 1,000% markup, but let's assume 40% So that means $5.00 USD so that brings it up to $17.76 USD or therebouts.

There you go. That's the way we cost it at work. That's what I do day in and say out, Planning and Cost Accounting and Purchasing.

Now, remember I just pulled figures out of the air to run the formula. You have to plug in your own numbers.

Don't ask the s what you should pay. They'll tell you to give it away wrapped ina $20 USD bill and want you to make the coffee besides.

The formula is

M= Material Cost
L= Labor
O= Overhead
.5 % of cost of goods as packing etc
Postagage (whatever it is, assuming it's P
G= Markup, what you want to carry away from the sale so assume you're of a giving sort and take 40% profit (not bad, about middle of the road, jewelry is about 1,000 percent, groceries about 6%
W= Markup, assume 40%

the formula is.

1.4(1.05(M+L+(L*5))+P)= Price.

There ya go.

All depends on your overhead and how much you want to take away on each product.

LOL :-) where's my $20 USD bill? I want to buy some of those heads.

Well, if you want the s to buy them it would be good to know what they would be willing to pay. Otherwise, you could be sitting on an awfully big pile of heads. Call it market research.

@ ottoathome:

So, that's pretty much 9x the basic costs of production (metal + labour)? We should all be paying about £3.00 GBP/$5 per 28mm figure on that basis then. Shows how little profit there is in this industry.

If they come "free" with the appropriate figure, that is fine with me. I would not like to have to pay extra for a head that matches the proper body.
Now, I really like the Highanders, and know the price I paid for quality figures. I can see paying +10% over the complete guys, if 8 different heads come with 8 different bodies in a predetermined pack.

If I want a special head that requires a little bit of labor on your part to put together, I might be willing to pay a slight increase.
Example: If I wanted to put a Hessian fusilier miter cap head (assume you make one) on a hunting shirt body (assuming you make one), then this is just a matter of matching figures and heads you make. (This might be a possibility for triumphant Continentals post Trenton wearing trophy caps. God knows I would not need that many.
In this case a +20% markup would not be out of line.

If you make something like British fusilier caps, but do not make the body to receive it, I might be willing to pay $.50 USD, but would hesitate to pay $1 USD for a head without a body. If I wanted to put a fusilier cap on an Old Glory regular body, I would be paying more for the head than the body!
The labor and waste involved in cutting off the head and drilling out a hole to accept the stub might also make me hesitate.
This would be a rare example.

Suppose I wanted a battalion of 18-24 Pennsylvania Associators. I would much rather buy the "proper" bodies and heads from you, knowing they would fit, than buy your heads at a premium price and have to match them to someone else's body.

It all depends on circumstances.
Buying separate heads, for me, would be an extremely rare event, but buying heads and bodies together from you would not.

To answer some questions:
Disco Joe…yes the heads will come with the new figures at no charge. You will be able to pick whatever packs you like to go along with the figures. If you buy all 16 figures you can pick 2 packs of 8 heads of your choice.

Extra Crispy…The heads were sculpted to be added to forthcoming releases from KMM. Continental soldiers are next up and you will be able to depict 80 % of the Continental Army with the new bodies and these heads. After that the Legions will be next. They will be foot figures in
action poses.

John OFM… You'll be able to use these heads with my new releases. I asked for pricing help here because I want to keep the price down so that guys like you will buy them to create their "dream units" that nobody makes. I certainly don't expect to get rich. In fact I would be happy to get close to even. This is a labor of love (not profit). I was actually shocked to see how well my original Highlander sold. They did so well that I ploughed the money right back into the Over Mt Men. My goal is to create the best product
available for the Southern Campaign of the AWI.
By the way, the Associators heads are smashing.

For me, this is a hobby. I fully appreciate that the professional people who replied have a much better understanding of the business than I do. They run successful businesses and make a living at it. I don't know how they manage to do it. I just want to break even and have some fun doing it.

Dear Lord Ayton and the rest

Not at all. Remember I'm only laying out the methodology of how costing is done by the big boys, that is in regular business, and remember I said I was only pulling figures out of the air to show how the formula worked. I don't knowwhat Nevinsrip's prices and costs are, his overhead labor etc. But what I gave was the methodology to calculate cost. I also left out some steps that will be minor and most not applicable for his operation.

Note that Nevinsrip says that he;'s not trying to make a lot of money, Nevinsrip says he just wants to break even and have some fun doing it. Therefore he wants to place himself outside the module. AS I SUSPECT MOST PEOPLE WHO ARE VENDERS IN THIS BUSINESS DO! It is a labor of love for most and they don't want to subsidize others but the overwhelming number of venders in this hobby just want to recover their expenses and have a good time.

They're complete fools, because they ARE subsidizing other gamers hobby even when they break even, but they are fools who are heroes of the hobby and deserve all of our respect, thanks, and encouragnement, AND us to give them a bit more cash out of respect. Anyone who get's into this hobby with the idea that they are going to attain a lifestyle they wish to become accustomed to are sadly mistaken. Like, I believe, the owner of "Old Glory" once said -"Want to make a small fortune in wargaming? Start with a LARGE fortune."

For those of you inclined to doubt the formula, a bit of recounting. About 20 years ago I worked for a company that made cosmetics- lipsticks, dusting powders, blushes, roughes, etc. I was production manager, and had the whole she-bang under my charge. One day I mentioned this to a friend I knew and she became rhapsodic and ecstatic and asked if I could get her some Lancome Lipstick, which was the big thing then. $30 USD a lipstick or something like that. I said sure and the next week I gave her a box 8" deep by 10" wide by 12" long packed with lipsticks of all shades and hues. They were line rejects which had say a poor forming of the head of the lipstick, or a flat spot that couldn't be cured by reglazing or slight ding or there was a dent or malformation of the case. She immediately flew off the handle and said "This isn't Lancome! This is Dorothy Gray! (which was about $1.89 USD in Walmart at the time). I said, trust me, it's Lancome. There is no such thing as Lancome of Paris, it's Lancome of Fair-Lawn New Jersey- it all comes out of a private label manufacturing company. The forumlas, color palletes, shades, and manufacturing is all theirs, not lancomes. When someone wants a line of lipsticks, they don't build their own plant, they come to us and we sit them down and show them the shapes, molds, sizes etc. In this case all we did was take the lancome cases off the line, put on the Dorothy Grey and fire 'er up! It's the same stuff!. She wouldn't believe it. Then I told her, that stick for stick you got about DOUBLE the amount of lipstick you got in Dorothy Grey than you did with Lancome, and in any case the "stick", the mass was made of grease, wax, rust (iron oxides for the pigment) and some preservatives and cost $.00 USD cents a piece. That's right! Two thousands of a cent. The rest is all packaging, marketing and labor. Dusting powder is even more costly. About a penny's worth of powder for 9 ounces, and $3 USD in packaging and it costs $28 USD for Revloy Youth Dew thank you very much.

The mark up on Jewelry is about 1000% note, that's MARKUP not the cost of goods and sales. Want to know what's the lowest markup? Food! Hovers between 2% and 6%. So quitcherbytchen when you go to the grocery stores.

The point of this is that when you get into the real business of it you begin to see what things really cost. That's why I say that most of war games, miniatures, are labors of love by hobbyists who almost do it as a benevolent service to their fellow gamers. I don't mean those foolish lads in Bored Games (no misspelling there) who work off major publishers who fall under the formula above.

As for you John the OFM, you obviously don't know about fixed costs and the molding process. It's nice to say "a little labor on his part." But the labor involved in spinning a centrifuge (which is the least labor intensive of all) is still a lot. First of all he has to get the mold heated by several successive spins till it will allow the metal to permeate to all the little fissures in the cavity and the electricity to keep the pot going, and run the centrifuge is the same if he's got only a few heads in the doughnut or a full range of figures. It also takes the same amount of time watching it, letting it cool, getting the doughnut out from the casting machine, opening it extracting the head, clean up etc. So it's almost as much as casting a full figure. By the way if he does his casting by hand pour the labor time goes up astronomically! Either way it COSTS Nevinsrip about the same to cast a head as it does a full figure, so his labor and overhead (the major incrementers of cost) are the same. In fact, it might even be more. The mass of metal in a head is far less than in a real figure meaning that he has to run many more spins to get the mold up to temperature before he can get a good casting (by either method). But the more spins of the mold, the faster it will burn out. That's all in overhead already, but it has to be paid for.

Then there's the grief, which is what mark-up wipes away, partly….

Remember you have to deal with a group of whinging, complaining, self absorbed, ungrateful people. if you doubt me, look around on this list. How these vendors put up with us I'll never know. I think in another age they'd be saints.

This is why when I was thinking of starting a business in gaming I considered all the facts and put my money into real-estate.

As for you John the OFM, you obviously don't know about fixed costs and the molding process.

Yes I do, as a matter of fact. I was in the manufacturing business for years. The "molding process" is no different than die cutting and "rapid die change". All manufacturing processes are only superficially different.
And I doubt that Bill does his own casting.
I am merely stating what *I* am willing to pay, or more accurately what I can afford to pay.
I could afford to overlook such costs "back in the day" in the manufacturing business, but even buying a single regiment these days is a luxury for me.

Dear John

Then I stand corrected. Sorry that you are in straightened circumstances. So tell me, what period are you in and in what scale? If you are in difficult financial straights I probably have a few regiments around (if in 28mm-30mm) that I'll never use. I'll give you one. I have everything from ancients to 18th century.

Certainly you deserve some reward besides all those stifles for the good and entertaining posts you put on here.

We are unworthy. Thanks for casting your pearls before us…….

I was not begging for anything. I was just making a point.

Dear John

Wasn't saying you were. Just offering assistance if needed. I have plenty of minis. If you need something just ask.

I( still need to know what price to charge!!!

A bag of 8 heads should sell for the same price one figure does. Just mu opinion.

Who are these s ya'll keep talking about, sounds like some kind of nose pickin aliens 8-) certainly not me and the rest of the poor hard working folk here abouts.

I still need to know what price to charge!!!

OK. What would *I* be willing to pay for a Bag O'Heads with no bodies attached in the order? This is for a massive regimental decimation decapitation project.
I have no problem with having to buy a full bag, and reasonable shipping charges. Since I am already crazy enough to embark on the above project…

This would be a case of "I may as well make this worthwhile and get a couple that I will never use to flesh out the order, so…"
Based on my PayPal balance at the time, I would probably buy 10 bags, and would not turn my nose up at a bag of 8 for $4 USD or $5. USD Higher than that, we are getting into the realm of a head costing more than a body. I know what Ottoathome said, but this is a case of perception vs reality.

I also sell heads to my figures. Here's what I've learned.

Most everyone will say it's a good idea and many will tell you it's silly not to sell them as people will use them in conversions etc…

The fact has been that I have sold about 10 packs of heads since I started selling them separately on my site. They don't make money for me at all. I'm to the point now where I think I might start giving them away with orders over $20. USD

However, I do sell them for $1.50 USD for 4. Hope that helps.

Okay, I'm at 4 to 5 bucks per 8 heads. I'll probably do something like offering them at 4 bucks a bag if you order the figures. You would still get 16 free heads with every set of 16 figures you buy. You could just buy additional heads at the reduced price.
I will probably have a sliding scale if you purchase 5 packs or more like 5 packs for 20 bucks (if your not already buying figures.) Maybe 10 packs for 35 and so forth.

Does that sound reasoonable?

I would pay $4 USD for a pack of 8 heads.What are you charging for the bodies?Are the bodies in packs of 4 or 8?There are 16 bodies aren't there?
Mark

A good price point would be $0.50 USD per head.

I have bought Pig Iron near future heads from the warstore to modify my 40k imperial guard. I have always disliked the way 40k faces are sculpted. Cost was $9 USD for 20 heads.

Dear Bill, why can Otto use a Jewish term for the n-word and not be thrown in the clink?

He was at the time.

Further, why is the Jewish term suddenly on the bleep-o-matic and not the n-word?

There have been no recent changes to the bleep-o-matic. That term was probably added a year ago, when Otto made his comment.

How did this end up here a year later???

No problem. I just found it odd, to say the least.