So that's the end of 2025 – not a classic year for many reasons, both major geopolitical 'the world's on fire' ones and things closer to home. The one good thing that could be said about it is that it was over quickly (or to us it seemed that way – maybe we're just getting older). In many ways, we'd much prefer a more boring 2026…
As always, we have plenty of plans for the new year. Unlike a lot of companies we don't plan too far ahead, our release schedule is a bit more ad-hoc. It tends to naturally divide into three phases; before Salute, Salute, and The Rest of the Year. Phase one is pretty much mapped out already, in that we know what is coming, although not necessarily in what order. We're hoping to have at least one new release in all of the major ranges during the next 3½ months. Most of them are already 'in the can', as in the masters have been designed, some printed, and even a few molds made. Here are a few…
As for Salute, we're going to try to tie our new releases for the event to the show theme, which this year is cavalry! With a couple of ranges that'll be straightforward, with others we'll have to stretch the idea a bit. Actual cavalry, armored cavalry, air cavalry, things related to cavalry. Things that are cavalry but not horses. Ideas are afoot, plans have been drawn, and designs started.
As for TRotY, who knows. There are already enough finished designs in the bank to take us well into July, but we don't like to be too rigid about things. Sometimes we'll just get an idea and run with it, and rearrange the schedule to fit.
As for specific ranges – Imperial Skies should see two completely new fleets, and we'll start the Euro Upgrade project, giving the older European ones a makeover. Hammer's Slammers has a new detachment planned for the near future in both 15mm and 6mm, with another in the earliest stages of planning in conjunction with John Treadaway. We'll also have plenty of new sci-fi scenery in both scales to fight over. We're also expecting that our various 3Dprints will be back in production within a few weeks, all being well, and we'll be able to expand the 28mm sci-fi range again. There are a few more licensed David Sheff models we were unable to get out before our forced hiatus, and more of our own designs as we return to Pioneer Station.
Getting smaller, after a quiet 2025 we have a number of releases lined up in the 1:1000th Small Scale Scenery and the 1:700th Coastal Scenery ranges. We'll also be adding more 3mm sci-fi scenery to accompany Germy's models.
We have yet to nail down anything specific for the spaceship range, but it will include more merchant ships as these seem to be remarkably popular, alongside more conventional warships and maybe another station or two.
One thing we'd like to do is increase our social media postings. Although our following on Facebook is pretty well developed but fairly static, we've picked up a number of new followers on both Blue Sky and Instagram. So we'll be showcasing some of our older models that were released before we joined those platforms.
There is one note of caution for the immediate future; the recent sale pottered along gently for the most part, and we were keeping up pretty well with the orders. But in the last three days it went absolutely nuts. Not just lots of orders, but lots of big orders. We try to end the sale a week or so early so that we have time to clear all the orders before the workshop shuts down for a week over the Christmas and New Year break. Not this time. Despite working ten-hour days in the last week and a half before the holidays, we still have outstanding orders. If your order was placed on December*nbsp;13th or before, then it has shipped (the last batch went to the post office on Christmas Eve). A few others placed after that date have also been posted, but we're left with a dozen or so that we simply ran out of time on. And of course we've continued to receive orders while we've been away.
We'll be back in the workshop earlier than planned on January 3rd, and will work to clear the backlog as fast as we can. We're hoping that there may have been a few unemployed shoemaker's elves who did some of the work for us while we were away. But it looks like it could take a couple of weeks at least, with a knock-on effect to any new orders, so please bear with us for a little while.