Many Mithril Pages @ Faerylands

As from my present contact with Chris I can only state that I really do believe in any single letter of his statement ... rhuoommm ... that's all there is to say from me ... tree ... hom.

It is very sad to hear, that Mithril doesn't even take in considerstion to talk to Chris about rising the prices and still use his name in the letter......
And also "someone" at Mithril must have a hearing problem to listen to what everyone who wants to help is crying out loud.
Maybe this "someone" should get himself a hearing aid, or he should take out his earplugs!

Right there Master Estel.
If you don't "flow" with the time, you don't flow at all after a certain amount of time.....

Now that makes sense. Who wants to loos his license.
I wonder how it works with MX. If i read through the add on the Mithril page, there is nothing said, you can't  choose a character out of the simarillion. How does TE approve these figs? Hmm
It seems there are a lot of dangerous edges you can easily cut yourself as a licencees.... No wonder there are only 12 left.
In the last few days I learned a lot of interesting "things". Thanks to all involved!

how bad the world has gone if now Games worshop has the RIGHT to produce a fake Beruthiel...

It's all a matter of money when it comes to TE I think (and to newline too!).... GW pays TE a little fortune to be free to do whatever they please. Mithril on the other side may certainly not afford to pay such a bunch of money and only pays what is necessary...
The implicit laws of market apply here : providers are generous and make "gifts" (physical, or abstract, by closing their eyes) with their "good customers" and providing the price of a TE licence, I doubt Mithril can afford to "pay more"...

Among the rules of Tolkien Enterprise licencing program there is a prerequisite of having a "good experience and standing" in the proposed domain of licence for at least 3 good years.... they do not accept anybody, and are not the generous kinds of person... they are there to make profit... (which is a reason why Tolkien Estate mainly opposes and are mad at them...)

About releasing unnamed and unreferenced previews as a "work in progress" that could be done providing there is no implicit knowledge that it belongs to tolkien (heraldry, hobbit like figurines, designs on shield or tabards etc...)
Also I am not aware on how the Licence contract works in the case of Mithril and TE. If the contract mentions that Mithril is to release Tolkien Only products and that EACH product must have been validated before being publicly announced, then they are bound by this countract... BUT

if this was the case, why would Michael had sent, in the past, in Newsletters, pictures of "later to be released MS figurines" which are waiting for TE validation to be put on sale... (which is precisely how he explained it)  that means they can send pictures... but there seems to be political barriers inside Mithril itself ....

Mithril are great products and I am certain it could sell very well... at least as good as Andrea Miniatures or Pegaso, which are not as massive than games workshop but sell quite good and have no crisis and far less references and can be seen in many shops...

Isn't it Ironic that the roleplaying shop in which I go every week-end, whose owner is an international figurine painter who won many prizes (and indeed knows mithril quite well... and had a personnal collection that he is willing to sell) well they have all kinds of figurines of all sizes, and companies... But only two or three "unblisted but new" mithrils in a glasscase for display at the back of his shop....most of which are old LO 54mm, or the old Gildor Inglorion vignette painted in gold for promotional purpose, or such dusty things... and when I tell him about mithril he is not aware and has no information from Prince August for many years... and PA does not promote the figurines or mithril in general... no... nothing at all...
He used to have customers.... used to... but one after the others, they have ceased to come, ceased to buy... because they all thought mithril was dead... and they focused on other companies and now they would not go back because it is too late...
(these customers are painters, roleplaying gamers, diorama builders but NO collectors or tolkien especially dedicated... and a company or another is the same... but for mithril, this pool of customers is definitly lost...)

Michael O'Brien seems to be in charge of the communication departement ... I wonder if there is not a filtering of communication in one way or the other... or Lars too does not want to involve himself in marketing strategies?
Indeed marketing, when the sales are bad and the money is missing in the company is quite hard to handle because it does cost money... and I don't want to be bad with Michael but havn't you noticed that since Mithril has gone "online and new-technologies oriented" (which is parallel to Michael's arrival at Mithril and his work as a webmaster....) well since that time that Mithril choose the internet as their favorite way of doing business.... Mithril has declined... the laws of market are not the same, online, and in reality... having an online store does not provide customers because you miss "the display" part... and they lack any promotion events in partnership with their international retailers....

what shocked me is when I read on Twitter that the prices had been changed and that Michael said he would have to change all the prices followed by "Blast it".... I don't know if that was just a joke or not... but he felt upset to having to change the price and work on that... When it comes to changing such details, it takes no more than 5minutes....

I received a private message from Michael too saying all my posts were transmitted to Lars and they were aware and thankful for my passion for mithril... this sounded, (but I may be mistaken indeed) as if I had been answered "thanks for your mail... we'll call you back..." (you see what I mean?)

. . . exactly, Gildor !

Well, I think Chris is spot on with the need for more Mithril presence at conventions and game shows.  That's how I got "re-introduced" to Mithril by Jim Corless in the US.  I had bought a few of the older minis from game shops, but then they all sort of disappeared.

Imagine my delight at finding a massive display of all of the MC's, boxed sets and current production M ranges at Historicon back in 1994 (or was it 1993??)  Anyhow, Jim and a few passionate collectors here started organizing little mini-gatherings of mithril collectors and gamers in the midst of these huge historical wargame conventions put on by HMGS, a mostly East-coast based historical gaming society.  Once they even displayed a complete M-series collection!  I was lucky enough to see some of Peder Hammarskold's work in person, including his Balrog of moria display as it was a work in progress.   Very inspiring stuff! 

Jim was the licensed US distributor for many years, but eventually got out of the deal.  He still attends the conventions with his Time Machine products, and continues to carry current Mithril releases and puts up  large Mithril displays.   

I obviously don't know all the details, but apparently there was always some level of difficulty and frustration in his dealings with Mithril.  It underscores the short-sightedness and chronic lack of marketing directly to the miniature buying population that has hobbled Mithril for many years. 

We as the passionate few can do what we can to help promote our obsession, but Mithril really needs a broad-reaching, organized business plan to market their products as something parallel to, but different and better, than the GW LOTR products out there.  They just don't seem to have an interest in doing that thus far.

when you want... you can.... it is said... Now I have the bad feeling that Mithril "does not want", that's the main problem...

I usually don't like the "what if" scenario, but do you think Mithril would have moved and proposed a solution at all without the threat and action of the boycott... even if the boycott is now over and the suggestions can now take place again... I fear that without such a strong action we would not have been heard except that they "were sorry but..." nothing because the economic climate is bad for them etc etc...

I'm still upset... the wind has changed economically perhaps, but this situation began long before the current problems..

Gildor Inglorion wrote:

...
what shocked me is when I read on Twitter that the prices had been changed and that Michael said he would have to change all the prices followed by "Blast it".... I don't know if that was just a joke or not... but he felt upset to having to change the price and work on that... When it comes to changing such details, it takes no more than 5minutes....

I really think that was just a joke. Agree to all the other things, though. However, I really fear that Michael, being an IT aficionado, is a bit left alone in the "communications department", and he is also managing the other PA series like Warzone etc. Think he needs more company-internal support. But hey, if you visit them, the company is really one big and fantastically stuffed ware house, not many people there (but everyone very friendly in person, and especially Michael!). Could really be the case that they do not have the budget for a dedicated sales & PR person.

Last edited by protozeus (Fri, Jun5 2009 3:58pm)

Mithril keeps mentioning that they will put a video on YouTube, but I have yet to see one. Maybe as a community we all could personally put our own videos on there to promote it ourselves?

Just a thought. I have been wanting to put some videos on YouTube anyway at some point and maybe we can do this somehow.

I dunno, I pop down into the cellar for five minutes, and all of this takes place! And the fact that the MMP system unsubscribed me for some reason didn't help, or I'd have commented sooner.

Basically, how can I do anything but agree with all of the above? I too received an email from The Man a few days back asking to be disassociated from Mithril's "absurd price increase", about which he knew nothing until Gildor told him. But what kind of way is that to run a business, where the boss-man (i.e., Lars) doesn't tell one of his business partners what he's about to do regarding product prices? Very strange indeed. (Has anyone here met Lars? What kind of person actually is he?)

The website is certainly uninspiring and uninspired by today's standards, and its unchanging content doesn't encourage repeat visits. I'm involved at a peripheral level with one of the larger wargame figure manufacturers, and their guy changes elements of the website daily, sometimes more than once a day, to ensure that it's always current - mind you, they produce more figures than Mithril (and at far greater speed...)

Advertising is the key to sales. Always has been, always will be. It won't necessarily persuade people to buy something, but it does ensure that people are aware of a product's existence. Mithril's frighteningly low profile is a direct result of their failure to advertise for years and years. That's what has led to those people who we've all encountered at some point or other, who think Mithril went out of business "years ago" - they could remember seeing advertising in the modelling and wargaming magazines a decade ago, but have seen nothing since.

And why can't Mithril simply get one of the independent shop outlets to represent their range at the shows? That alone would boost public awareness (if anyone has already suggested this in the posts above, my apologies). Even many of the large companies use such 'agents' rather than traipsing round to every show themselves. If the agent finds that he doesn't have sufficient stock and people leave a show disappointed, even that's good - it will generate demand for Mithrils.

Certainly no one should depend just on the internet to generate sales. The wargame company I mentioned above used to buy several pages of advertising in issues of the monthly wargaming magazines some years ago, but once they'd built up a customer base they stopped doing that and started depending on their website alone. And now their sales are only about a third of what they once were. Need I say more?

Finally, on the subject of seeing advance photos, I doubt that I'm the only one to have seen them, but I can confirm that the Helm's Deep 2 figures ("Death to the Strawheads") look superb. Oh, and my clue regarding the content of the Helm's Deep 4 release is no longer valid. It now applies to Helm's Deep 5 instead. All in all there's some terrific stuff coming once TE have approved it all and the factory have got off their butts and produced it. I'm particularly looking forward to sets 3 (contains several figures I've been wanting for years) and 5. Chris says that set 3 is already "nearly complete", but I've not yet seen any pictures - has anyone else?

. . .  haaaaa- looooo !  I also want to see pictures of set 2  . . .

Maybe Master Gildor can arrange a place here for The Man to put "HIS" pictures from HIS workbench to show.
Like all fellows do in the Mayor Samwise-section !
I suggest The Man should become a member here and I found a name for him also: Phaeton, Master of design department !
Just being member in the right place !

The future can look like this :




Please Gildor, tell him . . .

Last edited by rita.de (Sat, Jun6 2009 9:52am)