# a question for moebius... kit production cost



## razorwyre1 (Jan 28, 2004)

hi! i think it would be really informative for the members here to have an idea of what the baseline costs of producing an average styrene kit is (if there is such a thing as an average kit). 
setting aside any licensing costs, and separate from the sculpture or prototyping, what are the costs for the molds, castings, instruction sheets, and packaging for a basic kit? also, how many kits need to sell to make that cost back?


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## Auroranut (Jan 12, 2008)

Excellent question razorwyre. I hope you don't mind me asking another question here. I've been wondering about something for a while, but didn't know how to ask, but here goes: Frank, you have given us, and are still giving us kits we've wanted for a long time and we are extremely grateful. You have announced so many kits for release, it must be costing you a fortune. How is it possible for a starting company to be able to release so many kits in a 12 month timespan? Please don't think it a rude question. I know it'll happen- I was just wondering.

Chris.


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## xsavoie (Jun 29, 1999)

I would go even further than that.If Frank would be kind enough,without revealing too much about his investments and other production secrets he wants to keep to himself,just give us an idea on how,himself or anyone else who wants to start a model kit enterprise like his,must proceed.Kind of give us a step by step procedure that anyone should take in order to accomplish about the same success he did with his.Perhaps as well,give us a virtual tour of the kit factory in China,so to speak,by showing pictures of the kits from their original concept drawings,sculpting,as well as their manufacturing and finally shipping.That info could include an approximate production time period for each step.Still without revealing any secrets,but just revealing what is generaly known by the manufacturing kit industries out there.This info could be too long to answer on this thread,therefore if Frank could post it somewhere on the Moebius web site,it would be very enjoyable for a lot of modelers visiting his web site,I'm sure of it.:hat:


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## frankenstyrene (Oct 5, 2006)

Continued success to Moebius and Monarch, the new model masters.

Only in America! :thumbsup:


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## ChrisW (Jan 1, 1970)

Just a reality check. Frank is up to his eyeballs with production, licensing, shipping, warehousing, inventory, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum. He takes on much of the day-to-day work to help keep overhead down, to help keep costs down. While Dave is his right-hand production man, between the two of them they are doing a herculean task. Right now Frank has to schedule a 5 second appointment 2 weeks in advance if he wants to scratch his butt. I'd say for the time being just let him get on with the business at hand, turning out cool kits for happy modelers.


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## John P (Sep 1, 1999)

Our Mr Metzner once said that you shouldn't even think of starting up your own model company unless you have at least 2 million bucks for an initial investment.


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## Seaview (Feb 18, 2004)

There's an old saying in business, "Does Macy tell Gimbell?" 
Make Mine Moebius!


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## beck (Oct 22, 2003)

as far as tooling costs go , i read an articale in a plastic modelling mag ( can't remember the name but it wasn't FSM ) that a rule of thumb /ballpark avg. , consider 1000$ per part . now i imagine a kit like Big Frankie that per part est is considerably higher , but we're talking averages . 
but one can see how expensive just this part of the process can be . 
30 parts in the kit / around 30 G for the molds . 

hb


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## Dave Hussey (Nov 20, 1998)

Sounds like the answers to these questions whould be of great interest to Moebius' competitors.

Hence - we'll never see the answers!

Huzz


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## Lloyd Collins (Sep 25, 2004)

After all the cost, the only part of Frank that is left, is his head in a jar.


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## Scheisseler (Jul 11, 2007)

razorwyre1 said:


> hi! i think it would be really informative for the members here to have an idea of what the baseline costs of producing an average styrene kit is


As a member here speaking for myself, I think it's probably none of my business.


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## Old_McDonald (Jul 5, 2002)

beck said:


> as far as tooling costs go , i read an articale in a plastic modelling mag ( can't remember the name but it wasn't FSM ) that a rule of thumb /ballpark avg. , consider 1000$ per part . now i imagine a kit like Big Frankie that per part est is considerably higher , but we're talking averages .
> but one can see how expensive just this part of the process can be .
> 30 parts in the kit / around 30 G for the molds .
> 
> hb


Per part or per mold? A mold can have several small parts. 
Also, I'm thinking the subject matter's licensing fees rais the cost too. To start a company like Moebius off the ground, I would stick to low license fee subjects and get some revenue in. I'm thinking popular sugjects like those ships of the Robert Heilein (sp?) ships, etc. like Destination Moon's rocket would be good starters. I have no clue however what something like a Seaview license would cost.


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## BatToys (Feb 4, 2002)

Molds cost at least $50,000.00 each.


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## beck (Oct 22, 2003)

that's per PART for just the tooling . 
liscensing . initial sculpt and all that is extra . 
hb


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## Steve CultTVman Iverson (Jan 1, 1970)

I'd love to know where all you guys get your information.


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## beck (Oct 22, 2003)

well , like i said i read this in a modelling mag . whether it's accurate or not ....can't say . 
hb


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## John P (Sep 1, 1999)

Steve CultTVman Iverson said:


> I'd love to know where all you guys get your information.


Was it the great Lucy Van Pelt who coined the phrase "I just now made it up"?

Somewhere in a recent thread Scott Alexander shared the exact costs of making his Mercury capsule kit with us. Anybody remember where?


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## Steve CultTVman Iverson (Jan 1, 1970)

Start doing some math. Moebius puts out 1000 Capt. Action kits. If the molds cost 50,000, he would need to charge $50 per kit whoesale, just to cover the mold costs.


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## woof359 (Apr 27, 2003)

*political questions*

cant help but hear about the Chinese, Tibet thing on the radio, does that make Frank nervious? 

i can just see Bush say were cutting all trade with China untill they play nice with the Dali lama


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## razorwyre1 (Jan 28, 2004)

Steve CultTVman Iverson said:


> I'd love to know where all you guys get your information.


thats why i asked. theres a lot of misinformation out there. i intentionally asked to set aside licensing and sculpts etc because thats another variable altogether, and i wanted to keep things very general, info that applied to about every kit produced, like the packaging. 

as to it being none of our business, i agree that asking anyone about their profit margins, etc. is certainly noones business but their own. im guessing that if the kit industry is anything like the halloween business, there are certain percentages that apply acorss the board to everyone. im certainly not asking about anyones specific financial situation. 

chris, i certianly dont want to take time away from frank doing what he needs to do. i asked him specifically because he is the only person i know of specifically that posts to the forum that absolutely knows the facts. if anyone else thats a member here can authoritativly supply the info, that works too.

and if ive steped out of line by asking, i most sincerely apologize.


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## frankenstyrene (Oct 5, 2006)

Lloyd Collins said:


> After all the cost, the only part of Frank that is left, is his head in a jar.


I'd buy a kit of that.


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## kit-junkie (Apr 8, 2005)

Steve CultTVman Iverson said:


> Start doing some math. Moebius puts out 1000 Capt. Action kits. If the molds cost 50,000, he would need to charge $50 per kit whoesale, just to cover the mold costs.


Right. I think I remember Frank saying he wasn't making a profit on the limited run Captain Action. I thought he said he would make just enough to cover production.


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## BatToys (Feb 4, 2002)

Someone at Revell told me that. But maybe China is much cheaper.


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## Dave Metzner (Jan 1, 1970)

There are a number of variables in mold costs.
#1 Complexity - if the mold has multiple slides like a model car body it's far more expensive than a simple core and cavity mold for a figure kit. All molds for Plastic kits have moving parts, the more moving parts in a mold the more costly it is.
#2 Material that the mold is made of - High quality steel vs low quality steel or even aluminum - High quality molds will last for hundreds of thousands of shots - aluminum tooling is "throw away tooling good for far fewer shots.
#3 Tool making methodology - cast tooling tends to be somewhat less expensive than tooling where the actual cavities are cut into steel 
#4 Size of the tool -large tools are more expensive than small ones Big chunks of steel cost more than small ones and are more difficult to move around and work with than small ones
#5 Number of individual tools to produce a kit - Captain Action is only two tools - Invisible Man will be eight tools.......safe to say Invisible Man will be several time more costly to tool that Captain Action was.
#6 Number of cavities in the mold - a mold with six cavities is simpler thus cheaper than one with sixty cavities, Kits with lots of parts will generally cost more to produce than similar sized kits with few parts

Tooling is only part of the costs involved.
Prototype development, licensing fees, Mock-ups done for tool design, Packaging design, Instruction sheet layout, printing, Manufacturing costs and shipping costs.

There you go, a breif summary of some cost factors involved in tooling a kit.


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## razorwyre1 (Jan 28, 2004)

thanks dave. its an enormous number of variables. what sort of $ range are we looking at here?


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## Dave Metzner (Jan 1, 1970)

Sorry, I'm not going to quote our numbers.......
In the old days when tooling was done in North America, tools for a typical 1/25 scale car kit would cost somewhere around $125,000.00 excluding tires......throw in anothe 8-10 K for tires if you needed too do them......
At Polar Light our car kit tools were significantly less costly.
Today with the costs of production in China is up between 35 and 50% from 2003-2004 levels. I'm sure that similar Chinese tooling is still significantly less expensive than the 125K.


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## John P (Sep 1, 1999)

Polar Lights made CARS?!


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## Auroranut (Jan 12, 2008)

Yup- beautiful kits they were too!!

Chris.


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## kit-junkie (Apr 8, 2005)

I'll agree with that. I bought one of every funny car and doubles of some. They are great kits.


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## falcondesigns (Oct 30, 2002)

Looks like they'll be making more cars now that they are Auto World.


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## Lee Staton (May 13, 2000)

woof359 said:


> i can just see Bush say were cutting all trade with China untill they play nice with the Dali lama


It'll never happen. China is carrying too much of our astonishing national debt for America to take a hard line. It's like trying to spank your banker. Remember when U.S. businesses talked tough about the poisonous toy scandal when it first broke? And then a couple of weeks later had to quickly apologize to China for not taking the responsibility themselves to check the product materials? "Who's your daddy?" comes to mind.

Anyhow, I digress. Frank's costs and methods are trade secrets for his business, and he's earning it the *hard way*. Why should Colonel Sanders give away his secret recipe?  

It's like when people who want to start a convention just like WonderFest ask me to tell them how to do it--since I was one of the founders and ran it for so long. My response is that I've got more than 30 years of fan and business convention planning experience, and hard knocks, and am not just going to give that away to a competitor! 

We're pretty blessed that Frank has taken this risk and is producing products far beyond what we've ever been able to expect in our genre. You can count the _excellent_ s-f kits on one hand (my standard is seeing an s-f kit done to the same exacting standard as an aircraft or armor kit). I mean, years ago a product guy from Revellogram said to me--and I qoute--"Scale doesn't matter (on the B-5 Starfury kit). It's all made up anyway."

From what I've seen, Moebius is hitting that ball so far out of the park it's rather shocking. Looking at Dave Metzner's build ups of the Seaview and Space Pod, I see a whole new standard for s-f models being set here. 

Simply awesome!

Lee


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## Lloyd Collins (Sep 25, 2004)

Did you forget the famous PL USS Enterprise Hot Rod? I was battery powered, and at top speed, the saucer would seperate and fly into whatever was in the way.Wacky fun!


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