Crowdfunding New Tooling, Anyone???

[ljudice]

Check this out:

http://www.ngaugependolino.com/

Any thoughts on this concept?  It would seem to me to make more sense for an established small manufacturer
to lead something like this (nothing to say a crowdfunded project can't turn a profit).

[bbussey]

If you can persuade 150 of your closest friends to chip in $200 each, you can cover tooling for a freight car, its first release and advertising for the first release.

[wcfn100]

If you can persuade 150 of your closest friends to chip in $200 each, you can cover tooling for a freight car, its first release and advertising for the first release.

I'm in.  Now to get 149 other people to agree to the car I want...

Jason

[sirenwerks]

I'm going out on a limb and guessing those 150 people who pay $200 get something besides the warm fuzzy feeling of helping a new product into the world.  Like a quantity of that product on release (if the product is a Little Joe Mr. Wallet is in the ready position).  Or a percent of the profits of future releases. 

[Dave Schneider]

I'm in.  Now to get 149 other people to agree to the car I want...

Jason

Ohhhh......so it has to be the same car for all 150.....that will never work. 

Best wishes,  Dave

[Sokramiketes]

I'm going out on a limb and guessing those 150 people who pay $200 get something besides the warm fuzzy feeling of helping a new product into the world.  Like a quantity of that product on release (if the product is a Little Joe Mr. Wallet is in the ready position).  Or a percent of the profits of future releases.

Your portion of the first release is covered in Bryan's figures...

[JoeD]

Then there's the gaming company that needed $15 K to pay for new figure sculpting and withing two weeks had over $100 K pledged.  I think this is the way new niche markets (like Pennsy)  can be served.   I've thought about trying this with having an SP F-70 flatcar done with the standard flat, the TOFC flat and the Wall Board Flat as snap on options.  It's generic enough to work for other railroads as well.  It was difficult enough to have that done in HO in a market several times bigger than N...so other than maybe Wheels of Time, that car may not see the light of day in Injection molding..

Joe

[ljudice]

To answer Bryan's point, I don't think you could get 150 people to agree on one freight car...

My bet is that the UK model thing fails, unless there is something fundamentally different going on....

[VonRyan]

To answer Bryan's point, I don't think you could get 150 people to agree on one freight car...

My bet is that the UK model thing fails, unless there is something fundamentally different going on....

I wouldn't be surprised if it succeeded. The Pendolino is quite iconic (and fairly comfortable) and I wouldn't be surprised if enough modellers stepped up and chipped in.

[Hyperion]

Then there's the gaming company that needed $15 K to pay for new figure sculpting and withing two weeks had over $100 K pledged.  I think this is the way new niche markets (like Pennsy)  can be served.   I've thought about trying this with having an SP F-70 flatcar done with the standard flat, the TOFC flat and the Wall Board Flat as snap on options.  It's generic enough to work for other railroads as well.  It was difficult enough to have that done in HO in a market several times bigger than N...so other than maybe Wheels of Time, that car may not see the light of day in Injection molding..

Joe

Reaper Miniatures, a small local figure company, was looking for $30K to pay for molds for a new figure line (I'm sure they anticipated more, KickStart campaigns often set intentionally low goals).  They ended up with $3.5M after a month.

They then repeated their effort 18 months later on another expansion of the line, and got another $3.5M.  That's a lot of scratch for a bunch of little tabletop gaming figures.

They actually are an N-scale company too in a manner of speaking -- they manufacture about 100 pieces of sci-fi military equipment/figures for a tabletop game called CAV (think BattleTech for the geek-minded amongst us) that they produce in N-scale.

[nkalanaga]

Mark:  Is any Reaper's stuff usable for N scale?  Maybe not as intended, but as flatcar loads, building details, etc, or figures in fairly generic clothing?  I've never heard of them.

[Hyperion]

Mark:  Is any Reaper's stuff usable for N scale?  Maybe not as intended, but as flatcar loads, building details, etc, or figures in fairly generic clothing?  I've never heard of them.

I've seen them in a hobby shop but not really played with them out of the package, but 90% of the CAV line is big "mech" robots -- perhaps suitable for most N-Trak layouts I see at shows (  ) but not what most people here would be looking for.  Some of the tanks and similar equipment might work in a pinch, and the castings seemed really well done.  But they wouldn't be anything that you probably can't already get in a nice casting from some other company.  I'm pretty sure I've seen some decent N-scale military equipment already available over the years, but could be mistaken there as it's not something I'd pay a lot of attention to.

Coincidentally, they are launching another KickStarter in just a couple days to create a new CAV line and to tool it up for plastic rather than metal.  Perhaps they can, or could be persuaded to, throw in some more 'conventional' items into the lineup if they could generate a secondary market for it in the N-scale railroading world.

[bbussey]

To answer Bryan's point, I don't think you could get 150 people to agree on one freight car...

While it's never been tried, I wouldn't be surprised if a "civilian" (not one of the current MRR manufacturers) could launch a kickstarter for a specified product and got the full funding.  $200 for 150 people means $20 for 1,500 people – not an implausible scenario.

[bbussey]

Also ... that hypothetical $30k would get you a model of most freight cars.  Cabooses and passenger equipment (models with windows and visible interiors) would cost you more, and motive power significantly more.

[jpec]

Not too far fetched an idea...how much did that joker get to learn to make potato salad?  Over 50k???

Jeff