Impact! State of the Business 2008 and 2009

Tom Anders, President of Impact! Miniatures (and a really great guy to talk to) posted both the good – and bad news about Impact! over on their forum.

Some quick excerpts:

For 2008 we were well on our way to doubling the sales from 2007 (after 2007 tripled our sales from 2006) … in fact it looked like a sure thing that it would happen. We had a record sales month in September for the company. Then the world recession hit and our sales dropped 50% or more from the business we’ve been having this year.

In the end we came close … we look to end the year around 9000 GBP short of doubling sales from last year.

… we decided last month that Impact! really is going to undergo a major shutdown on new stuff produced for 2009 … ie if its not already assigned to a sculptor for production or a tournament figure … we are not going to be working on it.

We’ve decided that 2 1/2 years of putting in extra money from our pockets to keep growing Impact! needs to finally slow down. In 2009, we only want to start a new miniature project if we have cash set aside from profits to do so. This was the plan of operation since Impact! started but we have not done this because we really wanted to grow the store as quick as possible the first 3 years.

As of this morning … the Impact!’s debt to its partners could purchase a 2008 BMW Z4 Roadster convertible 3.0i with all the packages and options (if we had wanted to joint own a nice car instead of a business). We just finally need to address that fact.

This was posted this past Sunday – thanks to Paul for the head’s up on the information, which had somehow slipped past me.