Microartstudio: In-depth interview and behind the scenes pictures!

Most of you might know Microartstudio as one of the leading independent miniature companies. But what do you really know about them and their business except the shiny new custom bases you got from them last month? Not so much, hum?

Well, 40kings has had the chance to take a look behind the curtains of Microartstudio. And together with you, our beloved readers, we have developed a catalogue of interview questions based on what you always wanted to ask Microartstudio. In the following, the head of Microartstudio, Sebastian Makowski, has taken the time to answer your questions and give us and insight on how you make a living out of selling toy soldiers.

Here we go:

1) Hey there, could you introduce yourself to our readership and maybe give us a brief rundown on everything we need to know about Microartstudio?

Hi there, my name is Sebastian Makowski and I’m the owner of Micro Art Studio. We started in 2003. In 2006 the firm changed into civil partnership but since last June it’s my own firm. We’re located in Gdynia in Poland.

2) Considering Microartstudio has quite a history to talk about, could you maybe walk us through the last year when the studio faced difficult personal changes and the prospects for the studio as of today?

The 2012 was a turbulent year for us. Sometimes, ways of two persons split somewhere, and things that were founded together need to be finished by one. Both of us (ed: the two original owners of MAS) had different views on how the firm should grow and we needed to split. We divided our products in half and I held the name Micro Art Studio. Almost all of our workers, designers and painters stayed with me (about 5% left). After the split we are now more focused on new products, ideas and less on personal issues.

3) Now on to business: How does MAS get along with all the other Polish miniature companies? Rivalry or comradery? I mean, there have been almost no independent companies five years ago, now the market is swamped…

Yes it’s true – now in Poland there are 7 or 8 firms in our branch and new ones join still. I can say that we paved the way for many other Polish companies. About the second part of the question – I can say that in most cases we are friends. We know each other for years. We meet on tournaments, conventions, parties. I can share the secret that almost every owner plays 40K. Although our branch is small, everyone found his own way and we try to not strongly compete. Even more – we cooperate usually.

4) What I always wanted to know is whether microart is actually making money and for how many employees the revenue is sufficient. Too, I wonder why microart is not making models for 40k that GW still lacks like CSM zombies or Ymgarl genestealers? Is the production process too slow for quick adaptations?

Our most well-known products are battle bases and that’s the main income of our firm. Beside that, the terrain line, especially the HDF, grows all the time. At this moment Micro Art Studio employs 18 people. We have production workers, designers, sculptors and 3D sculptors. It’s neither the slow production process nor the lack of quick adaptations that forced us to stop the conversion lab products. We decided to focus on products that we’re really good at – bases, terrain, special miniatures. Beside that, our friends at Puppetswar and Maxmini make great bits so we thought it’s not worth bothering. Another thing is that we have distributors around the globe. And because of that we need to have everything, even the smallest product, stocked in large quantaties. You can imagine what logistic horror it is when you have 20 different kinds of small rat heads, haha.

5) How do you decide which miniatures are designed and produced? Is there any long term business plan involving miniatures that would likely sell well or do you just design whatever comes to your mind and produce it if it looks nice?

There are different kind of products and so there are different ways of how we are working on them. Here are some examples:

We don’t need a lot of preparation to release new lines of bases. In this case we have the know how. Of course there are many things that need to be done before we decide to sell it to our distributors – the moulds must be ready, the promo photos made etc. We try to release 3-5 new sets of bases every month. Sometimes we fill the gaps in existing lines, sometimes we are releasing totally new designs. After split we lost many nice lines but we try to redesign them in the new and better way – we know that you guys don’t only want to look at the bases, but also to be able to put your miniatures on them nicely!

The laser cut terrains need more time and attention. We need to carefully plan the whole production process. Every minute of the laser work counts. We need to prepare a huge amount of terrain before we can start to sell it. We usually need several hundreds of copies to start selling.

Wolsung SSG is another example, here the work is even more complicated. You need to think about everything months before you see the first minis, rules etc. At the moment we are preparing a new line with steampunk strigas, zombies etc. The new rules, miniatures, illustrations are on the way but the exact release date is still not known. We hope to be able to show you new stuff by the end of the year.

6) Thinking of your large product-portfolio, give us a rough guess on what acutally sells well and what is more of a niche product.

As I mentioned before best selling products are bases and terrains. At the moment our niche product are Discworld Miniatures. We know that it’s kind of our fault since in 2012 we haven’t released any new miniature in this line. But I can promise all our Discworld fans it will change this year

7) Is Microarts considering to hire artists to paint their stuff? Where could you get in touch with MAS to work for you?

At the moment we employ several painters so we’re not currently looking for new people.

8) If I do sculpts myself, will Microart consider buying the greens from me if they are good or do they only use their own stuff?

We are open to buy new greens. If we like the design and sculpt why not. But it works also the opposite way. Many of our sculptors make outside work, even for other firms in our industry or for private commissions.

9) Where do most of your customers come from – overseas, western Europe or even Poland? Do you see any trends hinting at a real global miniature market for “smaller” independent companies such as MAS?

We’re selling our products around the globe but the biggest markets are Euro zone and USA.

10) Let’s get back to your competitors: What do you think sets MAS apart from the flock of other miniature companies around the globe? What is the spirit, the philosophie of MAS?

First of all we’re players and because of that we’re producing stuff that we would like to use ourselves. I think that we’re a really forward thinking and innovative company. We are able to set new trends e.g. the story about conversion lab: After we launched this product the whole market started to go in this direction. Of course there were firms making such products before we did it, but I think that we pushed it forward. We started to sell heads of Orks, legs of Marines etc. and after that the whole market overflowed with all those bits. As a player I think it’s great thing. Now you have so many choices. You can customize your minis the way you like. In my own collection you can find bits made by many other companies.

The same process started when we launched the mass sale of futuristic HDF products. Of course before we have released District 5 apartment you could find HDF buildings, but most of them were for fantasy systems. Now when you look on the market you will be able to see the whole variety of different architecture. But everything that was mentioned before is just my subjective point of view.

Next thing that is differentiating us from the rest of our competitors is the fact that we really like to cooperate with other companies. It’s great to be able to work with Corvus Belli, Battlefoam and Kuźnia Gier for example. In short, our philosophy is: from players for players. We test our products paying close attention how they can be used on the battlefield. Take for example our hills: We tried to make them so that the miniatures can hide behind it and that the models can be easily put on them. We’re not only interested in the look of our products but also in the usability in the gameplay.

11) Thank you so much for your time and the effort in answering to questions of the readership of 40kings. Here is my last question: How does the miniature market “feel” for you guys? Do you see a trend towards professionalisation and a larger audience just as it happenend to computer games some years ago or is tabletop-gaming just too nerdy to get out of its niche?

At the moment the most important trend is crowdfounding. Kick Starter, Indiegogo and such are the areas where the most exciting things happen. We also want to use those platforms to launch some of our new ideas. It’s a great boost and great way to check if the clients are really interested in things we’re thinking off. It’s possible that our hobby will be less nerdy. We hope to be one of those companies that will be involved in opening on new hobbyists.

We can also share some info about things that we’re preparing for this year. First of all we want to release as much bases and terrain as it’s possible. We have prepared some nice, new hard foam stuff and we plan to expand this line of products. As I mentioned before, there will be a list of new products for Wolsung – new club, new scenarios, official German version of this game etc. You can expect new Discworld Miniatures.

In April we also want to show our new small dieselpunk miniature project with great airplanes and girls haha.
We’re also thinking of plastic terrain. There are also other products but I think we can still wait a little bit with these announcements

Thanks for all great questions.

Thanks a lot, Sebastian.

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