The reason Artesania Latina (AL), OcCre and others go forward with "upgraded and redesigned" kits has to do with the more and more limited supply of "exotic" woods. As these manufacturers are producing hundreds of kits a year, the amount of quality lumber need for like American or European Walnut is significant. In Europe these types of wood are getting more and more expensive every year due to regulations and availability, which drives the costs of these kit up to insane levels. So they needed to change their business model or they will fall and go out of business.
The first phase was to change kits of single hull planking with walnut or Sapeli towards double hull planking (so cheaper wood as a base and top veneer of walnut or sapeli). Less exotic woods are needed and the appereance and looks of the ship was the same.
The second phase is were they are now, redesigning kits with al lot of laser-edge parts of cheap plywood and cheap wood for hullplanking. More and more pewter / white metal parts instead of quality wood which you have to model into cleats, dowels, rudders etc.
They add paint and stain within their catalog and online store which you can buy seperately and they will make more money! They are great marketeers so they will say that these kits are better engineered and have a more realistic appereance. "museum quality" which is ofcourse pure marketing talk.
The prices of the upgraded kits goes up or stays the same as the previous model, so in the end, profit goes up because they use cheaper materials, they keep an competitive approach to the market and create a more diverse product portfolio with lots of additional items. From a business perspective these are all big benefits!
Now, for us a modellers, this is not so good news.
In kits we loose the more quality lumber we like and appreciate or even love. It's becomming more expensive, because we will have to find another supply of additional wood if we like to use walnut o.e.
AL changed the paper instruction manual and drawings and placed them on a CD....who has a CD-/DVD drive nowadays? Luckily all drawings, photo instructions can also be downloaded from their website.
The overall quality of the kits, let's not take the types of wood into account are pretty good engineered.
, fair enough tho, the Spanish kit manufacturers are perhaps not as sophisticated and authentic looking as Italian brand kits like Amati, Corel or Euromodel. Perhaps the Italian kitmakers produce more classical looking kits, but most of the time poorly engineered and we experience the fun of that during the build.... (except the Amati line of Victory models)
I have experience with almost all kitmakers and I must say, OcCre, AL, Amati, Corel have great customer service nowadays, this was maybe worse some time ago, but they all have upgraded their services which is really a good thing. At least, this is what I have experienced in Europe. I can't tell for other nations overseas like Australian, USA, Canada, RSA etc. Maybe for you it's different!?
So, here we are and we're landed in the evolution-period of kitmakers and there is nothing we can do about it to stop or reverse it, except bashing the hell out of all these kits.
Have fun modeling guys.
regards,
Pter
a kit and i will give it a go.