Here was the notice posted on the Gaspez main website:
I've had several emails asking what was up because this is a very serious accusation of a criminal nature in the miniatures business. If it is not referring to Impact! ... I want to know who it is because Impact! does not do business with recasters. It is the worst accusation you can make in this business and not one that should be done without really good evidence especially if you are going to send the accusation out to a large email list.Hi everybody! I am Fabio Gasparini from Gaspez-Arts. Unfortunately with great regret I discovered that an American firm with whom I collaborated and with whom I have no more business relations from July 2010 still sells on its site my products but not original, copied and of scarce quality, with damage of affectionate customers of my miniatures, who receive a product really much more inferior respect to the Gaspez-arts standards. If someone has the suspect to have bought a clonated miniature can send it with a copy of the invoice or of the purchase receipt to Gaspez-arts, who will free substitute what purchased and will add two single miniatures (limited edition excluded) FREE choiced by the customer.
Okay the details:
First ... Impact! has never cast any miniatures in our store that did not have the approval of the sculptor nor will we ever do this.
Second ... we never received an email from Gaspez Arts asking if this was true or actually any type of information on the matter. We found out when our customers forwarded us the web post on Gaspez's site.
Third ... we purchases a lot of figures from Gaspez over the spring and early summer of this year. They drastically changed their vendor terms and we had issues trying to decide how to continue to carry their range at the new discount level and minimum order size that was required. So we had a lot of Gaspez stock on hand of just two of their teams and no good plan on how to finance getting more.
So Impact! could not afford to stock Gaspez anymore at that time because the profit margin on their items was not high enough compared to other projects that we could invest the money as we too often were getting stuck with single figures that just sit on the shelf (like the Goblins for their Chaos Dwarf team).
The "Eureka" moment came in October when we thought if we only stocked full teams from Gaspez than we could carry their products in our store again and the margin they were offering would not be that bad as it would be on a more expensive item.
However ... small issue ... we needed capital to make that minimum order size. So we looked at the Gaspez stuff we were still sitting on in inventory after a few months and said if we could just sell all this stuff off ... we'd have enough capital to restock Gaspez again in just team sets. So we put the remaining stock on discount to clear it out and make room for a conversion in the future on carrying just Gaspez teams in the store.
Now somewhere along the way ... and since I never heard from them ... I don't know how ... Gaspez decided we were recasting their figures since they were still in the store. Again ... recasting is in my opinion the most serious accusation you can make of another miniatures company especially if you go to extra effort to email everyone with the accusation.
Being perfectly honest if we was going to run Impact! with illegal and reprehensible actions ... we'd recast Gaspez's incredible Bull Centaurs. Those figures are great and always sold very well for us. But if you check the store ... you'll see they are not there and team deal that had both bull centaurs is no longer there. Why? ... because we sold out of the Bull Centaurs as 2 packs and individually sold all the Bull Centaur #2 that allowed me to make the special team pack with both centaurs. In fact, I didn't get to remove the Bull Centaurs from the store fast enough and a customer from Spain bought a 2 pack of them and I paid Alex at Comixininos to ship them to him in order to make sure that that order was properly filled. Why did I not ask Gaspez to ship the order? Because we asked Gaspez if they would drop ship orders for us in situations like this and they told us that due to Italian tax laws they could not drop ship if we had issues with out of stock items. If you look on our forums you'll see that last week there was an inquiry about the Gaspez Bull Centaurs during our holiday sale and I explained that we had sold out. Like I said ... if we were recasting ... those would be the first figures I would have done. Recasting is evil and not something Impact! participates in.
I have immediately sent an email to Fabio at Gaspez to find out why he posted this to his site. I wish he would have just asked what the nature of the figures of his we were still selling was and we would have explained. If he had issue with me selling them at a discount to try and gather up funds to restock his merchandise I would have gladly removed the discount and just let them sell off more slowly (which would also delay us making the restocking ordering from him even more ... but that would have been fine by me if this really bothered him.)
Accusations of recasting are really slanderous in this business. I talked on the phone with one of the miniatures news services tonight and he said he's never see an accusation of recasting like this made without photo evidence and normally at least one email to the company to ask them what the nature of the miniatures was first. We would not send out a broadcast email accussing someone of it unless we had a lot of proof that we could post. I'm not sure why Gaspez did what they did today ... but I've sent off what I hope was a very friendly email to Gaspez to try and figure it all out and get it resolved.
Anyway ... I post this response to answer the emails I'm getting that asked "Did you really do this?" The answer is "no" ... and more importantly for me "not ever".
By the way ... if there really is a company not Impact! that they are talking about ... I'll immediately delete this and issue an apology in this spot. I talked to several professionals in the miniatures business tonight and they all advised us to post this notice everywhere we could since the company is unnamed and so many people are emailing us to ask if it is Impact! they are talking about. I hope it is not ... but if it is ... we were strongly advised to make sure to put out the information on the nature of the figures in our store immediately.
Tom Anders
President - Impact! Miniatures
S.
