Ebbro Interview Part 14, Ebbro F1 in the Future


Ebbro F1 in the Future
--- all rights reserved, Model Graphix magazine Japan ---

----What’s your overseas-to-domestic plastic 1/20 F1 model sales ratio at about now?

It’s higher overseas.  About 6 to 4.  It’s highest in Britain, but there’s also France, Italy, Germany…  They’re all handled by Tamiya distributors.  And they buy happily from us.

----You released the Lotus 72C in April ’12, the Rob Walker Racing 72C that November, the 72E in January ’13, the 49 in May, then this summer comes the Tyrrell 002 and 003…  You’re going at a blistering pace, aren’t you.

It’s not blistering.

----No, no, it is blistering!  At first I thought you’d come out with about one product per year, Kiya-san, and I think you actually said something to that effect once.

Well…  This is how I wanted to do it from the start, actually.  And besides.., it’s fun (chagrin).  Some of what happens from now on is up to Sugiura-san, but I’d like to commercialize about two a year.

----I’ve thought that 1/43 diecasts would always be your mainstay, but how are you thinking about that now, Kiya-san?

I wear two hats (laughs).  I want to continue placing similar weight on both areas, but since I’m more involved with the diecasts in actual fact, I’d like to keep going like this with both if I can have Sugiura-san do the plastic models.

----But the more we talk about it, the more it seems your coming back into the world of plastic models has been an overlapping of fortuitous encounters.

Yeah, it has been.  Being able to depend on Sugiura-san, the way our Chinese factory’s 3D CAD/CAM technology is advancing, the diecast miniature car craze decline…  But of course, the biggest factor has been Sugiura-san you know.

----By the way, when we went drinking together the other day, you said something like “Plastic models are great; plastic model lovers and diecast model lovers are completely different people”.

… Yeah, good point.  Diecast model lovers are important customers, so I’ll choose my words carefully, but on balance, the diecasters are a world of hairsplitters.  Of course, plastic modelers are like that sometimes too, but the diecasters’ reasons for returning products for example can be boundlessly neurotic, and conversation with them is a one-way street where it’s hard to communicate.

Compared to that, you can start up a proper conversation with plastic model lovers, and take in what they’re feeling.  I used to think it was like that only in Japan, but it was exactly the same way at this year’s Nürnberg International Toy Fair.  The diecast modelers would only cast us a cursory glance, but the plastic modelers would come in and talk about this and that.  It really hit home for me then.  People who use their own hands to make things have viewpoints like “I could probably work it something like this”, or “I’d really like to assemble it that way”.  So you can have conversations with them.  But the diecast modelers only purchase what they’re given.

----So, from your point of view now Kiya-san, it must be fantastic to have this “I’ve finally returned to the world of plastic models feeling”.

It is, yeah.  In my Tamiya days, I used to think “There sure are a lot of people talking about trivial details” (chagrin), but conversely now, I think “That’s the way it should be”.  So you know, I don’t hate Sugiura-san by any means (laughs).

Whatever happens, I want to continue an unbroken line with Ebbro’s 1/20 F1 series.  I’m going to keep doing it until the customers say “I give up” (laughs).