New Challenges as Ebbro
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all rights reserved, Model Graphix magazine Japan ---
----Okay, these
last rounds will be about Ebbro from here on in… First, when Ebbro became a serious 1/43
diecast miniature car brand, were there any differences from the enjoyment you
had when designing or producing plastic models?
Plastic models are something with which the
customer him or herself enjoys the process of assembling, aren’t they? Diecast models differ greatly from plastic
models in that they’re complete pre-painted products, and they’re wholly apart
from the product value you get with that assembly process, only having value in
their finished state.
So you can do away some manufacturing processes,
or hide some processes so they’re completely invisible. That was a lot of fun at first, because I
hadn’t done anything like that in my plastic model design days.
----But turning
that around, was there anything that you were dissatisfied with, or where you
felt there was something missing with your 1/43 diecast models, when compared
to designing or producing plastic models?
Umm.., (silence for a while) there was
something missing in everything.
Well because it’s China,
sometimes when we’d get a mold I’d say “I want this fixed a little here” and it
wouldn’t be fixed very well, and to be honest their testing limits were pretty
low at first… When I’d been developing
the Collector’s Club for Tamiya we didn’t do anything by halves at any point,
and I was instructed never to do anything by halves the whole way through, so
it was different in that respect.
----By diving
into 1/43 diecast models so whole-heartedly then, did you feel that anything in
particular changed inside of you, or that you’d gained something as compared to
your Tamiya days?
Well, that’s got to be my attitude towards
business.
For example, today’s Super GT wasn’t very
popular back when it went by the name JGTC, and I didn’t think it would ever
become big league. In the JGTC days, you
could take afternoon naps in the Fuji Speedway stands at the races. That’s how low its popularity was… However the machines themselves have become
interesting in recent years, so I had these “I want to commercialize this!”
moments.
So, I asked the association that
administers the GT and some automotive manufacturers to allow me to commercialize,
and from there you know, things started to sell like hotcakes. In the beginning we’d produce minimums of
3000 diecast units, and have about 1000 units left over actually. But then we started to sell more and more,
and soon we’d sell 3000 units in a flash and I‘d think, “Oooh!? Maybe I can get by on this?”
----Ah, I
see. Ebbro has been about historic cars
from the start, so…
Yeah.
I’ve mainly wanted to do historic cars.
I was meaning to make a specialized “1000 history making cars of Japan” series
you know.
----So, being
involved with GT changed your business style?
Yes it did.
And when that happened, not only customers but wholesalers, retail
shops, and the people caught up in historic GT started buying from us too. It was a synergistic effect. Ebbro really started rolling with GT.
----About how
many cars in your GT line are you selling now, by the way?
Well, you know, it was fantastic in ’08,
and sometimes we’d go up to 10,000 units.
That’s at 3000 units again now, though.
It dropped back pretty fast.
----What do you
think the reasons for that are?
Well.., to put it simply in a word, I guess
it’s “boredom”. People have them piled
high in the house and think “I just can’t collect any more”, then there was the
economic troubles after the Lehman shock, and prices rising… And this year with the weak yen, things have
gone up 20% automatically, and with Chinese factories up 15%, there’s not a lot
model manufacturers can do about it.
----Indeed,
people do just suddenly get tired of collecting diecast models one day, for whatever
reasons. Actually, I’ve already just
about retired from it, and have been holding off from purchases.
On the other hand,
purchasing desire and interest in plastic models just seems to continue slowly
but surely, across the board…
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it really is that way isn’t
it. What is it about plastic models that’s
so addictive? That’s where they clearly
differ from diecast models.