Brigade Models

In the past couple of months we’ve had to deal with the new EU small parcel tariff, and then there was the new requirement for a ‘withdrawal’ button on the website. What next, you may ask ? Well, you may be aware of this from other small manufacturers, but the EU has just launched another new set of regulations for e-commerce retailers, this time regarding packaging and recycling. We’re currently trying to get our collective heads around the implications (we’re struggling to find a summary in layman’s terms that we can make head or tail of), we’ve seen several interpretations of the new rules that say different things, but the consensus is that, right now, thing are Very Difficult for small businesses (including ones inside the EU, not just outside). It appears that we’re going to have to register and have a representative in every country, not just the one that we have at the moment that covers all of the EU. And on top of this, we have to register and pay a fee for recycling schemes, again in every country. Economically, this is impossible for us – the costs would far outstrip our annual sales to the EU.

So for now we’re suspending sales to the EU. We’ll honour outstanding orders (most of them left at the start of the week, there’s one remaining to be posted) but won’t be taking any more for now. In a spirit of eternal optimism, we’re hoping that a solution will present itself at some point, as it has for all of the other hurdles we’ve had to cross as a small business in the past 4-5 years. We very much value our European customers, and we want you back !

For domestic/logistical reasons (burnt out car windscreen washer pump; broken chassis on mechanic’s van; loose exhaust tailpipe) we’re slightly behind with the post this week. Orders have been cast and packed but are stuck in the out tray. This should be sorted by the weekend (MoT has been passed; new exhaust going on tomorrow) and all outstanding orders will hopefully be on their way on Saturday morning. Some orders bound for the USA have been affected for other, bureaucratic reasons – we’ve had to hang onto those while we ponder how to deal with some new import regulations. We think we’ve got our head around that issue too so all US orders will be included in this. The plan is to completely clear the decks tomorrow (Friday 17th).

Dragon Lancer picture unrelated to this post, but just because they look so cool…

Next week will see the workshop closed for a few days for a short holiday combined with some prep for an upcoming family wedding; the weather gods seem to be smiling on us, it looks like being warm and sunny without the extreme heat of earlier in the summer. The upshot of this is that any orders that come in after we pack up tomorrow (probably around lunchtime) will have to wait until we return on Monday 27th, and will be dealt with in our usual first-in, first-out manner.

Look out for a new release tomorrow; and all being well, we’ll see if we can schedule one for next Friday as well. We should still be able to deal with any emails/queries that come in, although our response time might be a bit longer than usual.

It’s “fun” being a small manufacturer trying to negotiate international rules and regulations nowadays. The latest thing thrown at us is a new regime of customs duties being levied by the EU on all packages originating outside of the Union. This is presumably aimed at the likes of Temu, Shein, AliExpress et al, but of course, being a rather blunt instrument, it hammers the little guys as well.

The initial implementation sees a 3€ duty added to every parcel from outside the EU for each different HS code on the customs declaration. Fortunately most of our packages have a single HS code (we use 9503003000 – reduced scale models – for the EU) so we should only incur one charge, but nevertheless it means that we’ll have to add that each order. There’s no way for us to add this separately in our website code, so it’ll be bundled into the shipping costs and won’t show separately on the invoice. If you require an invoice that shows this fee separately, please let us know and we can manually edit your invoice to show this as a line item separate from the shipping charges. For any orders that require a second HS code (which will happen if you order a book from us) we’ll contact you with a payment request for the extra duty. Our EU shipping charges needed updating anyway to reflect recent changes in courier fees (they’ve gone up slightly, but not by much), so we’ve done this all at once. The regulations took effect yesterday so the new charges are already in place.

One important thing we should point out is that we’ll continue to make sure that, whatever taxes, duties and fees are levelled at us, we’ll ensure that they’re all paid up front and once your order is placed and paid for, you won’t get stung for any further fees. We collect them all at checkout and pay them to the relevant authorities when your package reaches the EU. Your courier won’t ask for any additional fees before delivery.

As much as we’d love to absorb these costs, with everything else rising around us we just can’t do that (if you’ve five minutes we’d love to tell you how AI data centres are cornering much of the world’s supply of tin and forcing up the price we pay for our casting metal at a exponential rate).