Thread: Ask Mike
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Old 05-03-2009, 07:45 AM
MDorffler MDorffler is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Canon City, CO
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gus
Mike,

Thanks, no hurry on the other question. I appreciate you want to put some time into it.

With regard to the bring-backs, you mention a group of ten or twelve people. I know some of the folks here have great knowledge of how Estes functions but I don't think most of us do.

Could you explain a bit about how big the company is in Penrose and give a general description of how the place works? I'm really curious as to how the group to decide such a thing as bring-backs would be put together and the kinds of jobs people do who were involved. To be honest, the only people I can think of there with enough historical knowledge of the company's kits would be you and Mary R., but I really don't know that much about the workings of the company.


Gus - as to the inner workings of Estes, I really can't comment other than we opertae like most other companies that offer consumer products. New product ideas are created by the R&D department which are then presented to the marketing staff. Many times new products are requested to be designed and built by the marketing people to be presented to a new account. If a product is selected or approved to be added to the product line, the process begins to do the necessary specifications such as laser-cuts, the instruction writing begins and the visual graphics people begin the packaging art. Schedules are created and parts are ordered. This is admitadly a cropped version but that's essentially how we do things.

While it is true Mary and I are the only individuals remaining with any overall history of the company and the kits themselves, but we a team as a company. Mary and I created the master list of what we thought would make the best Classic kits. We then went through our selections with marketing and the boss, and made the final selections. The specifications for the parts were created, and we began the process of producing them. If the HR-4040 nuke hadn't fallen on us most of the kits would be available right now.
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