Jumpjet, their designer, often tells us what is coming out.how in the hell are we to know when new kits are out?,lol.they hardly ever update their
website.
He posts here about about Estes stuff, any other Estes official information usually is off their website. John does have a website but its a personal bio and non-estes related stuff webpage.does jumpjet have a website?.just did a google search and found nothing.
No true. New kits in the pipeline are listed in Coming Soon. Once available, they are listed in What's New. And frequent changes are made in pages that show if products are available to Add to Cart, or if Out of Stock.how in the hell are we to know when new kits are out?,lol.they hardly ever update their
website.
Totally Acceptable in this day and age...They should certainly do a PDF version online that can be printed out by the user.
Transfer the printing cost to the customer.
There's still time and labor in the graphic design work.They should certainly do a PDF version online that can be printed out by the user.
Transfer the printing cost to the customer.
That's strange... The Estes website I visit has a downloadable PDF copy of every catalog they ever produced going all the way back to 1963. Print them if you want to...They should certainly do a PDF version online that can be printed out by the user.
Transfer the printing cost to the customer.
However, there is no catalog (print or .pdf) for 2017. It's not much help for those who like researching kits for whatever reason. I should know, I use the catalogs all the time to help me with my .ork files, and wishlists.That's strange... The Estes website I visit has a downloadable PDF copy of every catalog they ever produced going all the way back to 1963. Print them if you want to...
>> https://www.estesrockets.com/customer-service/full-catalog/
I think you've got it here. My Mother used to be an Art Director for various magazines and catalogs. Paying lots of money for someone do the layout/font & color selection for each page of a catalog gets hard to justify when someone is already paid to do the website. Especially in 2017 when all new customers are on the web anyways....which brings it back to being a graphic design expense issue. If you want a well-done catalog, on par with the standard they evolved into, then there is likely considerable expense in not only designing it, but updating all of the relevant information. That takes time, it takes resources. If it didn't or was easy, I'm sure they would've done exactly that, making it PDF only. But since that didn't happen, that should tell us something...
Except there is no online catalog for 2017. And Estes Search isn't the best thing in the world either.I think you've got it here. My Mother used to be an Art Director for various magazines and catalogs. Paying lots of money for someone do the layout/font & color selection for each page of a catalog gets hard to justify when someone is already paid to do the website. Especially in 2017 when all new customers are on the web anyways.
Exactly!I think you've got it here. My Mother used to be an Art Director for various magazines and catalogs. Paying lots of money for someone do the layout/font & color selection for each page of a catalog gets hard to justify when someone is already paid to do the website. Especially in 2017 when all new customers are on the web anyways.
Obviously. That's sort of the point of all this discussion - the working hypothesis being that if the company put all that money into a website, why spend it (again) on a redundant catalog? Maybe they can improve aspects of the site (what site is perfect?), but on the whole, I've been saying right along here that print catalogs aren't relevant to the bulk of the demographic that Estes is appealing to, but the website is. From a purely business point of view, why would you dump thousands of dollars on both if only the later is likely to resonate with customers? All of mucking about here on TRF need to remember that we only represent a small, niche, segment of what's already a small, niche hobby. It isn't that Estes doesn't care about us (the existence of kits like the Conquest or Little Joe shows they do), but that they care a lot more about entry-level customers that aren't old-school, dyed-in-the-wool BAR types. I'm sure they represent a lot more sales than we do. It all comes back to what I said above - what would you prefer they spend their resources on? A catalog is bottom of the barrel priority.Except there is no online catalog for 2017. And Estes Search isn't the best thing in the world either.
anyone know why Estes has not released a 2017 catalog yet?:confused2: