Steve (Airsoft World) is out in China and has sent in text and photos (he also posted the text on his forums). Click the link through to read the full article and see all te photos he#s sent over:
Well as promised, here’s the first installment of what’s going on in China and a couple of other places I’m running around over the next two weeks:
The economy is suffering here too believe it or not. There’s factories closing down left right and centre as major foreign buyers (Walmart and other super-******s) are panicking and cancelling their orders. I’m watching the Chinese news here most nights and lots of people are going down the toilet.
On the airsoft front, I’ve just found out that the Olympic enduced security which caused serious delays in order deliveries for a period of almost 4 months was a bit more damaging than I thought. The Regional Government Office jumped on the Local Government Office who normally take ‘look the other way dosh’ from all the airsoft factories and associated manufacturers. The upshot was most of the molds that the factories have made for injection molding, alloy casting and so on, are stored in one factory. It was raided and a very large amount of these molds were seized and ‘destroyed’ (will probably be sold back) by the authorities. So there’s a shitload of product that ALL of the factories can’t make until the molds are remanufactured. This can take up to 6 months per unit as they are hand-made and cost from USD$30,000 to USD$150,000 plus EACH.
The bottom line result of all of this, coupled with the USD hiking up over our beloved pound, Chinasoft is going up in price by a considerable amount. The factories are already increasing theirs. The only immediate economic impact that will work in our favour, albeit very slightly is that due to all these cancelled orders, shipping ports are struggling to fill their cargo ships with containers and the bottom has fallen out of shipping costs. We are looking about $1k to ship a container instead of $2.5k up until a few days ago. When you divide that into the cost of the gear inside of a container though, it isn’t going to make any great difference.
On a brighter note, D-Boys’ have a new ‘RK-12’ AEG coming out mid November. It has Nylon composite ‘plastics’ loads of STEEL parts (not alloy or aluminium) and is the mutts nuts and even has a full steel NovPig styled flashider already installed. It should retail at around the £110 mark.
They have also brought out the gas version of their KAR98 with wood furniture and fires like a bitch! £130/40
A new rubber green gas powered BB shower grenade, METAL claymore mine and various flashiders and CNC’d aluminum body parts are also imminent. A bargainoussplishious £25 for the grenade and about £15 for the STEEL flashiders, no idea about the claymore yet, they are still tickling the bollocks of the mold maker…..he likee…
We’ve got some excellent wood body kits for EVERY type of AK you can think of, M14 wood kits (YES!) Thompson and the BAR freakin’ 10. The latter is being specifically custom made for Airsoft World
£40 to £75
I’ve got loads of photo’s but crap editing software on this laptop in my hotel room. Anyhoo, it’s 3.42am now and I’m off to my kip. Have a nice evening
A&K new gear:
AGM New gear:
Jing Jong new gear:
A surprise:
Until tomorrow, Steve TuFit Wang, (Airsoft World)
