Victorian Romantic by Baba Studios- new edition pre-order

[Baba Studio - Bababarock]

I like it very much. But I still wish that MRP would reissue the decks that they ALREADY REISSUED in "normal" formats, so that more people could enjoy them. Sure, fancy versions will cost more. But don't lock out all he people who can't afford them. And do NOT - that person ! you know who you are if you're here ! - start posting about how it's only a cup of of coffee in Starbucks a day for x months. A lot of people can't afford that either - to save all those pennies would take them YEARS. I COULD just afford it, but if I were to go the forgo the fancy coffee route to so so - I go out to coffee maybe twice a month.... that line is just silly.

 

No-one is suggesting they should reissue limited editions cheaply - LE is LE and should stay that way, in fairness to those who bought them expecting them to stay LE. But this deck - and the BBC and others - were put out in "mass market" format - and I cannot see why reissues of those can' happen, as well as fancier and fancier ones.

 

Well, I for one have never said anything about Starbucks. But anyway, the answer is about the business model and I'll try to explain it succinctly. You really have a few choices if you're going to produce tarot decks, but broadly speaking, there are two main approaches:

 

1. You go mass market, run several thousands of each deck, distribute as widely as possible via distributors and Amazon and eventually make, if you are lucky, about $3.50 a deck (though we found it was often less). On this model, you have to reprint with no changes as the amount of profit just doesn't allow many more months of work to be put into the same deck.

2. You do things on a small scale, sell direct, make a much better profit per deck but sell far fewer decks. On this model, there is actually better profit and that can be put back into spending the required amount of work to make a reprint different and interesting.

 

We tried the first - we really didn't like it. Our distributors in London and Los Angeles were lovely but we used to send off thousands of decks, and about six months later we often got back about what the decks had cost us to make and ship. We had no control over Amazon undercutting us (because they can ship free and we can't) and taking returns which they just binned. It was quite heart-breaking. I remember once sitting in the studio discussing how we would find money to go to the grocery shop and then some Japanese collectors knocked on the door (thank you Fate!) and bought some decks and we rushed straight to Tescos!

 

So we switched to the second way of working, and believe me, life improved. We didn't have to tie up tens of thousands of Euros in huge print runs from which we might never get back much profit and we've been able to control when and if we reprint so we have good cash-flow and everything is financially secure (as much as a small design business ever is ;) ). This means we don't have to rush our work, and so the quality of design and imagery has improved. It's far, far better.

 

So - we'll never go back to mass market decks and we'll never again be trying to sell decks at $25. But we do try to make them better and better in terms of quality and we're employing two brilliant people (and looking for a third) and that feels great. No-one is asked to work every hour god sends, and we can all afford to buy groceries!

 

I hope that explains things.

[gregory]

I like it very much. But I still wish that MRP would reissue the decks that they ALREADY REISSUED in "normal" formats, so that more people could enjoy them. Sure, fancy versions will cost more. But don't lock out all he people who can't afford them. And do NOT - that person ! you know who you are if you're here ! - start posting about how it's only a cup of of coffee in Starbucks a day for x months. A lot of people can't afford that either - to save all those pennies would take them YEARS. I COULD just afford it, but if I were to go the forgo the fancy coffee route to so so - I go out to coffee maybe twice a month.... that line is just silly.

 

No-one is suggesting they should reissue limited editions cheaply - LE is LE and should stay that way, in fairness to those who bought them expecting them to stay LE. But this deck - and the BBC and others - were put out in "mass market" format - and I cannot see why reissues of those can' happen, as well as fancier and fancier ones.

 

Well, I for one have never said anything about Starbucks.

No; the person who does that every time the price comes up knows who they are - though I think is not signed up here. But it is annoying - hurtful even - to those who can't afford Starbucks, never mind your decks when it is brought out almost as a meme to people who wish they COULD afford them. (And for the record, I have finally preordered it; this isn't me objecting to the price of THIS deck !)

 

The comment wasn't aimed at you, but at a particular individual, in case they show up here. It's one thing saying a deck is expensive; so are many decks. It is quite another to suggest people save up for them by not doing something they can't afford to do either, if you see what I mean.

[Guest]

I've been asking, er, bothering them for a while about re-releasing the BBC since I never got that deck. They told me the artist wants to create all new artwork for it. I'm kind of expecting a release like this one in a few years time. :o

 

We would love it to happen, but we are very tied up in the current, huge project - Ireland Through Bohemian Eyes (a five year project) - and so it's hard to predict if there will be time for a whole new design of Baroque Bohemian Cats. Alex would like to completely redo it, and has ideas, but that means at least a year of his time, and where to find it?

 

Our cats are keen to see it happen though!

 

 

Ireland Through Bohemian Eyes sounds fantastic.  Even without seeing any images, I love the theme.  Will be looking forward to this one!

[Baba Studio - Bababarock]

 

 

 

Ireland Through Bohemian Eyes sounds fantastic.  Even without seeing any images, I love the theme.  Will be looking forward to this one!

 

It may not be a tarot deck, though it's looking possible that it will be. It's a large photography/illustration project about the way in which moving away and coming back alters the way you see things. I suppose it's about emigration (always a huge issue in Ireland, as so many Irish had to emigrate) and also about how cultures clash and also enhance one another. I hope it will be a tarot, but quite what form that would take we aren't quite sure yet - we've only produced the first four images so far, though we have done a lot of planning and costuming for about twelve more.