Posts Tagged by copperfox
Copperfox Model Horses Closing Their Doors
| July 21, 2018 | Posted by aidanstoytrove under Model Horse |
Copperfox Model Horses Closing Their Doors
We were greatly saddened to hear that Copperfox Model Horses will be closing their doors on August 14, 2018. We were very excited about the impending release of Winston the Shire and Scamp the Pony. Copperfox’s announcement created a rush of people purchasing the last of Copperfox’s stock directly from their website and on other venues. The mini resin Welsh Cob and Connemara are sold out. At the time of this post, the mini resin Exmoor, Irish Sport Horse and Scamp are still available through Suenta.
UPDATE:
The Winston resin was only available in the UK and will not be produced by Suenta 🙁
We had a very limited number of Copperfox Model Horses listed for sale on our website and sold through most of what was listed almost over night. We do have more Copperfox Model Horses than are currently listed and will have a nice variety to offer. We have some First Quality Welsh Cobs and Connemara Ponies. We have Seconds of the Welsh Cobs, a small number of Connemaras and a small number of Irish Sport Horses. Off the top of my head, we have Percival (First and Second Quality), a small number of Lakeview Knight (First Quality), Tiger Woods (First and Second Quality), Bertie (First and Second Quality), Prince Cavalier (Second Quality), Gibson (Second Quality), Superman (Second Quality) and Cadbury (Second Quality).
Here is the official announcement made by Copperfox
https://www.copperfoxmodelhorses.com/our-blog/copperfox-important-announcement
Regretfully, Copperfox Model Horses will be shutting it’s stable door on the 14th August 2018.
We set out to create a range of model horses of British Native breeds for horse lovers worldwide to cherish and with your help and support through many challenges, we achieved this goal. Your encouragement and belief helped us achieve what many thought was the impossible, so a truly heartfelt thank you for making it all a reality.
Our journey now though has sadly come to an end for a number of reasons. We have had a turbulent few months trying to negotiate with our factory and in short, the factory does not want to produce our models, at the quality we know our customers would expect, for a reasonable price. The factory find the models very labour intensive and therefore want to increase the price considerably, which obviously we cannot accept as it’s unsustainable. Despite our ceaseless efforts we have been unable to find an alternative factory in China nor an alternative plan of how we can continue production of the plastic models. The paint team at the factory have already been disbanded as the factory are adamant that they do not want to produce the models. This has added to the ever increasing costs of plastic and shipping, exchange rates, tooling costs and their maintenance, as well as a never ending list of production obstacles.
This difficult time has had to made us review the business in-depth. Since it’s formation, it has put us both under an immense about of pressure taking an extreme toil on our health, well being, family and finances. Bedtimes and family commitments have been missed due to us trying to make it work, together with countless sleepless nights as we were both utterly committed to making Copperfox Model Horses a success. With sadness, we have made the decision that the time has come for us to step away from the model horse world, a community which has changed so much during the 20 years we have been a part of it.
This news means that there will be no more plastic Copperfox Model Horses, even though we were on the verge of a next production run. The samples were confirmed but the production never finalised during our negotiations so no models were created.
We shall be re-homing all our remaining stock from our warehouse over the next few weeks. Both our new models, Winston and Scamp are available, whilst stocks last, in resin as originally planned but there will be no plastic versions of these models.
We would like to thank all you, once again, our Copperfox Ambassadors, Fans and Followers for your continued support and helping us make it all possible. Thank you for joining us on this fabulous journey and giving our models wonderful forever homes.
– Becky and Sharon
Copperfox Model Horses
Our heart goes out to Becky and Sharon for all the sweat and tears that they have endured to get the company off the ground. Farewell Copperfox!
Copperfox Horses at Western States Horse Expo
| May 13, 2017 | Posted by aidanstoytrove under Model Horse |
Copperfox Horses at Western States Horse Expo
Welcome to the weekend everyone! As quickly as time has been flying, I’m glad that the weekend is here. After all, Sunday is a no shipping day =D As mentioned before, we will be vending at the Western States Horse Expo at Cal Expo in Sacramento, California from June 9 – 11, 2017. We will be in Building D and we are booth number 4602. We will be selling all kinds of Breyer Horses as well as Copperfox Horses. We had a few inquiries asking for pictures of Copperfox Horses. So for those that asked (and those that didn’t, hehe), here are just a few of the Copperfox Horses that we will have at the Western States Horse Expo:
This is CF604 Bertie the UK Tour Special Run.
This is CF602 D’Abernon Tiger Woods aka Bailey
This is CF605 Lakeview Knight
This is CF607 Marble
This is CF610 Loughnatousa Fabio aka Superman
This is CF608 Trifle Exmoor Pony
This is just a sampling of the Copperfox Horses that we will have on hand. We will have both first quality and second quality horses. The first quality horses are of the finest quality and come with a custom foam fitted box and COA. The second quality horses have minor flaws that may keep them out of the show ring. They do not have boxes or COAs but are offered at a lower price point. The second quality horses work perfectly for customizing and make great display models. These Copperfox Horses are only available to purchase in person. However, if you know someone that is attending the Western States Horse Expo, pickups are permitted.
Here is a video of some of the Copperfox Welsh Cob Ponies that we had at BreyerWest 2017.
Here is a link to our previous Western States Horse Expo Blog Post.
We hope to see some of you in June. Please stop by our booth and say hi. We would love to meet you!
Congratulations Barrie Getz and Copperfox Whizzer
| April 5, 2017 | Posted by aidanstoytrove under Model Horse |
Congratulations Barrie Getz and Copperfox Whizzer
Barrie Getz purchased a beautiful Copperfox Model Horse from us at BreyerWest 2017 which was held in Albany, Oregon from March 24th to March 26th. He is the Copperfox “Loughnatousa Fabio” aka Superman model. For those unfamiliar with the Copperfox Horses, this is the Irish Sports Horse or Finnigan mold in a lovely red bay. When Barrie stopped by our booth to look at Superman, she was quick to point out that unlike the other Supermans, this one did not have a white star on his face. Wow, what a neat variation! We jokingly called him The Starless Wonder.
The very next weekend, Barrie took Superman to his first model horse show. Prior to showing him, Barrie gave Superman a ‘bath’. After Barrie put Superman in the show ring, she heard the judge ask why the horse was ‘peeing’. With much joy, showers clamored around the show table and were delighted to see Superman again peeing onto the table. The water was coming from a small air hole which was conspicuously (or not so conspicuously) placed in Superman’s groin area! There was a lot of laughter and Superman was officially named The Wizard of Ahh’s nickname Whizzer.
The story doesn’t stop here however, Whizzer went on to win a Championship and was awarded a beautiful blue rosette. Congratulations Barrie Getz and Whizzer!
Picture Credit: Barrie Getz
BreyerWest 2017 Part 3 – The Copperfox Herd!
BreyerWest 2017 Part 1 + 2 + 3 + YouTube Videos
| April 3, 2017 | Posted by aidanstoytrove under Model Horse |
BreyerWest 2017 Part 1, 2 & 3 + YouTube Videos
I have been working on writing a BreyerWest 2017 Part 4. However, it still takes me quite a bit of time to get the formatting to look right on the website and the backend of the website is still crawling along at a snail’s pace. If you haven’t heard already, we are in the middle of a migration to a new website server. The website migration started 3 days ago and is due to finish any day now. We are waiting for the magical email that will tell us the migration is complete so we can flip the switch so to speak and make the website live on the new server. Our current server has caused us a lot of downtime, frustration and excessive page load times. We are crossing our fingers that the new server will remedy these problems. If it doesn’t, we have a backup plan in place!
What the ongoing server migration also means is that, new blog posts and new products will likely be lost and will have to be manually redone when the website is live on the new server. We have A LOT of news to share and new products to list but we’re waiting on the new website server to save ourselves a lot of redundant work.
I realized that our BreyerWest blog posts are a bit spread out and that a lot of the BreyerWest Videos haven’t been shared here on the website. So today’s blog post will be short and sweet. I am providing some easy to click links to everything BreyerWest that has been shared by us so far. There is more BreyerWest content coming (hint, there are YouTube Videos set to go live every day this week!) but here is what we have shared so far:
- BreyerWest 2017 Part 1 Blog Post
- BreyerWest 2017 Part 2 Blog Post
- BreyerWest 2017 Part 3 – The Copperfox Herd Blog Post
- Aidan’s Toy Trove YouTube Channel BreyerWest 2017 Video Playlist
Have a great week everyone! It’s cold and windy here but it is sunny. Spring is in the air!
BreyerWest 2017 Part 3 – The Copperfox Herd!
| March 29, 2017 | Posted by aidanstoytrove under Model Horse |
BreyerWest 2017 Part 3 – The Copperfox Herd!
Hi everyone! We arrived home safely from BreyerWest 2017 but I came home in less than optimal shape. We finished loading the cargo trailer at the Northwest Horse Fair and Expo around 11pm on Sunday and drove straight home. We pulled into the driveway around 5 am on Monday morning. I slept for 2 hours on Monday morning and then ended up taking a 2 hour nap in the afternoon which cut into the time that I had planned to unpack and get reorganized. Eeek! I have been feeling a bit under the weather and it seems that recovering from our weekend of plastic pony madness took me a solid 2 days. The best that I could manage on Tuesday was to get one package shipped and to start listing horses to eBay. We had the eBay Store closed while we were gone and now we have over 100 listings that expired while we were gone and those need to be relisted.
I’m finally beginning to feel a bit better. My fatigue level finally been brought back to a more normal level. Thank goodness! You should be seeing BreyerWest blog posts, pictures and videos going up on the website, Instagram and YouTube. Hurray! We haven’t been as quick at shipping these past 2 days but we are back on track and should be back to shipping orders within 24 hours. We want customers to be happy and know that that quick shipping is important! Our apologies for the delay in shipping for Monday and Tuesday but now we’re back on track.
I have lots that I want to share about BreyerWest 2017. We had a great time and there was so much going on that is was at times it was a bit overwhelming. We had a 10 x 10 booth that will be upgraded to a 10 x 20 booth next year. We apologize for the tight space in the booth this year. Was everyone cozy?? We did great at the BreyerWest Open Show and our show herd earned us a number of NAN cards and Championships. Hurray! I will make a blog post featuring some of our winning Breyer custom model horses.
Today I want to talk about the Copperfox Model Horses that we brought to sell at the Northwest Horse Fair and Expo 2017 that was held from March 24th – 26th in Albany, Oregon. We had absolutely no idea that we would have these amazing UK based horses on hand to sell. On a whim, I emailed Becky Benfield, the mastermind behind Copperfox Model Horses. I wanted to know if there had been any progress made on having US based Copperfox Dealers and I mentioned that we would be attending The Northwest Horse Fair and Expo in 2 weeks. My memory is a bit of a blur at this point but Becky started to pull out all the stops and had Copperfox Model Horses waiting for us at our hotel when we arrived on Thursday, March 23rd. Prior to going to our hotel which was located a half hour from the Linn County Fairgrounds, we spent a long day setting up or Aidan’s Toy Trove sales booth. We arrived around 2pm and left the fairgrounds around 11pm.
We pulled into the hotel a bit before midnight. We loaded the 3 BIG boxes of Copperfox Horses onto a cart along with our suitcase and computers and lugged everything up to the 4th floor where our room was located. Little did we know we had a surprise in store for us! When I inserted the key into the hotel door, the LEDs flashed red and green. I thought this odd but the door opened, so what they hay, right? We turned on the lights and started to lug everything into the room when SURPRISE, we noticed that the room wasn’t clean. The bed wasn’t made and there were empty drink bottles on the counter. Eww? We squeezed ourselves back into the tiny elevator and went back down to the front desk to request a new hotel room. Our new room was also on the 4th floor so back into the elevator we all went. I breathed a sigh of relief when the LED’s on the door lock flashed only green. We brought all of our ‘stuff’ into the room and kept the luggage cart for the night, shhh. We deserved that luggage cart right??
I lay half dazed on the bed and stared at the Copperfox tape encasing the boxes of what was sure to be beautiful horses (and ponies!) But I was tired and all I really wanted to do was sleep. In the end, the horses won out and I opened a case full of horses to take a quick peek. I was very excited to see Superman, Cadno, Lakeview Knight and Celtic Warrior for the very first time! In fact, this was the first time that I have ever seen a Copperfox Model Horse up close and personl! I didn’t open any of the other shipping cases other than to confirm that the contents looked to be in good condition. I packed the Copperfox Model Horses back into their shipping case and went to bed around 2 am.
We briefly debated pulling the Copperfox Model Horses from their shipping cases to make transporting them easier. All of our show horses were still loaded into the car and were taking up quite a bit of room. We had left the cargo trailer at the fairgrounds. Cargo space was at a premium and hubby said that I couldn’t leave Aidan behind at the hotel and pile his seat full of ponies. What’s the problem with that?? But it was raining out and we didn’t want to risk water damage to the lovely Copperfox packaging and we opted to leave them in their original shipping cases. It was like playing real life Tetris getting those 3 cases of Copperfox Horses into the car on Friday morning but we did it! We arrived at the Horse Expo at vendor opening time, 8m and proceeded to finish setting up. We had A LOT of work to do but we prioritized getting the CopperFox Model Horses out and gave them prime real estate on our front table so people could look at all of them in person. We had a lot less space to work with than we would have liked but it worked!
At 9 am I left the sales booth and headed over to the BreyerWest Open Show to set up my personal show horses. Hubby was manning the sales booth (manning…get it?!) while I was showing. We did some shuffling so he could get his horses on to the show table while I stood at the sales booth. The floodgates opened at 10am which was the official start time of the Northwest Horse Fair and Expo. There was a whole stampede of people rushing into the horse expo but I only caught a glimpse of it as I was still unpacking show horses. I remember glancing up and seeing a huge swarm of people over at our sales booth. I thought this would be the worst of the rush, but alas, nope!
We decided to not open the sales of the Copperfox horses until 3 pm. This was around the time that I was finished with the Open Model Horse Show last year but unfortunately the show ran much later this year and it had me in quite a panic. All through the morning and early afternoon we had many visitors at the booth that were delighted to see and handle the Copperfox Model Horses in person. Many people thought that they were made of fine china or porcelain! People were amazed at the crisp detail on all of the Copperfox molds. We are glad that we decided to delay sales on the Copperfox horses so that people could see them because at 3 pm, the Copperfox horses grew wings and took flight!
I was dashing back and forth from the Open Model Horse Show to our sales booth to make sure that the Copperfox sales were running smoothly. There were a few hiccups with releasing the Copperfox herd at 3 pm. A lot of potential purchasers were also still at the model horse show (like myself) and our sales booth had a line of people waiting to purchase Copperfox horses. Lakeview Knight was in high demand and we only had 2 on hand. We ended up selling him by lottery. Our apologies to those that missed out but we will try to have more stock on hand next time. We also limited sales to 1 per person per transaction. This seemed to work well and enabled everyone to purchase at least 1 Copperfox Model Horse. Some people stood in line for their Copperfox horse more than once!
I was finished with the model horse show by 5 pm and hurried back on over to our booth. I was delighted that so many of the people that had purchased horses earlier in the day were still around and wanted to talk more about Copperfox Model Horses. We had a mini gathering of sorts. I was leafing through the individual Copperfox horses’ information cards right along with other hobbyists and everyone had a lot of fun learning about the various molds. There was a lot of talk about the Copperfox horse sculptors. Most notably, Morgen Kilbourn! It hadn’t clicked in my head until Morgen Kilbourn stopped by the booth that she was the sculptor of the Irish Sport Horse. That was a major DUH moment on my part! Morgen was judging at the model horse show on Friday and was a hobby demonstrator on Saturday. I know that Morgen signed at least 1 Copperfox Superman during the event. How cool is that?
We specifically held back some Copperfox Model Horses for viewing and purchase on Saturday. Saturday was twice as busy as Friday. I had so much fun showing the Copperfox horses to hobbyists and nonhobbyists alike. There were a large number of model horse collectors that had never heard of Copperfox Model Horses and they were amazed with the quality. There were even non model horse collectors that stopped by the booth just to see the Copperfox horses. Their eyes lit up when they opened the boxes to look inside. The Black Pearl Friesian Dance Troupe was performing and in addition to the Friesians was a Welsh Cob stallion named North Forks Cardi. This very special horse is trained in Grand Prix Dressage and was shown on the long lines. The Welsh Cob floated around the arena in the trademark airy trot that is so frequently seen in the breed. People were very excited to see the Copperfox Model Horse Tiger Woods after watching the Friesians and the Welsh Cob perform!
We still have a lot to share about BreyerWest but this is a good stopping point. We just reserved vendor space at the Western States Horse Expo and will be bringing a selection Copperfox Model Horses to see and purchase! We hope to see you there!
BreyerWest 2017 YouTube Video Playlist
BreyerWest 2017 Part 2 Blog Post
BreyerWest 2017 Part 1 Blog Post
