Hasslefree Miniatures Newsletter – WAMP Awards

We are happy to be nominated in a number of categories in this year's WAMP awards. Details of how to vote are below, you'll need to register an account if you don't have one but other than that small, free, step you literally just point and click, and while you're there you can nose through the other categories and vote in those too :)

While you can vote up to 3 times it doesn't seem like they are structured 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. so the best bet for the entries you'd like to win is just to vote the once I guess?

Direct links to the categories that affect us are in each section below but these are the general rules and a link to the overall forum...

Rules

1.    Voting will remain open until 1pm Friday 17th January 2014 (British Time)
2.    You must be registered and logged into Wamp to vote (if you are not registered it is free to join)
3.    You may cast up to 3 votes per category
4.    All votes in a category must be cast at one time
5.   Any dubious voting will be investigated.

Woot! We were very proud that we managed to win this in 2012, in the face of stiff competition, so we're going for a repeat  on our 10th Anniversary :)

We were nominated for the first prototype of our upcoming Sci-Fi line, the as yet unnamed 'Sci-Fi Female 1'.

It's some of Kev's best work yet and we particularly like the weapon and helmet design. This armour design will likely form the basis for the 'scout' or 'light' armour.

I'll have to slap WAMP on the wrist for allowing fully painted figures in the poll there but for those who want to know what ours looks like painted up, the ever-awesome Dwartist has a WIP up on his blogHERE.
(He's also just started work on the 2nd and 3rd prototypes so expect more sci-fi awesomeness soon).

Not technically us being nominated but Crackpot has painted up Hanako incredibly well and put her in a beautifully arranged diorama so we figure we'd give him some exposure.

Tough competition in all the painted categories but we're comfortable putting our support behind this one without feeling nepotistic :)

*grin* As you might notice by the sparcity of the text under 'Best Company' above, we're not big fans of blowing our own trumpets too often but in this case as it's me typing and not Sally, so I get to blow all the trumpets I like!

Hasslefree passed it's 10th birthday a few days ago and every single one of those years the company has been run in the way that Sal set it up, even when she was ill or taking a break, the company continued to perform in the way it does because of the way Sal put things in place.

For ten years Sal has struggled with juggling a growing business, a growing family and a chronic illness. She has never shied away from helping others in (and out of)  the industry wherever possible: Advice for fellow industry people; free miniatures and support for small/local events; free minis for numerous charities; offering Kev's sculpting time for charity events.

On top of that the business is run with a personal touch, every one of our regular customers has exchanged messages with Sal via email or the Forum of Doom or Facebook. On the few occassions mistakes are made you don't get a form email or silence, you get a real person saying 'Sorry, we screwed up, this is what I'm going to do to fix it'. Every order has a handwritten note so that you know a real person did something, every order has candy because Sal liked the idea that when you open a parcel from us you smile.

This year's goodie bags had 'miscasts' in, minis that didn't pass our quality control. 5 different people messaged me to say that they thought we'd made some kind of mistake, the mini in the miscast bag was better than minis they get from someone else.

All of the above is Sally. 'Her' idea to help other companies who are where Hasslefree was years ago, 'her' quality control standards to show that smaller companies can produce the best too, free minis out of 'her' pocket to give back to the community who gives to us and 'her' insistence that people much prefer to deal with a real person than a faceless moniker. These are the cornerstones of our company.

And as an aside, while she isn't exactly retiring she is taking more of a backseat and a break from now on, so this is perfect timing in my opinion :)

So yeah, vote for Sal.
(Preferably before she notices I wrote all this and slaps me for embarrassing her).

Arty.