Northstar are selling Immortal now too.
I think smaller manufacturers are finding it difficult to both make and sell miniatures.
For example Musketeer Miniatures have recently arranged for Gripping Beast to sell for them:
Over the past year Musketeer Miniatures has been growing to a point where it became too much for one man to run on his own. My sculpting time was reduced to almost nil due to coping with the day to day running of the business. Despite how busy it got it wasn't earning enough to employ someone else full time to help me out. Ah! The joys of self employment!
So from today onwards the production, mail order and general running of Musketeer will be taken over by my top chums Darren and Andy and overseen by Lord S from Gripping Beast. All orders will still go through this website for now, but any enquiries or phone orders will be dealt with by Gripping Beast (01386 761 511.)
One of many advantages to this new arrangement is that GB operate from early in the morning to late at night so are much easier to contact. Also they can take credit card orders so call them!
The upshot of this is I will at last be able to sculpt full time once more and get ranges finished that have been hanging round for far too long (we all know what I'm talking about ....!) New exciting ranges are planned for the future as well as some individual projects that we think you might like.
There are some quite good dealers out there who are doing a pretty good job of offering competitive prices and good service, and are well organised with good websites.
Maelstrom and Wayland are probably the bigger two that spring to mind, but personally I find Northstar and Caliver very good, and there is a pretty good one up in Scotland called Wargames + Miniatures which is moving forward.
Northstar aren't the cheapest, and charge postage, but Nick uses Twitter to post regular updates, has a bargain section where he shifts excess stock, and as with Artizan he seems to be some sort of main agent for a range.
There are lots and lots of miniatures outfits and as we know most are pretty small - to market and set yourself up properly I should imagine needs a fair amount of initial capital - if you haven't got the capital, then an arrangement with a good dealer can be mutually beneficial.