Just this morning, the Vancouver Sun published an interesting article about FigurePrints LLC, which is a name WoW players know quite well, though probably not the little details of the company. FigurePrints LLC, which is based in Washington, has its production center in the heart of Vancouver. A production center with with only 11 employees, up from its original one, with its eyes set on moving up in the world to a mind blowing 25 employees.

FigurePrints works around the clock, producing somewhere between 1,200 and 1,400 figurines in a month. That almost sounds like a lot (they produce over 40 figures per day), but when you consider they need to draw these names from a lottery of over 25,000 potential customers? They really have their hands full, but they're clearly not going to run out of customers anytime soon, especially since their contract with Blizzard is an exclusive one. FigurePrints is also looking into opening a plant in Europe to expand the market to our overseas friends, and they've been approached by other gaming companies as well. They seem to be in a very good place right now.

Personally, I'm curious to see where the company will actually go from this point forward in terms of what they print, and who they print for. I'm sure most of the popularity of this company is due to their arrangement with Blizzard, so will that relationship continue even beyond World of Warcraft? Will FigurePrints LLC be right there with Blizzard when some other MMO rolls around, like Galaxy of Starcraft (or whatever)? Or will they stand just fine on their own when WoW is gone, moving on to other companies and games?

Edit: To try and clarify, it's a Washington-based office with a Vancouver, Canada-based production plant. Not Vancouver, Washington.

Tags: blizzard, canada.com, figure-prints, figureprints, figureprints-llc, redmond-washington, vancouver-sun, washington

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items