Just wondered if anyone knows what's going on with GeoMag these days? Getting hold of their products seems to be harder and harder, the range seems to be narrower and narrower, and High Street stockists (in the UK at least) are dropping like flies.
The GeoMagStore in the UK now only offers GeoMag Colour, and none of the nice presentation packs (which although very expensive, offered the best value when worked out to "price per unit"). I found a good deal on Just Panels 90 from a Dutch Store, but the price was SO low I suspect it may be clearance stock.
I do hope this excellent product isn't set to disappear?
I share your hope, I'd hate to see Geomag disappear.
As an insider, I know what's going on but cannot share. But I can point you to http://www.geomagworld.com which is quite new and will give you an idea of what's going to happen.
My compliments for the excellent model you have put on YouTube! Very very well thought out and executed! I suggest you share it on Flickr. At the moment this Wiki and the Flickr Geomag group are the places where the biggest fans keep in touch (even though activity is low at the moment). I think your model could inspire others to get some new ideas.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/geomag
Regards, --Peter Jepsen 08:49, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
In case anyone should wonder, the excellent model by User Grey Area which is mentioned above can be viewed on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QttOa4NN0QY
--Peter Jepsen 08:56, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
Hi Peter, any kind of update you can share on this?
I'm a big Geomag product fan, with around 15,000 pieces I purchased years ago, back when there was a real and active community on the geomagsa website. The photo galleries on there were truly inspiring with thousands of images. The forums were the crowning jewel with the "challenges" posted, people showing how-tos, various discussions etc. That whole community aspect was what inspired me to order a mammoth collection of pieces to build some of the monster models.
However literally within days of my geomag arriving "in bulk", the geomagsa community site went into meltdown. The galleries and forums disappeared overnight, and I have yet to hear an explanation from anyone as to what happened and why they were not restored or at least "restarted" if it it was from a crash/lack of backups. I have never once received a response to any of my multiple enquiries via their contact details page. Now I see even the geomagsa site itself has disappeared fairly recently.
Sadly it appears Geomag are a dying company - perhaps in reality there are deals going on we cannot see over ownership and future plans. However I find it bizarre that they killed the lifeblood of their community - the people who want to aspire to owning large collections or build amazing models they inspire others with via directly or via YouTube etc. The web is littered with products that have "survived" thanks to the cult status created by the community, yet Geomag have shown no interest in encouraging this in any way.
I do appreciate the efforts of the few community members who created the pages here on Wikia, and the attempt to try to keep things going. However that uncertainty period of the cone of silence from Geomag over why their site disappeared and whether it would reopen appears to have killed interest for many. Also the irritating approach by Wikia to not use "conventional" forum software and do this "clumsy" page editing doesn't exactly encourage forum posts here. Even those who started this site appear to have lost interest if the editing of pages here is any indication.
I've looked on the geomagworld site you posted above, but the "community" button is not enabled as yet. Do you have any insight as to what will appear in that section, will it be "real" forums like there were previously, will the massive image galleries be restored, etc?
I'm literally at the point of sticking my whole collection on Ebay and cutting my losses to reclaim the space in my flat, but if there was some glimmer of hope of a "real" community returning then I would hold off a bit longer.
Help me Obi Wan - anything you can enlighten us with would be appreciated. Feel free to email me if its not something you are comfortable sharing publicly here - I literally just want to decide on whether to sell off or hang on a bit longer...
Kiwidude 11:22, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
Kiwidude, hang on to your Geomag collection a little longer! :)
Sorry I can't respond in detail to all the points you mention above, but I can share some info with you and others reading this.
- The old forum and gallery were 'sabotaged'. It still angers me; the forum was my baby, and a girl on the Model Team spent a lot of hours on the content of that gallery.
- The old Geomag company was a dying company. But that is past. The new Geomag company and the distributors are slowly but steadily getting the Geomag brand back on its feet.
- Now that the new geomagworld.com site is up, one of my next projects is the forum. I have a backup of the original phpBB database from right before the forum went down, and I have geomagforums.com registered and waiting. Whether we will re-instate the backup or start from scratch is still to be decided when we get to that point. Regarding the future of the gallery, I don't know yet for various reasons.
- The company does appreciate the fans. That is one of the reasons I have received permission to try and get the forum back up.
And don't call me Obi Wan. I don't think I am worthy of such a comparison.. :)
--Peter Jepsen 10:28, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
Hi Peter, thank you for your time to respond and the enlightening information.
Wow, sabotage? That really sucks - I can appreciate how frustrating that must have been for you guys after all your work to get it up and running. Clearly there is more to this story than will ever become public, but fingers crossed for you on the "relaunch" via geomagworld.com etc.
Interested on your point about a girl in the model team being responsible for much of the galleries - she did a fantastic job in the range of models and photography. I loved the way the photos were also able to be browsed based on the size of your Geomag collection - although that was a rather expensive for me way of looking... ;-) Fingers crossed you can overcome the issues with restoring those galleries. My biggest regret in hindsight was not making a "local copy" myself to allow me to replicate many of the great models in there or variants thereof.
A new phpBB based forum sounds great, hopefully you can regenerate the community from attracting new Geoag users and some of the old frequent posters alike. I only had the opportunity to read it for a few weeks before it went missing but seem to recall lots of interesting and intriguing input so it will be good to have the benefit of that again. I particularly liked those "combine 12 shapes like this" type challenges - good reasons to drag the Geomag out of the cupboard, love a challenge. Mind you so many posts I found intriguing, be it mathematical based discussions, magnetic model approaches, impressively scaled models or even just people being very creative with a small number of pieces...
As for the "Obi Wan" reference ;-). You seem to be the only person associated with Geomag willing to actually respond to our questions about what is going on. I know I wasnt the only one to have emails go unanswered - heck even a stock "we are sorry but the community area will no longer be available" would at least have been some kind of response.
So you have me convinced to hang on for a little longer. I'm sure I'm not alone in looking forward to hearing some timeframes or announcements when things become closer to fruition. Good luck! Kiwidude 12:36, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
I concure :) couple rude bois :) geomag is as well we all know the best of the bunch so must survive ,*** did note on the new site no distibuters listed in uk? :( new lines look great(colours an kids o my, ) ***** BUT worrie not all existing products still b availible (compared plastwood glow sticks whick were superseeded therefore collectable, for exmpl) i started about 2yrs ish ago, was bouight a magnetix set, but luckily a shop had loads geo glow clearance, saved me, prob few thou now, thank ebay, tho tk maxx had few clearance earlier this yr :) much loves alang