Victrix

Victrix Limited is owned by Julian Blakeney-Edwards.

I (Julian) have been fascinated by toy soldiers since the age of 7. I have fond and vivid memories of playing with Airfix plastic soldiers throughout my childhood. This passion extended into the real world and at the age of 22 I entered Sandhurst, subsequently commissioned into 3 Royal Anglian (Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Essex) Regiment. A fascinating 6 year career with my regiment took me to Germany, Canada and Northern Ireland.

I spent many years working in The City before setting up various businesses working in the hobby markets and also the overseas holiday property business. For nearly 9 years now I have been running Victrix Limited with my business partner Stephen Hales. Steve has recently resigned as a director of the business but continues to work for Victrix on a consultancy basis

Steve and I had been discussing for some time the feasibility of a 28mm hard plastic range. Our first discussions centred around Greeks and Persians, but then we both quickly realised that our true joint interest was in the Napoleonic period. Before you could say "at ready" we had decided to pour our heart and soul (not to mention a very large amount of money) into the launch of a new range of hard plastic 28mm Napoleonics, and so Victrix Limited was born.

We have put great emphasis on producing figures with real character, truly reflecting the look and feel of the Napoleonic period. A great deal of attention has been placed on the sculpting of faces, the look of the uniform and the pose of each figure. As the Duke of Wellington said on the eve of Waterloo;

"I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me".

We want our figures to look like soldiers and to scare the living daylights out of their metal opponents. We want to appeal to military modellers who will appreciate the detail of our figures and want to use them as performers in their dioramas and vignettes. More than anything we want to recreate the pleasure and excitement of collecting miniature figures and perhaps convince the younger generation there is more to this pastime than Elves and Dwarves.

In recent years Victrix has moved away from traditional engineering methods and now all our plastic products are developed using digital technology. This involves digitally sculpting figures using various software platforms. Once the digital files are complete they go through a number of processes before getting uploaded to a CNC milling that then cuts the tool.

The adoption of digital technology has helped reduce development costs which has allowed us to invest more money in new product development. What the future holds is anyone's guess but developing STL files for people to purchase from us to then use on a domestic 3D printer is certainly one future avenue we are exploring.

Julian Blakeney-Edwards