@Reb T What company isn't interested in cashflow? That's the whole point isn't it? We're not a 501(c)3 after all!
The Vox Populi system is designed to let our customers vote on which one of the sets we are planning to release in the future to get pushed to the front of the line. We have a LOT of sets in the pipeline but obviously each set is a significant investment for design, tooling, production, artwork/painting, box printing, freight, etc. - $10s of thousands per set. There is also a question of how many releases a month is too many and at what point do you oversaturate the market (or at least your own distribution channel)?
We have always been a very much slow and steady type company. There are lots of moving parts all building toward an ultimate goal - we're increasing our output tempo, expanding our physical and digital catalogs faster than most miniature companies, and significantly increasing our distribution to retailers and distributors. We've doubled in sales each of the last 2 years and are on track to double again this year.
Vox is a way to give the customers exactly what they want. The voting system generates vouchers that can be used immediately so it doesn't really cost anything (and several customers now "buy" votes immediately before using those vouchers on a purchase). The second step of going into a pre-production order for $6000 ensures there's actually enough buy in to go ahead with the kit and it wasn't just one guy throwing a bunch of votes at it. It's our own little version of Kickstarter for our customers and lets us slip in the products people want while we execute on our own release plan. It also lets the folks who are interested in that particular set to provide even more input during the pre-production period so they end up with exactly what they want.
Providing a means to purchase physical versions of our 3D files has always been part of the plan but the typical licensing method is an incredibly stupid business model. Most companies sell blanket "commercial licenses" to 3rd party printers where they can print and sell any of your files and pay a monthly flat rate. We would never go with a model like that because we A. have a rather massive catalog, B. could never be guaranteed of the quality of the product and C. would leave a huge amount of money on the table.
Instead, we are committed to using Only-Games as our (mostly) exclusive partner for printed versions of our digital models. With O-G we set our own pricing and margins and are guaranteed of the quality levels. We have been waiting for MMF/Only-Games to execute on their own plans to expand their operations to the United States to allow a larger chunk of our customers to be able to order locally instead of having everything have to ship from the UK. They're getting close to having this in place and until they did there was no great reason to spend a lot of time getting everything on Only-Games. Now that they're getting closer we've been working to bring all the sets over.
That said, I don't expect printed sales to represent much of an increase in revenue. 3D printed miniatures are not much different in the end than metal or resin ones and the same types of economies exist for that type of product. Real revenues are generated by distribution and having your products in a lot of stores in a lot of countries. But it will be nice to make all these (175 and counting) sets available to our customers who don't print on their own.