ABOUT  ENCHANTICA

Part Two
Royal Doulton Days

In 1996 Royal Doulton took control of Holland Studio Craft who were in financial trouble, this was not because of a lack of orders, in fact the order books were full but no one was paying so Phill Holland sold to RD who made it their resin department, (RD had played with resin before but without any real knowledge of it they didn't do too well) instead of completely wiping out the HSC name they kept it on unfortunately Pat Wenger who Phill did the deal with had an accident and he retired from Doulton meaning that with Pat gone there was no one high up in RD with any understanding of resin and they were unsure how to market resin figurines and they treated them as second rate throw away pieces compared to their own porcelain figures.

Also in 1996 we saw our first collectors Extravaganza showing that RD were determined to push the range as much as possible if they could and they actually got off to a good start, the extravaganza was held at Trentham Gardens in Stoke-on-Trent in one of the small rooms because the large room was holding a computer fair, this was to change for the 1997 show when they realised how popular the range was and they booked the large room for subsequent shows.

We also got the release of the third Enchantica novel "The Glory of the Golden Dragon"

On the 25th of April 1997 we saw the sad Departure of John J. Woodward as head designer who moved on to other things including working for rivals Collectable World Studios and he was replaced by Robert Simpson who had joined the company four years previously.

1998 was the 10th Anniversary of Enchantica with plenty of celebrations and the release of the anniversary piece "The Adventure Begins" and the fourth and final Enchantica novel "The Freezing Fire". It was also the year when everything was moved from the King Street factory at Fenton to new locations around Stoke-on-Trent with production moving to Longton at the Beswick site, Design moved to Nile Street in Burslem and Admin moved to headquarters in Stoke! not the best way to run a business really, it all needed to be together but for some reason it was all split up, I know the factory at Fenton was too small but they could have moved to a larger, single location as I'm sure that would have made more sense!

We also got the first of two pieces that were to show the direction in which Andrew Bill would have liked to take the range with the stunning 1998 Extravaganza piece "The Jewel Thief", followed in 1999 with "Wings of War" both which were much more delicate looking but this was at a price, the pieces were produced in the Far East instead of in the UK and when further pieces started to get made in the Far East we saw redundancies and a huge drop in paint quality on the pieces. This was not helped by people in marketing (mentioning no names) who tried to get in on colouration for pieces but they had no idea or interest in the range and didn't talk to the people who had been involved with the range for many years and this proved very unpopular indeed.

November 1999 was a good (bad!) sign that things were going down hill with the departure of the founder of HSC, Phillip Holland and then to confirm everyone's fears in May 2000 Andrew Bill departed, nothing would be the same again, Andrew didn't appear at the 2000 extravaganza for obvious reasons and the collectors noticed a different subdued feeling at the show, Andrew eventually released a new range called Verbum Magus by teaming up with Phillip and Dea Holland and Doug Mitchell once more and the new pieces showed a similar style that Andy had used on the two Extravaganza pieces.

The end of 2000 brought on a mass retirement of Enchantica pieces and the line was streamlined drastically and the other fantasy ranges "Fables" & "Jenny Oliver Faeries" were discontinued seeing Fables sculptor, Andrew Hull and head painter Caroline Briggs made redundant by this shock move which prepared everyone for a similar thing to happen to Rob & Enchantica.

The official Enchantica website was a great place to visit with a chat forum and loads of photos of retired pieces (a lot of them taken by me) but for some reason RD decided that they wanted to improve things... that improvement meant removing the chat forum where we all used talk and they removed all the retired pieces and virtually turned the site into one simple advert for the new pieces and nothing else, the collectors club also started to give out less information due to the new people who ran the club had no idea about the range at all and were only interested in the Lady figures and those blasted Bunnykins. The club then closed in 2001 so the planned club pieces for 2002 became production pieces instead, the club was always a fun thing and was well run by all those who took charge and in the latter days Karen Hand did a stirling job of trying to keep collectors informed and she had a genuine care for the collectors but her bosses just didn't care (again no names)

All credit has to go to Rob Simpson, Ian Johnson and head of sales at HSC Roger Ball in these dark days after the departure of Andrew Bill as they were the sole promoters of the range but no one at RD cared.

Rumours have it that RD who were in financial trouble had Enchantica for sale for a while with the likes of Enesco and the now defunct Collectable World Studios interested! Eventually and to no ones surprise the Enchantica range was cancelled by RD in 2003...

 

To be continued...

 

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