BUILDING MODELU - 11 YEARS IN THE MAKING - PART 1
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Time to read 8 min
Eleven years ago, I quit a stable IT career, moved back in with my Mum aged 40, and started Modelu in a garage with a single 3D printer.
REMEMBERING KATE BUTTLER
1934-2026
I originally started writing this blog to mark Modelu’s 11th birthday, looking back at how it all began and how we got to where we are today. I never quite finished it at the time.
I’m revisiting it now following the passing of my mum, Kathleen, who died peacefully on Friday 19th June, just four days after her 92nd birthday. It is impossible to tell the story of Modelu’s early years without properly acknowledging her part in it.
Mum didn’t just give up her garage so I could turn it into a workshop. For the first five years of Modelu, she packed and posted almost every order we sent out, drove parcels to the local post office, helped keep things moving when the business was still finding its feet, and supported me through the difficult early years in more ways than I can really put into words.
Many long-standing customers will have received figures that were packed and posted by Mum with great care.
So this is partly the story of how Modelu began - but it is also a thank you to the person who made those beginnings possible.
IN THE BEGINNING...
2013-2014
The idea that Modelu was based on began earlier, in 2013, with a modelling problem.
I was building a model of Oswestry Works and wanted to accurately portray the people who worked there - not just generic figures, but real roles, based on the men I’d met, spoken to, and taken notes from. Alongside that, I was also trying to create detailed interior elements like overhead cranes and machine tools.
Nothing available at the time really did that justice, so I started experimenting with CAD and a 3D printer at my local MakerSpace.
Modelu itself came later - after I’d left my career in IT. It didn't start with a carefully planned buiness plan, or a “eureka” moment. It was driven by stress, and by the need to be around more at a time when my Mother was unwell.
What began as a personal modelling challenge gradually turned into something more.
MISSENDEN ABBEY
It was attending a Missenden Abbey modelling course, where the first glimmer of a life outside of IT began to form.
Meeting inspirational modellers such as Tim Shackleton, Barry Norman, Mick Bonwick, Iain Rice, Tony Gee, and many more helped me understand where 3D-printing could help even the very best modellers in the hobby.
It was also somewhere I met David Brandreth, who later selflessly helped me at exhibitions all over the country, encouraged, advised, and even posed to be scanned in those early days, immortalised in red resin!
LEARNING, THE HARD WAY
2015-2016
The early days were very challenging.
There were plenty of failed prints, the occasional breakthrough (point rodding!), and a whole range of issues that come with trying to build a business from scratch - not helped by the fact that Welsh winters and resin printing don’t mix particularly well.
LOCAL LINKS
I was extremely fortunate to meet Geoff Taylor (of Barmouth Junction fame), a professional model maker who lived just a couple of miles away from my childhood village in Mid-Wales. Geoff became a sounding board for ideas, and his encouragement kept me going during those early stages.
Through Geoff, I was introduced to other modelmakers in the area, including Tony Geary, Gavin Clark and the SHAG P4 Area Group guys. They helped with ideas for new products, small commissions and cruicially, feedback on the designs I was making.
THINGS BEGIN TO GET REAL
A real turning point came when people from heritage railways began to get in touch.
Jamie Green from the Severn Valley Railway offered his help as a trained signalman, in full GWR uniform, and Iain Ross and Tom Peacock from the Llangollen Railway invied me onto the footplate of GWR 2-8-0 3802 to see first-hand what a crew actually did.
That experience changed everything.
TECHNOLOGY MEETS AUTHENTICITY
It wasn’t just about getting the uniforms right - it was about understanding posture, movement, and the small details you only notice when you’re there in person.
Those early sessions formed the basis of a range of around 20 figures, which went on to our first exhibition.
Looking back, that was the point where Modelu really started to take shape.
OUR FIRST SHOW: GUILDEX 2015
A big milestone was our first exhibition at Guildex in 2015.
Setting up on the Friday evening, I had a few friendly faces come over, say hello, and ask what I was doing. Once they saw the figures, the encouragement was immediate - which meant a lot at the time. My whole stock sold out by 11am on the Saturday. Thankfully, I had the 3D scanner and around 40 customers went down in Modelu history. They are still on file now!
NEW KID ON THE BLOCK
Even so, I was very aware of being a newcomer.
I’d spent years attending exhibitions as a visitor, and knew how much work goes into them, often over many years. There’s a huge amount of experience and craftsmanship behind the stands.
Getting pricing right felt like a delicate balance. I didn’t want to undercut others or come across as an upstart - but at the same time, I had to have confidence in what I was producing and put a value on it. That was probably the biggest challenge.
GROWTH, AND STRAIN
2016-2017
Following those early exhibitions, things began to pick up. The range was expanding, I was making more railway contacts for 3D scanning, and gradually becoming part of the community of traders I’d see at exhibitions up and down the country.
These were incredibly hard-working people - James Hudson of Bill Hudson Transport Books, Brian Hanson of Shawplan, the Petite Properties family, Andy at Severn Models, and many others. Being around people like that set a standard in terms of effort, commitment, and what it takes to keep going.
"BRINGING THE PAST TO LIFE"
2017 was another milestone year.
Pendon Museum commissioned a range of figures for the Vale Scene. To have our work displayed alongside the incredible modelling of Roye England, R. Guy Williams and Stephen Williams was something I would never have imagined when starting out.
We also had figures featured on a Sky Arts documentary and a piece on Sky News — with thanks to Paul Marshall-Potter, whose painting brought them to life.
FLOREAT SALOPIA
2018
We relocated to Shrewsbury, which would be home for the next three years, and invested in the next generation of 3D printers - around ten times faster than what we had before. It was a big step. At £12,000 per machine and resin at £180 a bottle, margins were incredibly tight.
Keeping up with both web orders and producing enough stock for exhibitions was a constant challenge. There was never quite enough capacity to stay on top of it. 3D Scans to edit were piling up, product development had ground to a halt.
I had just enough money in the bank to bring in two part-time staff to help with scan edits and printing. My mum continued packing and posting orders - by this point, she was 83.
2017 closed with receiving the Innovation Award at Warley. From the outside, things probably looked like they were moving in the right direction.
In reality, the pressure was building to the same levels that had ended my IT career. By the time I received the award, I was completely burnt out.
I had to take a step back from shows. Though it was a tough choice, I felt I was letting people down - the scanner was a unique service (and still is!) which brought people to events. But for the business to continue I needed breathing space to develop commerical relationships and build the range.
Chris Klein at Minerva was one of the first manfacturers to recongnise the oppourtunity for collaboration - and using my network of heritage crew contacts we were able to create the perfect finishing touch for their locos.
Dave Mylett at Hattons got in touch soon after with what remains one of our largest orders - bespoke crews for their OO SECR P Class and Andrew Barclay 0-4-0T.
That project took me down to Kent to meet Andy Hardy, who posed as driver and fireman. With Andy’s help, I was also able to expand other areas of the range - industrial workers, signalmen, guards, and more.
Nine years on, I still work with both Dave and Andy, now operating at the leading edge of product design with Rapido UK.
FINDING BALANCE
2019-2020
After 2018, some balance finally came back into my life.
Stepping back from exhibitions gave me the space to improve processes and become more efficient, but more importantly, it gave me some semblance of a life again for the first time since leaving everything behind in 2014.
Around that time, I met Steph, now my wife, when she was staying with family in Shrewsbury for Christmas, having been living in Bristol.
SUPER CHARGED
2021-2022
We had around 18 months of freedom together before lockdown hit - just one month after I’d relocated both myself and Modelu to Bristol.
Overnight, exhibitions, and oppoutunities to 3D body scan simply stopped. Like many others, I had to adapt quickly.
I converted the downstairs bathroom into a printer room and shifted product development away from scanning people to designing accessories in CAD.
At the same time, demand increased exponetially. With more people at home and spending time on their layouts, orders grew by 200%. Isopropyl, a key element of post-processing 3D prints, increased in price by 500%.
Without an exhibition schedule, this was an oppourtunity to completely reset the business. The website was updated, new product bundles created, the long backlog of scans for the range finally saw daylight. But most importantly the operation had to become as efficient as possible.
COMING NEXT: PART 2
GROWTH, CHANGE, NEW FRONTIERS
In Part 2, we’ll cover the years from 2022 to the present day. A period where, in many ways, as much has changed in four years as in the previous seven.
This is the chapter where Modelu really began to grow beyond its early foundations. We became a limited company, moved studios more than once, standardised more of our processes, and started building the team that makes Modelu what it is today - with Harrison, Chris and the rest of the team bringing new skills, energy and ideas into the business.
It’s also the period where the technology took another big leap forward. We invested in our own scanning equipment, pushed further into full-colour 3D printing, and continued finding new ways to make miniature figures more lifelike, more accurate and more useful to modellers.
We’ll also look at the collaborations that have helped shape Modelu’s recent years -working with manufacturers such as Accurascale, Hornby and others, along with the challenges that came with growth, the lessons learned from multiple moves, and the ongoing balancing act between creativity, production, people and process.
The early years were about proving that the idea could work and be sustainable. The next chapter is about what happened when Modelu began to grow into a proper business, with a team, a studio, new technology, and a much bigger sense of what might be possible.