What's the story with Stevens International?

I thought Stevens was an importer associated mostly withTrumpeter (or formerly so).

They are a distrubtor/importer who also rebox OOP kits from other manufacturers that they deem still have a viable market. Squadron used to do this (might still do it) with Encore boxing.

They don't make the stuff, they order it from companies (Revell-Monogram, etc.) and rebox it for sale under their name.

their main function is to supply your LHS with kits, they have many brands of kits at wholesale in the many genres we need, both the original kits in original company boxes and some of their own reboxings

I use their site as a guide to what my LHS guy can get, and to over estimate what he will charge for each item,,,,,,,,they list an MSRP, and he does not charge that high

there is a slight issue with what is in stock, sometimes,,,,,,,but, if you are waiting for a kit at the LHS, you just keep checking at Steven's, and when it shows up, the LHS can order it, and mine charges less than the Steven's retail price

that is how I got the Skyhawks from a US supplier,,,,,,I ordered from Hannants, saw the stock was dwindling there, and when they didn't have any more, the container had hit the US, when Steven's listed them, I called my LHS guy

These are two of the kits I'm talking about. You can see the Stevens International logo on both boxes and Hobby link says the second kit was "Exclusively Produced by Stevens International".

 Both AMT and Monogram are American companies I believe.

www.cybermodeler.com/.../kit_rm_5619.shtml

www.hobbylinc.com/.../stv38555.htm

Hey guys,

Stevens International is an importer and distributor for the hobby industry. They share import rights to Trumpeter with MMD, and are the exclusive importers and distributors in North America for Kinetic and Meng.

They used to repop some older kits, but that went away for the most part when Round 2 came through and scooped up the licenses to AMT and ERTL (edit: although I do recall Stevens still retaining the right to produce a limited number of kits from those lines--got distracted with a phone call and dropped this from my initial post). They also wholesale more than models: They distribute toys, puzzles, miniatures--and the whole thing started from selling stamps and stamp collecting accessories.

Tim

That makes sense.  I haven't seen any Stevens repops in a long time.

Thanks guys