For many years, NECA was the only western toy company that produced consistently high quality figures at a reasonable retail price. For my own custom figure projects, it was a combination of the franchises NECA worked with and the quality of their PVC and articulation joint engineering that stood out. For almost a decade before retail price creep took over, NECA converted me to working almost exclusively with their figures as composite bases to work with.
Figures.com had a great look inside NECA's studio, including some upcoming (circa 2013!) projects:
http://www.figures.com/forums/news/30712-exclusive-neca-studio-tour-part-two.html
2026 update: Link updated to The Internet Archive.