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[quote user="azrail"] How does Kadee do it in Oregon, yet offer the same quality level as the stuff from China at almost the same price? <div style="clear:both;"> </div> [/quote] The was a thread about kit manufacturers on MR forums in September 2017: [url]http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/t/264946.aspx[/url] riogrande5761 cited Jason Shron from another forum: It's quite simple how they do it. Kadee sells thousands of couplers at a wonderful markup - we all dream of markups like that. They are able to subsidize their gorgeous freight cars with that coupler markup. (And Kadee freight cars really are gorgeous.) Same goes for Micro-Trains.  That's why those two companies can do production in North America.  If Rapido was selling millions of widgets for $1 each that only cost us $0.05 to make, we could use that extra profit to subsidize North American production or to bring down the prices of overseas-produced models enormously.  If there is a company that can either do RTR production in North America or they can produce RTR models in China at a hugely lower price than everyone else, then there is always a real economic reason behind it, such as cross subsidization (discussed above) or selling a loss leader for the purpose of market penetration. That means "I want my model in every store so I will not make any money on the project but at the end I will be in every store." Seeing a handful of companies producing models onshore or cheaply does not mean that all of the other companies are gouging the customer or that we could really make models much cheaper if we wanted to.  There are even projects Rapido has cancelled after they were fully designed because we realized that in order for them to make profit we would price ourselves out of the market. We have one freight car that would have retailed for $60 in 2013, which was way too high for a car that small. It had about a million extra parts. We had to shelve it. Maybe when other, similar freight cars get up to that price we can finally make it, because we can probably still make it for $60. -Jason On the Kadee website <a href="https://kadee.com/htmbord/answer15-17.htm">https://kadee.com/htmbord/answer15-17.htm</a> Is a short article (#118) “The Costs of Doing Business as a Manufacturer” Kadee complains about the ever rising minimum wages: In Oregon we have to deal with the mistaken politically correct mandatory minimum wage increases that seem to be the trend with politicians without any foresight looking for support and votes without any regard for the employer as to how they are going to pay a higher wage without an increase in income. So I assume that they pay just minimum wages. Regards, Volker
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