As I sit here wondering How long before I can Get a replacement locomotive from my local hobby shop. I wonder who came up with the marketing Idea of No inventory is good for business, I recently purchase 2 new Ho models , An Sd70 Ace and an Mp 15ac engine, Both had to be returned due to the fact neither ran out of the Box.Many years in the hobby along with my fellow Modelers at the local hobby shop Are amazed that in this day an age of instant everything I have to wait Months for a replacement engine due to the fact I missed the pre order date?. the pre-order dates are fine for buying new engines , but what happens when that new engine dosen't work,. the manufacture can not help because his inventory is O . How can this be good for the hobbyist who has cash on hand , and no place to spend it? kinda wishing for the older days when you could pick up a catalog , place a call and have your item within a week. so much for technology.
Tough economy and shrinking (some say) MR business means local HS don't have money to keep extra inventory. Same goes for MR manufacturers, hence the strategy to manufacture enough units just to cover pre-orders, strategy which I really dislike.
All comes down to what they call Lean Manufacturing. Produce only enough to cover preorders with a percentage of overproduction. Which is much much less today than it was years ago. Todays plastic market is handled much like the brass market. One must preorder what they want or there is a good chance you wont get it or you will have to camp out on ebay and search online sources to find one at a shop that ordered that version for stock. I dont see this changing any time soon either. The markets will remain soft and volitile for years to come. I know my hobby spending dollers have shrunk to almost nothing in recent years. I preorder very little, instead I watch for deals online and in the second hand market. Mike
LHS mechanic and geniune train and antique garden tractor nut case!
johnnyshiloh As I sit here wondering How long before I can Get a replacement locomotive from my local hobby shop. I wonder who came up with the marketing Idea of No inventory is good for business, I recently purchase 2 new Ho models , An Sd70 Ace and an Mp 15ac engine, Both had to be returned due to the fact neither ran out of the Box.Many years in the hobby along with my fellow Modelers at the local hobby shop Are amazed that in this day an age of instant everything I have to wait Months for a replacement engine due to the fact I missed the pre order date?. the pre-order dates are fine for buying new engines , but what happens when that new engine dosen't work,. the manufacture can not help because his inventory is O . How can this be good for the hobbyist who has cash on hand , and no place to spend it? kinda wishing for the older days when you could pick up a catalog , place a call and have your item within a week. so much for technology.
A lot of facts are missing or are unclear. I would hesitate to rush to a judgment without more information. And I'm not sure what pre-order has to do with the situation.
This is not new ground for these forums, but in general, Chinese production runs something like this:
Note that run size is locked in early because assembly and paint space is rented, not owned. As soon as importer A's run is done, the facility is set up to do importer B's run (or a different model from importer A).
Almost all importers take their orders from hobby shops and distributors - not from individuals. Individual pre-orders are actually more of a retailer tool than an importer tool to help determine order quantities. BLI, with their in-house retail arm, is a rare exception. But even with BLI, the in-house retailer aggregates the individual pre-orders.
In the OP case, the warranty return is apparently being handled by the LHS. The LHS apparently has no unspoken for stock left. (I wonder how many extra the LHS ordered.) Depending on how prompt actions are at both the LHS and the importer, I would expect up to 6 weeks delay for the replacement if the importer has any left. If the importer also has none left, it's going to be many, many months for a replacement unless an alternate paint scheme or model is acceptable.
If both LHS and importer have zero stock, the most realistic approach would be to find another distributor or LHS that has not yet sold out their entire stock of the chosen roadname. Then the sticky issue of who pays who rears its ugly head.
The ugly reality is that customers just don't have the same recourse for things gone wrong with foreign-produced items. Importers don't want to admit this (naturally), but it's true. And customers don't like to take this into account either when pursuing the ultimate deal.
I don't have any great answers; I'm just painting a likely scenario. It's easy to point the finger at both the importer and the LHS for not ordering greater quantities - and perhaps they will in the future. But all it takes is a couple of money-losing misjudgments on either party's part to make them swear they will never make that mistake again.
Then, perhaps it might become feasible to own one's production facilities again (preferably domestically) with flexible local suppliers. Then surprises in market conditions can be more quickly accommodated.
just my thoughts
Fred W
Precisely as the previous poster said..
It used to be that many hobby shops would be saddled with large stocks of stuff...but we are not seeing that now because of that over abundance...
Besides, no one really can say just what that market size really is...at any rate...
Me? I just go and find the deals when I can...or make the dang things myself...
Any argument carried far enough will end up in Semantics--Hartz's law of rhetoric Emerald. Leemer and Southern The route of the Sceptre Express Barry
I just started my blog site...more stuff to come...
http://modeltrainswithmusic.blogspot.ca/
Fred,
Lots of thoughtful and accurate important points as usual.
A few comments if I may, you said:
"Note that run size is locked in early because assembly and paint space is rented, not owned. As soon as importer A's run is done, the facility is set up to do importer B's run (or a different model from importer A).
Almost all importers take their orders from hobby shops and distributors - not from individuals. Individual pre-orders are actually more of a retailer tool than an importer tool to help determine order quantities. BLI, with their in-house retail arm, is a rare exception. But even with BLI, the in-house retailer aggregates the individual pre-orders."
This is true, but is changing quickly. distributors, in the traditional sense are just about gone. Walthers imports, distributs to hobby shops/mail order outlets and has their own retail arm. Athearn/Horizion also. So yes they are taking preorders from hobby shops, but also from individuals through their retail outlets. So are Bowser, ConCor, BLI (which you mentioned), and Intermountain.
Bachmann sells to both directly to retail shops/mail order outlets and to distributors like Horizion and Walthers - I pitty the shop owners foolish enough to buy Bachmann from those two.
And there is still no evidence to suggest that Bachmann and Athearn are limiting production based on preorders. Since there still seems to be plenty of their product available after the "first rush" of a new item. But it is clear that many of those others are playing quantities very close to preorder commitments.
I agree with your comments about domestic production, but domestic or off shore, good service is linked to investing in inventory and until that happens "service" will remain like Bachmann, "we will give you a new one, or if we are out of them, what else would you like".
Sheldon
This topic leads me to three questions I've always wanted to ask. How much profit is made by the importer when the product is sold to a business like Walthers,Horizon,etc.? and do the "importers" such as Athearn,Atlas,etc monitor how fast or slow their products move off the shelf? Case in point when Athearns "R Mack" tow trucks came out, they flew off the shelf and in this case would the importer ask for another run of fast selling products from the manufacturer?
willy6 This topic leads me to three questions I've always wanted to ask. How much profit is made by the importer when the product is sold to a business like Walthers,Horizon,etc.?
This topic leads me to three questions I've always wanted to ask. How much profit is made by the importer when the product is sold to a business like Walthers,Horizon,etc.?
I don't know what the discount is to the distributors. I believe it's typically expressed as a percentage of MSRP, and would be less than 50%.
....and do the "importers" such as Athearn,Atlas,etc monitor how fast or slow their products move off the shelf? Case in point when Athearns "R Mack" tow trucks came out, they flew off the shelf and in this case would the importer ask for another run of fast selling products from the manufacturer?
There's no data system that links importers, distributors, and hobby shops. Besides word of mouth, orders for more stock from the LHS and distributors would be a good clue.
In the last year or two, the problem with additional runs has been a lack of capacity at the handful of model railroad manufacturers in China. Production runs have been repeatedly delayed as the manufacturers took on more business than they could handle. About a year ago, some smaller importers were given letters telling them to find a new manufacturer. There is hope that this will reduce of the delays we have been seeing for importers whose business was retained. Labor issues and rising costs in China, along with other market uncertainties make it unlikely that Chinese manufacturers will expand their capacity significantly.
Yes, most importers will try to get 2nd runs done as fast as possible when there is unanticipated market success. The 2nd and subsequent runs are more profitable than the first because much of the tooling cost has already been amortized.
my thoughts
Given that discounts run as much as 50%, I'm not sure MSRP has much meaning. Hobby shops in Northern Virginia are about the only ones I know of that actually charge MSRP S scale, being a minority scale, tends to have less discounts. But still I have gotten as much as 40% off at train shows and 50% off from the importer when he has a sale. But 15-25% is a more normal range. I figure the Chinese factory must be charging about 25% of MSRP for everyone else to still make a profit. But then smaller lines or less popular items like parts are discounted less or not at all These latter items are usually made in the U.S. and don't have as many resellers in the chain, so maybe that's the reason.
I freely confess that I don't have any experience in retail (other than a summer flipping burgers many years ago), but from the outside it looks like a mess.
Paul
It's a simple matter of numbers.
In the 1991 Walthers Catalog, Athearn had 21 different decorated & operating locomotive models in 141 total variations for their entire catalog. If a hobby show were to order one of everything, it would cost $3,821 at full MSRP.
As of the end of 2009, Athearn's website listed no less than 39 different loco models in 2774 total variations for Genesis and RTR model lines. If one were to average $100 per loco, and a hobby shop wanted to order one of everything, it would cost around $2,774,000 dollars.
Now, who has that kind of money? Obviously, most hobby shops are not going to order one of everything today...it's impossible as there is so much more out there and they don't have that kind of captial. So, they guess what people want, and sometimes they guess wrong.And this is just Athearn. It's not counting Atlas, BLI, or any other company.
That's why you can't just go into a hobby shop months or years after a model was released and expect to find everything you want on the shelf like you could in the "old days". No one can afford to stockpile millions of dollars of items just in case someone, some time from now, might want one.
Let me put it this way: that SD70Ace and the MP15AC would probably not exist today if we kept the 1980's ideals of model railroading.
Paul A. Cutler III
At the risk of getting my head bitten off let me add to what Paul just said, in 1968 I opened a train store here with a total investment roughly $25,000, a fair piece of change then. By 1971 I had managed to increase my inventory to include literally everything that was available for a dealer to sell and that total came to about $40,000-45,000 and this involved N Scale and HO only but also included a large selection of brass as well. We advertised over a 100 different brass loco's in stock at all times. None of this was done with "borrowed money", it was all straight from the pocket so to speak. We bought from Atlas and a few others "as" distributors, the rules have changed since then, and the discount there was 50&10. Or, 50% off of MSRP and another 10% off if paid within 30 days, 40&10 for all others such as Walthers. Tools and books usually ran about a one third discount.
That being said I reconsidered opeing another train store about the year 2000 and as best as I could figure because of the raise in prices and the "amount" of newly available merchandise I was going to have to come up with at least $500,000 in inventory to even begin to approach the level of what I had in my previous store and this was due primarily to the amount of newly available merchandise on the market. To "fully" stock a train store today with 2 of each item available, and that's NOT a heavy inventory, would require in excess of $1,000,000...................
There's an old joke among vendors and dealers alike, "wanna make a small fortune in model trains? Start with a big one!"
Unfortunatly there's a lot of truth to that...........
Mark
P.S. I sold my store in 1974 and made a decent, if not large profit, and got into a less stressfull and more profitable business.
-------------------------------
Mark,At the last train store I worked part time my boss would say he wasn't getting rich or living above his means..He's living comfortable enough to drive a 5 year "beater" pickup while the wife drives a 2 year old Camry-she was a school teacher..
His shop was profitable and he wanted to expand to on line sales but,the"boss" ended that when she retired and wanted to move to Florida...He closed shop and move to Florida.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
Larry...........
Sounds about right, when I finally sold my store I used the money on "real estate" and made a heck of a lot more with a lot less "stress". Of course just by "luck" I was right on the front end of a boom. No smarts involved, just pure luck.
The other thing that I noticed is most model railroad shops are started by model railroaders, not always the best business men or the best at people skills, but they usually try hard. The biggest problem is when you make your hobby your business you loose interest in "working" on your hobby. I didn't get interested in trains seriously until quite some time later just because of "burn out". It almost ruined model railroading as a hobby for me. I still do a little buying and selling now and then, mostly brass, but if I don't sell anything for 6 months it's not a big deal to me and you would never catch me under a sign behind a counter again, I'd loose my hobby again.
Like any business it's a balancing act of keeping enough inventory to satisfy customers while not keeping excess inventory which only ties up cash. Making money is all about the number of 'turns' in inventory you can achieve. Inventory that sits not only ties up cash, it loses value the longer it sits.
I imagine that this hobby has a low number of turns per year, so unsold items tend to sit longer. This translates into bigger potential losses, so inventory control becomes even more critical. In this environment, I can see why limited runs are more appealing to everyone in the supply chain. However, this can also more easily bump into a customer satisfaction issue as frustration mounts over lack of availability. So....
I'm glad I'm not in this business.
From the hobby store owners I talk to, they can't get the inventory. So, it's not the LHSs trying to avoid inventory. Your post is right, it's the mfg, but also the large distributors like Horizon and Walthers--whose business is stocking. The internet stores are even worse as they are built on a business model of JIT--that's one way they give us cheap prices.
One way to help fix this is to not preorder. For some reason guys keep buying locos sight unseen. And for sound locos where things are so subjective it really makes no sense if you're concerned about quality. You got hit with bad product and little or no inventory to back it up. If you got to try the product out before you bought it, would you have purchased??
Since the average cost per loco or car have gone up significantly in the last 10 to 15 years, mfg unsold stock becomes a bigger issue. 15 years ago, my average acquisition cost of a loco was probably around $60, today it's more like $150(more with sound). For psgr cars I paid around $15, today more like $45. My salary hasn't tripled since 1996. I doubt that total industry sales have tripled in the last 15 years as well. That means that each unit represents a higher percentage of sales and cost.
Richard
There are actually two issues here related to the modern concepts of marketing to a niche (or niche within a niche, or dare I say, niche within a niche within a niche) market such as ours is.
The first is the limited run/get it while you can/never to be repeated philosophy, where the manufacturer seeks to know how many units have been sold before the production run even begins. It is one way to address the very real risk of coming out with a product that too few people want, or too few want at the price that has to be charged.
But it also means the manufacturer often misses out on a runaway success where the demand lasts for years not months. If you think about "profit" the way an accountant does, imagine how fully amortized the tool and die work was for the classic Mantua steamers, or the Revell structures.
The second issue is that the era of a permanently cataloged item also usually involved a nice availability of replacement parts -- Athearn, Mantua, Bowser, and AHM/Rivarossi all had robust parts catalogs and often Athearn parts were packaged for retail sale at LHSs. Going way back, Varney had a huge parts catalog all supporting their line of locomotives, and I imagine that Lionel and American Flyer were the inspiration -- remember when dealers advertised that they were authorized to do Lionel repairs? So if somethng went wrong, authorized repair and not just complete replacement was the first option for defective goods.
And if the problem was your fault, you could attempt the repair because you could buy all the parts.
The irony with limited runs is that by necessity it involves early announcement of future plans, which used to be a closely guarded secret to avoid having someone beat you to it. Yet another irony is that history shows that we modelers can get rather ungrateful when what was announced as a limited run is generously brought back as a re-run! I remember the initial Bachmann Spectrum engines were announced as limited runs so I got the GE 44 tonner and an Amtrak F40PH in the initial run, at close to full list price -- only to see them brought back often enough that significant discounting started to be involved. I don't regret my purchases but I could have gotten better deals.
Dave Nelson
The answer to this headline can only be a decided "Yes"!
I think that this limited run, limited availability & no inventory policy is detrimental to the hobby. I am one of those folks who has to get a look and feel of something, before I cash out my money, and I guess I am not the only one around. I don´t like those pre-order items, making me wait for months until it is released into the market. I just don´t do any pre-orders - period! I don´t let the manufacturers blackmail me into a purchase.
The same I do with back-orders at my LHS. Either he´s got it, then I´ll buy it, or he does not stock it - out I am. The third time around I don´t get what I want I´ll find a new place to spend my $$$.
To keep it quite simple - I am the customer, either they play by my rule, or they don´t get my business!
I agree with Ulrich, I absolutely hate this preorder crap going on. I hate when I want something and it's already been sold out. ie. the new Walthers Sante Fe Superchief.
These manufacturers are missing out on my business because they don't have any units available.
Also, somewhere along these lines the issue of quality control must be hurting their business. Who wants to buy a $300 loco that is defective? Not me, I refuse to spend my time and energy trying to fix something they should have figured out before putting them on the shelves.
Michael
CEO- Mile-HI-RailroadPrototype: D&RGW Moffat Line 1989
Train Modeler From the hobby store owners I talk to, they can't get the inventory. So, it's not the LHSs trying to avoid inventory. Your post is right, it's the mfg, but also the large distributors like Horizon and Walthers--whose business is stocking. The internet stores are even worse as they are built on a business model of JIT--that's one way they give us cheap prices. One way to help fix this is to not preorder. For some reason guys keep buying locos sight unseen. And for sound locos where things are so subjective it really makes no sense if you're concerned about quality. You got hit with bad product and little or no inventory to back it up. If you got to try the product out before you bought it, would you have purchased?? Since the average cost per loco or car have gone up significantly in the last 10 to 15 years, mfg unsold stock becomes a bigger issue. 15 years ago, my average acquisition cost of a loco was probably around $60, today it's more like $150(more with sound). For psgr cars I paid around $15, today more like $45. My salary hasn't tripled since 1996. I doubt that total industry sales have tripled in the last 15 years as well. That means that each unit represents a higher percentage of sales and cost. Richard
Richard, I agree completely, I just want to remind you and everyone of an important point.
You CHOSE to buy locos with the added features of DCC and sound, like choosing to buy BMW rather than a Ford, Chevy or Toyota.
And you chose to buy high detailed RTR passenger cars.
So, fact remains, much of the increase in prices above the rate of inflation is to provide these new"value added features and benifits".
I still detail my own pasenger cars and have no interest in sound or DCC and the last five locos I bought - steam at that - were only $103 each.
I am right with you about sending a message by not preordering.
That is the point...if one continues to demand high quality, highly detailed and DCC equipped with sound you will have to pay for that. You would also have to deal with the pre-order route as many of these are not cheap to make and, of course, there is that other issue, what is the actual size of our market?
Then there is this.....how many of us really want to work on our locomotives to get them running well? Not many of us do...so...what do we want?
Labour costs are going up...energy costs are going up...supply chain costs are going up....like it or not...products are going to up....
Pre ordering is stupid at best. A picture can be deceiving. I won't buy anything (minus building ) unless it's in my hands and I can see it first hand. Pre ordering just gives manufactures more reason to build only on request which limits more and more of what you can get at the LHS.
It's ok Atlantic. My wife keeps telling me I don't need DCC. She says I can use DC and still have the same amount of fun. I finally ran DCC the other day and never going back to DC so she lost lol. I'm sure I'll be paying for it though!
Some time back a similar discussion on the Atlas forum and when I voice my concerns I was told by Paul Graf that they(Atlas) order extra as replacements should the need araise and they carry a line of repair parts..
I agree pre ordering is a joke and leads to "buy it now" feeding frenzies..
So tell me, exactly what does a person feed these "frenzies"??
Mark ;-]
Forty Niner So tell me, exactly what does a person feed these "frenzies"?? Mark ;-]
I use pig slop..
ATLANTIC CENTRAL Train Modeler: From the hobby store owners I talk to, they can't get the inventory. So, it's not the LHSs trying to avoid inventory. Your post is right, it's the mfg, but also the large distributors like Horizon and Walthers--whose business is stocking. The internet stores are even worse as they are built on a business model of JIT--that's one way they give us cheap prices. One way to help fix this is to not preorder. For some reason guys keep buying locos sight unseen. And for sound locos where things are so subjective it really makes no sense if you're concerned about quality. You got hit with bad product and little or no inventory to back it up. If you got to try the product out before you bought it, would you have purchased?? Since the average cost per loco or car have gone up significantly in the last 10 to 15 years, mfg unsold stock becomes a bigger issue. 15 years ago, my average acquisition cost of a loco was probably around $60, today it's more like $150(more with sound). For psgr cars I paid around $15, today more like $45. My salary hasn't tripled since 1996. I doubt that total industry sales have tripled in the last 15 years as well. That means that each unit represents a higher percentage of sales and cost. Richard Richard, I agree completely, I just want to remind you and everyone of an important point. You CHOSE to buy locos with the added features of DCC and sound, like choosing to buy BMW rather than a Ford, Chevy or Toyota. And you chose to buy high detailed RTR passenger cars. So, fact remains, much of the increase in prices above the rate of inflation is to provide these new"value added features and benifits". I still detail my own pasenger cars and have no interest in sound or DCC and the last five locos I bought - steam at that - were only $103 each. I am right with you about sending a message by not preordering. Sheldon
Train Modeler: From the hobby store owners I talk to, they can't get the inventory. So, it's not the LHSs trying to avoid inventory. Your post is right, it's the mfg, but also the large distributors like Horizon and Walthers--whose business is stocking. The internet stores are even worse as they are built on a business model of JIT--that's one way they give us cheap prices. One way to help fix this is to not preorder. For some reason guys keep buying locos sight unseen. And for sound locos where things are so subjective it really makes no sense if you're concerned about quality. You got hit with bad product and little or no inventory to back it up. If you got to try the product out before you bought it, would you have purchased?? Since the average cost per loco or car have gone up significantly in the last 10 to 15 years, mfg unsold stock becomes a bigger issue. 15 years ago, my average acquisition cost of a loco was probably around $60, today it's more like $150(more with sound). For psgr cars I paid around $15, today more like $45. My salary hasn't tripled since 1996. I doubt that total industry sales have tripled in the last 15 years as well. That means that each unit represents a higher percentage of sales and cost. Richard
Sheldon,
You're right about paying for the extras. I buy used stuff when I can and then make it what I want for a lot less. My son and I have installed probably 25 sound decoders. His last locomotive was a kit we put together for a SD90MacH. And I am sick of having to "fix" brand new locos. Even if Athearn or whomever agreed to "fix" the loco, they only repair it to what it was. And sometimes that wasn't very good, such as the MP15AC speaker install.
Like the auto analogy you had. The car mfgs make a lot more money on a fully loaded luxury model than the stripped down version. The options are supposed to be extra. I don't like having to pay for them when I can put them on as I wish and for the money I can afford. I am also glad for those who want the fully loaded luxury brand that they are there to be bought so the hobby can be enjoyed by many.
There are 2 ways of looking at customer-supplier relationships. One is, "I'm the customer. Read my mind, produce what I want. Then, maybe I'll buy it if I get a good price. And it better meet my expectations that you the supplier helped set. Until then, I'm sitting on my hands. I'm not using my time to assist you in gaining greater profits." Pretty much standard American consumer practice.
The other mode - that I learned in my Deming courses and still believe in - is to partner with chosen suppliers (and their chosen suppliers). I have seen partnerships succeed in getting special runs of locomotives with slightly modified details and new paint schemes that would probably never have been produced otherwise. And most importers got their start through one guy taking the lead for a group, and getting a particular engine produced that most of the group would like to buy.
The hated pre-ordering, as I said in an earlier post, is more of a tool for the retailer than for the importer/manufacturer. I know of only 2 importers that make a go/no-go decision based on quantity of pre-orders. As those with experience in hobby shops have pointed out, the great variety of products makes it difficult for the retailer to know just what to stock. Since he can't stock it all, the pre-orders give the retailer a better handle on what is likely to sell to his clientele. For the consumer, the pre-order is a guarantee that one of the run is his, and that bigger than expected sales won't leave him without the model he really wants. The downside, as many including the OP, have pointed out, is the real possibility that the product doesn't measure up to expectations.
Yes, by pre-ordering, by serving as a prototype evaluator, by providing prototype information, by investing in an importer or manufacturer through deposits, etc., you are reducing risk in the supply chain, and quite possibly enhancing profits. Isn't that what you really want in the long run for your supply chain? You want them to do well serving you so that the mutual business grows. And if you help them produce what you want sooner or better than would have otherwise happened, isn't that a good thing for you?
My take is that pre-ordering itself is neither good nor evil. I will pre-order when the desire is high, and I believe in the manufacturer. Otherwise, by not pre-ordering I am essentially saying I am willing to make do with what is available when the time comes for me to buy. The same is true of buying new cars. You can order the specific car you want with your chosen options, and wait for it to be built and delivered (I've done this a couple of times when my choices were not popular for the region of the country where I was living.). Or, you can accept what is on the dealers' lots within a reasonable radius of your location when you are ready to buy. Translate auto options and colors to color scheme and version of a locomotive, and you see the picture I am painting.
my thoughts, your choices
I have pre-ordered twice directly from an importer. They are both small operations and only sell direct. Both times it was for items I really wanted, that were small runs, offered pre-order discount, and have not been discounted after arrival.
But that's the exception. Mostly I wait for it to arrive. There is more available even in S than I can use even within my era (the ever popular 50's). So I pick and chose from what's available now.
Enjoy
Several years ago Con-Cor announced the Burlington Zephyr set in HO scale as a very limited run by pre-order only. One of our club members just had to have one, so he pre-ordered and paid Con-Cor's full MSRP.
He waited almost a year to get the model. When it finally arrived the motor went up in smoke within five minutes. Con-Cor's offices are in Tucson, Arizona, which is only 70 miles away, so he phoned them and drove to Tucson to get it repaired.
They gave him a replacement, which was the last one they had in stock. He then drove 1/2 mile to a local hobby shop, and saw 5 of them on the shelf for $200 less than he had paid.
Needless to say, he was not a happy camper about that. And Con-Cor subsequently made a second run of the model, so it was not really a limited run, collector's item as advertised.
cacole Several years ago Con-Cor announced the Burlington Zephyr set in HO scale as a very limited run by pre-order only. One of our club members just had to have one, so he pre-ordered and paid Con-Cor's full MSRP. He waited almost a year to get the model. When it finally arrived the motor went up in smoke within five minutes. Con-Cor's offices are in Tucson, Arizona, which is only 70 miles away, so he phoned them and drove to Tucson to get it repaired. They gave him a replacement, which was the last one they had in stock. He then drove 1/2 mile to a local hobby shop, and saw 5 of them on the shelf for $200 less than he had paid. Needless to say, he was not a happy camper about that. And Con-Cor subsequently made a second run of the model, so it was not really a limited run, collector's item as advertised.
Four simple points:
If "they" say it's collectable, it's not - these are big boys toys, some will have value later most will not. No one can predict the "future" value of anything, especially something as trival as model trains. And history tells use 99.5% of this stuff is like a used car - value drops exponentially as soon as it hits the street.
ConCor has no control over what other retailers sell their products for. But all manufacturers in both the direct sales and wholesale business are going to protect their dealers by not discounting - that is all a given to anyone who knows even the sightest bit about business.
They replaced it - customer should be happy.
It is in the best interest of ConCor and the the hobby as a whole to match the supply to the demand as closely as possible. This makes the most money for them and fosters future interest in their products. This is largely the question/problem discussed in this thread. There is no "benifit" form a limited production run that does not fill the demand.
This may explain the answer I got when I called my local hobby shop and inquired about Atlas sets. The answer was along the line of "I can order one for you but there are only two that are not discontinued." I wonder if he really meant that his distributer only has two sets to choose from in remaining stock?
HO & N scale. Digitrax DCC. Mostly L&N (Louisville and Nashville) railway using a mix of brands. Back in the hobby after a looooong absence.