Don't get me wrong, Kadee makes great stuff.
But I failed collecting 101, so I don't buy much of anything I have to preorder. In fact, I have pre-ordered more from Spring Mills Depot (4 items, 20 pieces total) than all other manufacturers out there put together.
And with no plans to replace all the Blue Box, Yellow Box, Varney and Athearn tin cars, etc, etc, I am reaching the point where the layout does not need much more rolling stock.
As a business person I get it, but the shopping part of the hobby was nicer when they made the trains before they tried to sell them.
So Kadee's new policy is fine with me.
Sheldon
G Paine,Actually, what Kadee is doing is not what BLI or Rapido are doing.
BLI/Rapido picks a project and does most of the design work, then they announce it to the world and start taking pre-orders a year (or so) in advance. If the pre-orders are there, they start cutting the tooling. If the pre-orders are not there, they delay or cancel the project.
What Kadee is going to do is more like the Tangent model. Tangent designs, builds, and ships a product to their warehouse. Once they have it in stock, they then announce to the world and start taking orders; first come, first served. If it bombs, they are hosed.There are pros and cons with both methods:BLI/Rapido Pro: Gives time for consumer to save up money for product, the most time for widest possible advertisement swath through hobby press, prevents making a economic loser, maximizes income.BLI/Rapido Con: Consumers get ticked off by the long wait between announcement and delivery, or ticked off when product gets canceled, or get ticked off when long-forgotten orders start hitting their credit cards.Kadee/Tangent Pro: Instant gratification for consumers.
Kadee/Tangent Con: Consumers can miss product due to it selling out before they find out about it; the company can leave money on the table by not making enough or get burned by making too many; and any major errors that might have been caught during the public announcement period are not corrected.
All I buy are undecorated models. For once I am not effected by an earth-shattering announcement!
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-Kevin
Living the dream.
Broadway Limited, Rapido and some other manufacturers have been doing something similar for a long time. They do not commit to a production run unless they have sufficient preorders. I have seen some projects cancelled fro lack of preorders
The big companies like Walthers and MB Klein do their large preorders, so they have a sufficient supply.
George In Midcoast Maine, 'bout halfway up the Rockland branch
I assume a fair number of you are like me on the Kadee email list and recently they announced a different business method. The "pre-order" system they've had for years is going away (that is, they'd announce a car, and if you wanted to be sure to get it you'd pre-order it, or if the LHS was confident it would be popular they would pre-order it).
Now Kadee is saying that you should sign up for their electronic newsletter (which I strongly suggest regardless) and they'll anounce what's new, it will be in limited quantities, and it's every man for himself and the devil take the hind-most -- my words, not theirs of course. What a "limited" quantity is, is not defined. To me it seems more like the distribution philosophy of some of the boutique resin car kit folks: "here's our kit, we made 100, go for it."
I'm not sure if it is (from my perspective) better or worse if you feel you really want a particular car. I know I passed up some pre-orders on cars that in retrospect I would have liked to have. One would think that it could have an impact on pricing, but again I'm not sure in which direction. We'll know more after December when the change-over happens.
At least one hobby dealer I know thinks this is very ill-advised. Perhaps their feeling was they'd rather take the risk of pre-orders sitting on their shelves for a while but that way a larger overall quantity of cars could be made and they'd sell, eventually. There are after all different philosophies in the LHS retail world, too.
The other part of Kadee's announcement was that while they appreciate and encourage suggestions about road names and paint schemes, some are of such limited interest as to be impossible for them to put into production from a financial standpoint.
Hopefully I have not mis-stated Kadee's position here.
I'll be interested in hearing your reactions, particularly from those with a retail perspective. Or maybe it is just too early to comment until we see how it all shakes out.
Dave Nelson