Who?

I can’t even begin to list all my friends and acquaintances that have had a serious drop in their income over the last six to eight years. And I’m not even taking into account inflation.

When you go from a $20 an hour “High Tec” job to an $8 an hour service industry job, your disposable income goes to $0000000.000000

 

I hear ya!

What triggered the question was a combination of seemingly unrelated factors and events. One of them was an acquaintance in the trade telling me sales were down. Yet another was a passing comment by Charlie Vlk on the Yahoo N Scale list. Another was the LBF rumor and another was the trend toward increased prices. As Alain and sd90s pointed out, that don't go so well with declining disposable income.

Which of course leads to surmising that something has to give - question is what?

I have a different take: Product creates the market in this hobby. Kato brought out the California Zephyr and did it well, and most people found a way to raise the money to get a set (self included). Same thing with Bachmann and their Consolidation steamer.

Problem is product costs money. No, not for us (that, too) but manufacturers don't get a lot of change for $500,000 tooling up for a new product. Smaller companies usually don't have a few million lying around to tool the five or six products they wanted to do for a particular year. Which means they can't bring out many sexy new products to capture our attention (and our wallets).

Their only hope would seem to be us, buying their existing product line. Which of course only happens if we think their products are good. So.. what I was curious about is which manufacturers put out products compelling enough to keep us buying...

 

I'd feel like buying an Austin Mini.

 

If it were only about getting a fuel efficient car that would be expensive but easy to deal with. Unfortunately it isn’t.

Am I the only one who notices that a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk and a pound of meat are all closely tied to the cost of a gallon of gas/diesel? Then there are the dramatic increases in insurance and health care costs.

Somebody mentioned the Kato Super Chief and how many people came up with the money to buy one. Well I’m one who would have liked to get one and the Kato Zephyr as well. I didn’t get either and money was the reason. I’m sure I’m not the only person with that story.

As far as buying the products available from the small manufactures. Good idea but if they don’t keep new product flowing how can you keep buying? How many DPM buildings can one small layout use? Even kitbashed you wind up with the same architecture everywhere.

Same with Pikestuff and the Walther’s buildings.

 

I've heard it referred to as the "Slinky Effect".

The farmer must use fuel to farm the farm so as soon as fuel costs rise, the farmer must figure in the added cost he has to pay to do business. The small business owner spends more to either manufacture the product or to buy the product for resale. He must pass this cost on at some point. The larger companies must pass the higher energy costs on as well.

BTW: if you are wondering where your paycheck is on the SLINKY.... you will find it on the end that hasn't moved yet.

Things will usually balance out in time, but the volitility of the energy market right now has a lot of folks holding on to those hard earned discretionary dollars just in case they need them to buy gas to get to work next week.

The businesses that are carrying little to no debt will probably weather the uncertain times, those carrying a large debt load may not.....

 

There is an article in the NMRA monthly "Scale Rails" where they interviewed Jim Conway. He says the model rail market has contracted for then every year since the early 1990's. He also says Con Cor is currently making 80% of their return off 20% of their product. He says there will likely be drastic cuts in what CC does, and the facilities and personnel requred to get it done.

I don't agree on every point made in the article, but still recommend it as insightful information on the inner workings of the hobby from a manufacturer/importer view.

 

Long Train,

I was goig to post about that interview as a separate thread. MY question is, are all sales dropping, or is it just ConCor, because the market has passed them by?

I'll bet most of their sales came from a few good steamers, the passenger cars and the Autoracks. Even with the racks, they may have been limited by how many folks have layouts big enough to run them. Perhaps ditto with big steam and passenger cars.

I wonder, if Kato has a better ratio of profict on most items. I think the RDC and pair of cement hoppers were both dogs for them, but I'll bet everything else sold all they could make.

Ditto Atlas. As for freight cars, the only ones I see sitting on shelves are the poor one (like Concor and old Bachman) and some "run once too many" like the RC centerbeams.

 

Bowser Manufacturing, Montoursville, PA.....!

They make an excellent Boston & Maine Class N-5 Minuteman caboose in N-Scale. One of the few stores where it is available is Rio Grande Hobbies. Bowser also makes some very nice hoppers...2-door, 4-door, airslide, and cylindrical. These N-Scale products are also available in Pennsy and other road names.

Bowser also has a large selection of HO-Scale products, including trolleys.

 

I think that most of the second tier manufacurers make pretty good products these days. If Con Cor is one, it has improved a lot over the past few years. I'd also put in this category some smaller manufacturers such as DPM (already mentioned), Walthers (for their buildings in N scale), Woodland Scenics, Deluxe (mentioned by several here), and Red Caboose. Some others that make very nice products (but are perhaps "third tier") are GHQ, NJ International, Fine N Scale, Aztec and the notable others made by members of this forum (I won't mention them except Deluxe because I'd probably leave someone out and I don't want to offend anybody).

I'm one of those that didn't bite on the Cal Zephyr mostly because I put together a passable CB & Q streamliner out of Con Cor Budd cars and an old set of Con Cor E7 shells custom painted and on plastic Life Like E unit chasses. I'll probably pass on the Super Chief since I've got some streamline ATSF cars (both Katos and Con Cor Budds) and a pair of PA's plus a couple of F3's (the original katos from the 1980's) to pull them.

Do I still buy new stuff? Sure, but like others gas prices, general inflation, work considerations, and my upward "mobility" in age have caused me to back off a bit. On the other hand, I find I'm doing more real modeling (painting, kit-bashing, scenery, even a little scratchbuilding) than I've done in a long time so hobby enjoyment is the same if not greater these days. Besides, at the present there is more stuff coming out in n scale than I can handle, even if I had the free dinero. I really don't need to double my loco collection every couple of years to enjoy running trains.

Just some thoughts scraped together for this thread.

[ July 05, 2005, 09:57 PM: Message edited by: Big Snooze ]

 

I dunno Alan. Maybe he uses Unitrack and takes down his layout for the shows.

 

This subject seems to come up most summers, but this year there are additional 'happenings' within the industry to cause some concern. The industry does seem to be in a state of change and flux. We hope that this will be a good thing in the end, time will tell.

The modeler is being flooded with more and more choices and decisions to make. That is a good thing - for modelers. N scale is reaching a point that we will be able to choose 'high end' models or 'trainset' models - or both. All R-T-R.

Will the small companies that make detail parts and specialty items still find a - 'large enough' market to make it worthwhile to market their items ? Many (most) of them make them now because they are modelers themselves (and want the items themselves), not because it is a highly profitable venture. Of course, this is nothing new.

Of concern is that the distribution pipelines will become so cloged with releases form the 'major' companies that shops will continue to have to choose which products to offer, and all manufacturers will struggle to keep their products in the limelight. Those with the most ad dollars and influence of distributors, will win. As modelers, we forget what was new three months ago, yes.

Interesting times, indeed.
Steven

 

Making something for yourself that others "might" like is a double edged sword. I've had more products die out because, while I wanted it, no one else did.

It just makes being a model manufacture more fun!

Kel

 

Kel and Steven, thanks for sharing your insights. Seems like the Golden Age in N Scale is not without its downsides, doesn't it?

As Steven pointed out, distribution is a major issue for manufacturers, especially if they don't make HO stuff, too. And it remains the irony that more and more brick and mortar stores go out of business, even as they ignore the fastest growing scale, one with more and more products.

 

After doing this for 3 years as of July, the model business is alot different than 10 years ago.

One thing that has helped my business was getting into another scale. Narrow guage trains are keeping the lights on, so to speak, so N scale items can still come out.

The other edge that has helped is the Internet and boards like TrainBoard. It's a piece of cake to make something and spend 20 minutes announcing it all over the model forums. This saves the 3 months for a print blurb to come out. I did send out some of the new stuff today to the N mags for them to look at, but it's still nice to let people know about something *right now*.

Kel

 

Quite true!