Horizon Hobbies (Owner of Athearn) Sold

Mike Fifer,

In response to your statement about Athearn not selling to Internet shops; is it just to Internet shops that do not have a brick and mortar store? Please elaborate as I have wondered why a few large etailers do not carry Athearn stuff.

 

If you care to , read this!
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303983904579093173797712780

Mike

 

There is nothing to elaborate on. They Will Not sell to etailers or distributors.
Mike

 

My understanding is that Horizon requires a fair amount of evidence that a brick and mortar store actually exists. They used to send out disposable cameras and directions as to what to photograph, for example, your outside sign, your list of hours, your inside display area, your shelving, etc. With a disposable camera it's rather difficult to fake or photoshop something. (Are disposable cameras still available?) They also require a certain number of business hours and a certain minimum sales volume per year.

In other words, it ain't easy.

 

Horizon's "no Etailer" policy is likely rooted in the Great R/C Crash of XX, when, shortly after R/C started getting really popular, a bunch of Etailers jumped into the market, many of them fly-by-night, and it REALLY, REALLY hurt the B&M stores. The carnage was substantial. Horizon has chosen to take steps to protect their B&M retailers. This is simply another way that a company can attempt to preserve it's long term profitability, much like MAPP, protected sales areas, and other methods that a company will use to control the marketing of their product.

It can work, but it can also fail. Either way, as a business practice, it's likely to stay around for some time, not just in our little niche of the vast marketplace.

 

I will not elaborate but there are now ways for such companies to verify such etailers and virtually ALL other model railroad manufacturing and sales companies are doing so.

 

I don't know how smart of a business decision it is to completely rule out web sellers now days. I mean, I can understand having some sort of quality requirement... but just throwing out a blanket 'no' to all of them, is probably not smart. Like it or not, the web is here to stay. And while there are plenty of crappy web sellers, there are also crappy store owners, who didn't need very much help from the internet to put themselves out of business. Scenario: They would be more satisfied selling to some grumpy guy that has a store nobody goes into, as opposed to an excellent online seller that moves tons of stuff? I'm not saying all stores are bad... I know there are great stores. But just because you have a store, that doesn't make you a great seller automatically. Seems a little narrow-minded and potentially a shot in the foot.

 

I used to work for a major player in the brick and mortar and e-tailing markets, Horizon was difficult to deal with for a number of reasons. One of the most frustrating things was when an Athearn product would sell out before even being available. Customers hated that and it cost the shop a lot of business. The website sells Athearn stuff but it is difficult to keep track of inventory because back orders are only rarely filled on most high dollar Athearn items. In a sense Horizon's prohibition on strictly e-tailing saves Horizon and the seller the heartache of Athearns ridiculously small manufacturing runs and fluctuating stock levels. Typically though it was pretty easy to deal with Horizon on customer service issues and they did help us track down some pretty obscure components from overseas manufacturers. I will say that we received far more returns (for highly suspect reasons) from website customers and a lot of that stuff had to go back to Horizon because we couldn't take the risk of a possible defect. It may be that brick and mortar customers are more inclined to work with a hobby shop on in-house repair/servicing and therefore attract fewer customers with the "It must be ready to run mentality". You take the good with the bad, but customer patterns were the same no matter what product type you are dealing with. R/C car customers buying from the website always wanted to return cars they had wrecked for a full refund claiming they broke because they were defective (they normally blamed the electronics which triggered a return to Horizon), whereas the customers of the brick and mortar store would bring the car in for us to inspect first and we could normally fix it for very little money and effort. It was the same for planes and trains as well.

 

I have a wierd feeling that this RTR mentality WILL kill the hobby as we know it within the next 10-15 years. The writing is already starting to be scribbled on the wall.

Ryan

 

I think you might be right... on the other hand if more of us would open our hobby up to younger who show an interest I think there would still be hope. I am not addressing anyone here, but when I worked in the retail dept. of a hobby shop I saw/heard all manner of "train people" who disliked the idea of kids (sometime even teenagers) being around their layouts and yet they complained bitterly about how their club was dying off or how many hobby shop were not stocking much train stuff anymore. The two go hand in hand, getting young people involved means a next generation for the hobby. My children and the children of my best friend are as involved as we can get them in all things train related. We support our local railroad society and attend their open houses. We chase the local shortline and I make a big deal about it every time we see NS while we are driving places. Finally, we got them into Thomas when they were very little (even though I find the faces annoying), we got them an HO set up and let them run to their hearts content, and although our oldest is only 7 I let her run my n scale stuff. Kids inherently like trains, its just a matter of making sure that we don't get so wrapped up in our hobby, which can easily become a private one, that we ignore the interest of the younger people around us. I keep some older Rapido equipped N scale stuff around so my kids can run to their hearts content and I don't have to worry about broken grabs and dropped Katos.

Sorry, that was a little off-topic.

 

+1.........

 

Bumthum you hit the nail on the head! As a newbie and a younger person I thank you.

 

Funny, people have been saying that about radio control and ARF (Almost Ready to Fly) models for about the last 20 years. The RC hobby continues to grow. Lots of people would rather fly than build. And yet that hobby survives. Tons of threads on RC forums about the "death of the hobby" and how "kids today...." Yada-yadda.

FWIW, Horizon is one of the leading companies in designing and bringing to market all shape and sizes of RC aircraft. It is one of their core businesses. I suspect that the people in charge of Athern at Horizon are well schooled in how to design and market with that business model in mind. If anything, I'll bet that RTR will help attract more people, rather than fewer. Some of the guys who mined their own ore to smelt the brass to make their stuff may not like it, but there it is.


BTW - I used to grow my own trees to harvest the balsa and I raised horses so I could make my own glue. I have not built a kit from raw wood in ages, and yet I love RC as much as ever. I'm fairly new to trains, and one of the huge attractions for me was Kato Unitrack and the quality of the RTR stuff. Not to mention DCC making wiring a snap and the ease of using that. I would not be breaking out the funeral clothes

 

So far we've lost undecorated kits (and kits in general), paints, decals and detail parts.

What more has to happen to be considered detrimental?


Jason

 

I successfully made my nephew a train nut.
Started him in N scale at 5.
Every birthday and Christmas he gets more trains from me.
At age 9, I think he's a gonner.

Each of us should try to recruit a couple of people to share our passion.

 

I guess it depends on your definition of "hobby". I used to see a lot of people come in for the RTR stuff but they never became hobbyist. They simply bought the RTR planes, trains, and RC cars in the same way people go to Toys R Us to buy toys. When things broke more than not they went into the trash. That is assuming that they didn't just call us (or come to the store in person) and demand a refund because their plane crashed, their car broke, or their train didn't work. I had one customer who bought an HO train set and then tried to return it because the wheels on the loco got dirty and they didn't think they should have to clean them. Sure plenty of stuff is being sold but that doesn't equate to people I would define as hobbyists. I think it has had a detrimental effect because people learn less about their new potential hobby and so quit more readily. What they define as a bad experience is then passed on to those around them and soon word spreads that "this, that, and the other thing" is junk or there isn't anything good on the market in "such and such" hobby. That stunts the growth of the actual hobby and prevents the word of mouth advertising that unnecessary luxuries like hobbies need for long term stability. That is simply how they people I saw worked. Most people who were really into their hobbies (whichever one they chose) were at least 30 but the majority were 50 or more. I think the saving grace has been companies like Bachmann who are really stepping up their game at a competitive price and Atlas who have been emptying my wallet for several years.

On topic, yes Horizon has done a pretty good job getting new things to market and I admit that some ARF planes have found their way into my hanger. Athearn has great brand potential and I hope the new owners of Horizon see that... I would love to see them offer more of their HO models in N scale.