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Even if every Railwire-ian bought a single copy of a product that we demanded, that would amount to what, 1300 or so sales?
What I don't understand, and this really is a legitimate question, is why all the detail maunfacturers keep going belly up and then not selling off their tooling. Seems to me that Craig could and should pick-up Cal freight, Sunrise, and N Scale of Nevada tooling and add it to his line. He got production, he's got distribution, he's got CAD, he's go charisma for cryin' out loud. Yest I hear that many of these folks just won't sell, even when they have no intention of continuing production. Drives me nuts.
... What I don't understand, and this really is a legitimate question, is why all the detail maunfacturers keep going belly up and then not selling off their tooling. Seems to me that Craig could and should pick-up Cal freight, Sunrise, and N Scale of Nevada tooling and add it to his line. He got production, he's got distribution, he's got CAD, he's go charisma for cryin' out loud. Yest I hear that many of these folks just won't sell, even when they have no intention of continuing production. Drives me nuts.
This is not intended as a rebuttal -but [no pun intended] I have to think that the pre-order system this hobby is currently embracing has a lot more to do with the probability that a model does not get made than what is obvious. Capitalism has a long history among us and one of the basic tenets of capitalism is that the rewards received are commensurate with the risk taken. People will assume that a manufactutrer has done his homework and will take on the the risk fully expecting the rewards to follow. But people see the pre-order system as a means to eliminate a large part, if not all, of the risk but not affect the other side of the equation. Essentially they see the pre-order system, at best, as a lazy man's way to conduct market research or at worst an attempt to have a free lunch. In essence the perceived notion is that manufacturers hold a particular car captive until the desired ransom is paid. So they choose to not pre-order even if they would want the intended model. This essentially is telling the manufacturers what they can do with their proposed product. This perception is reinforced by the "wait and see" philosophy directed toward a few manufacturers like Bachmann whose reputation for past products has been less than stellar. All of this results in a lower demand as perceived by the manufacturers and if enough people opt out then the announced model is cancelled. This becomes a lose/lose proposition for both manufacturer and customer with the manufacturer, at best, with egg on his faceand at worst a black eye and people, both those that did, as well as, did not pre-order are left with a sour taste in their mouth. A manufacturer could do this one time without any major customer backlash but each successive time only increases the customers lack of faith in the manufactutrer's credibility. An excellent example is PCM's on again, off again, announcements, especially the PRR M1.
Another issue inherent in today's model manufacturers and bearing on the problem is that, for the most part, they are essentially a cottage industry operation with its incumbent lack of adequate capitalization. They can't afford to invest money in a product that is not going to provide sufficient returns to pay the bills. Even a well capitalized business could not withstand a series of failed attempts. But that is the risk one takes to earn the reward. It would be nice if manufacturers could function as do insurance companies where the customers pay first and then receive the product. That is sort of the way the pre-order system works without the prepayment feature. But manufacturing, by tradition, does not operate that way and that tradition is hard to break.
In addition how much desireability is there amongst the general customer base for upteen different styles of 40 foot boxcars? Is the percentage of those hard core modelers who can tell the difference between a PS1 from any other 40 foot boxcar a sufficient base to justify taking the risk to manufactue it? I, for one do not think that we, in N Guage, have reached that critical mass whereby such justification exists. We are a diverse group. A large percentage of us are in Ntrak where generally the opportunity to run long trains is not easily coupled to individual highly detailed cars that may cost 3 times or more than the cost of an Atlas Trainman/i] car. Then there is the seasonal modeler who puts up a train around the Christmas tree for the kids or whatever but who is not interested in rivet counting and those handrails maybe prototypically too thick but what the heck. So we essentially have a quantity vs quality split that affects the critical mass needed to sustain production of a high quality/limited appeal product. I suspect that what we are seeing in the N Gauge market place is that there are a lot less people wanting the highly detailed model than others who want a car but not at the price of an arm and a leg. So what is ultimately needed is a change in the percentages or growth in the number of people in N Scale to achieve that critical mass necessary. But I don't see the pre-order system as helpful in doing either of these.
Sorry to be a pain, but how does agreeing withthe thread that was linked to "not getting it?"
Who is Gordon Andrews?
How is it an SD26 is a safe bet in N, but a GP40-2W is not?Can someone more enlightened than I answer that?
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Topic: Good manufacturing-themed thread in YahooGroup NScaleKitbashing (Read 4182 times)
