Has Micro-Trains shot themselves in the foot?

[DKS]

http://1-220.blogspot.com/2008/03/micro-trains-exclusivity.html

[John]

Though shall not speak ill of MT ..

[Chris333]

My main question, why only Z scale?

http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php?t=96383

[FrankCampagna]

Could it be they caught or suspected someone of sending their couplers to China to be copied?.

Frank

[wcfn100]

Sound like a great business move MT.  I'm a bit impressed.

Jason

[haybros]

Has Micro-Trains shot themselves in the foot?

No...I think it was a head shot this time around....

Bill
www.zscaleloads.com

[Ed Kapuscinski]

This is not a surprising development at all.

I HOPE someone sent their crap to be done in China. While I'd feel bad for the 20 or so people who will lose their jobs if MTL goes toes up, I don't feel bad if this guy:

[Sokramiketes]

This is more evidence that MTL simply can't keep up in todays market. 

First they complained about everyone catching up to them in N scale.  Their market share fell greatly over the past 10 years.  So they moved to Z scale so they could be "King" again. Rather than stepping things up in N scale to compensate, they tried to take the easy way out and take over Z scale.  Now with AZL and Full Throttle and others, in a small marketplace to begin with, they are having troubles again.

I wouldn't worry about this affecting Z scale as a whole too much, like everyone else is worried about.  Either someone like AZL will step up and offer trucks and couplers to the smaller guys, or everyone will tool their own trucks anyway.  In the long run, it''s much more cost effective to pay for your own tooling than try to buy MTL goods anyway.  This will just cause others to move into the truck and coupler market faster.  I don't know what exactly MTL thinks they will gain by this decision... but, they have an awful lot to lose as a company.

Speaking of which... did I just read that MTL N scale heavyweight samples won't be shown until Winter 2009?  Ouch.  Someone could call up China and have product on the shelves within that timeline. 

[tom mann]

David's latest on this is brilliant:

http://1-220.blogspot.com/2008/03/yes-more-micro-trains.html

It does make you wonder if either there is more to it or if it wasn't exactly thought out.

[FrankCampagna]

It does make you wonder if either there is more to it or if it wasn't exactly thought out.

Or possibly both. You can have a good reason for your actions, and still handle it badly.

Frank

[Ian MacMillan]

Jeesh....makes me not want their Z SD40-2 now!

[bsoplinger]

This tidbit from Joe over on the trainboard pretty much sums it up to me:

We had big issues in N scale with companies that do their production in China being able to offer our couplers on their cars for less money.

Umm, did they ever think of doing cars that people who actually run their cars want? Did they think to try to stop catering to the collector market and then wonder why regular folks don't buy their releases? Atlas regularly releases 2 and 3 road numbers, Athearn always does 2's, some manufacturers like Hubert's do a dozen, IM often does 4 at a time. And then they do a pair of runner packs every what, 2 or 3 months? Have they increased the quality of their molds with each release being crisper and more detailed than the last like Atlas seems to have been managing for the last 10 years? Or are they just sitting on 20 yr old tooling and offering it in colorful one of schemes to appeal to collectors?

Of all the reasons to feel their products weren't selling, watching MT couplers being put on China manufactured cars so they could be sold 'for less money' sure isn't very high on the list.

Red caboose sure couldn't seem to keep their autoracks in stock and they are basically the same price as the MT ones, yet those languish on dealer shelves. Yet at the same time MT was able to completely sell out of the Pan Am 50' ribside boxcar, an old mold with a new paint scheme, at what, $35 a pop?

So it isn't the price, per se, of MT offerings that isn't the issue. MT is able to sell expensive items, sometimes. Other manufacturers of similar cars as theirs can sell items that cost as much if not more. (How much are the IM railbox cars?)

Hmm, could it be the offerings they have? Naw, that couldn't be it  :-*

[daniel_leavitt2000]

People wonder why many members of Railwire bash MYL. Well this is why! Every example Joe from MTL cited for the new policy was in N-scale. Yet the policy id for Z scale? The reason why this is the case is that they KNOW RC, IM and others will just order up some Accumate trucks for a fraction of the cost that they can purchase MTLs for and pass even MORE savings onto the modelers.

Z scale is a bit more closed off, so they went with the all or nothing route. MTL has been getting more erratic latley. Their proto releases have been sloppy (models not fitting the prototype). They gambled on N scale freight equiptment and even their best effort was only on par with other manufacturers so they ditched the line.

You have to wonder what other models MTL had in the pipline when they pulled the plug on the N scale production. Even with the Chinese mechinisms, they must have poored money into truck and mechinism designes. I'm sure they were planning more.

At least their tirade wasn't aimed at N scaleers this time. Maybe Z scalers will think twich before they purchase that 60's era Bachmann widebody style GP9 or GP35.

AZL is a much better company and they seem to respond well to the market. As Atlas improved in N about 15 years ago, its about time for MTL to step asside and let AZL assert some compitance in model railroad production.

[tom mann]

Any updates on this?

[DKS]

Any updates on this?

From what I've been able to gather, M-T is proceeding as planned. No change in their position. Someone on one forum made it sound as though M-T was playing copycat to other manufacturers, what with a number of coincidental releases--the GP7s (which M-T apparently changed to GP9 to avoid duplicating AZL), covered hoppers (which Robert Ray had released as kits), and several others. Joe got all bent about that and declared he would not pursue the discussion any further. He also took us collectively to task for grumbling on forums instead of writing to M-T directly. Well, I wrote to M-T directly, in addition to grumbling on forums. And blogs. The response, as expected... crickets.