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Farish RRP increase


lindi
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The latest Bachmann/Farish availability list (8 Feb 2019) contains increases in the RRP of a number of models

 

Diesels

Class 37/47/70                                          + £5

Class 08/24/25                                         +£10
Class 31                                                     +£15
 

Steam

Merchant Navy/Ivatt 2MT/A1/O6/8F    + £5
Standard 4MT                                         +£10

 

DMU

Class 101/108                                          +£10
Class 150                                                  +£15

Class 350                                                  +£20

 

Coaches

MK1/MK2a/Stanier/MK2f DBSO            +£5
Bullied/Hawksworth                                +£3

 

Wagons

various amounts between £1 and £5 although not all wagons have increased in price

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Thats a whopping increase in percentage terms yet again. I could understand a one off big increase to get things to where they need to be but there does seem to be a massive increase every year now. I reckon they may well have gone too far and could will struggle to sell in reasonable quantities.  Fezza could be right in that it will be bad for the future of N gauge.

 

Look on the bright side - all your current stock is now worth more on Ebay!

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RRP for Farish Hawksworth coaches is £39.95 while RRP for Dapol Collett coaches is £23.40. So an eight coach rake at RRP would be £319 for Farish or £187 for Dapol. While the Farish coaches are exquisite the Dapol ones are ok and I would say affordable whereas the Farish aren't. I fancied a few Hawksworth maroon coaches but they are not sufficiently important to me to pay out the sort of cash required.

 

Likewise the Autocoach - Farish RRP only just gone up a bit to £39.95 while the Dapol RRP is only £16.96. I have one of each.  Again the Farish is an exquisite model and is great to get up close to and admire, but, when they are a few feet away on my layout, there isn't much between them. 

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14 minutes ago, Chris M said:

Look on the bright side - all your current stock is now worth more on Ebay!

 

I've been thinking that for a while whilst trying to decide what to do with my rakes of Lafarge JPAs and FIA intermodal twins.  Even if I asked double what I paid for them the buyer would still be quids in when compared with boxshifters prices let alone RRP.

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Here we go again!.....

Just accept the fact that the far east are wanting a western lifestyle with dishwashers, washing machine, fridges and all the other mod cons. Who is going to pay for it? Us, because we moved manufacturing over there when it was beneficial. It was always going to come back and bite us in the bum, so we're just going to have to deal with it.

Comparing some items between Farish and Dapol is like comparing Hornby and Hornby Railroad, so take your pick, they are after all luxury items.....

 

Dave

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I'm glad that I bought the coaches I wanted some years ago given the amount that they have increased in price since. Whilst I can understand that those manufacturing want a greater salary and that material costs have also increased, these increases are getting very hard to swallow. 

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In 2011 a 'Blue Riband' Mk1 was £16 from a well known online retailer, at £40 it's a huge increase over 8 years.

 

It does make modelling a harder prospect, especially in N gauge where running longer rakes was one of the draws of me moving from OO. Shame as I need a good few Mk1 and the Mk2f, if/when they appear.

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If the Sealink Mk1s had actually turned up in the year they were originally supposed to (Existing tooling and a livery already done in OO scale so what is the problem?) I wouldn't be facing the prospect of an extra ten quid a coach and probably another fiver on top of that if as seems to be happening they get later still and carry on into 2020 with another mark up in January. 

 

I was going tobuy four, now it's just two and maybe, just maybe add to them if they get heavily discounted further down the line.

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17 minutes ago, maq1988 said:

In 2011 a 'Blue Riband' Mk1 was £16 from a well known online retailer, at £40 it's a huge increase over 8 years.

 

 

Is this comparing the shop selling price with the manufacturers RRP? Something with a RRP of £40 is likely to be on sale for £34 - still quite an increase but we all know the reasons now, including the doubling of Chinese labour costs over 5 years.

 

G.

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10 minutes ago, grahame said:

 

Is this comparing the shop selling price with the manufacturers RRP? Something with a RRP of £40 is likely to be on sale for £34 - still quite an increase but we all know the reasons now, including the doubling of Chinese labour costs over 5 years.

 

 

Research shows that the RRP for the Mk1 I was using for comparison (374-061A) was £19.70. So comparing RRPs it's over a 102% increase. Basing on £16 retail -> £34 retail it's an increase of 112%.

 

I do wonder what the costs would be if they were manufactured in the UK. I can't blame the Far East for wanting better pay / living conditions

 

Edited by maq1988
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8 minutes ago, maq1988 said:

 

Research shows that the RRP for the Mk1 I was using for comparison (374-061A) was £19.70. So comparing RRPs it's over a 102% increase. Basing on £16 retail -> £34 retail it's an increase of 112%.

 

I do wonder what the costs would be if they were manufactured in the UK. I can't blame the Far East for wanting better pay / living conditions

 

 

Yep. The increase doesn't seem far out of expectation with the labour cost increasing by 100% in 5 years (20% year on year for five years) and being the major part of the variable manufacturing costs with the manual assembly being complex and time consuming for our increasingly detailed models. And no doubt they have increased in the other four years of that period along with rises in materials, shipping and so on.

 

I suspect that UK labour rates are still higher than Chinese ones and since production moved there at the end of the millennium (19 years ago) they will have also increased. 

 

G.

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Your maths is way out there, 20% rise year on year for 5 years isn't 100%. its far higher. Last years 20% rise itself has 20% added to it this year, and 20% on the added amount the next year. £1 with a rolling 20% rise after 5 years becomes £2.49, not £2.

 

I'm glad I did my buying when I did, I effectively stopped when coaches breached £20. That a brake van now exceeds that price (with discount) is quite frankly ridiculous. If the 8F doesn't arrive before the next price hike, I simply will do without. Its not a case of can't pay, I've set aside the money for 3 at todays estimated price, if it goes up I won't buy a single one and will spend the money elsewhere. I've scrubbed so many pre-orders in the past few months and moved the funds away from the account I use to cover them, its insane. Last count it was £3k worth of pre-orders cancelled, all I have left from them is the N 8F and 00 gauge 1P, which are both on rocky ground too.

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I wonder how much it’ll affect the popularity of things like the 350. The original ones hung around until they were being punted out for £70, and here they are adding another £20 to the pre-order price of the reliveried one, which is already over £200 IIRC. 

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Hi Guys,

 

Whilse I baulk at the ever increasing cost of N Gauge, it is, after all, our hobby...and we will afford either what we can or want. I’m a little perturbed at the constant price increases and, although I appreciate the overheads, wages etc...I do feel that Bachmann are not sharing any of the cost rises and passing either 100% or more to the consumer...ie , us.

I will, of course, fulfill my requirement for six Sealink coaches, either 4 x TSO and 2x BSK/BSO or 5 TSO and 1 Brake.  Any additional coaches for a 2nd rake will only be under a good discount.

Like many people here, I have reined back the ‘wants’ a great deal and I let some of the more Rule 1 purchases sail on by. I do worry for the long term sustainability of such a policy...but that brings us full circle to the fact that it is a hobby and those who ‘want’ will alway afford it somehow.

 

Later,

Stu from EGDL.

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42 minutes ago, Zunnan said:

Your maths is way out there, 20% rise year on year for 5 years isn't 100%. its far higher. Last years 20% rise itself has 20% added to it this year, and 20% on the added amount the next year. £1 with a rolling 20% rise after 5 years becomes £2.49, not £2.

 

 

Actually I didn't do any maths, but of course I'm fully aware that a 20% increase compounded five times is more than 100%. However, I was a little concerned that although I've seen it claimed that was the way it progressed I've also seen/read that the aim was to double (100% increase) the wage rate in five years. Nonetheless over more than five years since Farish was sold and production moved to China the effect certainly appears to be quite a bit more than 100%.And, of course, that feeds through to retail prices.

 

16 minutes ago, Stu from EGDL said:

Whilse I baulk at the ever increasing cost of N Gauge, it is, after all, our hobby...and we will afford either what we can or want. I’m a little perturbed at the constant price increases and, although I appreciate the overheads, wages etc...I do feel that Bachmann are not sharing any of the cost rises and passing either 100% or more to the consumer...ie , us.

 

Like many people here, I have reined back the ‘wants’ a great deal and I let some of the more Rule 1 purchases sail on by. I do worry for the long term sustainability of such a policy...but that brings us full circle to the fact that it is a hobby and those who ‘want’ will alway afford it somehow.

 

 

I guess we'll never know all and the exact cost increases but I'm not sure that it can expected that Bachmann should take a hit on profitability by sharing cost increases with customers (although we don't know for sure that they haven't). After all their financial performance over the last few years hasn't been particularly healthy. 

 

Many will no doubt have reigned in such discretionary hobby spending but then that process will have always been the case. Those on limited budgets in the Poole production years will have been effected by price increases back then. I guess there will always be those who want, will purchase and can afford it.

 

It's the same for a beer in a pub - a pint was 25p in 1975 and now it's around more than 16 times as much. I flinched when it got to 50p but I still go to the pub and have a few but there will be some who dropped out or cut back. The same goes for purchasing models, some will have given up if beyond their means but others still purchase new ones - but will there be enough? Oddly, although pub beer sales are down, the number of brewers has significantly increased provided choice and better quality products - just like the recent increase in N gauge model producers. 

 

However, it does feel that many are now voicing their concerns and complaining about the Farish price increases and there is a very real worry about the future. But is that a more vocal output simply because of the electronic age where such comments are easily and quickly circulated to a large audience?  

 

G

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The main issue I see and for me the Elephant in the Room of railway modelling is this.  Across all scales (particularly OO, maybe not so much with N) is that there has been a monumental increase in the number of different models announced from an increasing number of manufacturers, these are being retailed at ever increasing average prices yet as far as I can see the disposal income pool, that finite bag of money that is available hobby wide to pay for all these items has not increased at all, in fact in the light of current political and financial debacles, it may even be shrinking.

 

Eventually there is going to be a breaking point and it is then that some manufacturers will collapse and certain models will disappear.  It is going to be a mess and it is in my opinion inevitable.

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