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BBC Four - James May's Big Trouble in Model Britain


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44 minutes ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

(Personally, I suspect Hornby need to shake off a lot of the accumulated drag acquired during sixty years of trading. 'A complete range' is no longer required to compete in this sector.)

 

 

Which "sector" do you mean?

 

For the new entrants, probably wanting Railroad standard, I would suggest that a complete range is necessary (even if some elements are outsourced).

 

Other manufacturers have shown though that it is perfectly possible to cherry-pick and only make one type of product e.g. Heljan locos (OO).

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8 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

Which "sector" do you mean?

 

For the new entrants, probably wanting Railroad standard, I would suggest that a complete range is necessary (even if some elements are outsourced).

 

Other manufacturers have shown though that it is perfectly possible to cherry-pick and only make one type of product e.g. Heljan locos (OO).

 

Only those on a budget or children.

 

If I was starting out building LEGO would I want a basic starter kit or the new Ford Mustang?

 

It's the Mustang all day long. That's the market Hornby needs to compete with, not the kids toy market but the reasonably affluent Big Boys Toys market.

 

https://shop.lego.com/en-GB/product/Ford-Mustang-10265

 

:maninlove:

 

 

 

Jason

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The first programme suggested that the new management want to roll back cuts and restore a comprehensive range.

 

Interesting was the chap in the programme who showed us his model railway. He seemed to assume that the continued existence of Hornby was vital to the hobby, but, then, in a way that suggested that the point was striking him for the first time as he spoke, he reviewed the section of his layout in shot and realised that nothing on it was a Hornby product, yet, everything in shot was something for which Hornby made an equivalent product; it's just that he'd used someone else's.

 

It's probably harder to build a model railway without any Peco or associated products than it is to do so without any Hornby product.  

 

What, I think, the Man with the Layout illustrated is that the use of Hornby as a one-stop brand for everything you need may be long gone. It's not the '50s and '60s  when rival ranges were not particularly compatible. People mix and match everything these days.  A comprehensive range means that Hornby must compete effectively against many competitors who between them cover all the various railway modelling ranges that Hornby produce.  That must be a significant challenge.  

 

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Well I watched volume 1 last evening. May make more observations(sorry) but to start with James May. He is what he is, amusing,sometimes cynical, realistic,an enthusiast and pretty intelligent. We could have had Clarkson(perish the thought). Its like travel shows, you don't get Michael Palin when you watch Portillo, they are different animals and you may or may not like either of them so you pays your money and takes your choice. Likewise with this we could have had an in depth BBC2 type investigation by that guy who used to be on Dragons Den but what would that have been like. The joke about blurring the young guys faces was a typical May joke, what you would expect from him but in reality I think it was bit more than that as it was a safeguarding issue too protect them. 

Then we come to Simon Kohler, I have been a critic of his lately because I was unsure that he was right for the role. Not always good to go back and there were some moments when I felt Engine Shed and the way it was going was being held back. I liked the drip feed of new product info. However he proved his passion in this episode, none more so when he discovered the tools(or lack of them).I honestly thought he was going to burst into tears. Interesting days ahead with Terriers and 66s and Rails and Hattons. There's a battle going on will it all cool down or will it explode. 

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5 minutes ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

Anything not turning a profit. Get focussed purely on what makes money. Tie-ins with other strong UK brands to provide entry packages if there are still any legs in the 'Train Set'.

 

It's not necessarily about a train set, as such. A new entrant needs easy access to a range of products that will get him started and that he knows will be compatible. That is most easily done through a local retailer and for the retailer it is much easier to be able to source all those products from one supplier.

 

I think that there is still money - plenty of it - to be made from Railroad standard models if Hornby market and distribute them properly.

 

Given Hornby's evident ability in tooling and production, there is also scope to produce high-quality, high-detail models and make money from that as well.

 

But to make money from both, you have to make clear to the consumer which is which. And you do that by branding them more distinctively than Hornby does. This is not a recent problem in Margate. It goes back more than 20 years.

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When I had my first train set, Rovex/Triang Black Princess when I was 6 years old in 1958, included in the box was the catalogue, and separate price list, which contained everything you needed to build a complete railway system; track to build the track plans, signals, platforms, buildings, sheds, signal boxes, level crossings, bridges and approach piers, gradient signs, mileposts, telegraph poles, platform furniture, water cranes.  Within a few years this had been expanded, including TPO collection/delivery.  Hornby Dublo, the only real RTR alternative in those days, had a similar range of stuff.  Both ranges clung to their standards to try to persuade you to be a loyal customer, so you couldn't run Triang stuff on HD track and vice versa, even after HD introduced 2-rail, and the couplings were incompatible, not that this stopped us trying.  There was also Trix Twin, but this was so crude it wouldn't even run on Triang track, though the couplings were compatible with HD.

 

Over the next few years, simultaneously with my developing ability to build them, Kitmaster and Airfix introduced me to kits, (and another type of coupling), and it was impressed upon me that my railway did not need to rely on the products of one company.  In my teens I became aware of Peco for track and 'wonderful wagons', and Graham Farish, Bilteezi, and Superquick.  A model railway was now constructed from a variety of sources, and my current one is exactly this, with some home made stuff.  

 

Nowadays, the few train sets that are sold are generally thought of as entry points to the hobby, not to the 'wonderful world' of one company or another's products, much as the marketing departments may regret this.  I'd say that setrack and controllers could easily be outsourced and probably are; they do not really need to be in modern ranges and could be dispensed with.  One of the first upgrades most people make is to ditch the train set controller!

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Well, indeed, arguably Hornby only need to produce track and controller for train sets.  The track and controller you need for them are basic and limited and do not argue that you need to cover all radii or other, more sophisticated controllers. There might be reasons why you would want to produce a full range of such things, but the perceived benefits of producing trains sets is not necessarily a sufficient reason alone.  

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4 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

 

Crowd-funding should have been a game changer, and appeared to be so for a while, but I believe it ran into difficulties quite early on, with many funds not reaching viability, or finding that costs had risen so much during the wait for D&D and then getting a production slot, that the original offer could not stand. I know there have been a number of successful schemes and some are still progressing this method, but it is not a route for the faint-hearted.

 

But it is of some importance to note that the retail commissioners have now largely abandoned this in favour of commissioning and then selling, using expressions of interest and other market research to bolster their "gamble". With other new entrants too, the next few years will be very interesting.

 

Whether Hornby should pursue limited commissions, without controlling a factory, and just when they seem to be getting their own production runs back into decent order, is moot. Bachmann certainly take on commissions, but look where their production problems have led them, reputationally at least.

 

 

Important point, that. There is no substitute for being able to attract a sufficient number of expressions of interest, taking an informed view of their “weight”, producing a sufficiently accurate estimate of likely additional trade, producing a viable business plan and following it through. Knowing the business you are involved in, in fact! 

 

Crowd-funding DOES suffer from a lot of problems, not least that like a lot of things online, the lack of effective thresholds to entry lets a lot a unrealistic or unachievable schemes into the arena... but it is still out there, still batting. 

 

But I’m not surprised that knowledgeable retailers with sufficient working capital, have turned away from it. 

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5 hours ago, adb968008 said:

Fwiw,

 

The stockists link on Hornbys website lists 25 retailers per page and has 16 pages in the UK, giving approx 400 retailers, across all main Hornby brands, and include “toy shops” as well as specialist retailers.

https://www.Hornby.com/uk-en/stockists/england/

 

A similar search on Bachmann gives 27 pages of 20, so approx 540.

https://www.Bachmann.co.uk/stockists/

 

Pecos search page claims “With nearly 400 models shops in the UK”.

https://peco-uk.com/pages/find-a-stockist

 

of course non of this give any indication of size / turnover and just like my previous lists includes examples like “Alley katz and Piglets” of Brignorth, which is a traditional toy shop.

 

On a happy side note, for years ive driven past Mick Charles models seeing its ads for Cars / RC and Helicopters, with nothing obvious to railways,however i just happened to see them listed under one of the above,so i’m going to drop in... clicking the links above is worth it !

 

Picking up on this first my local shop, which has become a well known retailer attending many shows with their trade stand and posting on this forum, is difficult to find on both Hornby and Dapol lists. If I search by town they do not appear, I've got to search by county in order to find them. Therefore I conclude that the search engine used by them is flawed whilst the Peco site accepts my home postcode and pulls up the local stockists without issue. The Hornby site even suggests a local garden centre is a stockist but has moved it to Carmarthenshire from Cambridgeshire.

 

Indeed the Dapol list includes two retailers who apparently have nothing whatsoever to do with model railways. I've approached them and they say they have never heard of Dapol let alone stock any of their products.

 

As for the number of model shops I do not believe the number of 23 shops for my area in 1996. I moved here in 1994 and struggled to find a local shop, there was one but it shut down in around 1998 iirc. I wonder if the numbers included ventures such as the attempt to get train sets into Marks and Spencer or am I a bit out of kilter on daters here.

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5 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

I'm not sure what you are trying to prove with the numbers though - that the number of model shops has dropped sine 1986, that's true, although the actual numbers are likely to remain impossible to pin down. 

 

That the model railway hobby is a lot smaller and therefore Hornby should make Polish models? I don't think this proves that. I think the hobby has got smaller since the heydays of the 1950s and 60s, but the 80s? Not so sure of that. I do think it and our buying patterns are very different from 30 years ago. 

Also, of course, the increased variety, authenticity and frequency of new releases in the first two decades of the 21st century compared with the last two of the 20th means that most of those of us still in the hobby spend much more in both cash and real terms.

 

Many of us who identify themselves primarily as "modellers" became de facto collectors almost without realising it, and I confess it openly.

 

For me, the process began with the arrival of the Bachmann Mk.1 coach range, purchased at the rate of one every payday over an extended period, and on top of anything else that was emerging.


More recently, I certainly wouldn't have acquired even a quarter the number of Bulleid Light Pacifics that I own if those available r-t-r were limited to the old ex- Tri-ang and ex-Hornby Dublo models, each with just a couple of legitimate identities....

 

John    

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2 hours ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

Anything not turning a profit. Get focussed purely on what makes money. Tie-ins with other strong UK brands to provide entry packages if there are still any legs in the 'Train Set'.

 

Train sets are what you sell by the container load to Argos etc. Cheap to make and easy to pile high and flog in quantity. 500 Pecketts sold to small traders who then pass them on to picky customers look a lot less attractive.

 

Of course, when you can sell 5000 plastic aeroplane kits costing the same to tool as a loco but which need no after sales service, cost a lot less to make and can be shipped in quantity, I'd say ditch the trains entirely. The profit margin is a lot higher on Hellcats.  You aren't making stuff in a scale that only British people buy either, so you can sell around the world too.

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Well the program has been repeated a couple of times and I managed to record and re-watch part 1.

 

As I thought, but could not confirm until I had watched again, the guy with the 08 does not say that he only has one Hornby model.  He says, while looking around,  that the only Hornby item he could see was the locomotive.  If you only had one Hornby item, that would be a slightly strange thing to say.  You would know that was all you had.   Also of note is that no other locos or items of rolling stock are visible during the clip.  I suspect our modelling colleague has other Hornby items hidden from view.

 

This reinforces my previous assertion that the point of this clip is to show that Hornby are not alone in the market - even if many believe otherwise.  I now think that the whole scene was staged very specifically to make this point.

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9 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

For grandparents I think it's anything from mid 30s upwards nowadays :o.    I remember a piece on a local tv channel some years ago about a great grandmother (in Reading) who was celebrating her 50th birthday.  

 

So in theory there could well be a grandfather on this forum who is under 40.

 

:offtopic:

 

As with many things these days the reality is a bit more complex - and as with the wealth gap over time it has not gone unnoticed by researchers in the field that when it comes to having children the trend is a move away from the 'middle ground' as it were to one extreme or another.

 

There are plenty of studies showing that an ever increasing number of women are holding off having children at a young age - wanting to establish their careers, difficulty finding Mr (or Ms in these enlightened times) or the desire to go and see the world, plus the invention of IVF / egg freezing are all factors in this - but the upshot is that for some becoming a grandparent doesn't happen till well after 50.  The thing is that, these tend to be of a certain socio-economic background where the parental support network (money and motivational) is there to back up such a stance

 

However studies also show that women who don't have these key influences / desires tend to have children when they are in their late teens / early 20s (nothing wrong with that per say I hasten to add). In such cases the ambitions of said women lie in a different direction focusing on the family angle as it were rather than personal advancement.

 

Another powerful factor in this is a sort of 'inherited' behaviour aspect - just as children whose parents smoke are statistically far more likely to take up the practice themselves, so it is that if a young woman starts her family quickly, the chances are that said offspring will also go on to have children early in their adult lives, and so on.

 

Ultimately this all gives rise to grandparents who are either below 50 and another set in their late 60s / early 70s.

 

 

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35 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

 

Train sets are what you sell by the container load to Argos etc. Cheap to make and easy to pile high and flog in quantity. 500 Pecketts sold to small traders who then pass them on to picky customers look a lot less attractive.

 

Of course, when you can sell 5000 plastic aeroplane kits costing the same to tool as a loco but which need no after sales service, cost a lot less to make and can be shipped in quantity, I'd say ditch the trains entirely. The profit margin is a lot higher on Hellcats.  You aren't making stuff in a scale that only British people buy either, so you can sell around the world too.

No after sales service required ,  ???  i can just imagine all the builders claims this and that was missing coz they made a mess of it .

 

As for profit margins i bet they are no better , its a very crowded market 

 

Regards Arran

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55 minutes ago, arran said:

No after sales service required ,  ???  i can just imagine all the builders claims this and that was missing coz they made a mess of it .

 

As for profit margins i bet they are no better , its a very crowded market 

 

Regards Arran

 

RRP for a Hellcat is £119, so not that much different from a OO loco - but Hornby don't have to assemble or paint a plastic kit.

 

As long as all the bits are in the box, which is easy enough to spot if you look at each sprue, then there is no aftersales service. Even if you do something (remember the missing part slips in Airfix kits?) then it's only a case of putting a bit of plastic in the post. Despite your claim, I doubt every builder gets in touch. Let's face it, a lot of those kits will live in a cupboard awaiting their time on the workbench.

 

On the basis that tooling costs are very similar to a loco, but spread over 5000 units and assembly costs are nil, I'd say the profit margin on a high-end plastic kit was rather good. Nothing wrong with that.

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7 hours ago, adb968008 said:

I think my points lost in weeds and ive done a bad job of explaining it.

I’ll make this my last effort, The abstract I was unsuccessfully trying to make was..

 

1. to thrive.. Ideally by selling more and reducing costs

that could be...

To sell more, you need more customers or customers willing to spend more.

To lower costs, you need cheaper production or economies of scale (volume).

Both are tough.

 

The refernce doc was to demonstrate the opposite has happened, and a suggestion (not a statement) of example of sideways thinking to evolve from it, though the focus went here and got stuck in objections.

 

2. in my mind, that means find new customers, grow and develop the market, here & abroad as well as managing costs.  In otherwords make new “stuff” and find new people to sell it too, especially those willing to pay more. This ive always felt is a Hornby strength.. their customers want Hornby, and want new stuff. That reputation and loyalty extends beyond the UK borders too (but dont get hung up on that point). I havent said in this thread, but I too think Hornby needs to become cool to the next generation, and maybe think about apps, Augmented Reality and interactivity, but eveytime ive suggested that ive been well shot down... this isnt certainly not a place to express creativity without hostility. Hornby or a US manufacturer are the only real candidates for this innovation.

 

However My viewing of the documentary to me,  the direction is opposite to my thoughts, in that strategy is to persuade people to buy more Hornby (ie persuade the “class 08” guy to buy more Hornby rather than xyz), instead of finding 10 new “class 08” guys and giving them new things to buy. Secondly, by being highly competitive in duplication they will stem the competition to default “08 guy” to buy Hornby by reducing his variety (either in duplication or forcing out competitors).

 

3. In summary, i feel Hornby needs to become a hunter for new business, not just a farmer seeking to expand into his neighbours fields..

I’m not sure making more 08’s will make the “08 guy” buy more class 08’s, even if they successfully exited the competitors class 08s from the market... same is true for grass and track, as hes already built his layout. 

 

 

Finally, apologies the class 08 guy, i know you have a name, but i dont know it, but you were great and made me smile.

 

Oh and a friend of a friend (a party acquaintence you could say) for many years was on that programme, and whilst were not “buddies” in the last 10 years ive occasionally met him, not once has he, nor I ever mentioned the hobby (ually we talk shop)... you can imagine how astonished I was to see him on the show, especially as I was only talking to him the saturday night before ! Weve exchanged numbers since, and hes never heard of rmweb... communication.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry, but I can't make head nor tail of any of that. Confused.com 

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1 hour ago, phil-b259 said:

 

:offtopic:

 

As with many things these days the reality is a bit more complex - and as with the wealth gap over time it has not gone unnoticed by researchers in the field that when it comes to having children the trend is a move away from the 'middle ground' as it were to one extreme or another.

 

 

 

Totally off topic but thanks for an interesting post.

 

This move to extremes seems to be reflected in much of life. Take politics, Brexit, Trump, Corbyn, Le Pen, Viktor Orbán etcetera - their popularity would not have seemed possible just a few years ago. 

 

In relation to the question of young grandparents, it is remarkable that teen pregnancy rates in the UK have halved in the last decade and are at an all time low.

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10 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

 

RRP for a Hellcat is £119, so not that much different from a OO loco - but Hornby don't have to assemble or paint a plastic kit.

 

As long as all the bits are in the box, which is easy enough to spot if you look at each sprue, then there is no aftersales service. Even if you do something (remember the missing part slips in Airfix kits?) then it's only a case of putting a bit of plastic in the post. Despite your claim, I doubt every builder gets in touch. Let's face it, a lot of those kits will live in a cupboard awaiting their time on the workbench.

 

On the basis that tooling costs are very similar to a loco, but spread over 5000 units and assembly costs are nil, I'd say the profit margin on a high-end plastic kit was rather good. Nothing wrong with that.

 

Having spent all day Sunday at a very larger plastic wholesalers, I agree with this. A tiny proprtion of plastic kits have parts missing. The wholesaler doesn't sell Airfix but probably has the same problem as Airfix, namely the customer who loses the parts or who makes a mess of them. In eight years of selling Airfix, I can honestly count on one hand the issues with missing or wrong parts. Two right hand parts of a ship's hull. No fuselage in an aeroplane kit. An aeroplane missing a tiny cockpit window, that was never included in the tooling and had to be rectified in every single kit, not Airfix may I add. I'm struggling to remember any more.

 

The main issue I see for Hornby on the Airfix side? You can get an awful lot of loco's in a 40' container, 1/24 Hellcats will take up a great deal of space.

 

British outline? Not with Airfix, kits from any country and any time period sell and sell well. Airfix has seen a tremendous resurgence in the past few years. The decision to bring back old tooling Vintage kits? Nostalgia is no longer a thing of the past. The way they are selling and pre-orders for others still to make their way into the market this year are really good.

 

Model shops though have the same issue as the containers, plastic kits are space hungry. I have just had a very, very long day re-organising the shop to make even more room for plastic kits. None of the room has been taken from the model railway side, it has been all the result of my wife Gill and our Tom's creative thinking. Gill had to make the final decision as she had ordered more kits than we had room for :o Now we have even more shelf space and it will be more ordering to fill the shelves. Hornby order after last weeks programme. Airfix this week, thanks to those customers who were unaware that Airfix were bringing out a 1/24 Hellcat. Thanks James May.

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7 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

 

RRP for a Hellcat is £119, so not that much different from a OO loco - but Hornby don't have to assemble or paint a plastic kit.

 

As long as all the bits are in the box, which is easy enough to spot if you look at each sprue, then there is no aftersales service. Even if you do something (remember the missing part slips in Airfix kits?) then it's only a case of putting a bit of plastic in the post. Despite your claim, I doubt every builder gets in touch. Let's face it, a lot of those kits will live in a cupboard awaiting their time on the workbench.

 

On the basis that tooling costs are very similar to a loco, but spread over 5000 units and assembly costs are nil, I'd say the profit margin on a high-end plastic kit was rather good. Nothing wrong with that.

 

So, why would Hornby (or anyone else) bother making any other products?

 

(I can speculate, but would rather hear from those of you in, or very much closer to, the trade.)

 

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5 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

 

Which bits would you drop?

 

Track? Controllers? - you need both for the train sets, unless you propose dropping those too.  

I think that's a good point Phil.

Though they're probably underrepresented on RMWeb , there are a lot of people whose idea of a "model railway" is what we would probably see as a glorified train set.

 

I know several who buy everything from Hornby, are quite happy to use Setrack and whose layouts consist of several circuits around which they can enjoy running their trains. They probably  won't have actually bought a train set as such (though it can be a very cost efficient way of getting started)  and may well never look beyond Hornby. They may well delight in having a loco with a complete range of sound effects but only run it on bare boards.   

 

I know one chap whose layout consists of an unballasted double track Setrack oval with with a number of sidings and  a few buildings plonked on it but who delights in running trains with exactly the right loco, coaches and other vehicles  as the real trains on a particular main line in the 1960s that he's researched extensively. I suspect there may be many more people who approach the hobby in that and similar  ways than those fretting about the perfect way to represent a quayside or getting just the right period wallpaper for the stationmaster's bedroom ( and who  rarely get round to actually running a train!)  and they're probably a bigger part of Hornby's actual market. 

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1 hour ago, Phil Parker said:

 

RRP for a Hellcat is £119, so not that much different from a OO loco - but Hornby don't have to assemble or paint a plastic kit.

 

As long as all the bits are in the box, which is easy enough to spot if you look at each sprue, then there is no aftersales service. Even if you do something (remember the missing part slips in Airfix kits?) then it's only a case of putting a bit of plastic in the post. Despite your claim, I doubt every builder gets in touch. Let's face it, a lot of those kits will live in a cupboard awaiting their time on the workbench.

 

On the basis that tooling costs are very similar to a loco, but spread over 5000 units and assembly costs are nil, I'd say the profit margin on a high-end plastic kit was rather good. Nothing wrong with that.

I await the  Hornby  super profits announcement !!! 

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Once the injection moulds have been qualified, ie cleared for production, the reject rate for plastic models would be very low compared to scrap rate during assembly of RTR items.  In a Rapido film a whole batch of bodies were rejected late in the assembly cycle due to incorrect paint masking or something similar.  There have also been the Heljan L&B 009 warranty returns.

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