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APT Resurrection?


Crewlisle
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57 minutes ago, Markwj said:

As the thread is called apt resurrection and is in the Hornby part of the forum I thought we were talking about the 5 car Hornby model maybe with new motor, would anyone be happy with this or as has been mentioned in the thread are more coaches essential. Would it sell in the5 car format?

The tooling no longer exists, so another run of the old model is not possible.

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On 17/06/2019 at 13:52, MrTea said:

However, if I was 8 now and mad on trains I’d either want 2999 Lady of Legend or one of the new Stadler Hybrid EMUs for Greater Anglia - it’s streamlined and the noise it makes is amazing: http://transportdesigned.com/5-worlds-epic-sounding-trains/

 

Imagine one of those with TTS sound for less than £200! What’s not to like? 

 

...sounds like a hair-dryer to me?  :blink:     :lol:

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On 17/06/2019 at 12:36, JDW said:

As much as I like tha APT, I can't see anyone rushing to try and bring one to market at the moment.  I'd have liked to have seen the DJM one succeed, and yes, I can imagine someone like Rapido or Accurascale making a good job of it but it's too big to be realistic for most people, both in terms of physical length and cost.  On top of that, look at the number of different options people were asking for, 5 coaches, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, it makes it very complicated. 

 

Anything is possible.  If Accurascale can see an 18 coach Caledonian Sleeper set as being viable then I'm fairly sure there would be a market for - what is let's face it - a far more iconic train in the APT-P, even if it meant producing several conveniently-sized coach packs of 3, 4, 5, or 6 for example.

 

 

Edited by YesTor
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For Hornby it would be dammed if they do and dammed if they do not.  An upgraded Hornby model would be eagerly awaited by those happy with Railroad standard,  but alas,  today's modeller wants all the bells and whistles and if Hornby released a Railroad version then there would be howls and frothing as to why they did not go full fat.  The APT is an iconic train,  however these days there is no happy medium.  For most who really wanted it,  it would need to be as detailed as possible or not at all.

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3 minutes ago, GWR-fan said:

The APT is an iconic train,  however these days there is no happy medium.  For most who really wanted it,  it would need to be as detailed as possible or not at all.

 

Agreed, there's no way I'd dig deep for a ridiculously aged model that I can just about remember from childhood.  

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22 hours ago, Sir TophamHatt said:

 
Yes, I understand.
But I also see the bigger picture.  If ONE SINGLE model covers it's own costs (tooling, marketing, salaries), then I wouldn't be chasing after profits if in the long run it helps the busines as a whole (through the fame of producing it).

Look at companies that have built their brand on marketing fluff - Virgin, Dyson...  it's about the bigger picture, not sucking profit from every single model you possibly can, especially when it's as iconic and complicated as the APT.
 

If I had the money, I'd approach a company and get them to produce a model.  I wouldn't be doing it for the profit, I'd be doing it because I wanted the model.

 

The problem is that every modeller will straight away say , "if you could produce an APT for THAT price, why should I pay so much for all your other models"? 

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23 hours ago, Vistisen said:

The problem is that every modeller will straight away say , "if you could produce an APT for THAT price, why should I pay so much for all your other models"?

I highly suspect the markup on models isn't that big.

But if you'd like to provide any evidence to support your statement, happy to see it.

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You're taking about two totally different approaches, if you had £500k to throw at a manufacturer and say "build me an APT, I'm paying", they'll almost certainly say "yeah, ok". If you say "you should build an APT and sell it at cost, because your reputation will be boosted massively", I'd be stunned if any said yes.

 

As has been observed Dyson is about as far from the altruistic "make something the market wants at no fiscal benefit to us" approach as is possible!

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Hornby is the one to do the APT-P if anyone does. Don’t forget that Rapido and the NRM has put the prototype HST on hold. Hornby’s tooling may have gone but the research materials might still be available. Hornby would probably be more willing to take a cheaper, no frills approach than anyone else, producing something similar to the Javelin, Pendolino or 800s. Even so, Hornby is scrambling to escape financial problems. The APT-P would be far too risky and even a simplified version would be costly to produce. In producing cheap locomotives from old toolings with better motors and good decoration, Hornby has hit on a profitable idea and is exploiting it to the full on the backs of higher quality but more expensive announcements. I think Hornby will stick to that with a few prestige locomotives in the mix – big locomotives may be expensive but they are a lot cheaper than whole trains. Sadly, no APT-P for the foreseeable future.

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I would have thought that anyone that really wanted an APT-P would put up with the flaws of the old Hornby model and buy a second hand one. I have got two, which I eventually will get around to cutting and shutting into an 8 car set.  If you are not prepared to buy an old Hornby one, then you don't really want it all that much...

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I was seriously tempted when DJ announced his but was put off by the back of fag packet, make it up as you go along business approach . N gauge announcement , then OO , Then with without Black windscreen , then bewildering options..........But what it spurred me on to do was buy a Hornby one second hand , which as an added bonus arrived Christmas 2017, so was a wee present to myself .

 

The only people I can see doing an APT are Rapido as they've done APT-E and so have figured out how to make it tilt etc . But that looks a little far fetched at moment . Perhaps when/ if things settle after Brexit. It sounds Like the Hornby tooling  no longer exists , so your only route is second hand .

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7 hours ago, Sir TophamHatt said:

I highly suspect the markup on models isn't that big.

But if you'd like to provide any evidence to support your statement, happy to see it.

It wasn't a statement, it was an opinion, and as such therefore requires no evidence to be valid as a point of view.

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7 hours ago, Sir TophamHatt said:

I highly suspect the markup on models isn't that big.

But if you'd like to provide any evidence to support your statement, happy to see it.

Look at Rails sale of recent Lord Nelsons, Duchesses, their own limited editions, lots of 30.40% reductions

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12 minutes ago, brittannia said:

Look at Rails sale of recent Lord Nelsons, Duchesses, their own limited editions, lots of 30.40% reductions

 

That in itself, and taken in isolation, doesn't actually prove anything. I'm sure this has been debated on here before.

 

Example (all figure completely made up)

 

You buy 100 models at £75 each from a producer to sell in your shop - cost £7500

The model has an RRP of £100 - potential income £10000

You sell 70 models at RRP - actual income £7000

You discount the remaining 30 by 30% and sell them all at £70 each - actual income £2100

Overall income £9100

Overall profit (before any of the many other costs invovled) £1600

 

Overall, in this purely fictional example, you've made a profit despite selling almost a third of your inventory below cost price*

 

Now unless anyone knows exactly how many Lord Nelsons Rails bought and at what price, it is well nigh impossible to make assumptions about the cost price and margins involved.

 

*there is some much else to consider, but this is really just to make a point about isolated statistics

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5 minutes ago, truffy said:

The point that @brittannia was making is that the RRP has a sizeable markup for deep discounts to be made a no loss to the retailer. Your hypothetical example simply serves to illustrate it.

 

No it doesn't. The point about my hypothetical example is that it is completely fictional, it doesn't illustrate anything except that a single statistic taken in isolation cannot be relied upon to prove a case. For a start, it completely ignores any of the other costs involved in running a business.

 

What I wanted to show, quite simply, was that it is possible that deeper discounting can incur a loss per item sold at the discounted price, while not resulting in an overall loss on all sales of that particular item.

 

If you do not know what the cost price, the original margin and  the quantity ordered (and going further, the fixed costs to be paid for out of profit (margin), and the similar variable costs of the business), it is difficult to accurately judge the profitability of any given item. And I've not even looked at VAT.

 

Which brings me back roughly to where I started: that it is impossible to make an assumption about the details of a particular retail example from a single statistic, so whether or not Rails have discounted a model by 30/40% is irrelevant without other figures to help prove the point one way or the other.

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On 22/07/2019 at 17:32, brittannia said:

Look at Rails sale of recent Lord Nelsons, Duchesses, their own limited editions, lots of 30.40% reductions

Rails didn't make the Nelson. Hornby did.

What rails do with their retail price has nothing to do with Hornby.

 

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On 22/07/2019 at 18:49, truffy said:

The point that @brittannia was making is that the RRP has a sizeable markup for deep discounts to be made a no loss to the retailer. Your hypothetical example simply serves to illustrate it.

You buy 100 models at £75 each from a producer to sell in your shop - cost £7500

The model has an RRP of £100 - potential income £10000

You sell 70 models at RRP - actual income £7000

You discount the remaining 30 by 30% and sell them all at £70 each - actual income £2100

 

Discounting models to £70 which cost £75 sounds like a loss to me.

 

This has wandered from the original point though. If a manufacturer believed a good profit can be made from a new APT-P, I am sure they would do it.

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8 hours ago, Pete the Elaner said:

Discounting models to £70 which cost £75 sounds like a loss to me.

That was simply @melmoth's example, plucked from thin air. More like reductio ad absurdum TBH.

 

I doubt that any retailer makes a loss on sales, but may reduce their margins substantially (not considering fixed costs etc. that always eat at profits.) I have no data to back that up though, I'm not in retail. Perhaps Melmoth sells books at a loss. Dunno. :unknw_mini:

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Retailers (in all industries) often sell things at a loss to clear stock. You've money tied up in stuff sitting on the shelves, and it's blocking you from having other, more profitable things, so stuff is often just better gone.

 

Look at some of the clearance items from Hattons/Rails - do you honestly think they're making >100% margin on stuff?

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59 minutes ago, truffy said:

I doubt that any retailer makes a loss on sales, but may reduce their margins substantially (not considering fixed costs etc. that always eat at profits.) I have no data to back that up though, I'm not in retail. Perhaps Melmoth sells books at a loss. Dunno. :unknw_mini:

 

Indeed, I do try not to sell any at a loss. However, there certainly are items sold by retailers at a loss. The concept of a 'loss leader' is pretty well known. The best (off topic) bookselling example is Harry Potter. Almost nobody made any money (except J.K Rowling and her publisher) directly out of selling Harry Potter books because the publisher refused to offer anything other than standard trade terms to anyone wanting to stock the books (i.e. no extended margin to allow for deep discounting). Therefore, any copy sold at more than about 25% off cover price made an effective loss per copy when taking into account fixed and variable overheads, while any copy sold at 50% or more lost money directly, even before accounting for overheads.

 

It was, in hindsight, completely bonkers, but the two arguments in favour were that it was "all about market share", which looks good in reports to shareholders until you point out that a bigger share of a loss is nothing to get excited about. Secondly, and this is more plausible, was that all those people who turned up to midnight book launch parties (staff overtime goes through the roof at this point as well), make other purchases at the time, or make repeat visits/become regular customers, i.e. the book was used as a loss leader in true supermarket fashion.

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This may sound like a naive question but could someone like Rapido or Hornby buy the APT scans off the liquidators and carry on negotiating with the Chinese manufacturer about APT tooling and eventual manufacture to modern standards, even to restrict it to a five or six car set?

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11 hours ago, truffy said:

Where did I ever say that anyone makes >100% margin?

You said you doubted retailers sold at a loss, but that infers you think they’re still making money on items sold way below retail prices; meaning those sold at ‘full’ price achieve monstrous margins. 

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