A question from Accurascale - At what stage of development should a manufacturer announce a new model?

[woodenhead]

I reckon a Tweet after the fourth pint of Guiness when the germ of an idea has become the most brilliant thing since Hornby tried 'Design Clever'.

 

But failing that, once you've reached a stage where you think a model will fly and you're about to invest serious money.

[Miss Prism]

22 minutes ago, jjnewitt said:

If you've got a decent team leading the development of a model you shouldn't really need feedback from RMweb in order to get things 'right'.

 

cough, splutter... !!

 

[jjnewitt]

30 minutes ago, Miss Prism said:

 

cough, splutter... !!

 

Well they shouldn't. Accurascale seem to have a good team in place and my impression is that there isn't a huge amount wrong with the artwork they produce. I don't need feedback from RMweb in order to get the stuff I produce right. Admittedly I don't have the Chinese factor to contend with. I don't have to work with a team on the other side of the planet who speak a different language and have very little familiarity with the prototype in order to produce models. I suspect that has as much as anything to do with major errors being present on RTR models. That and the cost of correcting things.

 

Justin

[PaulRhB]

Like a couple have said a reasonable time helps shops get their orders right and it gives those living on tight budgets time to save. There are those whose dream model might well be worth ten months of saving because they don’t have much spare cash each month due to family etc. The old system of a catalogue coming out and the models arriving over the next year  sort of did it but with the limited batches of today they could still be sold out before you saved now. Think of those who dreamed of a finescale Rocket and they arrived a few weeks later and they saw them all gone. 
I think a year or so would be my personal ideal minimum notice, I don’t mind longer especially with a company I’m sure will do them eventually. 
I count myself lucky to be able to indulge most of my whims for locos these days but with friends running much tighter budgets that dream model, loco or rake of stock, can be a treasured gem of their collection if they have enough time to put a little aside. 
Just another angle  

[Miss Prism]

I rest my case...

[jjnewitt]

9 minutes ago, Miss Prism said:

I rest my case...

I didn’t know you were a legal person. You’re not working for Trump are you? 
 

The manufacturers will no doubt be relieved that with the benefit of your wisdom and others on here the job of dealing with the Chinese will be a whole lot easier...

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

Giving kit manufacturers the time to recover from a devastating announcement has to be taken into account too!

 

Mike.

[spamcan61]

12 hours ago, jjnewitt said:

I'm not particularly bothered about showing early CADs. Most the time it seems all you get is number of 'experts' crop up and tell the manufacturer things that they know are wrong and have already been altered. The rest of the time nothing changes anyway so what's the point... If you've got a decent team leading the development of a model you shouldn't really need feedback from RMweb in order to get things 'right'. 

 

Justin 

Absolutely, for starters the manufacturer has to work out which 'experts' are actually experts and which are just experts at sounding like experts (not unique to RMWeb or the internet...) and in order to do that they need to know more than the experts anyway. Plenty of instances on here and elsewhere of an 'expert' pronouncing categorically that something is wrong / never happened only to be proven wrong themselves with minutes/hours / days; that must be a ballache to deal with when there's 100K + of tooling costs at stake.

[Steven B]

21 hours ago, Accurascale Fran said:

try as we might we do get emails (albeit very occasionally) from a customer complaining that they havent heard from us or we have no news about xy or z projects. 

 

These projects by their very nature can take months as part of the process, such as tooling. There really is little to report until the process is complete, which is why we try to map out that particular stage of the process "production will be complete in 3 months." or "tooling us underway and is due to be completed in March" for example. After that there really isnt much we can say about them except set the expectation for the next time there will be fresh news.

 

I think is comes down to managing expectations. Manufacturers can't be expected to produce a full warts and all gantt chart for a project, yet customers shouldn't be expected to be enthusiastic about a new model after being left in the dark for months.

 

If a model is in tooling and will take three months, then at an update partway though that period I don't think it's unreasonable to say something along the lines of "project X is 50% way through tooling and still due to be complete by March". I'm a N Gauge modeller so haven't bought any Accurascale models, but certainly when I'm watching Revolution Trains updates from Ben and Mike I'm often left wondering, "yes, but what about the class 92" (or some other model). Judging by comments here and on other forums I'm not alone.

 

As I said before, I think Accurascale get it about right. If nothing else, your approach means that there's no waiting in the no-mans land of waiting for expressions of interest, or waiting for a production slot. At least Bachmann's new "here's what we're releasing to the shops in the next 3 months" anouncements save us from the latter.

 

Steven B.

[BR Blue]

In summary. If you want to announce something today, we are all good with that.

[newbryford]

9 hours ago, BR Blue said:

In summary. If you want to announce something today, we are all good with that.

 

Just as long as it isn't an announcement of an announcement..............

 

(Now where did I hear that before?)

[cheesysmith]

As long as you don't release anything in Q1. Got car tax/insurance/test end of Jan, then our lasses birthday, my son's, then youngest daughter. Think our pass might be a little upset if her present turns out to be a new wagon. I'm sure I would be singing suprano afterwards lol.

[Accurascale Fran]

Hi everyone,

 

Many thanks for the feedback. I think a lot of interesting points have been made and I do feel we are going about things the right way and it seems a lot of you agree too, which is reassuring! Our next announcements will continue to be with samples, and beyond that perhaps we will look at completed CAD/3D model. Let's see what happens in the future! 

 

Cheers!

 

Fran

[7013]

Seeing this a bit late, but my own opinion for what its worth is that Expressions of interest, pre orders etc. can lead to disappointment if they do not go ahead. Of course the other side of the coin is risk making a product that does not sell in sufficient quantities.

Market research is the way to go for many, but if there is nothing else of the same quality then its perhaps a justifiable risk. Quality usually wins out over quantity. For instance Hornby have a knack of re-releasing old tooling models just before a really top class new tooling model appears (Hattons Class 66). So expect a load of Class 92's from Hornby. Fortunately most modeller's will buy the decent one (budget allowing). My layouts are set where there is no OHLE, but that will not stop me buying a CL92 if I like the finished model.

 

[McC]

6 hours ago, scumcat said:

Rock and a hard place, announce too early and people could get impatient waiting. Announce too late and risk getting beaten to the announcement by another manufacturer. I myself am fully paid up for 3 x mk 5 sets that were announced really early. I probably would have preferred a shorter wait

I think very much of the delay with the mk5 was the delays with the real thing  

[cessna152towser]

I much prefer the less waiting.

I once pre-ordered a blue box coach, because it would be a scale model of an actual coach on the heritage railway where I was a volunteer.

During the waiting period of over five years till my model finally arrived, I got married, the prototype vehicle left our railway, the running number of the model got changed and the price almost doubled.   

[MikeParkin65]

I think the reaction to the Locomotion/Rails/Bachmann announcement of the LNWR Precedent demonstrates the positive impact of announcing a model relatively late in the design cycle. I like also Frans response to the idea that early release of CADS allows the 'experts' to have their say: far better the manufacturer takes responsibility for proper research and design in the first place  

[Islesy]

5 hours ago, MikeParkin65 said:

far better the manufacturer takes responsibility for proper research and design in the first place

Absolutely Mike...

[farren]

About a week after some poor probably on here has completed their year long journey building a particular class/ diag/ wagon. Which no one is ever going to produce...
 

So they have a week or self achievement. Before they throw it in the bin, crying their eyes out wondering why they bothered well handing you the complete contents of the bank account. 

[Covkid]

Very good topic Fran, which there are of course 64,000 answers and 64,000 subjective opinions. Some people are fortunate in having unlimited funds, or at least able to buy a new loco every month.  Others might only have the funds for one loco a year, which makes their choice that much harder. In my case I only tend to buy stuff specific to my timeframe and location, which makes things much easier for me, until this year. I have want some scale class 24s and 25s for a long time, and have some Hornby and Bachmann victims waiting to be attacked to try and sort out their problems. All of a sudden, after a very long wait it appears the Heljan "late body" 25 is getting much nearer to production, the Bachmann 24 is out and there is now a tangible possibility the relaunched Bachmann 25 might not actually be years away. There is of course the debate about whether SLW are seriously considering the 25.

 

So where does that leave the consumer who want 25s because they want them rather than they are a new item in the catalogue ? Well the choice maybe a little simpler.  At this stage Heljan suggest they will only produce the "late body" class 25, leaving Bachmann to produce both early and late models. 

 

The next part of the consumer decision making process is - who does the consumer trust to justify their investment ? It is at this point that Heljan slump a few points for me personally. Up until currently, Heljan have had the odd problems with the face of some diesels, and for me particularly around the windscreens, gutters and cab roofs. The O gauge class 31, 47 and 50 IMHO are victims of this and I feel the class 50 windscreens tend to jar with me. No maybe with Ben Jones in charge things might improve - but there is the confidence thing for me. Bachmann on the other hand and Hornby do seem to produce very accurate looking models, so maybe I will hang back for the new Bachmann 25 and compare it to Heljan's model, unless the Heljan models wow me.

 

So customer confidence plays a large part in the choice, particularly of those who restrain themselves to logical choices. Is the manufacturer of the latest advertised release reliable enough to deliver ? In the case of Accurascale absolutely no issues whatsoever, a huge difference to a few years ago when some folk were handing over credit card payments for class 74s and APTs and the like. 

 

So summarising Fran London Midland transition era stuff for my particular area, I would be very happy with a four month announcement to line up my budget, and sign up in advance with my choices. Looks like I will be ordering some MDVs !!! 

[Hal Nail]

22 hours ago, cessna152towser said:

During the waiting period of over five years till my model finally arrived, I got married, the prototype vehicle left our railway, the running number of the model got changed and the price almost doubled.   

Some bad luck has gone on there. Theres always divorce though

[AMJ]

If you can keep your designs under wraps without others speculating what you are doing then announce at the tooled EP sample or like the recently announced model from Shildon at the livery stage.  This gives less time for folks to wait for the first models to land.

 

However I still like the anticipation of models announced before the R&D and CAD have even commenced.

[Colin_McLeod]

On 13/11/2020 at 08:21, cessna152towser said:

During the waiting period of over five years till my model finally arrived, I got married, the prototype vehicle left our railway, the running number of the model got changed and the price almost doubled.   

 

Never mind, at least you got your coach 

[Meld9003]

Personally, I think you should show the finished CAD for checking, especially with locomotives or anything with lots of curves. Given the cost of tooling I just think it makes sense to check you haven't made any howlers. While I take Justin's point about internet experts etc. and companies doing their own research, capturing the shape of something like a Deltic is really quite difficult, especially if the CAD operator isn't a railway enthusiast. Laser scanning isn't the be all and end all either as the face of the DJM 71 shows.

 

The best way to illustrate this is that although I haven't ordered my Deltics yet, I definitely will at some point. However, I'd be sticking with the Bachmann model if you had produced them based on the print you showed at Warley...

[Accurascale Fran]

3 minutes ago, Meld9003 said:

Personally, I think you should show the finished CAD for checking, especially with locomotives or anything with lots of curves. Given the cost of tooling I just think it makes sense to check you haven't made any howlers. While I take Justin's point about internet experts etc. and companies doing their own research, capturing the shape of something like a Deltic is really quite difficult, especially if the CAD operator isn't a railway enthusiast. Laser scanning isn't the be all and end all either as the face of the DJM 71 shows.

 

The best way to illustrate this is that although I haven't ordered my Deltics yet, I definitely will at some point. However, I'd be sticking with the Bachmann model if you had produced them based on the print you showed at Warley...

 

Hi @Meld9003

 

Interesting points. It's lucky we made some revisions to the CAD following the 3D print so!

 

Thanks,

 

Fran