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Hornby acquire remaining Oxford shares.


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14 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

Perhaps a swap of brands for Oxford's Mk3s going to Hornby

 

Per this exchange...

 

 

There may be some issues there, notably in the Oxford MK3s (those of the dodgy underframes) being scaled at 1:76 rather than 1:76.2.  It's almost a case of I'd say of producing new tooling from the Oxford CAD to the correct scale (and correcting the underframes (and any other "issues" at the same time), also presumably re-jigging the CAD to give commonality with the Sliding Door MK3s that Hornby recently produced).  The cheaper fix would be "just" a retooled underframe and ignore the scale issues but you know Hornby will get roasted for that as well.

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On 09/08/2021 at 06:57, frobisher said:

There may be some issues there, notably in the Oxford MK3s (those of the dodgy underframes) being scaled at 1:76 rather than 1:76.2.  It's almost a case of I'd say of producing new tooling from the Oxford CAD to the correct scale (and correcting the underframes (and any other "issues" at the same time), also presumably re-jigging the CAD to give commonality with the Sliding Door MK3s that Hornby recently produced).  The cheaper fix would be "just" a retooled underframe and ignore the scale issues but you know Hornby will get roasted for that as well.

 

At a guess, if Hornby really wanted to new tool the Mk3 they would be better going with assets they know are accurate - the sliding door Mk3 CAD - than to try and assess where exactly the issues happened with the Oxford version.

 

But unless someone else at least hints at creating a new HST my guess is Hornby won't bother - as people currently continue to buy the existed stuff given the lack of options.

 

On 08/08/2021 at 16:26, Dunsignalling said:

There's no reason why one set of tooling shouldn't be used to produce models for both brands.

 

At which point you need to price both the same, and then the question becomes why are you running 2 brands for the exact same model...

 

On 08/08/2021 at 16:26, Dunsignalling said:

The obvious place to start would be for Oxford's rather decent 9'wb RCH 1923 7-planks to finally despatch Hornby's fanciful ex-Airfix 10' wb monstrosities to history where they belong....

 

The problem of course is that much of the Oxford range has design issues, that the Oxford market apparently doesn't care about but could cause issues with the Hornby brand - so better to just keep it all as Oxford.

 

On 08/08/2021 at 16:26, Dunsignalling said:

Perhaps a swap of brands for Oxford's Mk3s going to Hornby and Hornby's 4/6 wheel generics going the other way might make both ranges more coherent?

 

Doubtful - but I suspect the lack of any additional runs of the Oxford Mk3s is a good indication that they are dead.

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1 minute ago, mdvle said:

 

1.

At which point you need to price both the same, and then the question becomes why are you running 2 brands for the exact same model...

 

2.

The problem of course is that much of the Oxford range has design issues, that the Oxford market apparently doesn't care about but could cause issues with the Hornby brand - so better to just keep it all as Oxford.

 

 

1. Why? There are plenty of people who won't buy anything that's not labelled Hornby and there's no reason why those of us who are less blinkered should pay extra.:jester:

 

2. As does a big chunk of Hornby's wagon range. Their best sets a benchmark for the industry, but too much of the rest dates from the 1970s, and the entirely fictitious ex-Airfix 10' PO wagons are seriously inferior to Oxford's 7-plankers. I didn't advocate moving the entire wagon range across....

 

John

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On 05/08/2021 at 20:34, BokStein said:

Silly question, but with Oxford now owned by Hornby, is another price increase imminent?

Not a silly question at all...I’d say given Hornby’s scale of price increases over the past few years that is a wholly pertinent question.

 

In the current RTR marketplace Oxford Rail appear to offer good value products, in particular their current and planned wagon range. I doubt Hornby will allowing retailers to be selling open wagons at £10, vans at £13 and tank wagons as low as £16. As for proposed new releases such as Pilchard wagons circa £13 and CS cranes circa £17, I don’t believe these price estimates will hold firm under Hornby ownership.

 

I predict we will see an initial price increase of something like 25% across the wagon range, whether sold by Hornby through their main range, railroad range or newly acquired Oxford Rail range.

 

 

 

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Oxford diecasts any scale are incredible with the attention to details including some so tiny! They look fantastic on model railways. cars vehicles, vans, lorries etc Hornby are very lucky that they now have another fantastic brand with access to their new tooling's and copyright brands, companies etc Royal Mail, Sunblest ,CO-OP, British Rail, Southern Electricity, Unigate, Walls  independent Ice Cream Vans etc there are only more fantastic diecasts to come hopefully.  I love everything Oxford Diecast produce and one of my favourites is the 1:76 Sherpa Van 1980 1981 Royal Mail Wales I have this one so hopefully I can complete this with a Sherpa Royal Mail van can be added in the future. 

 

 

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22 hours ago, Soul Survivor said:

Not a silly question at all...I’d say given Hornby’s scale of price increases over the past few years that is a wholly pertinent question.

 

 

I predict we will see an initial price increase of something like 25% across the wagon range, whether sold by Hornby through their main range, railroad range or newly acquired Oxford Rail range.

 

I don't think it's necessarily that easy of a question to answer.

 

The Oxford line is serving a customer base, and based on comments on here that base is buying on price (they certainly aren't buying on accuracy).

 

So it may well be that a 25% increase will actually decrease the profit Oxford Rail makes as that customer base either stops buying Oxford products, or buys fewer.

 

My guess (as I have said before) is one of the reasons for folding Oxford into Hornby at this point in time is to increase the odds that Hornby can post 2 years in a row of being profitable.  If Hornby puts through a massive price increase that reduces the income from Oxford then that jeopardizes that 2nd year of being profitable (because Hornby's profit really wasn't all that great considering the massive amount of spending on this hobby that happened during Covid).

 

Will a price increase happen?  Yes - costs in China have gone up, shipping costs have gone up.

 

Will it be a massive price increase?  I think that is harder to predict, so maybe yes but maybe no.

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People are talking about potential changes to the Oxford range but I don't see that the acquisition changes things fundamentally. 

 

The fundamental change in relationship between the two companies dates back further when Lyndon Davies took over as Hornby's CEO. Surely since that stage, Lyndon would be involved in both companies' plans and could amend them accordingly.  I think we've seen evidence of this with Oxford buildings moving into the Skaledale range, The Hornby Terrier plus Oxford manufacturing diecasts for Hornby. And it's not as if the 51% shareholder in Oxford was a third party - it was none other than Lyndon himself with a contract for the shareholding to be sold to Hornby by 2023 if certain conditions were met.

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On 03/08/2021 at 16:10, Miss Prism said:

Fair points about my over-emphasised Oxford 'design team'. What I meant was there would have been someone at Oxford, perhaps only one person, who could say to China " 'ere, the brake gear is the wrong way around", and this seems to be borne out by what Stationmaster Mike is saying.

For 'design team', perhaps read 'project manager'. There was the person, who must not be named, who said he was a designer, but turned out to be nothing of the sort. Simply, a project manager....!:jester:

 

I wish Oxford Rail and Hornby well, BTW

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I have only ever owned three items of railway stock produced by Oxford Rail and all three were in my opinion, awful. The open wagon I trialled self destructed into a pile of parts at the first sniff of a corner, the Adams Radial was mechanically a complete bag of spanners and the cattle wagon was so wrong that I put it straight back in the box and sold it the day after I bought it.

 

Hornby would be better off jettisoning a lot of Oxford Rail's earlier stuff, it just isn't worth it.

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