Bachmann Autumn 2022 Announcements inc. Farish headlines

[40002]

43 minutes ago, Markwj said:

Have noted that the class 47 (old tooling) was used for retailers special releases, then the class 37 (old tooling) was and then more recently the class 45 tooling has been used for the same purpose. Do you think this time next year we could be looking at a brand new tooled 44/45/46 family from Bachmann?

But doesn't the latest Bachmann 45 already have improvements over previous versions, including showing the missing hinges and latches on earlier versions for the nose side grills, I think the roof fan area is better as well. I can see them doing a 46 and  45/1 based on the existing model, although that would of course require mods to the bodyshell.

Edited August 7, 2022 by 40002

[Pmorgancym]

A few months back I went to a 'toy n train fair'.  There was lots of new boxes Bachmann stuff at well reasonable prices by todays standards, a smattering of Dapol and Heljan amd hardly any Hornby 

[paulbb]

I think that much of the current market demand for model railways stems from its prominent baby boomer demographic,  and many of these that are now drawing state and corporate pensions from this group and are key to sustaining what we have in the trade. When this bunch start to 'decline' as it were then we shall see some major changes. A growing market of youngsters and/or females may confound this of course! Lets hope.

[Michael Hodgson]

I am pleased to see their excellent OO STVA IPAs are back, but only as a Club members exclusive. 

 

However on top of the membership cost the price has risen to to £139.95 per pack for the grey version, £149.95 for the weathered red.  Inflation and all that, and Bachmann say that these wagons have so many parts to assemble it wouldn't be viable as a general release, but all the same, that's treble the RRP of the 2010 version.

[phil-b259]

12 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Bachmann say that these wagons have so many parts to assemble it wouldn't be viable as a general release, but all the same, that's treble the RRP of the 2010 version.

 

If it took a worker 3hrs to assemble one back in 2010 at £10 per hour, but in 2022 they are are on £30 per hour then its going to cost Bachmann 3 times as much to make the same model today.

 

You forget that when it comes to inflation (be it labour or materials) its the inflation rate in china which matters - not what it may be in the UK!

 

Over the past decade China and its people have seen significant increases in their standard of living - something that is simply not replicated in the Western world. That has meant the price of EVERYTHING has increased at a much faster rate than people in the UK have experienced.

[Delta_Who]

1 hour ago, phil-b259 said:

 

If it took a worker 3hrs to assemble one back in 2010 at £10 per hour, but in 2022 they are are on £30 per hour then its going to cost Bachmann 3 times as much to make the same model today.

 

You forget that when it comes to inflation (be it labour or materials) its the inflation rate in china which matters - not what it may be in the UK!

 

Over the past decade China and its people have seen significant increases in their standard of living - something that is simply not replicated in the Western world. That has meant the price of EVERYTHING has increased at a much faster rate than people in the UK have experienced.

 

That makes no sense in context to the STVA. We're talking about wagons that have already been tooled, and have significantly less complexity/labour lines required than... lets say a Class 90 @ £180. Triple the original price. Labour cost is going to be a fraction of the final RRP, not the whole thing. Even with the excuse card of "expensive manufacturing", why then put up a barrier to sale in the form of a £30 Club Membership?

There are many liberties I'm willing to take... but I think this is one of the few times Bachmann have out "Scrooge-McDuck'd" Hornby.

Edited August 7, 2022 by Delta_Who

[phil-b259]

2 hours ago, Delta_Who said:

 

That makes no sense in context to the STVA. We're talking about wagons that have already been tooled, and have significantly less complexity/labour lines required than... lets say a Class 90 @ £180. Triple the original price. Labour cost is going to be a fraction of the final RRP, not the whole thing. Even with the excuse card of "expensive manufacturing", why then put up a barrier to sale in the form of a £30 Club Membership?

There are many liberties I'm willing to take... but I think this is one of the few times Bachmann have out "Scrooge-McDuck'd" Hornby.

 

Well nobody is forcing you to buy them - and in any case I know who I would rather believe.

 

Namely a manufacturer with decades of experience in the field instead of a whinging armchair expert from the UK.

[rob D2]

12 hours ago, Markwj said:

Have noted that the class 47 (old tooling) was used for retailers special releases, then the class 37 (old tooling) was and then more recently the class 45 tooling has been used for the same purpose. Do you think this time next year we could be looking at a brand new tooled 44/45/46 family from Bachmann?

The 45 they finally brought out with the sealed beam version - they seem to have hung around and been discounted. With competition of Heljans 45/1 , I think the chances are super small

[PaulRhB]

10 hours ago, Delta_Who said:

 

and have significantly less complexity/labour lines required than... lets say a Class 90 @ £180.
 

That I’m afraid is a very old assumption. When I worked for RJH back in the early 90’s people moaned about that and we pointed out that even in a kit the coaches had more parts internally than the loco and the only actual difference in cost was the motor and gears which was £30 at the time. 
In a modern wagon the many tiny etch details, masking and printing within the decks of those wagons means they are more complex to assemble than the cab, drive shafts and a pcb so the labour cost, which is the huge increase in cost compared to materials, is actually higher than most locos.

 

 

10 hours ago, Delta_Who said:

 

Triple the original price. Labour cost is going to be a fraction of the final RRP,

No it isn’t because labour is part of the wider factory costs of providing the facilities for them as well. It is misleading just to look at labour as time to assemble. Increasing rights means they are getting breaks and better facilities so there are more workers effectively involved so the costs have risen dramatically. 
At the end of the day the factory is run as a separate part of the business and will quote in line with current commercial rates. If the model railways don’t want to pay that then they will simply make other toys instead where the market will pay the going rate. 

 

 

10 hours ago, Delta_Who said:

 

not the whole thing. Even with the excuse card of "expensive manufacturing", why then put up a barrier to sale in the form of a £30 Club Membership?

Because that’s simply a commercial decision that they don’t think adding another £10-20 to each set to cover their shipping to and profit for shops will work. 
As you need multiple sets making them that bit cheaper makes a big difference for a full rake. So yes for one set the club fee, which includes the mags and other offers, may seem expensive but if you buy 5 sets it’s dropped to £6 per wagon and the other club goodies for free?

Edited August 8, 2022 by PaulRhB

[frobisher]

10 hours ago, Delta_Who said:

That makes no sense in context to the STVA. We're talking about wagons that have already been tooled, and have significantly less complexity/labour lines required than... lets say a Class 90 @ £180. Triple the original price. Labour cost is going to be a fraction of the final RRP, not the whole thing.

 

That makes perfect sense, even if Phil's figures were exceptionally spurious by way of illustration.  Just because a model is old tooling does not mean that it's assembly and production costs remain fixed. Those have to be paid for at today's rates.  Bachmann's costs at factory are higher than they were (labour and materials).  If you make the assumption of a percentage margin is taken at each step between factory and resale, then a tripling (say) of factory cost will reflect the whole way down to purchase, especially if you have an increase in transport costs (which have gone up considerably in the last 18 months). 

[Phil Parker]

10 hours ago, Delta_Who said:

Labour cost is going to be a fraction of the final RRP, not the whole thing.

 

I've been told by several manufacturers that labour is the largest part of the final cost.

[spamcan61]

20 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

 

I've been told by several manufacturers that labour is the largest part of the final cost.

Surely that would apply to factory cost though, which is a long way from RRP.

 

I'm also intrigued as to how they factor in development costs, for example Bachmann's much publicised million pound class 47 development,  they're never likely going to sell a million Class 47s so that money has to amortised somehow.

Edited August 8, 2022 by spamcan61

[Phil Parker]

12 minutes ago, spamcan61 said:

Surely that would apply to factory cost though, which is a long way from RRP.

 

I'm also intrigued as to how they factor in development costs, for example Bachmann's much publicised million pound class 47 development,  they're never likely going to sell a million Class 47s so that money has to amortised somehow.

 

I don't have the numbers, and neither (I suspect) do you, to confirm this. Only the manufacturers will, and they aren't going to spill the beans. It's a fascinating subject, but we aren't able to do much more than speculate. However, we do know Chinese wages have risen, and shipping costs shot through the roof.

[Dunsignalling]

1 hour ago, spamcan61 said:

Surely that would apply to factory cost though, which is a long way from RRP.

 

I'm also intrigued as to how they factor in development costs, for example Bachmann's much publicised million pound class 47 development,  they're never likely going to sell a million Class 47s so that money has to amortised somehow.

Well, if they expect to sell, say, 50,000 over five years, it would be twenty quid per loco to recover the development costs (which presumably includes the tooling) over that timescale.

 

They probably want/need to cover it more quickly than that, though. Realistically, the fastest reasonable rate of recovery might be two years and 20,000 pieces, which would represent £50 on each one. 

 

However, I doubt it actually works that simply, and the accountants may write-down the million over (say) half the anticipated lifetime of the tooling, by a set annual percentage. Thus the early sales might be less profitable for Bachmann (because the sale price would include a greater cash amount set against the up-front costs) than those made in later years.

 

John

Edited August 8, 2022 by Dunsignalling

[Phil Parker]

[TomScrut]

11 hours ago, Delta_Who said:

Even with the excuse card of "expensive manufacturing", why then put up a barrier to sale in the form of a £30 Club Membership?

 

Because that is their only mechanism to sell direct, and if the CC has a markup then Bachmann can control it and ultimately the money stays in house anyway. I think the whole point is these wagons would be £200+ a pair if they had to go through dealers.

 

11 hours ago, Delta_Who said:

and have significantly less complexity/labour lines required than... lets say a Class 90 @ £180

 

How do you know that?

 

11 hours ago, Delta_Who said:

Triple the original price. Labour cost is going to be a fraction of the final RRP, not the whole thing.

 

In terms of how much it costs to have an item at a factory door (forgetting tooling), I expect the vast majority of the cost is labour. The plastic, metal and paint as raw materials isn't the issue (whilst have gone up, will be small fry compared to an employees factory rate). As has already been mentioned, over here for example we can have factory workers earning £12 an hour and the cost to the business is around £35 an hour because of the building, rates, insurance, NI, electricity, tools, other aspects of facilitating that person to stand there and do their job which people seem to forget about.

 

So if the cost of labour triples (for example) then a lot of that goes up too meaning the factory rate might double as a result of the labour tripling (assuming other stuff goes up but not to the extent of the labour).

 

Its quite straightforward to get some numbers out of this without sounding too ridiculous for complex wagons, although they will be wrong.

 

£150 RRP

£125 excl VAT

If Bachmann have a 50% mark up then its £83.33 (that is assuming that the CC doesn't have a mark up, a lot of their products are more than normal RRP)

£13.33 in shipping, import duty etc.

£70 at factory.

Factory at 50% mark up - costs £46.66 to make.

£10 an hour, 4 hours work - £40 (I expect it will be more than £10 an hour nowadays, but its a number that works well)

£6.66 of materials/packaging

 

As I said before, I think because of when these wagons were designed maybe less attention was paid to the labour cost element because of how the market was at the time. Maybe new wagons need to be designed a bit more with this in mind?

Edited August 8, 2022 by TomScrut

[TomScrut]

55 minutes ago, spamcan61 said:

I'm also intrigued as to how they factor in development costs, for example Bachmann's much publicised million pound class 47 development,  they're never likely going to sell a million Class 47s so that money has to amortised somehow.

 

The development may have cost £1m, but a lot of that will be engineering labour costs which will just be run as an overhead on the business. Likewise I expect that the tooling costs are capitalised and paid off over X amount of years as a cost to the business as a whole. Whilst they can use sales figures to check the success of a project vs those costs, and knowing how many they need to sell to pay for it all, I think the tooling will be paid for in the short term by stuff that the tooling doesn't owe them anything anymore. So the 47 will be being paid for by the 66, 57, 08 etc. and in the future the new 47 will pay off other tooling suites.

[spamcan61]

2 minutes ago, TomScrut said:

 

The development may have cost £1m, but a lot of that will be engineering labour costs which will just be run as an overhead on the business. Likewise I expect that the tooling costs are capitalised and paid off over X amount of years as a cost to the business as a whole. Whilst they can use sales figures to check the success of a project vs those costs, and knowing how many they need to sell to pay for it all, I think the tooling will be paid for in the short term by stuff that the tooling doesn't owe them anything anymore. So the 47 will be being paid for by the 66, 57, 08 etc. and in the future the new 47 will pay off other tooling suites.

I suspect you are right, indeed the company I'm working with at the moment uses this method, personally I'm not keen on "hiding" a specific development's cost in this way, but then it's not my train set, so to speak 

[TomScrut]

Just now, spamcan61 said:

I'm not keen on "hiding" a specific development's cost in this way

 

I think they will have the numbers associated with a project for long term retrospect, but I don't think they can operate with the attitude that loco X needs to be price X because of what the tooling cost (other than when initially deciding to do the project). They need to sell stuff for what they can get for it, once they have the tooling they have spent the money, so if the market collapses and they have to sell stuff for less margin then they are still better off doing that than not at all. If you catch my drift. Whilst I expect the 66 was long paid for when it happened, they slashed a load off the RRP of that when the Hattons one came along, I don't think that was to do with tooling amortisation!

[Delta_Who]

9 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

 

Well nobody is forcing you to buy them - and in any case I know who I would rather believe.

 

Namely a manufacturer with decades of experience in the field instead of a whinging armchair expert from the UK.

I can respect other people opinions (waking up to the from the 6 or so notifications this morning xD). But "whinging armchair expert" is a bit much though no? Mr @TomScrut had a really nice counter argument.

[Roddy Angus]

If I remember correctly, the original models were not quick sellers as I am sure that I picked up some at a significant discount.

 

Regards Roddy

[spamcan61]

2 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

 

I don't have the numbers, and neither (I suspect) do you, to confirm this. Only the manufacturers will, and they aren't going to spill the beans. It's a fascinating subject, but we aren't able to do much more than speculate. However, we do know Chinese wages have risen, and shipping costs shot through the roof.

Well we know the VAT element and dealer gross margin at RRP  is likely to be 40%, could be confirmed or not by several retailers here, those two factors alone take a 200 GBP RRP loco down to 120 GBP ish. In terms of the shipping costs then, as I calculated here a while back, assuming 40' containers and 75% packing efficiency the increase to 16K USD shipping cost is less than 50p per loco sized item. I'm not for a minute claiming costs haven't gone up or we're being "ripped off" but speaking as somebody who has to generate business cases and time to profit as part of my day job it's interesting to look at other industries.

Edited August 8, 2022 by spamcan61

[Delta_Who]

1 hour ago, TomScrut said:

As I said before, I think because of when these wagons were designed maybe less attention was paid to the labour cost element because of how the market was at the time. Maybe new wagons need to be designed a bit more with this in mind?

 

Potentially? I'll admit to being naive as to how much that labour cost would factor into the final overheads for a product.

 

1 hour ago, TomScrut said:

How do you know that?

 

I mean... the STVAs just won't. There are 2 variations for that wagon, so thats less tampo moulds/prints required than a typical locomotive, and most of the components don't even appear to be spray-painted (except for weathered versions) but make use of coloured plastic injection. No electronics so the only thing remaining large cost is parts assembly.

 

1 hour ago, TomScrut said:

 

Because that is their only mechanism to sell direct, and if the CC has a markup then Bachmann can control it and ultimately the money stays in house anyway. I think the whole point is these wagons would be £200+ a pair if they had to go through dealers.

 

This is the one I probably have the most confusion with, because the high markup and CC appear like 2 barriers to entry. It seems counterproductive to selling volumnes of this wagon when you can go on ebay and get the same wagon at an average of £50 - £70 (judging by the sold listings, that price hasn't inflated yet).

Edited August 8, 2022 by Delta_Who

[Dunsignalling]

As I see it, the price is what it is, and will only change if enough stock hangs around long enough to become a financial or physical nuisance to the company.

 

We, the (intended) customers have to decide (a) if we can afford the item at all and, if so (b)  whether we want it enough to purchase it in preference to something else on offer, or even hanging on to the money! 

 

In my own case, I have not yet had to rule out anything I really want outright, though almost all "wide-of-scheme" impulse buys get "pre-rejected" these days, and decision (b) is being posed ever more frequently.

 

Specifically, I've pre-ordered Bachmann's new Bulleid 2-set coaches, but am likely to wait for the 3/5 set vehicles to be released in green, which is more period-appropriate for me. In times gone by, I'd almost certainly have gone for the Crimson/cream ones as well!

 

Bachmann et al will be as aware as the rest of us as to what else is going on in the world and undoubtedly factor that into what they make, how many they make, and what return they can expect from doing so.

 

John

Edited August 8, 2022 by Dunsignalling

[PaulRhB]

3 minutes ago, Delta_Who said:

and most of the components don't even appear to be spray-painted

 

 

The main body components are painted even if some individual details are in coloured plastic. Also as most etch parts are brass they are usually plated, painted or chemically blackened. 
 

5 minutes ago, Delta_Who said:

thats less tampo moulds/prints required than a typical locomotive

Ok so you save a bit of time on artwork but the application is little different as there are still at least three colours on most wagons and often more. There would appear to be at least black, white and red printing passes on these.