Hornby Tier System

[The Stationmaster]

1 hour ago, Dunsignalling said:

 

There are plenty of exhibition and swap-meet dealers in pre-owned items, too; including some that maintain watch-lists for regular clients, and who may also trade via eBay. 

 

Some shift considerable amounts of stock "off-line", and those sales are unlikely to figure in any analysis.

 

John

And auction house as well although they will be nowhere near the EBay figure (but I bet they provide some of the stuff that will subsequently be sold through Ebay).

[BachelorBoy]

On 30/12/2023 at 15:59, adb968008 said:

Maybe he meant £200mn… Hornbys turnover is £55mn, thats ignoring everyone else and the retail end sales price too).

 

 

Didn't you work in Seattle in the late 1990s/early 2000s? Do you remember Hornby's concept shop there?

 

 

 

 

[ColinB]

Looking at the Hornby website sale I get the opinion reality is beginning to hit them. I bought a class 43 off of them via Bure Valley railways a couple of years ago and was amazed at the price and actually what you got for it, a loco plus a carriage without windows. At the time a decent Bachmann diesel and carriage was cheaper. Fast forward and I have just bought a class 43 off their website at a price substantially cheaper than I paid for the one two years ago. Obviously they are having issues selling this model at the full price. That is probably why the tier system has got binned. I think the inflated sales during Covid gave them a false impression of the value of their products.

[APT Fan]

What switches me off about Hornby is the lack of factory fitted DCC models. I assume this is a deliberate strategy and they have done the market research in that the DC market must be bigger than DCC so the cost does not justify the means?

[adb968008]

12 hours ago, BachelorBoy said:

 

Didn't you work in Seattle in the late 1990s/early 2000s? Do you remember Hornby's concept shop there?

i lived west coast US for several years, and travelled widely, almost every week.
I only ever came across very few model shops in the US.

 

Though when I found them, they were usually huge, bigger than a small supermarket in some cases, sold just about everything you could think of, I could buy striped blue / white drivers overalls, with cap and red scarf to wear when operating my layout in one place !.. I have an SD40-2 double headlight, number boards and builders plates courtesy of one place which I brought home.

 

Unfortunately they werent always good on price, but I still have some letraset style rub on transfers for various US railroads to this day… and they still work, I renumbered a Roco S160 just recently using a set nigh on 25 years old !.. its nigh impossible to get such range in rub on transfers today in this country.

 

I did help a certain online bookshop design its first data centre, in Seattle, then Reston, VA. They wanted to compete against Borders and then Blockbuster.. I had a builders workbench, with a vice fitted for my desk and were quite generous with expenses.. A suite at the Sheraton, with a half bottle of wine and 12 oysters waiting for me after work every day… not bad for my second job out of uni with a years experience… As opposed to going home at weekends, they paid for me to spend weekends in Alaska, Hawaii and Salt lake city. Its always enjoyable talking to new AWS employees who have been indoctrinated about the companies humble beginnings not knowing my past started there, before most of them were born.

 

The only time I ever saw such expenses after that, was banks here in the UK in the run up to 2008… after that Pot Noodles.

 

Never saw a Hornby shop in Seattle, but I did learn Sushi from a really old bloke called Shiro, who spent 5 years just learning how to make rice !.. 

https://www.seattlemet.com/news-and-city-life/2016/09/shiro-across-the-sea

 

 

 

Edited January 1 by adb968008

[ColinB]

34 minutes ago, APT Fan said:

What switches me off about Hornby is the lack of factory fitted DCC models. I assume this is a deliberate strategy and they have done the market research in that the DC market must be bigger than DCC so the cost does not justify the means?

I must admit most of the models I now buy are always DCC fitted or DCC sound fitted, I got so fed up with bits falling off when I had to dismantle them to fit the decoder. Of course the only exception is Hornby. One of the reasons, I suspect is on their older models it is so difficult to add DCC or sound, as in the design there seems to be no appreciation of how to fit the decoder. Even on their newer models where they are designed for HM7000 they don't include enough space for the Powerpack, which from my experience is necessary to get the best performance from the HM7000. I even mailed Hornby to find out if a HM7000 fitted model contained the Powerpack, which of course it didn't. Fortunately being a 9F it had enough pickups to allow it to work properly. I always get the opinion with Hornby electronics is an after thought, something in the modern world they have to support but is secondary to making locos. Bachmann on the other hand seem to design the electronics in, admittedly sometimes at the expense of removing a weight but at least they tried whereas Hornby would leave the weight in and leave it up to you to butcher your brand new loco.

Dapol, Accurascale, Bachmann and many more sell their locos prefitted with decent sound, which is generally cheaper than retrofitting yourself, so they obviously think that there is a market for them. Buying a sound fitted loco from Accurascale is the optimum, as they seem to tailor their sound for that specific model.

[meatloaf]

6 hours ago, ColinB said:

I must admit most of the models I now buy are always DCC fitted or DCC sound fitted, I got so fed up with bits falling off when I had to dismantle them to fit the decoder. Of course the only exception is Hornby. One of the reasons, I suspect is on their older models it is so difficult to add DCC or sound, as in the design there seems to be no appreciation of how to fit the decoder. Even on their newer models where they are designed for HM7000 they don't include enough space for the Powerpack, which from my experience is necessary to get the best performance from the HM7000. I even mailed Hornby to find out if a HM7000 fitted model contained the Powerpack, which of course it didn't. Fortunately being a 9F it had enough pickups to allow it to work properly. I always get the opinion with Hornby electronics is an after thought, something in the modern world they have to support but is secondary to making locos. Bachmann on the other hand seem to design the electronics in, admittedly sometimes at the expense of removing a weight but at least they tried whereas Hornby would leave the weight in and leave it up to you to butcher your brand new loco.

Dapol, Accurascale, Bachmann and many more sell their locos prefitted with decent sound, which is generally cheaper than retrofitting yourself, so they obviously think that there is a market for them. Buying a sound fitted loco from Accurascale is the optimum, as they seem to tailor their sound for that specific model.

Where theres a choice i always get the sound fitted option, becasue generally it dosent work out much more expensive than buying the dcc ready model plus a decent decoder. 

[john new]

12 minutes ago, meatloaf said:

Where theres a choice i always get the sound fitted option, becasue generally it dosent work out much more expensive than buying the dcc ready model plus a decent decoder. 

Likewise have DCC pre-fitted (but not always sound) having been bitten in the past with a loco I eventually had to send off repair and DCC fitting as it was so darn difficult. (The Dapol OO B4 tank). Best to let those who do it for a living have the difficulties. 

[meatloaf]

1 hour ago, john new said:

Likewise have DCC pre-fitted (but not always sound) having been bitten in the past with a loco I eventually had to send off repair and DCC fitting as it was so darn difficult. (The Dapol OO B4 tank). Best to let those who do it for a living have the difficulties. 

Yes i quite like the Dapol option of having dcc fitted and then sound as well. Although i recently got a DCC ready 73 from rails for 99 quid as i had a hm7000 chip ready for it

[The Stationmaster]

20 hours ago, ColinB said:

Looking at the Hornby website sale I get the opinion reality is beginning to hit them. I bought a class 43 off of them via Bure Valley railways a couple of years ago and was amazed at the price and actually what you got for it, a loco plus a carriage without windows. At the time a decent Bachmann diesel and carriage was cheaper. Fast forward and I have just bought a class 43 off their website at a price substantially cheaper than I paid for the one two years ago. Obviously they are having issues selling this model at the full price. That is probably why the tier system has got binned. I think the inflated sales during Covid gave them a false impression of the value of their products.

Two issues here I think.  Firstly Hornby's HST marketing has been weird to say the least - power cars without coaches in the same year and vice versa.  Plus - so i undersand from retailers - still getting the coaching type mix wrong when they do produce the coaches.  So that is a sign of poor marketing and lack of thought.

 

Second thing is the 2020 total revenue.  This clearly owed a lot to the effects of Covid and lockdowns etc plus the resultant changes in discretionary spending habit.  More importantly for Hornby was, I think, not the small profit they made but the fact that it arrested several years of sharp decline in revenue.    But even then  their year-on-year revenue growth, while spectacular, didn't even match the sort of growth some retailers in the sector saw that year.   From there their annual revenue has shown a small continuing upward trend but still lags behind where it should be when you make allowance for inflation.

 

In fact forgetting inflation and just looking at the numbers they are still not achieving the sort of revenue they were getting 10, or more, years ago.  Then, as revenue declined, they were slow to trim costs to the extent the situation demanded although with one bright spot in the numbers that  is to some extent understandable.

 

Now they are in the situation where the new management has recognised the critical need to increase revenue and has rebuilt the relevantl part of the  organisation around that.  Putting it very simply Hornby will not be profitable unless it gets in a lot more revenue and, obviously, that revenue exceeds the company's costs.   Getting certain major retailers back onboard and abolishing tiers are no doubt part of the plan to boost revenue but overall Hornby and its retailers can only sell what the market wants to buy..

d

[BachelorBoy]

42 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Getting certain major retailers back onboard and abolishing tiers are no doubt part of the plan to boost revenue but overall Hornby and its retailers can only sell what the market wants to buy..

 

 

As Yogi Berra is supposed to have said: "If people don't want to come to the ballpark, how are you going to stop them?"

[BachelorBoy]

52 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Getting certain major retailers back onboard and abolishing tiers are no doubt part of the plan to boost revenue but overall Hornby and its retailers can only sell what the market wants to buy..

 

 

Do you think Hornby is still a "must have" brand for shops (general or specialist) that sell model railways in the way that supermarkets feel they have to stock Heinz and Coca-Cola?

 

 

 

 

[Dunsignalling]

55 minutes ago, BachelorBoy said:

 

Do you think Hornby is still a "must have" brand for shops (general or specialist) that sell model railways in the way that supermarkets feel they have to stock Heinz and Coca-Cola?

 

 

 

 

 

Undoubtedly, but when people were walking into model shops that Hornby had persistently under-supplied with product, it was in the retailers' interests to promote alternatives they did have in stock. 

 

Gaps in the market will inevitably be filled, and it was (mainly) Hornby who created those gaps. 

 

If you want a parallel, take the British motorcycle industry in the 1960s, which abandoned the small-displacement market in the face of Japanese competition they couldn't match on price.

 

Problem was, learners were very satisfied with their small Japanese bikes and, when they wanted bigger ones, many found a DOHC, electric-start CB450 or a 4-cylinder CB750 much more attractive than pushrod British twins that were mostly just pre-WW2 designs with up-dated suspension.  

 

John

Edited January 1 by Dunsignalling

[ColinB]

31 minutes ago, BachelorBoy said:

 

Do you think Hornby is still a "must have" brand for shops (general or specialist) that sell model railways in the way that supermarkets feel they have to stock Heinz and Coca-Cola?

 

 

 

 

Interesting point, Rails survived for a few years without any Hornby, they virtually killed Hatton's Hornby sales with their tier system both are still going. My local Model Shop has a few odd Hornby locos but not many, they survive on N gauge sales and second hand. Given the high selling price of Hornby locos not many of the smaller Model Shops will have many in stock. I think my model shop has realised they can sell more of the accessories which are lower cost where post and packaging for mail order makes it cheaper to buy from them. 

[Hroth]

Have a look at what Hornby sets are being sold through Argos.  In a nutshell, not much!

 

A Playtrains starter set, a Cola Cola set, a Santa Express set and a Flying Scotsman set.

 

Not very inspiring. Hornby need to expand their exposure beyond model shops and direct sales.

 

[Dunsignalling]

3 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

 

Snip > Getting certain major retailers back onboard and abolishing tiers are no doubt part of the plan to boost revenue but overall Hornby and its retailers can only sell what the market wants to buy..

 

 

But equally, retailers can only sell what they can obtain. A major factor in Hornby's recent woes is that retailers have been forced to concentrate on selling second-hand models and the products of competitors because they were unable to fulfil their customers' wants for the latest Hornby models.

 

The adjustment was painful for many and it's not a business model they will abandon overnight. For Hornby, it's not going to be "just like they've never been away".

 

Many customers have weaker affinities with particular prototypes these days but there seems to be a greater interest in novelty for its own sake. When people miss out, some will consider "the moment has gone".

 

Either the prospect of a second run lacks the immediacy of the first or, on reflection, a model isn't quite the "must have" that one first thought. I've reached the second conclusion more than once and, even if a sale goes ahead, a potential Y1 + Y2 multi-buy has often become a single purchase....

 

Demand for under-supplied initial releases therefore doesn't inevitably  transfer to Y2 follow-ups.

 

John

 

 

Edited January 1 by Dunsignalling

[Oldddudders]

2 hours ago, BachelorBoy said:

 

As Yogi Berra is supposed to have said: "If people don't want to come to the ballpark, how are you going to stop them?"

Fair comment, when people in this thread say they don't buy Hornby products, rather than saying Hornby make nothing they happen to want. 

[woodenhead]

54 minutes ago, Hroth said:

Have a look at what Hornby sets are being sold through Argos.  In a nutshell, not much!

 

A Playtrains starter set, a Cola Cola set, a Santa Express set and a Flying Scotsman set.

 

Not very inspiring. Hornby need to expand their exposure beyond model shops and direct sales.

 

Looking at that through the wrong lens. 
 

Argos will decide what they believe their customers will buy and be worth stocking, which is reflected in the offering in the catalogue.

[Hroth]

a. Hornby has to have a dialogue with "alternative" retailers.

b. Hornby has to do more to produce something with wider appeal than their favourite big pacifics and endless variations of Flying Scotsman.

 

I hope the new team will start looking through a wider lens...

 

[wombatofludham]

I think it is fair to say I have been a vocal Hornby critic in the past but the news the cack-handed "Tiers" farrago is over is good news.  I too will be interested to see how the new management will take the company forward although I expect January 9th will be too soon to have had any impact on product launches. Prior to my boycott over "Tiers" my Hornby spend was already minimal due to mainly their woeful stewardship of their non-steam range and obsession with freakery like the APT.  Glitz and glamour and fame is all well and good but allowing competitors to come up with cheaper, better designed competition to their core, bread and butter non steam range (companies like Accurascale with the Class 50 and 31, and Cavalex with the 56 and 60) effectively shows a lack of awareness of the non-steam market which, if @Revolution Ben's revelation that their retailers have said the market is transitioning away from steam and "transition era" towards BR Blue and Sectorisation is correct (and it matches my anecdotal conversations with visitors to the "Dolgellau" layout) then it might help explain Hornby's falling revenues.  They might be the go to manufacturer for fans of steam compared to Bachmann and newcomers, but the massive amounts of investment in non-steam models by other outfits suggests that the direction of the model market might just favour non-steam and could lead Hornby to be exposed over the next few years.

All that said I do wish the new team at Hornby well and do hope they can turn the company round and into profit.

PS New management team, a 7 car Exec or IC Swallow HST in Cross Country formation with TRSB would welcome me back to the brand.  Cash waiting!

Edited January 1 by wombatofludham
Spilling mistook

[ColinB]

1 hour ago, wombatofludham said:

I think it is fair to say I have been a vocal Hornby critic in the past but the news the cack-handed "Tiers" farrago is over is good news.  I too will be interested to see how the new management will take the company forward although I expect January 9th will be too soon to have had any impact on product launches. Prior to my boycott over "Tiers" my Hornby spend was already minimal due to mainly their woeful stewardship of their non-steam range and obsession with freakery like the APT.  Glitz and glamour and fame is all well and good but allowing competitors to come up with cheaper, better designed competition to their core, bread and butter non steam range (companies like Accurascale with the Class 50 and 31, and Cavalex with the 56 and 60) effectively shows a lack of awareness of the non-steam market which, if @Revolution Ben's revelation that their retailers have said the market is transitioning away from steam and "transition era" towards BR Blue and Sectorisation is correct (and it matches my anecdotal conversations with visitors to the "Dolgellau" layout) then it might help explain Hornby's falling revenues.  They might be the go to manufacturer for fans of steam compared to Bachmann and newcomers, but the massive amounts of investment in non-steam models by other outfits suggests that the direction of the model market might just favour non-steam and could lead Hornby to be exposed over the next few years.

All that said I do wish the new team at Hornby well and do hope they can turn the company round and into profit.

PS New management team, a 7 car Exec or IC Swallow HST in Cross Country formation with TRSB would welcome me back to the brand.  Cash waiting!

You can understand that. Hornby has been making steam locos for years most people that do model railways are old so they generally have the previous version of the model. I wanted a City of London loco, didn't want to pay £200 plus so I bought the old model for about £80. I upgraded the tender to the latest spec and it works just as well as the new one. Any younger members will want to buy the locos they grew up with hence the trend towards diesels, it is a bit like classic cars. Even with the APT it was so expensive that they couldn't shift some of them, I bought my one for about two thirds of the retail price from TMC when they couldn't shift them.

[RichardT]

37 minutes ago, ColinB said:

Any younger members will want to buy the locos they grew up with

Any chance we can put this canard to bed? If this was true there’d be no modellers of anything before 1948, no modellers of First World War aircraft or vehicles, no modellers of sailing ships etc etc.

 

RichardT

[Fair Oak Junction]

52 minutes ago, ColinB said:

Any younger members will want to buy the locos they grew up with hence the trend towards diesels

 

I'm afraid that is objectively wrong. Many MANY young members of the hobby are grouping and pre-grouping modellers, and many of the purveyors of steam era 3D prints are also young modellers. Rapido are a good example of this, where some of their CAD modellers are young people with particular interests in pre-grouping railways.

 

I'm 34, yet I model a railway that vanished in 1948. I would model pre-grouping if it was easier. I have absolutely no interest in 99% of the soulless boxes that have been running around during my lifetime. Also I would point out the driving force behind the restoration of LSWR T3 563 were young people. Generalisations are rarely accurate, or helpful.

Edited January 1 by Fair Oak Junction

[ColinB]

7 minutes ago, Fair Oak Junction said:

 

I'm afraid that is objectively wrong. Many MANY young members of the hobby are grouping and pre-grouping modellers, and many of the purveyors of steam era 3D prints are also young modellers. Rapido are a good example of this, where some of their CAD modellers are young people with particular interests in pre-grouping railways.

 

I'm 34, yet I model a railway that vanished in 1948. I would model pre-grouping if it was easier. I have absolutely no interest in 99% of the soulless boxes that have been running around during my lifetime. Also I would point out the driving force behind the restoration of LSWR T3 563 were young people. Generalisations are rarely accurate, or helpful.

All I can say is if @Revolution Ben statement is correct, then there must be a reason. Perhaps it is because the diesels are cheaper to buy and and less hassle to run.

[Fair Oak Junction]

1 minute ago, ColinB said:

All I can say is if @Revolution Ben statement is correct, then there must be a reason. Perhaps it is because the diesels are cheaper to buy and and less hassle to run.

 

Perhaps. I think a lot of factors are at play, rather than any clear single reason.