Pete47401

I've not seen this catalogue yet, but most likely won't be ordering much apart from the brand new items, none of the old tat. Customers have got too wise to subsequent dumping/Black Friday sales. I always said to the rep that 20% of Hornby catalogue was of interest and 80% not, and with Bachmann it was the other way round. We are just small fry, so I doubt they would miss us at all!

Andrew Blanchette? No, neither he nor they have bothered to tell me about that, but it would explain recent lack of contact. Perhaps they don't want people going around trying to do stupid things like sell models to model shops when they'd rather sell them direct.

We haven't either. Waiting (probably in vain) to see if they even notice. Perhaps a friendly email from the sales office or a rep... "Can we interest you in any of our great new 2016 product Pete?". If they aren't interested then I'm not interested. No doubt what we would have ordered can just be sold direct to the public.

It's 8 weeks not 15 weeks, chaps, not so long to wait. People come to expect the imminent price drop, so you might sell for higher prices in the first 8 weeks, but in lesser quantities than of old. Swings and roundabouts.....

I think many people genuinely don't have that much money to spend, but I do wonder if it's more a matter of principle with others. Perhaps they have read too many headlines about "rip-off Britain" and have come to believe that items selling at anything near RRP is part of a wicked conspiracy against them. A few years ago, if a £60 loco got discounted to £50 after a while it was no big deal, but with a a £125 loco today, people hope to pick it up for less than £100, makes a much bigger difference to the wallet now.

I think most people can comprehend it. Members here seem like an intelligent bunch despite what you might think. Disingenuous maybe to imply that things have always been this way, yes there has always been discounting and yes people have always made mistakes and sometimes ordered too many of something but customers are really baulking at higher prices these days and say it will kill the market but the thing which has changed most of all is the now widespread expectation of future discounting. Several of my biggest and best customers now routinely say they will wait for prices to come down on pretty much any release by Heljan (though will be interesting if the steam prototypes follow the same pattern) and now increasingly on Hornby too. Bachmann not so much, as there is more scope for small retailers to be flexible on price without actually losing money. This never used to be the case. Cannot blame any individual for wanting a bargain but it must ultimately be damaging when it reaches a point of people expecting them all the time.... our reps tell us it just isn't like this in the European market, people are happy to support new releases at RRP, don't know how true this is but the situation here is that we now won't hold stocks of models "on spec", just supply to definite customer orders and any spares just get rid of on eBay at cost. Why risk holding stocks of Heljan when they will appear on the sites of big model shops in 18 months time at prices we can never hope to match without taking a big loss? Why risk holding stocks of Hornby when some Black Friday promotion comes around and they undercut their own retailers? Why risk holding stocks of Bachmann when if you make a mistake and need to liquidate prior to the price fixing period being over you can't do so? Ultimately, assuming we aren't the only ones in this position, it means less orders up front for the manufacturers, less inclination to support a second run or livery of something if the first wasn't well supported and maybe less chance of a similar type of model being contemplated in future. So we are out of new models, and sticking to secondhand.... sad. If the trade wants higher prices to stick then they have to stay firm on them otherwise people just won't get used to them or come to accept them as the norm. Just my thoughts, based on 15 years of selling and lately seeing increasing customer resistance and expectation of price cutting which we aren't able to provide given reduced profit margins.