Widnes Model Centre

We have no problem now with getting stocks of Humbrol enamels. The range has been reduced and 16 colours have gone from the range. The acrylic range has increased. Our biggest problem is that Royal Mail won't allow enamels to be posted.

Bit closer to home… inside the Lightning is in five or six pieces and will be reassembled at the former RAF Binbrook, Lincolnshire. Then will be restored. Just need some poly cement and a bit of filler! Apparently there’s no flash.

I told you Airfix did big kits. Preorders welcome.

That’s practically a new release! On my desk is a 1/32 Bentley Blower from 1956 tooling , but l have the New Box one from 1973.

We can’t get enough of them. A very heavy number of Airfix customers are collectors not builders. Nostalgia is just as prevalent with Airfix. The Airfix Bond Bug is due shortly and preorders are high. Perhaps @Phil Parker will be building this while recuperating?

Is this Tim Mulhall?

Warlord Games already had ties with Hornby. They produced the Airfix War Gaming set, Blood Red Skies, been on sale for some time. In stock at Airfix, £69.99 or from Warlord Games, £25. Available elsewhere for less.

R3983 and R3984 are due to arrive imminently. Seems like an eternity since we ordered the P2’s.

In fairness to Hornby, they informed retailers fairly recently of the price increase as well as the price increase on the LNER Coronation Coaches. A casual glance seems to indicate that retailers have adjusted their prices. Reason given was manufacturing inflation. From that l understood that prices had gone up in China. Not much they can do about that.

Exactly, it’s an Attraction and you need to pay to gain entry. Presumably the cafe is closed as well, entry to there is free though. What was said about getting youngsters engaged in the hobby? Money for museum receipts is probably not a great deal, cafe and shop on top probably adds up. Engaging youngsters, entertainment, fun for all the family. Priceless.

As @Ravensor has mentioned, Airfix is still really big. This week saw the arrival of two very eagerly awaited new releases, Hawker Hunter and Blackburn Buccaneer, Gulf War version. Not to forget a London Taxi in Airfix Quickbuild, very popular with the younger and not so young modellers. Received notification of my allocation early this week. Today, three emails from Hornby’s Logistics Company. Three emails from DPD. Three notifications from the DPD App. Very well informed aren’t we. About an hour ago, received three emailed invoices. All Hornby and none of the new Airfix. Check DPD notifications and ‘we have your order x 3 but we do not yet have your parcels’. Hopefully they will collect in the next day or so, this is very normal especially towards the end of the month. For me to order these items, search for or request an order form. Fill in the order form, send to account manager. He will then forward to the sales team. Normally within a day or two they will input on system and we receive an acknowledgement of our order. Presumably our order is then forwarded to the Logistics company. Once in picking and picked, but not necessarily sent, we are invoiced . With a bit of luck and a fair wind, we will eventually receive our order. So excited customers expecting new releases in the shop this week. Already have orders for the Airfix. Are we panicking? Not one bit. While I’ve been typing this, my wife, Gill had just placed an order for all the Airfix items with our local wholesalers. They are guaranteed to be delivered before midday tomorrow. Less than 16 hours from ordering. Room for improvement somewhere? Honest answers only. should l really ask Airfix, “Where’s my Buccaneers “?

The RRP for enamel tinlets is £2.69. Humbrol RAF Blue is now discontinued possibly why you paid £1.85? Haven’t a clue as to what the cost of a tinlet would be to Hornby.

I don’t recall there ever being a ‘Fire sale’ of Airfix products, nor for that matter, Corgi. We have experienced shortages of kits, especially for new releases. Has made me wonder why there is a general shortage of Humbrol products? Certain lines have been out of stock for some considerable time. Again, left me wondering just how much the Humbrol enamels, ‘illegal to sell’, return for disposal free of charge.? Followed by a month or so later, ‘it’s legal to sell in the UK’ saga actually cost Hornby? We were holding around £5,000 of Humbrol enamels and as we had bought them from a wholesaler we stood to lose the whole lot. That’s just one shop, if Humbrol ditched all their stock, that’s a lot of money, to then go and pay for replacement would have been a financial disaster. That was the end of March 2022.

Regarding the very informative interpretation by adb968008 above, l interpreted the report in a very similar manner. What he has additionally highlighted was the subject of much trade chat last night. The Clubs. Hornby opened up the TT120 Collectors Club at no cost to the consumer and from memory it gave the members 15% discount. All the other Hornby branded clubs give you 10% discount off the direct and l believe Concessions sales. Paid for Membership. Then there is the Hobby Rewards discount. Moving into the Retail sector, l presume they will have to continue with these Club discounts? The margin they save by not selling to the trade won’t go very far in my opinion. If they decide or have decided to open retail outlets l will use my own town as an example. Around 100 yards from our shop is the actual Town Centre. Rents in there can be doubled and even tripled, the business rates even higher. Now if they pick say, Liverpool or Manchester you can really start to spend some serious margin. Then there is the staffing, movement of stock will presumably cost them the same as sending it to current retailers, that’s before they pay utilities, shoplifting, security and everything else that goes with running an outlet. One thing that is clear, they seem to have held back on plenty of stock to fill their shops if that’s the way they are going. Something Hornby never seem to appreciate is the amount of service they actually get from their retailers. I wish I had a pound for every item that we put right either after sale or before it hits the shelves. Easier in the long run than requesting a return and or replacement. Airfix gift sets brought back as the mini pots of paint are bone dry, we don’t return them that’s too petty and time consuming just another kit for the spares box. I really do hope l am way off the mark with my interpretation. (Off topic, but as I’ve mentioned security. I was somewhat amazed to see a factor in arriving at our shops Rateable Value was that we had cctv !)

Difficult to give a definitive answer but as a guide. We stock 9 different railway loco manufacturers products. It’s late so l may have missed one. When doing an audit a few weeks ago, we counted 50+ plastic kit manufacturers that we stock. We stock Humbrol, but we have at least seven other paint ranges. The 50 or so other kit manufacturers outsell Airfix but they would have too or we wouldn’t stock them. Airfix is still a major, major brand. Even the Vintage range sells extremely well. Very old kits at modern day prices. Not unusual to sell out of Airfix new releases very quickly, sometimes difficult to get them in the first place. Your remark regarding the build up of Airfix is highly unlikely as they distribute through quite a lot of wholesalers and we sometimes have to check and use every one to get Airfix stock.

They don’t wholesale Hornby, Scalextric or Corgi. They wholesale Airfix and Humbrol.

I am somewhat confused regarding what their Retailers role will be going forward? They have stocks of £21+million and yet this paragraph: The Tier System remains clearly for the future. They look to expand their own retail operations, starting in Margate. Will that be even less stock for National and Independent Retailers? Maybe they should locate one in Widnes, Cheshire, ideally midway between Hattons and ourselves and then we could all meet in the park for lunch? In fact why not put a concession in the local garden centre, scrap that, there’s already one there. Recent reports of a Market Research company approaching retailers and asking if they would like to see the return of Hornby reps? Most of them appear to be now working for competitors. Will someone from Hornby please let us know what role if any we have in the company’s future plans?

We opened until 8pm, one day a week for a trial period. Other locally owned shops, the bike shop, the reptile shop, hairdressers and a cafe all stayed open until 8pm the same day. It was a total failure in terms of sales, but regular customers would arrange to meet in the shop and discuss their latest projects with like minded individuals. It became more of a ‘Club meet’. For financial reasons we had to discontinue the late night opening. All the other businesses did the same. We all tried. The vast majority of our business is before lunch. This changes to after lunch on Saturdays.

Hi Fran, l did at 1023 this morning. Received a reply a short while ago after posting the above. Always check spam. Cheers Barry.

Hi @McC. As one of your retailers, we have heard nothing regarding this. Other than seeing it on here or social media. Not able to order the 66’s.

Thanks for this as we haven’t heard anything from Accurascale regarding this.

Simon was a great friend and we will never forget the night before the 2020 Glasgow Exhibition having dinner with him. It was to be the last time we would dine out for a very long time. As a Hornby man through and through his support was unbelievable, nothing was too much bother for him. Email him at 5am, guaranteed reply within twenty minutes. First in and last out of Margate l am told. Problem? No longer once we had spoken with him. As someone said above he was on his feet longer than anyone at Exhibitions and kept on answering questions no matter how many people asked him. We are not going to wish him a Happy Retirement. You really think Simon Kohler will retire? Knowing him he will be working on his next project wherever that may be. We do wish him well and l am absolutely certain we will get to speak to him in the future. We have to, it’s our turn to pay for dinner! Sadly, Hornby’s loss. We do hope that Montana will be given the opportunity to step into his shoes. I am sure she has learnt a lot from SK.

Genuine joke. But the customers contacting me thought we could get Collectors Club items.

Day off today, emails, text message and one telephone call asking can we order this? To save any further enquiries, our allocation is completely sold out. Sorry 😢

When we first opened in 2011 we opened on Thursday. We literally never saw a customer and thinking as we were a new shop things would hopefully improve. It didn’t. We had by this time gained some regular customers. We asked one why was it so quiet on Thursday? He told us was traditionally Half Day. We told him but no one comes even in the morning. His response verbatim… ‘It’s Half Day, all day on Thursday’. We now only ever open on Thursday when it’s the last one before Christmas!