Whatever happened to ...

Purchased by Horizon. Joins Athearn as brands owned by Horizon.

OK, but I haven't spotted any of the old products - I'll go and read the catalogue again, 8^)

Regards, Greg.P.

I don't know if Walther's will be distributing or handling anything that Horizon owns....

While you were busy spounting off with Brian Ehni about "stupid Americans," MDC Roundhouse (not "RMC") was bought by Horizon Hobby on June 14 of this year. Their operations were combined with Athearn, which Horizon Hobbies bought earlier in the year. Horizon is the exclusive distributor of all newly released MDC Roundhouse/Athearn products, so they are not in the 2005 Walthers catalog.

The remaining MDC Roundhouse stock is here:

remaining products will be disconuntinued by Walthers when sold out.

Bought out by Horizon, now part of the Athearn line and unavailable through Walthers.

Don

-- snipped-for-privacy@prodigy.net

snipped-for-privacy@yahoogroups.com moderator: snipped-for-privacy@yahoogroups.com moderator: snipped-for-privacy@yahoogroups.com co-moderator: snipped-for-privacy@Yahoogroups.com

They can't. Horizon will only sell to authorized Horizon dealers.

Don

-- snipped-for-privacy@prodigy.net

snipped-for-privacy@yahoogroups.com moderator: snipped-for-privacy@yahoogroups.com moderator: snipped-for-privacy@yahoogroups.com co-moderator: snipped-for-privacy@Yahoogroups.com

| > I don't know if Walther's will be distributing or handling anything that | > Horizon owns.... | >

| They can't. Horizon will only sell to authorized Horizon dealers.

Of course if Walthers was to capitalize on their warehousing, shipping, manufacturing and internet site, they could give up distributing and easily swamp most any other internet shop. Become the Amazon dot com of trains.

CTucker NY

"Jon Miller" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com:

In general, not even a monopolist can set "any price they want". They will still face a downward sloping demand curve that is likely to be pretty elastic. If they raise the price too much, a bunch of people will switch to other hobbies. Also, I suspect that they won't be able to keep competition out. If they raise the price of a bluebox kit to $30.00, a lot of folks will switch to Accurail.

By the way, the last Accurail kit that I put together had screws to hold the coupler pocket lids and trucks in place. Hopefully, they have given up on that crap of cementing on coupler pocket lids and using that worthless push pin to hold on the trucks. Of course, I bought a package of #2 sheet metal screws for the trucks on Accurail kits long ago.

in article snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com, Jon Miller at snipped-for-privacy@inow.com wrote on 12/4/04 11:48:

A friend of mine maintains that Horizon's actions are serving to challenge the long-held dominance of Walthers in the model railroad distribution (as opposed to retail) channel. In some ways this is good, because Walthers has practically required shops to accept things on backorder (so I've heard).

Dieter Zakas

Walthers allows you to cancel your backorders anytime before they are ready to ship. They also have a liberal return policy.

Walthers was never the sole source for Most of the products they carried. There was almost always another source for them.

To take Athearn as an example, for a store there were many sources for the product including Athearn themselves.

With Horizon, it is their way or no way.

How is this an improvement?

Do you buy the 'Less Choice is Better' argument?

Bill Dixon

In article , snipped-for-privacy@telus.net says... .

As I said before, the only outlets that will consistently support large volume orders will be Walmart, K-Mart/Sears and maybe HobbyUSA but the selection will be very narrow and limited to the stock on hand. No special orders, no parts and the personal expertise of an ex fry chef who can't find the key to the display case. Since Horizon doesn't seem to want to venture into any other venue for marketing I think it's a bad idea and a bad precedent. The whole idea to me, from the distribution standpoint is just wrong. Although from a manufacturing standpoint narrowing the product selection and mass marketing it is a good idea if you can produce the volume to pull it off. Most people buying Christmas tree sets (the bulk of the mass market sales) could care less what components are included so long as there are enought pieces to put together for the holidays. It will go back in the box and into the trash in a few years.

Bob

I'm confused...lots of hobby shops use Horizon, not just big-box stores...

On Tue, 07 Dec 2004 20:55:18 -0500, Cheery Littlebottom shared this with the world:

Yeah, but...

The two hobby shops in my city (Winnipeg) that are "Horizon Authorized Dealers" are not train shops.

Which means that if I want to buy any of horizon's exclusive products, I either have to order from a store that deosn't care about trains, or mail order from somewhere else.

What I want to do is buy from one of the local shops (4 of them to choose from) that are focused on trains. Unfortunately, they are still not certain if they can abide by Horizon's dealer policies (especially minimum orders).

How is this good for the hobby?

According to

account requirements there's a $500 minumum order. A small shop that typically orders one or two items of low line merchandise on customer request is indeed in trouble. However if the bulk of their business is centered on the hobby side as opposed to the toy or beginner side is isn't reasonable to hold that stock on the shelf.

Bob