Kader have bought Sander Kan!

I doubt very much that is still the case with the recession and the number of Chinese factories that have recently gone out of business? Workers in many Chinese factories are being ordered to take a pay cut in order to maintain consumer demand at current levels.

(kim)

Thats an interesting idea John. Hornby overproduce so they sell very few, Bachmann underproduce and they sell lots !

Hmmm ...

I've got 4X as many Hornby locos than Bachmann but thats partly* cos theres more LMS from Hornby.

Cheers, Simon

Only partly cos theres the fact that my hero works for Hornby.

"simon" wrote

It always makes commercial sense to produce very slightly fewer of anything than the market can potentially absorb. If a product is in even slightly short supply then it tends to hold its price and sell easily.

On the other hand if there is over-supply, even if there's only slight over-supply, the customer knows they can always buy it tomorrow, and probably at a lower price.

John.

Wal-Mart?

If you mean Wal-Mart is a family company, it is not incorporated under UK law and is not relevant to the discussion..

While companies may be described as "family owned" or family run", there is no such legal entity as a "family company" in the UK.

A limited company (of which Dapol Ltd is one) is limited either by shares or by guarantee. I think I am safe to say that dapol will be limited by shares (as is the case for the majority of ltd companies). These shares are held by the shareholders, who own the company, and may even be members of the same family. A *public* limited company, or PLC, can sell shares to members of the public. A company cannot own itself.

MBQ

In which case would Kander want to do business with a direct competitor when they could sell more of their own products if the competitor wasn't in the market - oh look this has just become a circular argument. The fact is, Kader will do what is best for them, I doubt very much that they give two flying figs about what happens at Hornby...

Is that based on your sales figures or Hornby's, I would expect someone in the hart of the old LNER to sell but one variant - Sir Lamiel - but for traders south of the Themes to sell far more, OTOH these traders will probably only sell but one variant of LNER V2 - Green Arrow...

"Jerry" wrote

It has to be based on my figures and those of other retailers I know, they're the actual sales to the public. Hornby's sales are generally into the retail trade and no-one can really sale how readily the public receive them.

Were it only that simple. I could have five different locos of the same class in stock, but sod's law dictates that my next potential customer would want one of the variations which I didn't have in stock. Currently I have ten different King Arthurs on my shelves.

John.

It never quite works that

Not according to Dapol.

MBQ

Thanks for the clarification.

I was wrong about Wal-Mart, in the USA.

"Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (or Walmart as written in its new logo) is an American public corporation that runs a chain of large, discount department stores. It is the world's largest public corporation by revenue, according to the 2008 Fortune Global 500. Founded by Sam Walton in 1962, it was incorporated on October 31, 1969, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1972. It is the largest private employer in the world and the fourth largest utility or commercial employer, trailing the British National Health Service, and the Indian Railways." [The other one is the Chinese Army.]

ASDA, with 340 stores in the UK, some branded as ASDA Wal-Mart Supercentres, is a wholly owned Wal-Mart subsidiary.

This was sent to me in an e-mail from Bachmann (Iwon't say who) in reply to a specific question regarding Hornby production in their newly acquired factory.

'Hornby business as usual as a customer of Sander Kan, they have also put out a press release.'

Perhaps this will help stop all the speculation.

Regards,

That's true of any retail business. I was in a hi-fi shop belonging to a (then) business partner. A customer they'd never seen before went through a long list of radio tuners. "Have you got this one, have you got that one?". The answer was yes about ten times. He eventually found a model they didn't stock because it was no longer made: "That's the one I want!"

Also if it's *in-stock* the customer expects a discount becuase you're "trying to get rid of it" and if it's *out-of-stock* they expect a discount becuase they've had to wait for it. You can't win either way.

(kim)

Running a smallish TV/audio or computer shop must be a real headache, as retail prices keep falling almost weekly. What you pay wholesale today may be more than the retail price retail next month. The widescreen TV I bought at a "bargain" price 2 years ago sells for half the price today. They might even throw in a Blu-Ray player for £100.

And yet the price of railway models made in the same country goes up and up!

(kim)

The difference is that AV equipment tends to start way over price whilst model railway stuff tends to start way under price - at least for UK outline stuff...

I think you'll find that one market is considerably larger than the other. One benefits from economies of scale, the other is short runs and small numbers - almost a craft operation, by comparison.

Shop owners have a special name for customers like that...

Fred X

Well for 2007/2008 Hornby's turnover was £55million while Kaders turnover was only £65million. So if what you say is true then Kader would have to almost double their output to make it worth their while booting Hornby out.

Fred X

But does Sander Kan produce all that Hornby sells, remember that Hornby don't just make model railways and is Kader's turnover being restricted by lack of capacity, for a parent company with fingers in so many countries - for example I would think that Hornby has very limited turnover in the USA (IIRC they don't hold the US rights to TtTE) - the figure cited above sounds some what on the low side, I would have expected it to be higher.