Rough road ahead for Hornby?

I think the last paragraph should have read; 'Chief Executive Frank Martin said the markets are challenging but the next quarter will *hopfully* be its busiest. 'Consumers are delaying their Christmas shopping' he said, 'but we *hope* the latter half of December will be extremely busy.'

I've mentioned it before, and it seems to be coming true, the dash to China could be Hornby's undoing, I just hope that a). they have kept ownership of all the tooling and b). have mothballed their manufacturing capacity rather than ripping it all out to create more warehousing space...

Under the current climate, and being in a non-essentials market, that doesn't sound too bad at all - the car makers amongst others are having a far worse time of it!

Cheers Richard

The article in the Independent says they are expecting a jump for Scalectrix with Lewis Hamilton winning F1.

Chris

I understand the Lewis Hamilton F1 car will not be available until early December 2008 @ a price of about =A335 to 40 !

The Quantum of Solace set is =A380 !

If General Motors can talk of going bust then Hornby have no chance. I fear many companies have put all their eggs in the 'China' basket and it's about to fall.

Any bets on who will buy up all the rights & tooling very cheaply from the liquidator ?

Chris

What you seriously think that British manufacturing could compete with the cost of manufacturing in China? Costs in China would have to go up about by about 500% for them to become uncompetitive.

As a side issue the good thing about this news is that we don't have to put up with all of those awful steaming ahead, on track puns for a change.

Fred X

Was thinking the same myself, must be a fair few companies wishing their problems were as few as these.

Cheers, Simon

On Sat, 8 Nov 2008 13:03:46 -0000, "Jerry" said in :

I think you are wrong. India and China are both much better at doing things right first time every time than the UK is, and both have vastly cheaper workforce. Pitching the UK against India in the call centre business, as some firms do, is a disaster waiting to happen. In Pune you can get an honours graduate with no exaggerated sense of entitlement, for less than you can get a chippy Scot. And the Scots are best of the bunch in UK staff, IMO.

We should concentrate on being creative, which is what we (currently) do better than either China or India. And hope they don't catch up. And learn Hindi and Mandarin while we wait.

Guy

Perhaps you should note Fleischmann prices, still made in Germany AIUI, before making such stupid comment (never mind finding a clue as to what is happening to the worlds economies)... You seem to forget that it's already costing Hornby 25% more already due to the weakening of the GBP against the USD. Hornby moved production to China to maximise their own profits, if you are correct either Fleischmann prices are so low that they must surely go bust or that Hornby have been on a price hike...

If production moved from China to the EU I would expect no more than a

50% increase in the *relative* price difference - remember that prices are going to rise *anyway*, even if the production stays in China.

"beamends" wrote

It's the level of debt which worries me - that's a significant amount in relation to the half-year's profit - even accepting that the (potentially) best half-year's trading is to come.

It sounds to me that Frank Martin is really praying for a surge in pre-Christmas sales, but my guess is that if his last half-of-Decemeber 'prediction' is correct, it will be only on the back of some very heavy discounting aimed at redressing some very disappointing sales figures.

Certainly we've seen a significant drop in Hornby sales in the past few months and we must have our highest ever stock level of their products. That suggests to me that if sales do not pick up pretty damned quick, we'll be joining that heavy discounting to try and reduce our shelf stocks of otherwise unwanted products.

Fingers crossed.

John.

"Dragon Heart" wrote

Hmmm, the odds would be VERY short!

John.

Really? There have been a number of c*ck ups recently with chinese manufacturing, for instance missing pickups on the Dapol 9F. I seem to recall there was also a batch of Dapol chassis the had to be reworked. I've also heard of tools being changed without reference to the design authority.

If you have a proven design and proven process for mass production then China can work very well. In the small batch sizes used by MR manufacturers, where material and production costs are a much smaller proportion of the overall project budget, it's a very different story. A number of small to medium scale electronics manufacturers, who rushed to China before Hornby, have brought a lot of work back on shore. When you add up the problems of distance and logistics, the economics can easily tip back in the UK or EUs favour.

MBQ

and both

In message , "Just zis Guy, you know?" writes

How do any of these fare when the customer wants to speak Welsh?

A while back I saw a list of languages actually requested at National Rail Enquiries. Welsh and Gaelic were a very long way behind subcontinental languages.

On Sun, 9 Nov 2008 11:19:19 +0000, Jane Sullivan said in :

You know, I reckon the Indians would learn Welsh pretty fast if anyone asked them to. Our global service desk is in Pune, and I hold the guys there in very high regard both technically and as people. There is a culture of respect and loyalty which is quite refreshing these days, and I also find them highly motivated to take on more work, however dull, in order to give our end customers a better service.

Only this week I had an exchange with Malik over in Pune as a result of which they are going to take on one of the legacy admin jobs that remains on my desk after my change of role earlier this year. I can only applaud this!

Guy

"Just zis Guy, you know?" wrote

I'd applaud more jobs remaining in the UK.

John.

I disagree. Well at least about India.

Speaking with local (Aust) manufacturers, there is a 10% return on Chinese made products. On Indian, it is apparently near 90%. Plus there is the different philosophies, not easily understood but applying in many fields - for instance one manufacturer arranged for an (Indian) company to provide boxes for his models, to be forwarded to the model manufacturer (also Indian) for packing/shipping/etc.

When the model manufacturer didnt get any boxes, they contacted the Aust importer/entrepreneur. When he contacted the box maker, he was told they were waiting for him - in Aust - to provide the cardboard for the boxes ....

Theres always Bangladesh, or an African country that hasnt been tried yet.

Steve

Most unlikely, I suspect. What accountant wants equipment hanging around unused. Probably already sold off land/buildings not required for warehousing.

Yeah, then why are the call centres that ring up wanting us to change phone companies, ISP's, electricity & gas suppliers etc, etc, so appallingly bad? Noisy backgrounds - so bad they can't hear you, dodgy VoIP services with poor QoS levels, can only follow prompts, pretending they represent your current provider (they don't even know who they are), pretend they are in your nearest capital/large city etc.

The list goes on. They should try impressing us with their quality if they want our business.

As for persistence, the Indian ones in particular never accept no as an answer - I suspect they put something else in the database (like ring back later, answering machine) as it probably reflects badly on them individually if they were to put in the truth, i.e. you're not interested in talking to them (the business, not the operator).

I believe the days of call centre growth in India are over, generally they must be a marketing disaster to many corporates. Even with the low wage cost in running these call centres the numbers of lost/dissatisfied customers must be very high to some businesses.

I'll pass on learning Hindu thanks. I'll continue to tell them, "Not interested, thanks" and hang up - the truth hurts. ;-)

Kevin Martin

On Sun, 9 Nov 2008 12:25:00 -0000, "John Turner" said in :

Welcome to the free market. We get to keep the work we do well, which in my case is the engineering aspects of our virtual infrastructure, and lose the jobs that actually most Brits don't want and are not very good at. We do not seem to be very good at routine and repeatability, for example.

Guy

On Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:05:01 +1100, Kevin Martin said in :

That happens in some cases, but that is a problem of call centres not of the location of the call centres. I don't do business with companies that have their call centres phoning me touting for business under the guise of "surveys" and the like. Vote with your feet.

Guy