Houses mostly built to order? Maybe where you are, not around here.
I restore historic houses, and do medium to high end remodeling for a living. The developers put a hundred cookie cutter houses for every custom home around here - even in the $500,000 price range - which is the beginning of expensive in these par
I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.
A Chinese package is carried by the Post Office in the U.S. or Canada at a rate that is lower than the actual cost.
I can’t make heads nor tails out of it either.
-Kevin
Same here. Probably less than 5% of the houses are built to order. At least 95% are “Spec Homes”, one just like the other, put up either in old neighboprhoods like mine, or stuffed in 10 to an acre in new “high density” communities.
These houses sit on the market for no more than three months after they are built.
Yes, the $500,000.00 4,000 square foot house on a .085 acre lot is a real thing now, and they have no problem selling them.
People are willing to give up a convenient location, back yard, four car driveway, and city infrastructure to live in an ugly half-million dollar brand new house made out of OSB and steel studs.
-Kevin
[:^)]
The pre-order concept is a sign of decay in the model railroading hobby.
Somehow, manufacturers equate the lack of pre-orders as a sign of disinterest. But, it seems to me that the pre-order concept is self-defeating on the part of the manufacturer. Remember the old adage, build it and they will come. If a manufacturer thinks that some item is a good idea, then build it.
From the standpoint of the modeler, it may also be a good idea, but who wants to pre-order and then wait to see if the idea even gets off the ground, maybe as long as 1 or 2 years into the future. Imagine if everything model railroading related were a pre-order. Not only locos and rolling stock but also turnouts, decoders, structures, you name it.
Rich
does anyone know what the tooling for a typical model costs?
The agreement was that each country would keep 100% of the international postage levies to mail out of their own country and in return would deliver incoming international mail “for free”. America no doubt felt that would result at worst as a break even but probably net profit to the US.
The concept of user pay for postal service getting popular in some western countries, my own egregiously included, distorts this eminently reasonable system. In fact, the postal system is a very valuable public utility and should be run as such, just as are the roads, police force and fire departments. In Canada we add ambulance service to that group, sort of.
In no rational way can one argue that this entirely voluntary system subsidizes one country at the expense of another. The recipient citizens are subsidized by the mailing country but not the recipient country. That leaves aside the issue that mailman delivery has very, very low marginal costs in general so delivery of international mail is pretty close to free from a marginal cost perspective.
The problem arose with parcel post using the same framework as letter post. For letter post it is entirely reasonable to charge the sender, as it is to charge the telephone caller. On the other hand, for parcel post the recipient should pay as for a collect telephone call.
The international mail agreement has the same deficiency but that is not a “subsidy” to any participating country. The recipient is subsidized in both cases but by how much depends on where that recipient lives. Cheap Chinese postage subsidizes American recipients, not the Chinese sender.
Edited text follows:
As an analogy to postage rates, dumping is a subsidy paid by the exporting nation to the consumers in the importing nation. Import tariffs remove this subsidy. That’s just an example for illustration purposes.
I agree that politics don’t belong on this forum. I point out that I was r
Please do not bring politics into any discussion in these forums.
This is where we come to get away from such things and talk about our electric trains.
-Kevin
Number of preorders required to produce a product varies based upon what the product is, what the potential roadnames for the product are, and is a closely guarded secret. I worked for a (still in business) manufacturer; they are my lifelong friends, and they won’t even tell me. I only know generalities and am definitely not authorized to comment about anything on any forum on their behalf.
Even passing along a few little tidbits of information in the past went poorly and earned them negative phone calls from people who were ticked off. So I am most definitely not authorized to comment about anything at all, and my posts anywhere are dwindling down to nothing.
The number of pre-orders varies based upon the tooling cost. One project only got made because the Chinese made a sweetheart deal to do the tooling themselves. Because this is now almost ancient history I can probably get away with sharing that the fairly recent plastic Alco C-430 would never have seen the light of day if the tooling were designed in America. With 16 prototype units, and none owned by PRR/UP/SP/ATSF the potential sales numbers were far too low despite a plethora of second- and third-hand owners. The project only became viable because a Chinese builder offered to do the tooling for that one project. Otherwise it would never have happened at all despite some people (including but not limited to me) asking for it for 25 years prior to production.
Normally that manufacturer does a lot of the engineering themselves here in America, including almost all 3D cadd drawings, and including (with railroad permission) climbing all over surviving prototype examples to measure and photograph details, and use of 3D scans wherever possible. In many cases they even mold the plastic parts here to assure dimensional stability. That is how they provide the best quality that they can.
After many years, it is known that ce
beside tooling, may be worth considering all the labor the goes into each model and why they’re made in china and not he u.s.
I sort of understand those that don’t like pre-orders.
On the other hand, after 30 years the rot is either not as pervasive as believed or people have mostly moved on. Anything that requires a warehouse to hold it costs money and would mostly be full of rather average stuff that few lust over, but which might be needed along the way.
The fancy RTR rolling stock models seem to offer a plethora of choices in locos and cars. It’s all the not-pre-ordered stuff in the hobby that we tend to find ourselves needing extra patience to find on the market now.
I agree completely, Rich. I really believe in the “if you stock it, they will buy it” concept. But the Walmartization of retail has everyone clamoring for the lowest price. Inventory is supposed to turnover multiple times in a year; out with the old, in with the new. The problem in model railroading is that there are no longer model railroad staples. Everything is limited run. If I was starting out, and wanted to buy six Santa Fe CF7s; I would have to go to ebay to find them. No distributor has them, and certainly not a hobby shop.
The Santa Fe stock cars sell like hotcakes on ebay. My model railroad supplier of choice does not take advance reservations; maybe they pre-order enough, but it is frustrating when production on a popular model is delayed or put off because there aren’t enough pre-orders. BLI has been promising a true Santa Fe 2-8-2 for years; another model that will sell regardless of pre-orders.
BLI now has the pre-orders for the ATSF 2-8-2 to move forward and is planning a new announcement of it to generate more sales. Model due “early 2021” so I was told on recent inquiry.
“If you stock it, they will buy it” does not work anymore. Too often buyers go into the local store, see an engine they want, and then go out online and buy it for $50 or $100 cheaper someplace else, and if it hasn’t sold out from the importer within 3 weeks of arrival in the U.S., it becomes “dead inventory” that then becomes very difficult to sell (and may even get stripped for parts).
I don’t do that. If I see the engine I want in the local store, and all is well that it looks like I want, I’m buying it from them. However, I’m likely a dinosaur at 52.
John
Personally, I am not a big fan of pre-order/advance reservation. I did preorder and prepay once - and that was for 2 steam locomotives in S scale (not hi rail) which are hard to come by and these happened to be for a railroad that I was interested in modeling. I got a discount and they were only sold by the manufacturer/importer.
Otherwise I buy stuff when it becomes available. I also buy NIB older items at train shows.
Several items that I would have bought had they been made, were canceled because there were not enough pre-orders. Other items I would have bought, were so limited run that they were gone before I decided to buy them - in some cases before I even knew about them. But that really doesn’t bother me - there’s enough stuff to buy at train shows and truth be told I have more stuff than I’ll every use.
Paul
Pre-order has been a round for a good while now, but as for decay, we seem to have the most choices that ever have had. If this is “decay”, then it doesn’t seem too bad.
I generally don’t pre-order; I just wait for items to comeout and if it’s popular, I try to be on top of it. Generally I’ve been able to get what I need.
I pre-order through my retailer. That way he can aggregate orders, get some markup for himself and save the manufacturer some post sales service costs as that is generally what retailers do: provide advice in return for a markup rate on product.
The trouble with both internet shopping and big box retail is you don’t save enough to justify seeking the slightly lower pricing.
Pre-order through your retailer and that will keep new product coming to you regularly.
lastspikemike,
Actually, running plastic through injection mold tooling in North America is doable and economic, even with our relatively low production runs in our hobby. Kadee, Accurail and Bowser prove that. The expensive thing is assembly due to labor costs. Kadee’s innovative snap-together models and Accurail’s kits don’t have a ton of labor costs, and Bowser shoots the plastic in the US and ships it to China for assembly and painting.
Back in 2008 during the economic crisis we had, Atlas had posted on their old forum that it cost them $8000 to ship a 40’ container from China to New Jersey. The year before, it had only cost $4000. If that $8k cost is still the same today, and you have a production run of 3000 to 5000 units, then yeah, it’s only a buck or two per unit for shipping costs to the East Coast.
York1,
You know that shipping a container of model trains from China to North America has absolutely nothing to do with any postal organization, right?
tin can,
A company spending $4 per unit to ship something to China and then ship it back fits in with the numbers that Atlas talked about 12 years ago.
Sheldon,
FYI, Atlas was kind of late to the game with high-detailed loco models. IIRC, it was well into the late-1990’s before they started putting grab irons on locos. I think the U23B was the first and that was in the 1999 Atlas Catalog.
Production runs are much smaller today. 3000 to 5000 are more common.
DAVID FORTNEY,
The problem is with the market, not the manufacturers. In yon olden days, you could make a loco model and it would continue to sell well for years afterwards. Today, you make a loco model and after 6 months on the shelf you might as well throw them away for all the sales you’ll get. The market only wants the new stuff (with rare exceptions on eBay).
Sheldon,
Huh? People can’t buy a
Also, Games Workshop manufacturers most of their product in the UK with their own injection molding machines. Very doable, but no assembly.
When I watch those videos (not necessarily model trains) of Chinese workers accurately assembling amazing models out of tiny parts, I am breath taken. Are there even workers in North America that could do that? It is an incredible thing to see.
-Kevin
Yes.