We can’t the makers of these items have a LOWER price on the undecorated units? No fees are being paid. May help their sales.
I sell my damaged label products at a large discount (40%). Nothing wrong just the labels are ugley. I have an order in to “XYZ” for a loco undecorated and the price is the same as the others.
Roundhouse in the old days had a lower price on the kits with no logo.
Just my Question!
NO I AM NOT STARTING A WHO CAN AFFORD THREAD if it goes that way BERGIE please LOCK it or just Kill it.
I can’t speak about other manufacturers or kits specifically, but since I buy a lot of Atlas RTR cars (N scale) I can tell you that Atlas does have lower list prices on undec versions of the same car.
Most mfgrs apply RR decorations via pad printing. Once a particular machine is set up to print something, it’s a matter of the machine operator removing an item from a moving conveyor (or a static container)…placing it on the printing machine fixture…pressing a button to activate the printer head…and then return the item to the conveyor once imprinted. This entire operation only takes a few moments.
Granted, an undecorated item does not include the above but at some point, it may require special handling to bypass the printing operation which may offset the labor of the printing process. Either way, we’re talking moments, not minutes or hours of labor.
If that machine operator makes $15/hour (including benefits), a couple of seconds of labor & a few milligrams of ink is all that’s involved.
While these things are critical elements when calculating the product’s labor & material costs to establish a selling price, they’re apparently not worth consideration when it comes to extending an undecorated price to any of us.
And those of us who seek undecorated items so we can customize to a particular RR need, the unpleasant task of removing previoulsy applied printing & associated residue is well-worth the opportunity of being able to purchase an undecorated item at the same price as the printed one, in my opinion.
Doesn’t microtrains sell the undecorated cars at a reduced price. I loaded up on undecorated cars a few years ago and havn’t run through my supply yet, so I havn’t repriced them, but that used to be the way they did it.
Not all trains go though assembly line painting, boxcar kits, intermountain, branchline,for example. are painted first,so, an undecorated comes in gray, there’s no labor involved in that car as far as painting and printing, so car should be cheaper. Many locos come in basic gray also, so where’s the cost?Some intermountain and branchline undecs are cheaper. some are the same.
I would guess that the incremental cost to the manufacturer for painting/pad printing is more than offset by the additional cost for packaging/cataloging a batch of freight cars or locos as undec.
We’re seeing a similar effect in kits vs. RTR; at least one respected hobby shop in North Carolina has all but stopped ordering and carrying kits, claiming that they don’t sell. Manufacturers like Red Caboose and Intermountain respond to hobby shop actions like that by offering fewer kits, and the price is only slightly less than RTR (if decorated kits are even available from the manufacturer). If a manufacturer is set up to package 10,000 units of RTR, packaging for 1,000 units of the same item in kit form costs more per unit. If the manufacturers perceive less demand for undecs or kits, why should they provide a price break if it costs them incrementally more to produce?
In the case of Branchline, undec Blueprint boxcars cost the same as decorated, but the undec package also contains 4 additional sets of ends, 2 roof styles, and 2 styles of ladders.
As mentioned, some manufacturers do sell undec items at a lower price, what has not been noted yet is that the same manufacturers charge more for any paint scheme that has to be run through the line more than a couple of times. So for some obviously the manufacturing cost is calculated by the complexity of the paint scheme…other manufacturers of course sell everything for the same price. Perhaps some figure since so few undec kits are selling these days, that it is barely worth the effort and that may affect the final price of undec items.
Yes, very nice of Branchline to do that - but I doubt it was for our convenience. I’m sure it’s cheaper for them to throw in each end, door, and ladder part than to package dozens of variations separately. Sometimes though, things done for cost reasons are NOT a bad thing to the consumer.
I think the fact that undecorated units cost less to produce has very little effect on the sale price of those units. I believe the reason that undecorated units cost the same comes from a few factors. First, the manufacturers sell products not on cost but on what price the market will bear. The demand for undecorated units is likely to be lower than that for painted ones. Because of this, the price for those units should be HIGHER than painted ones. However, given the desire to maintain consistency, the manufacturers are likely to adopt a “one price fits all” mentality rather than dicking around with calculating the optimal price. They know demand is lower and they could charge more per unit but it isn’t worth the headache.
The same can be said about dummy units. Just about every LHS I have been to sells Athearn BB dummy units for only $5.00 less then the powered units undecorated or not. Does that mean the actual motor is only worth $5.00? Or are the dummies just that over priced? And it’s not just Athearn. Most of the manufacturers that still make them are doing this now. I model the CNJ so all of the stuff I have bought with the CNJ roadname was a little more money to begin with.( I guess due to the limited market) and that’s fine. If the engine or rolling stock is not available or costs too much I kit bash and paint it myself.
I can’t complain. This hobby is still a lot cheaper then my other hobbies, and if you love doing it you find a way.
This is getting a bit off topic of the original post, but I feel like someone needs to address what Danielle has just mentioned. Anyone can feel free to correct me if I don’t remember this correctly but…
Irv Athearn felt like blue box dummy units should be half of the price of the powered locomotives. After Irv passed the new management determined that since the basic difference between powered and unpowered was the 10.00 motor, then the MSRP should be raised on the dummy units to reflect the real cost of producing the item.
Of course when dummy units MSRPs became only 10.00 less than powered…and this is what happened at my store - I can’t speak for the whole business - but modelers quit buying dummies and went for the powered units since they were only slightly higher priced.
Then the demand for dummies went away and now they are not produced.
So yes the actual motor was then only a 10.00 portion of the cost and I honestly don’t see how the term over-pricing fits the picture for the dummy units. I don’t think anyone is producing a dummy unit now, other than the Athearn F units.
Because, for the ten cents worth of paint they eliminate, it wouldn’t be worth it. Besides, they would now have to have a separate accounting entry for undecorated. Next thing you know, the bean counters will separate out the single colours from the multi-colour units, and price them accordingly. What you pay now is the “average” price of producing the product. Complex paint schemes cost the same as no paint scheme.
Then the demand for dummies went away and now they are not produced.
It did? Or was it killed off the way SP killed off its passenger trains?
Oh well, at least Athearn BB still has dummy units.
Seems to me there would be a market for dummy units if manufacturers would make them. How many people have a layout that could take a train that an ABBA set of Genesis F’s could pull? Or a 3 unit set of SD70M’s, SD40-2’s or even GP-7’s?
I have purchased a few undecorateds recently and never thought about the price being lower. If anything the Undecs will be more of a load with costs of finishing, painting final assembly and custom decals.
I do prefer undecorateds to have a base coat like the accurail 40’ boxcars did or the pullman passenger cars from walthers for another example.
That was exactly my point. The amount of money and work that goes into the dummy units is about the same as the powered ones. The same thing for the undecorated units.
That’s for their 40-ft boxcar with 6-ft door. I suspect that their undecs for 40 footers with 7- and 8-ft doors and their 50 footers also contain extra parts to cover the variations in the decorated versions of those models.
Here’s more information, perhaps overkill, about the extras in the undec kit:
Ends, all 10’6", part designation molded on back (e.g., 2E):
1E R+3/4 late improved dreadnaught (“banana” taper)
2E R+3/4 early improved dreadnaught (“rolling pin” taper)
3E R+3/5 (I think it’s a “Despatch” end built at NYC’s Despatch shops)
4E R+3/4 dartnot
5E 4/4 improved dreadnaught
Roofs: rectangular panel, diagonal panel
Ladders: 7- and 8-rung
Sure, there’d be 20 permutations to deal with. It would probably be easier for them to offer one style of roof, end, and ladder in the undecs and sell the other styles separately – they have the ends and roofs separately packaged on their site for about $5 and $3, respectively. I don’t really care about their motives. What I perceive is
Danielle - yes I was actually agreeing with you, just verifying the speculation that you brought up about the price of the dummy units.
Andre - a clarification…demand for dummies went down when the price went up…the actual demand for lower-priced dummies is still there as I find whenever an out-of-production dummy unit does find itself on the used shelf in here, it never lasts for long. People do still want them, just not for the price that they were before being discontinued.