Bill et al
I have seen an actual increase in the number of kit companies and one rolling
stock company either entering or interested in the S market lately and have
brought in some of their products including a few I had made. Unfortunately
kits and details don't make the profit made by rolling stock and engines. Too
bad SHS and AM are cutting off or reducing dealer products as they have been
the bread and butter items. Unfortunately some other companies that have been
around for a while don't seem to understand the basic marketing principal that
you have to change the models you offer on a regular basis or suffer reduced
sales.
I am now of the opinion that not only are S people their own worst enemy but
that dealers who carry S have to be masochists as well. After over 10 years
of promoting S as a dealer in northern California and showing products at
shows with an average of 8 tables of almost all new S products, setting up a
portable layout table at shows and club events, including out of state, and
helping to bring in numerous new people to S like John Gibson and others, it
brings disappointment that the buyers in California fail to think of the
bountiful S in their own back yard and the dealer who would try to sate their
needs if they would only communicate and buy local. Yes, mine is not now a
store easy to visit, but the phone and email work just the same here as it does
out of state.
To help promote S, I offered to put S inventory in 2 large train stores in
northern california a while back at my cost and to share sales. Not interested
they say as volume won't pay for retail shelf space and S people are too cheap
to buy retail.
That said, there are some very pleasant local California and Nevada buyers who
have made the pain of being a dealer of S somewhat workable for a while so long
as profit is not expected beyond covering costs. Without having other
retirement income, being an S dealer would be a disaster and stupid for me to
continue. As to the high rail issue vs scale, I can only say that if not for
the high railer sales, everyone knows or should know that S would be nothing
close to the size it is. Unfortunately I was naive enough in the beginning to
think that we could merge the scale and high railers into joint efforts but
found that is like asking the Republicans and Democrats to love each other.
One high rail club I was a member of actually lost members because the true
blue AC Gilbert guys didn't want to contaminate the club with Flyonel, SHS, AM
or newer things. The San Diego show I did recently was an exception with the
scale guys having their modules in the Flyer Fest West show and a mixture of
both high and scale guys. Nice guys there.
Wondering about my sanity, I brought out a few new products for the S crowd
recently with two to be in the January S Guagian. It will be interesting to
see if it is worth continuing to do so. I will also be at the O an S Scale
show in January in Santa Clara with another 8 tables of new S products as well
as being at the Sacramento convention show next summer.
Howard Sheffield
Howard' S Trains
Fort Bragg, CA
On Nov 11, 2010, at 10:12 AM, Scale S Only wrote:
> I ran into that too, but as I was a scale S guy, I kept going until
> suppliers started to disappear. I sold the shop not long after...
>
> Bill Winans (former owner of Big Boys Toys/ Palmdale Hobbies)
> Prescott Valley, AZ
>
> How many more stories like this exist around the country?
> Ed L.
>
> ----S scalers are their own worst enemy.
>
>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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