A few months ago , my son picked up a magazine for me under the Classic
Toy Trains label about the golden years at Lionel. I was surprised at
the few motive power items they actually made--mainly just relabeled old
items. One interesting item was an E unit that was shown in the
catalogue but never produced. So sometimes the advertising department
wants to sell something that marketing isn't convinced will actually sell.
Back in the SHS days, we added an item of the 'future' product that was
being developed. Macintosh probably did the same thing by "loosing" an
item to be discovered by the public. It was fun when most of you got
wind of that idea--it did stir up interest and indeed encouraged
customers to start thinking and collecting the cash for the newest and
greatest.
Bob Werre
PhotoTraxx
Hi Scott....
You make some good points. Truly, you do.
However, I do not think we want to ask Lionel what their marketing
plans are. That is obviously confidential information. What next
year's catalog will contain is not what we should be concerned about.
Those decisions are already made. Nor are we looking for
company-private information of any kind.
I would like to think/hope that Lionel wants to know what we want to
purchase in the future -- at least in terms of features. And, what we
do not want to purchase, as well. What features are important to us?
Which features do we remove and throw away? All kinds of things
ranging from marketing communication (scale wheels or no scale wheels,
who knows?) to protoptype preferences (do only articulateds sell
well?) to engineering design characteristics (to enable scale
conversions or not?) are topics that ought to be of interest to the
decision makers at Lionel.
Finding someone at Lionel to discuss these kinds of issues with is in
our own best interests. Like you, I am amazed at how difficult this is
proving to be. It is almost surreal. RRM, AM, SMMW, PBL, SHS, etc.,
etc. all have (or had) names, phone numbers, addresses, email
addresses, etc. which make it easy to contact the decision maker.
Fred Rouse can only do so much in his well-equipped machine shop. He
can only work with the products AFTER they are delivered. I would like
to influence the nature of products BEFORE they are built.
There has to be a way to do that -- somehow.
Talking to my local friendly 3-rail O gauge dealer does not strike me
as a great way to reach the AF/S new product decision maker. That
approach reminds me of the Zephyr project produced by RRM back in the
good olde daze when Jim Kindraka was still there. Remember when Sunset
Models announced their S Zephyr? They did not get enough advance
reservations and cancelled the project. Then RRM announces a more
expensive Zephyr and it sells out.
Why the difference? RRM spoke directly with S customers. Sunset spoke
with their O gauge dealers and were told that "we don't get many
inquiries for S Zephyrs". I wonder why the O gauge dealers never got
any requests for an S scale product. Anyone want to hazard a guess?
Nothing beats direct consumer-to-decision maker communication.
Intermediaries are always filter and modify the message one way or
another.
I don't think we should give up yet. We can do better. Let's keep trying.
"S"incerely.....Ed Loizeaux
--- In [email protected] <mailto:S-Scale%40yahoogroups.com>,
"Scott" wrote:
>
> Who to contact at Lionel has been bandied about for months. I
started to wonder why so looked into it myself. This little disclaimer
at the bottom of their contact list explains it rather well..."Please
understand that the above groups are not able to answer "product
marketing" questions. They cannot discuss product marketing issues
such as when a product, not yet in a Lionel catalog, will be offered,
etc. Customer Service individuals do not know the answers to these
types of marketing questions. Questions that concern Lionel marketing
of product, etc. are "company private" issues and are not shared with
individuals outside the executive and marketing areas of the company."
> There are undoubtedly dozens and dozens of list members who have
tried to contact Lionel just as I have but have not bothered to share
their frustrated attempts because it doesn't really help get us
anywhere. So why then am I sharing mine? Because I think this
disclaimer may not be general knowledge.
> Seems like our choices are relatively limited.
> 1. Someone on the list who personally knows either an executive or
marketing person, contacts them as a duly appointed representative of
this list with a two-fold petition outlining our basic scale needs as
well as wants. (Every company does product research, our aim should be
to assist them with this useful tool for their product research team)
> 2. Prayer.
> 3. If we have no one on the list or in S scale in general who knows
an executive or marketing team member, I honestly can't think of any
other viable options...can anyone else?
>
> For what its worth...
> Scott Huston, Las Vegas Nevada
>
