I'm going to add another dimension to this discussion and ask that you all bear with me and by the end of this message have a grasp of what may seem like madness on my part so here goes. Some of you realize that I have been working with several manufacturers to get more Frisco models produced and at the same time achieve more accuracy and fedelity to prototype. I also made a commitment early on to Mike to try and keep up with and report new items as they are released. Having said that I need to try and impress upon everyone that this hobby is changing and evolving very rapidly. Therefore to me, trying to get something at a bargain may still be important in where you buy your products, but trust and availability are far more important considerations. By this I mean that you need to find a source that you can trust will get the item when it becomes available. More and more manufacturers are making only the quantities that are pre-ordered by retailers, whether it be the largest online ones or your local hobby shop. Intermountain and Kadee are two that come to mind first. If you want some validation to this point, go to the Kadee website and look at the upcoming product release announcements and notice that most are either sold out or nearly so. Kadee no longer wants to get stuck with cars that didn't sell like they predicted they would. One Frisco item that comes to mind is the last release of the PS2 covered hopper. Also, to me, the wait and see days in regards to locomotives and cars are over. Case in point here are the Athearn SD45. Most of you pro-ordered yours and they were gone immediately. Several of you pre-ordered one and after seeing how good it was scrambled to find the other two. In regards to pre-ordering, this seems to have become an accepted practice with some pushers offering as much as 35% off MSRP if an item is ordered by a certain cut-off date which is usually tied into the corresponding manufacturers one. Recently a relatively new manufacturer, Exactrail, which has yet to produce a Frisco model, actually got a new offering in stock before they even announced they were producing it and then announced it to the public and sold out in about 10 minutes. I have friends who are still looking for them! The next announcement they gave 24 hours notice and several of us had a pusher call them the moment they could. One would think they were buying concert tickets to Taylor Swift! By now I hope you can understand my point about trust and availability. You have to have a source or sources that you can trust will get the items that you want when they become available. Price them becomes a secondary concern.
I do agree with this aspect. Wholesale Trains has always delivered for me, but I do try and maintain relationships with Show Me and Doc's here in KC cause as you said it can be beneficial in the long run. I just wish more hobby stores would realize if they made their prices slightly more competitive they could probably steal quite a bit of business from the internet guys. I understand that many hobby shops don't have the capital it would take to bridge the gap created by lost income while word spread that their prices had lowered and business grew, and that makes it a very hard move for many to make.
To me Matthew is right on point with his assessment. That is what has made Discount Model Trains so successful and sustaining in the fact that everything in the store is marked 20% off every day. Retailers today don't grasp what I call the Wal-Mart effect. Wal-Mart only carries top selling, fast moving items and not ones that sit on the shelves and collect dust. There is a little known fact that one can order from Walthers direct and specify that the order be sent to your LHS instead of to you at home, thus saving one shipping charges. What if your LHS would then give you a 15-20% break if you did it that way. When I worked in the grocery trade business we called that a Win, Win situation!
I agree that I would rather deal with a local hobby shop, so it is good news to me about Walthers shipping to them on my order with no shipping charge. Has anyone had any luck (good or bad) with a local shop agreeing to this arrangement? I always order enough from Walthers on their sale items to not have a shipping fee, but sometimes I would rather not order that much. Terry
Great Trains in Pittsburg. It's how they stay open. They have a little bit in stock, but they will order anything from Walthers. I haven't been by there for a few years because of the fact that it's a 30 Min drive and if I wanted something, it would have to be ordered. But last time I did it was a 20% discount on anything ordered.
Ethan: Thanks for sharing that! That owner is one saavy operator. One of you guys that live over there might ask him if he would be willing to let people order from him at 20% off and then mail it to us. I might be his first mail order customer. Back in my Procter & Gamble days my first boss shared a principle with me that I still adhere to today: "What would you rather do, make a fast nickel or a slow dime?" Think about it.
