Re: What is Prototype Modeling?
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Dave Nelson
I think Tim is correct here... and IMO the thought can be extended to
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explain the move to the pre-order / very limited inventory business model too. Inventory is, after all, cash in a much less useful form. If you can transform it into sales, great, if not... what a dumb (and costly) move that was. I would not be surprised to discover that Kadee does much smaller production runs of their cars than they did at first and do so because they can... whereas going offshore probably greatly reduces certain degrees of freedom... perhaps offering a chance at more profit but also taking on more risk. I would guess that Accurail is similar. I don't know what either actually does... but having spent many years working in and around manufacturing I know there is always this conflict between amortizing setup costs with big runs vs. carrying too much finished inventory (my own opinion is holding much in the way of finished inventory is either bad, bad, or bad). Anyway, what's best to do this year may well be what was worst two years ago and if you're going to survive you have to be very flexible in your decisions. Dave Nelson -----Original Message-----
Partly. I think the larger reason is that the market shifted as a result of a FEW new manufacturers that began producing very high quality, accurate, prototypical models and were hugely successful at it. The market shift caused the old vendors to wake up (not all at the same time) and they began to produce high quality models in earnest. In other words, it was old fashioned competition that got them off the dime. No doubt the train market would be in the deepest doldrums if they had stood still. Tim O' |
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