Hattons and Farish

[trkilliman]

According to RMWeb, Bachmann are taking issue not with retailer model commissions per se but with Hattons wish to wholesale their own commissioned products to other retailers. Hattons must have ambitious plans in that direction if they are willing to ditch Bachmann in pursuit of it.

I think that's the real issue. As soon as Hattons allow their name to be on models sold through other retailers they become a competitor to Bachmann. Bachmann have their T&Cs which quite reasonably say they wont supply their products to other manufacturers. On the other hand Hattons must have seen a gap in the market that they think they can exploit. They would not be continuing on what appears to be a high risk venture if they didn't see an opportunity. Its just business. Both parties are doing what they believe is right for them for a good future. Neither party should be seen as being in the wrong.

I think Bachmann see the likes of Hattons as a threat because Hattons will have lower overheads than Bachmann Europe and will have the ability to get quotes from a number of factories for anything they want to have made rather than be forced to accept whatever price Kadar give them. This means there is a good chance that their total costs for any model will be lower than Bachmann's costs. It will be interesting to see where we are in five years time.

I wonder if Bachmann should be working on getting their cost base lower rather than stifling competition. You only have to compare their prices for coaches with Dapol's prices to see they must be doing something wrong. Farish mk 1 coach rrp - £39.95, Dapol mk 3 coach rrp - £25.95.

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I have been thinking very much the same Chris Morris.
Hatton's must be pretty sure they can do things their own way and quite possibly see an opening to compete on cost. We are hovering around the £50 N gauge coach from Farish, which for some will be just too much or they're just unwilling to pay it. I won't pay it and started making my own coaches from etches around 18 months back...and loving some real modelling.
I would say Farish have been greedy rather than doing something wrong, and may have scored an own goal.

Farish with their year on year price increases may have pushed the boat out a bit too far, and Hattons's given their sales/customer base will have noticed if customers have been buying less Farish as a result.

Our daughters in-laws are from Hong Kong and when I relayed the story of the Farish price increases to him he laughed, saying somebody is being taken for a ride. He is a businessman and returns to H.K. several times a year to check on his businesses. I know he has his finger on the pulse and how things operate in his homeland.

We may yet see an N gauge King rise from the ashes of the DJM dogs breakfast, as a Hatton's introduction. Yes, the next 5 years could indeed be interesting.

[njee20]

I think that's an enormous leap of faith, lets not get ahead of ourselves.

Yes, at face value Farish products are currently coming in more expensive than Dapol, who have admitted they are a bit cool on N gauge at the moment. However, we've no reason to think that Hatton's are proposing to go toe-to-toe with Bachmann on a full range, or indeed that they have any intention to release any further products whatsoever. Revolution's forthcoming mk5 coaches are £45 each, that's just where we are presently. If Hatton's really wanted to stick it to Bachmann and release some mk2 air-con coaches and get them to market before them I reckon they'd still be very close on price.

Railway products seem to have been affected more than many things by increases in Chinese labour rates, but that's not all that surprising when you consider what is being made; low volume products with extremely high levels of manual work. It's easy to look at television production and say "but TVs are falling in price", but the volumes are astronomical in comparison, and comprise huge numbers of machine built components. Look at the photos Revolution, Rapido or Accurascale have shared of people literally sat at desks surrounded by bodyshells, applying details by hand. That's expensive, at a time when that very commodity, the people, is soaring in cost.

[Fardap]

Hattons of course could have avoided any issues in being seen legally or otherwise as a manufacturer by setting up a sister company for the production of their own lines, there might have been some renegotiation from GF but if 'they' weren't the manufacturer directly and were also being supplied by 'HattonsEngines' then I don't think it would have got quite to this point. Just my opinion though and a moot point given where we actually are!

[njee20]

Part of me wondered that, Gaugemaster's shop is actually called the Engine Shed after all, but AFAIK it's purely a trading name of the same company. Similarly the brand they retail is "the Gaugemaster Collection", like Rails have "Rails Exclusives" I'm not sure that really would have made any difference, it's just marketing.

Ultimately Bachmann are under no actual obligation to supply anyone, so legal T&Cs are a bit irrelevant, they can just say "you know what, you're annoying us, no more products". They don't need a reason.

[Paul-H]

As they say in many a Pub


We Reserve The Right To refuse Service To Anyone

[jamespetts]

...Yes, at face value Farish products are currently coming in more expensive than Dapol, who have admitted they are a bit cool on N gauge at the moment....

Can I ask what the source of this information is? I should be interested to know the details in relation to this. My apologies if I have missed another post on the forum which makes this clear.

[njee20]

I read it on RMWeb, I forget where the original source was, quite possibly verbal rather than written down anywhere, but the general gist was that they were pursuing O gauge and OO as more lucrative markets for the time being.

I'd not take it as gospel, but they're not exactly falling over themselves to punt out N gauge models these days. I think it was made before they resumed work on the 50, maybe that's indicative of a renewed confidence in N.

[Newportnobby]

Such frothing and speculation.
Both companies are still in business but have had a parting of the ways. It can happen in the business world. OK - it could make things more difficult for those abroad but unless a declaration is made by either company (doubtful) anything else is just words on the breeze.
Have fun with it, but 'I'm out'.

[PLD]

We may yet see an N gauge King rise from the ashes of the DJM dogs breakfast, as a Hatton's introduction.

I think that depends on what was the underlying problem with the erstwhile Hattons/DJM arrangement. Was it the Market, the Model or the Man???

[PLD]

Arguably Bachmann have actually been more tolerant of Hattons (and others) commissioning models to retail under their own brands, but while those models remained 'exclusive' to one retailer it was tolerated; that changed when you started to see Hattons branded products appear at other retailers...

Gaugemaster are doing the same with their "Gaugemaster Collection", although they're basically just repaints at the moment.

And that's the key difference: to quote from Gaugemaster's website:

The Gaugemaster Collection is a carefully chosen range of items, produced in conjunction with tried and tested manufacturers.

The philosophy so far seems to be to bring to market some of the more novel liveries of existing models that could be seen as too risky for the manufacturers to do as general releases. The N Gauge 66s are I believe a Dapol model, but there is every possibility the next product could have a Farish base model...

[JayM481]

As others have observed the reality is that other retailers will pick up the slack, I've not seen anyone saying "my pre-order's been cancelled so I'm buying a Dapol model instead. The impact to Bachmann is probably reputational principally.

People won't say that because they can't if they're looking for a model of a particular prototype. The nature of the UK manufacturing scene has a long-established "tradition" of not usually engaging in direct competition. "My pre-order has been cancelled" means for a given model - that Dapol doesn't produce. I hope Hattons can make a go of being a manufacturer though. From the consumer's perspective it's better to have more variety.

[njee20]

That's my exact point. People want a certain model; if their retailer of choice can't supply it they buy elsewhere, they don't buy a different model. Ergo Bachmann don't really lose out.

Agree on Hatton's as a manufacturer, I suspect they'll play more in OO gauge - the 66 is a serious entry with the number they're releasing, and they're already doing second batches of some models. They're obviously testing the N gauge water with the Garrett, be interesting to see if we see more out of them.

[bluedepot]

cheers for recommendations

got about 6 locos and a 158 to order now


tim

[njee20]

Am I weird in having never pre-ordered an item?

[woodbury22uk]

Am I weird in having never pre-ordered an item?

Except from RevolutioN etc? Although, of course, for most pre-orders you don't pay in advance.