Price Increases

[AndyMac1707817969]

Just received notification from Gaugemaster of between 10% and 15% price increases on Hornby pre-orders I have placed with them. They say it’s down to higher shipping charges from China and Hornby are passing this on to the retailers. No word yet from any other places I have advanced orders with including Hornby themselves.

[Rana Temporia]

Just seen on the news the cost of sending a shipping container from China has gone up over x10, can’t remember the exact values but that will have to be passed on to the customers. Partially due to the Evergiven incident, partially due to Covid, probably partially due to Chinese people wanting a better standard of living. Maybe Kent or Liverpool will become attractive as manufacturing areas again?

[AndyMac1707817969]

I see Hornby's prices on their website are up too, £40 for a MK3 coach, up from about £35.

[ColinB]

I read about this on the other railway website before the friendly administrator shut it down. There is always a risk when things are not entirely under your control as a company. In Hornby's and a lot of other companies, they don't control their production or the Shipping. The issue for Hornby is that they are getting to the point for their large locos where they may become out of reach, price wise for most people. For the price they are now charging it becomes less of a "throw away" item so I think they should seriously start looking at the lack of replacement parts if they fail. I doubt that they will move it from its current location other than to India, which is cheaper but even less reliable. One of the things in the old days was if you preordered the price was fixed, but obviously that has gone out the window. Just think you can buy a new TV for the price of your loco, that sort of sums it up for me. How long before this thread gets canned by the administrator?

[atom3624]

I forget where, but I've seen Mk3's on sale for less than £30 new.

Google is your friend - then the telephone may assist.

Al.

[wairoalbany]

The price increases are definitely making me think long and hard about how badly I want the new APT I currently have on pre-order. I may be better off just buying one of the original APT sets off ebay and trying to repower it.

The costs of these new models makes me fear for the future of the hobby.

[Anglia998]

Containers shipped from Shanghai to Felixstowe, Britain's busiest container port, cost just under $11,000 on average at the peak, up from just over $2,000 last October. The cost of shipping to the port of Southampton rose by a similar amount.

[96RAF]

If pre-order prices are going to be variable then I cannot see the need for Pre-orders except to take the risk out of going into production with a lemon - wouldn’t be the first time.

Wait for them to turn up at your local retailer then buy.

If folk veto the pre-order system then manufacturers will have to review their production planning forecasts, based on firm orders from retailers at annual launch time.

[ace2507]

I don't think they have put up the price on pre orders made directly with Hornby, my APT 7 car pack order is still showing the original price.

[ColinB]

I was already beginning to wonder about pre orders. I got into a panic pre ordering the blue East Asiatic Company Merchant Navy, thinking it would be desirable and sell out. Having had my order at Rails cancelled, then all the issues with Hattons. I got so worried I pre ordered it off two different suppliers, meaning to cancel one of them. Well I ended up with two as they virtually shipped together and now to add salt to the wound, I notice Bure Valley are doing it at 25% off. So 96RAF I am pretty sure you are right. Hornby are in a corner, they have to increase the price because of increased labour costs in China and now the shipping but then that is entirely of their own making.

[threelink]

Methinks manufacturers may need to consider their market place. If I had £150.00 would I spend it on an old Triang/Hornby loco and parts to upgrade it to a more detailed spec? Yes. Would I spend the same on a modern loco of near museum quality appearance? No. At normal viewing distance the two will be virtually indistinguishable. The upgrade will run for a lifetime on a few drops of oil every now and then and the occasional replacement brush. The modern r-t-r is unlikely to have serviceable parts. Ten years hence replacement parts are unikely to be available. It will die, requiring expensive replacement then and every ten years thereafter. It's a no-brainer. Manufacturers beware of pricing yourselves out of the market.

[96RAF]

Totally agree 3-link.

Their present throw away strategy doesn’t make sense from a brand loyalty point of view.

What is needed are designs that use good quality parts that can be serviced and/or repaired and those parts need to be stocked as part of the initial provisioning of the product into production.

As an example of doing it properly whenever any new bit of kit was introduced into the RAF and other services, there was a paper trail to trawl how many spares, tools and other materiel were required to support that kit through life. These forecasts were listed, discussed and approved by committee and phased into the supply chain along with introduction of the new kit.

The model industry doesn’t need to go into that detail but it does need to run a parallel spares supply alongside each model produced and those models as stated need to use quality not throwaway parts.

[Bulleidboy]

On pre-orders Hornby have in the past kept the price as at date of order - one of the other advantages of pre-ordering. On this site the prices have been increased - I have the Hornby Dublo Merchant Navy on pre-order (January 2021) when the price was £264.99 it is now £291.49.

As has been said, buyers will certainly think twice before ordering. May be an incentive to re-introduce the 10% discount for club members.

[ColinB]

I must admit I agree with threelink, although my new Hornby locos go really well, I have recently picked up some old second hand duchess locos, the version previous to the present one. Now you have to be careful as some people ask unrealistic amounts or bid ridiculously high, but the ones I have bought lately have been half the price. Admittedly I have to fix a few bits and I normally upgrade them to DCC with the socket in the tender, but they go really well. The funny thing about pre ordering, well in my case, I will happily pre order a loco at full price or 10% below that, but when it comes to buying them after release I normally wait for a decent deal on them. Now Hornby have messed up the pre ordering system, I doubt I will be pre ordering many more.

[Jimbo1707820979]

Ocean freight rates for containers have increased enormously since the Evergreen crisis in Suez. Also scarcity of empty containers. So I am afraid import costs reflecting this. Maybe a small encouragement to manufacture closer to home.

[threelink]

Hear Hear, Jimbo. I never did understand how it could be cheaper reliably to manufacture on the other side of the world and then ship products all the way here whilst still maintaining adequate quality control and guarding against fluctuations in the exchange rates and other imponderables (like Evergreen)

[96RAF]

To put costs into perspective, at one time the MoD were looking at getting their heavy maintenance of a certain large aircraft (now out of service) done in Romania purely on cost grounds. India was next on the list of probables.

[ColinB]

My old firm decided to ship their instrument cluster software out to India, in the UK one person did it. After a while the management could not understand why it was costing so much until we pointed out that they employed 20 people to do the same job. As an Indian software engineer is costed at 25% of a UK one, they were effectively employing 5 people and it still didn't work. Usually it involved endless meetings to get them to fix it. The Chinese though are usually pretty good so not that bad a choice to put production there. I feel Hornby's issues lie closer to home in their procedures, multiple part numbers for the same thing is not a help, then there is the issue that the locos are no longer toys and need a bit of expertise to put them together. Then there is the long communication link to production. I get the opinion that they design each loco separately with no coordinated approach with little or few common parts, even Triang did that. You just have to look on each one, how the body is attached or in a lot of cases the different ways a tender body attaches to the chassis.

[morairamike]

Article on the BBC new about the evergreen ship. A container pre the Suez block was £2,500 now it's £15,000. This will affect all prices and will hit hard at Xmas 2021.

[37lover]

Would anyone like to guess the value of Hornby goods that could be packed in one container; that will give a truer picture of what price increase can be "blamed" on the increased shipping cost. I believe that the article mentioned by morairmike may have stated the number of containers on the ship and the total worth.

[ColinB]

I bet that firm that does a rail transport from China to Essex is thinking this is great. At those prices moving stuff by transcontinental railway starts to become competitive.

[maw78]

Problem is more the model cost in the first place the more expensive itll be ..... I pre ordered the LNER Azuma from a shop and with dcc fitting at both ends it came to roughly £420 ..... hornby website now has it listed at nearly £440 and that's just dcc ready. I just hope the shop honours the original price !!

[Jimbo1707820979]

As model trains have a fairly high value-to- weight ratio, I am wondering if air freight dispatch will become workable. Also would result in faster turnover of goods. Don't ask me to do the arithmetic, please !

[atom3624]

Didn't Hattons do just that with the early-issue Class 66 locomotives - a slight premium was requested for those wanting their wobbly axle boxes earlier I think.

Al.

[ColinB]

I gather from a source at my local model shop, that is exactly what Bachmann are doing at the moment when they were quoted a wait of 3 months.