New Years Sale ? Bah Humbug !

[Too Tall]

Anyone else fed up with Hornby promoting this but not including a single TT120 item ?

Its bad enough I have bought from several online model railway suppliers and so keep getting the emails about all the new releases and sales of wonderful goodies in 00 or N, but Hornby ignoring the TT crowd is a kicker.

We could at least get a double points or something ?

On a slightly related note, all the TT stuff delayed and now scheduled for a Spring 2024 release ain't gonna happen ... you look at all the preorders on the site that have spring 24, and tell me that we can realistically expect all of that will come in one quarter ?

Anyways, just needed to get that of my chest grinning

[HST Mainline]

Looking at the products in the "sale", it looks very much like "storage clean-up". Probably products that did not sell as well as expected.

If a product sells well, it will never go in a 40% off sale. TT is probably in that category as it looks to be selling very well. There is simply no reason to put it on sale.

[Hobby11]

I agree with HSTMainline, it's far too early in the scale's life to expect to see sales of TT120, in fact if I did see TT120 stuff in their sale I'd be worried as it would indicate things aren't going as well as we hope. As I don't, all's good! Come back in 5 years time, there may be some stuff then, but, whilst it would be nice, I hope not before.

[P-Henny]

As far as I can see there are only two primary reasons for having a sale.

1. You sell products in a highly competitive 'High Street' market and your 'High Street' competitors are having a sale and 'Sales' are an annual planned event. Clothes for example.
2. You need to shift product that is sitting idle on the retailers shelf.

Neither of which fall into Hornby's category as Hornby direct sales of TT are not on the High Street and as far as TT is concerned the demand is higher than the supply. Expecting 'Sale' price reductions just because it is January is IMO chasing a rainbow.

[96RAF]

High street sales are misleading as they usually relate to an obscure product that had been on full retail price somewhere in their shop network for a certain period, whilst the rest of the stock is marked down from a ridiculously over-priced starting point. DFS for instance has had a recurring sale for as long as I can remember them trading.

Hornby and other retailer model sales are genuine price drops against the normal RRP, but as stated they are usually clearance of slow moving stock, not newly introduced stock.

[ntpntpntp]

Why would you expect anything to go on sale when it's a new product line that's still building up a full range and demand is outstripping supply as it is? There are no dusty old unpopular products to shift yet.

[Too Tall]

Oh I agree totally with all of the above.

Just when I get an email from Hornby every few days .... but a points promotion or something would be nice, its not like they haven't done it before blush

[Rallymatt]

I think everyone recognises that ‘Sales’ are a way to clear the stockroom and turn dead stock into cash.

I could be wrong, it’s been known before, I’m not expecting to see a lot of special offers etc coming with TT:120, the amount of out of stock items suggests few products need the extra shove of an offer and now the range has gone High Street to a degree, the retailers are absorbing the margin that Hornby used to share with us and I am sure some agreements are in place to ensure a D2C offer doesn’t undermine the retailer’s position, with the fledgling range.

[david_watts1]

I'd just be glad to see some new stuff so I can spend my 20,500+ points.

[moawkwrd]

I’d be more worried if Hornby were discounting TT:120 stock to be honest, as that would suggest it wasn’t selling well enough which would put the whole project at risk of Hornby pulling the plug.

[Generic Hornby Username]

So far, I've seen one sale for Hornby TT120 beyond the typical retailer discounts. It was over at the Modell Bahn Union German model shop website. They had a Christmas special for both the sound fitted Silver King and sound fitted Night Hawk. They were each 40% off. I should have jumped at the chance, but I'm trying keep to my budget. By the next day they were both sold out.

Besides that, I've never seen a sale.

I agree with everyone above. TT120 is clearly starved for supply. The fastest moving items are the sets, which still seem to be selling extremely well. The retailers I monitor tend to be running out of those sets too. All good signs. Over at TMC multiple of the TT items are down to the last 2 or 3. So, while demand is strongest for the sets, it seems like there is substantial interest across the entire range of products.

I think the best way to gauge whether Hornby will deliver in April is to look at whether they meet their target of delivering the Swallow HST in February. That's the bellwether product for me. If that slips, then it's reasonable to expect subsequent products to slip. Watch that product as the indicator.