Large Scale Central

Polks

General Discussion
#21

This is just my opinion based on my own observations but its no secret that Aristo’s product line is manufactured under contract with Sanda Kader, same company that owns Bachmann, and if you understand the way the toy industry works, that in all likelihood its Sanda Kader who owns the tooling for the AC line, Polk Hobbies would contract for production runs, thats why there’s still unpaid stuff sitting in China. So its highly likely that once Polk Hobbies closure is finalized and any remaining contracts are negated, that Kader will have the option to either sell the lineup or more likely offer it under the Bachmann sales banner. There may a few items Kader doesnt own the tooling to but that wouldnt fit the standard business pattern in China.

If you understand the way the toy manufacturing market works, you’ll know what I mean by that. A company may sell a certain toy under their name, but the actual tooling is owned by the manufacturer and you are contracting with that manufacturer to produce that certain toy for you under your name, you own the license to sell that toy under your name and no one else can sell that toy due to copyrights and licenses, but once your license expires or you renege on your contract due to bankruptcy or ?, the manufacturer can then reissue that toy under a new license or under their own name, often with no changes or with necessary cosmetic changes if the original was under copyright, this is IMHO how Newqida produced their line while Marklin couldn’t lift a finger in opposition because they no longer owned the tooling or the licensing after EPL burned up. Those rights were in all likelihood reverted back to the manufacturer per contract after EPL reneged on their agreement.

Again this all just my own opinion, maybe we will see the same here with Kader, possibly next year.

#22

My question is about turnouts, I use 10’ diameter turnout from Aristo. I havent seen where anyone makes this size.

#23

Common wisdom is that as a general rule after three generations the demise of a company becomes inevitable.
There’s no doubt in my mind that the demise of Polks means the end of AristoCraft as we know it.
The best outcome would be the emergence of several specialist companies emerging, Phoenix-like from the ashes, having bought the dies, patterns, parts, etc. for some of A.C’s various products, then taking these products and making something topnotch out of them, and running a tight ship company to go with.
New young blood, ambitious and hungry for success, could breathe new life into these products by improving them and the service that goes along with it. I envision a number of small, reliable, owner-operated companies, each working hard to achieve reliable/improved products, service and consumer believability.
This is much the same scenario that I outlined a couple of days ago on the Revo thread, and it still seems to me that Crest/Revo is indeed going down this path.
I do believe that many of the Aristo products that are most admired - there are many admirable ones after all - will survive this collapse and the ensuing shakeup in one form or another.
All will work out for the best in the long run.
There may even be people on this forum who will become part of the Phoenix.

#24

This from Harry Hartman on the Aristo site:

"Peter
The ECLSTS WILL go on. Lewis turned the show over to me totally about 3 months ago. I am working on putting together the same ECLSTS that I have for the past 8 years, except I work for ME now instead of Lewis.

We are looking very seriously at bringing back the FALL ECLSTS too. I have already rented the hall for BOTH the Spring (March 21& 22, 2014) and the Fall Show (September 19 & 20, 2014)

We hope to see you all there. "

#25

I wrote all that before Vic’s post above here appeared. 'Course I’ve been thinking along more traditional lines, that A.C. actually owned their own patterns and had all the rights. So I’ve been thinking, ok, so the next step is a bunch of smaller companies, each owned by an enterprising American Chap. I think Crest is evolving in this drection, with Revo, but that may well be a unique situation. In that case the enterprising, and very capable chap was right on the scene, methinks.
Vic’s scenario of the product ownership residing with the Chinese manufacturer is a very different one. Awful. I wanted something manufactured I certainly wouldn’t place myself in a position like that! Just awful…

#26

Aha, Steve, some of the Phoenixes ARE arising!

#27

I wish I had the ability, to aquire this company, in part or as a whole!!!

#28

Vic’s post certainly makes the argument for bringing manufacturing back onshore. So we have to pay a few bucks more. It will be worth it.

It went offshore a little at a time, the reverse will have to be true, as well.

#29

John thats the way almost all products being mfrd under contract in the PRC are done these days, its also one reason why during the EPL fallout it took Marklin a long while to reclaim the tooling that they retained rights to.

Its just so much less expensive than having to foot all the tooling and production costs yourself, you use the deep pockets of the Chinese gov. backed factories to help foot the development costs, but the downside is that you get what you pay for, and any defects become very hard to correct as the die is quite literally already cast and once in production its expensive to make changes when you’ve contracted for a product at lower price level X but to get a reliable product you should have paid for the product run at higher price level Y.

#30

John Le Forestier said:

…
Vic’s scenario of the product ownership residing with the Chinese manufacturer is a very different one. Awful. I wanted something manufactured I certainly wouldn’t place myself in a position like that! Just awful…

John,

If you have enough money you can get anything produced wherever you like, by whomever you like.

If you don’t then you have to “cut a few corners” i.e. you have the mfg build the tooling, you may or may not pay for that in full (if you have the money), then you have the mfg run the production of the items — you pay for the quality control portion (at whichever level you decide) — pay to rent the tooling etc. etc. etc. and the mfg stipulates the minimum order per run and the terms of payment.

If sometime down the road you decide that you got a rotten deal, you may be able to buy the tooling … at whatever price the mfg decides.

If you really don’t like that deal to start with … you look for a better deal (good luck with that!), or you find a partner who has enough money — in which case you now have to dance to his tune or he may buyout your share of the company with a deal you can’t refuse.

:wink: :slight_smile:

This is one scenario, there are many variations, but … all of them boil down to the same: it can never be cheap enough and the profit margin can never be too large!

#31

Steve thats the lesson Marklin apparently learned dealing with the PRC to get their tooling back, the factories naturally assume they own everything, and it takes a while for the lawyers to prove them otherwise.

Marklin brought their production “home”…sort of, at least its in continental Europe once again.

I also agree bring it back here, unless you like having your product stolen and illegally reproduced while the gov. looks the other way, ask BMW about that.

(http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2006/06/bmwx5fakespy.jpg)

(http://cache.jalopnik.com/assets/resources/2008/04/Chinese-Mini-Cooper.jpg)

#32

Mark Dash said:

Maybe now the haters will shut up, well nope they wont now we get to hear months of I told you so and speculation on who will buy the brand

Ya know…this whole episode was to get you KAD’s to see what was going on, to take the blinders off.
Your post indicates the blinders are even more firmly attached.
It isn’t what any of us said that’s really important…it’s what was not said, what was alluded to, or possibly suggested.
We had folks trying to get me or any of us to tell them to buy all their Aristo now, before it was gone.
I can spot “baiting” quite a fur piece off.
I wouldn’t do it…and it wouldn’t have helped, as there was no stock anyway…so we laughed.
There is so much back channel story…most of which can never be told.
Do you understand now why there was so much comment, hilarity, about the Ariemma “interview” of the Polks?
Geez…we all knew, you all were denying…and look at it now.
Is there hope?
Yeah…there is.

Remember all that commentary on why another company suddenly came out, for the first time, on purpose, 1:29 stuff?
Are you starting to see something here?
Then the comments on who owns and holds the tooling?
Are your blinders getting loose yet?
What factory has deeper pockets? What factory has how many containers of goods on the dock?
There was a chance…we could have had something like “Williams by Bachmann”, but I am pretty sure reading the tea leaves that there were some involved who thought the glorious name was worth a lot…and now…well, watch and see.

Bottom line, I really think you may see goods and parts sooner this way, but it all depends on how long the Chinese New Year celebration goes on.

You get the comments early on about Navin, the change of the CREST website mailing address…the whole freaking scenario has been written on billboards in huge fonts so you could read it for yourself…but, no, The Great One has told us not to believe the infidels.

TOC

#33

I read a web site today and saw recently (not on any Forum I add) things that suggest to me, purely intuition by the way, that not all is a bad as it might seem. Time of course will tell but I am encouraged to say the least. No further comments of course, it is purely intuition after all.

#34

I wondered what was up 'way back when Aristo didn’t come out with any of the Norfolk Southern Heritage Dash-9’s.

#35

(http://criswellpredicts.com/images/header_072711b.jpg)

He might be a little premature, but Criswell ghost suggests a possibility we may yet see a return of some of the product line under another banner sometime next year.

#36

Steve Featherkile said:

Vic’s post certainly makes the argument for bringing manufacturing back onshore. So we have to pay a few bucks more. It will be worth it.

It went offshore a little at a time, the reverse will have to be true, as well.

Fly One in the ointment: Producing in the high-wage countries means considerably higher prices - you don’t expect the producers to sacrifice their profit expectations, do you?

Or

You open a slave shop, where people earn just enough to get by. That means they can’t afford to buy your product

Fly Two: To design the items you need experienced designers with a lot of product background (the baby boomers send their greetings). To produce the tooling you need highly skilled people and expensive machinery — unless you’re happy with Newquida quality. To assemble the items you need very good quality control and people for whom it is more than a McJob.

Those people expect a bit more than minimum wage and no benefits.

#37

Vic Smith said:

This is just my opinion based on my own observations but its no secret that Aristo’s product line is manufactured under contract with Sanda Kader, same company that owns Bachmann, and if you understand the way the toy industry works, that in all likelihood its Sanda Kader who owns the tooling for the AC line, Polk Hobbies would contract for production runs, thats why there’s still unpaid stuff sitting in China. So its highly likely that once Polk Hobbies closure is finalized and any remaining contracts are negated, that Kader will have the option to either sell the lineup or more likely offer it under the Bachmann sales banner. There may a few items Kader doesnt own the tooling to but that wouldnt fit the standard business pattern in China.

If you understand the way the toy manufacturing market works, you’ll know what I mean by that. A company may sell a certain toy under their name, but the actual tooling is owned by the manufacturer and you are contracting with that manufacturer to produce that certain toy for you under your name, you own the license to sell that toy under your name and no one else can sell that toy due to copyrights and licenses, but once your license expires or you renege on your contract due to bankruptcy or ?, the manufacturer can then reissue that toy under a new license or under their own name, often with no changes or with necessary cosmetic changes if the original was under copyright, this is IMHO how Newqida produced their line while Marklin couldn’t lift a finger in opposition because they no longer owned the tooling or the licensing after EPL burned up. Those rights were in all likelihood reverted back to the manufacturer per contract after EPL reneged on their agreement.

Again this all just my own opinion, maybe we will see the same here with Kader, possibly next year.

Yup…owned by Sanda Kan/Kader. To give you an idea…when the SD-45 came out, I was told that I could call Sanda Kan, tell them I wanted, oh, 500 SD-45’s in 1:29 scale.
The questions would be: What road names, what business name on the box and fuel tank, and when do you want them?"
The only really sticky points in all of this is the name “Aristo-Craft”, which we know can be fixed pretty quickly…remember how fast Kader yanked the counterweights off of all the already built K-27’s?.
Pull the engines, change fuel tanks (to eliminate Aristo name), put new stickers over the tags on the rolling stock.
And ship out 2+ containers under…another name.
Patent is the other…but, since it’s cosmetic, and it’s in China, where patents don’t mean anything, well, change out one of the cosmetic identifiers while swapping fuel tanks…

EPL owned the tooling…Richter’s shipped it to PRC. Richters out, Maerklin in, took I think years to get the tooling EPL owned back from the PRC.
In this case, the original REA Korean stuff was owned by Polks…but you can probably guess that tooling is wore out.
TOC

#38

Curmudgeon mcneely said:

Mark Dash said:

Maybe now the haters will shut up, well nope they wont now we get to hear months of I told you so and speculation on who will buy the brand

Ya know…this whole episode was to get you KAD’s to see what was going on, to take the blinders off.
Your post indicates the blinders are even more firmly attached.
It isn’t what any of us said that’s really important…it’s what was not said, what was alluded to, or possibly suggested.
We had folks trying to get me or any of us to tell them to buy all their Aristo now, before it was gone.
I can spot “baiting” quite a fur piece off.
I wouldn’t do it…and it wouldn’t have helped, as there was no stock anyway…so we laughed.
There is so much back channel story…most of which can never be told.
Do you understand now why there was so much comment, hilarity, about the Ariemma “interview” of the Polks?
Geez…we all knew, you all were denying…and look at it now.
Is there hope?
Yeah…there is.

Remember all that commentary on why another company suddenly came out, for the first time, on purpose, 1:29 stuff?
Are you starting to see something here?
Then the comments on who owns and holds the tooling?
Are your blinders getting loose yet?
What factory has deeper pockets? What factory has how many containers of goods on the dock?
There was a chance…we could have had something like “Williams by Bachmann”, but I am pretty sure reading the tea leaves that there were some involved who thought the glorious name was worth a lot…and now…well, watch and see.

Bottom line, I really think you may see goods and parts sooner this way, but it all depends on how long the Chinese New Year celebration goes on.

You get the comments early on about Navin, the change of the CREST website mailing address…the whole freaking scenario has been written on billboards in huge fonts so you could read it for yourself…but, no, The Great One has told us not to believe the infidels.

TOC

You know, when you call someone you don’t know, a KAD, you present yourself as a self righeous ass right?

Unlike you I have a life and my world doesn’t revolve around what Louie has said, I only care that products that fit my railroad are available, the name on the box doesn’t matter. Quite frankly Bachman may be able to deliver the same Aristo stuff at a cheaper price eventually which is better for me. There are no blinders here, I know which ways up and whats to the left and right what is wrong is how you and your cohorts continue your agenda to prove yourself right (and righteous) and quite frankly it’s getting a bit thick, the kool aid your on is fermented or just plain rotten.

Good Day Sir

#39

I see a lock a-coming!

#40

Mark, that was over the top, and definitely not called for.