Hornby web site end of year sale

Looking on the Hornby web site I see they having an end of year sale. Does anyone on this forum buy direct from Hornby?

http://www.hornby.com/shop/sale/?page=1

 

Funny how they can afford to drop the DCC 28XX from £160 to £99, suggests they were ridiculously overcharging to begin with.

Think I'll stick with the few larger shops who are consistently under the over inflated RRP.

Edit: nearly £70 for a bloody pug that's been unchanged for years prior to the sale ?, who the hell do they think would pay that for a dodgy performing 0-4-0 ?.

 

43% of RRP (inc Vat) is usually the trade mark up.
They probably have similar for themselves.

so an RRP of £100 (inc VAT, or £83 ex VAT) would be approx £63 + VAT trade, ergo you can probably guess at £45 is the Delivered/Import Dutied /Manufacturered, R&D & Tooling Factored cost of a completed model to Hornby + VAT.

If you went to Guangdong and got it yourself off the production line and declared nothing to the tax man or the designers, you'd probably pay only £20, of which maybe £5 in materials, £3-5 in labour, £2 for transport between the various factories for the bits, the rest would be packaging and a margin for the factory.

It does surprise me that some of the factories haven't considered "factory shops" or direct selling from China… some raw materials in the hobby already deal direct from China.
Another option is to sell RTR in "build it yourself" format.. then it can be imported cheaper to the UK as it's a raw material, not a finished good.

I suspect the ultimate option will some day be the download a 3D printed and painted model yourself (though I suspect the Chinese will deal direct before that, as this is a major threat to their industrial base), Hornby may have taken their 1st steps in that direction in 2014 with their new plans. (If you want to see how it works.. anyone ordered a Dell PC lately and see how it is delivered, compared to how it was 10 years ago).

I have done business in the area (not in modelling) which has allowed me to see the production lines for model railway / other electrical equipment (usually smaller 10-20 people sized offices with several rooms), or in one place a "factory floor" which looks a bit like a sewing machine factory ! with lots of employees, not a huge amount of automation and many of the prototypes that have been prepared / hang around their which make interesting viewing, unfortunately few clues as to whom the "agent is" here in the UK (Or other countries) being made for.
Quite a lot of waste (production control is pretty good as it costs very little, if there's an imperfection they drop it into the bucket for recycling).

 

I'm sure I remember picking a calendar pug up for a fiver not too many years ago...

 

I picked one up for £5 at 2012 Warley. I thought it might come in useful for something - it might work coupled to a truck for pickup but not solo

 

Careful, Hornby do 2 different pugs...

One is the toy with the bumble bee motor that flies like the wind, the other is the old Dapol product, which although detailed, is dated.
Both of them however are at least 25 years old, the toy pug's chassis dates back to 1979.

 

Didn't see the point in starting another thread. I see today Hornby have listed another selection of locos and coaches/wagons plus other items for sales at a reduced price.


http://www.hornby.com/shop/last-chance-to-buy.html