@Landsteiner posted:(The above is meant as a joke).
Too bad. I was looking forward to calling the shots.
@Madockawando posted:Ironically, the fact that a thread like this would even need to be started speaks volumes of the current state of MTH. Can you imagine all the puzzled looks and questions if someone posted: “Hey everyone! I just talked to Charles Ro and guess what? Lionel is STILL in business!”
As Shakespeare said: “The Lady doth protest to much”
You tried this same comment in another thread and it flopped there too. Give it up already. We know, you love Lionel and they can do no wrong, the continued presence of MTH and DCS makes your life harder somehow.
What you don’t seem to realize is that some of us have locomotives and rolling stock from all brands. Not just Lionel and not just “no xyz brand”. You know what, we are getting the most enjoyment out of the hobby because we buy what we like.
All brands have made home runs and duds. Lionel makes the best Baldwin Sharks, but MTH has the best PRR steam tooling (other than the J1a). MTH’s Sharks are just hands down goofy looking. They should be in the RailKing line. Lionel’s PRR H10 is a joke, but their C&O T-1/PRR J1a is beautifully done.
Some of us can look past the box color and buy what we like because we just like trains, not a company.
@Madockawando posted:All the tooling was and is for sale. The tooling that is left is the tooling that neither Atlas nor Lionel wanted.
MTH retained 80% of their tooling. Lionel and Atlas already make a lot of the same things that MTH has, so they probably didn’t what copies of what they already had. They were likely trying to fill holes in their lineups. What is so hard to understand about that?
But maybe I’m wrong and you will get to dance on MTH’s grave in a few years. I’ll be sad the industry lost another place to buy models from, but I’ll be happy with my MTH PRR steam, and my Lionel RF-16s.
@Madockawando posted:All the tooling was and is for sale. The tooling that is left is the tooling that neither Atlas nor Lionel wanted.
Or Atlas and Lionel could not afford.
@Tom Tee posted:Or Atlas and Lionel could not afford.
Not according to Lionel! In the LCCA presentation Lionel stated that they reviewed all of the tooling carefully and selected all the tooling for purchase that they wanted. They had the ability to purchased more.
Perhaps we could all agree that MTH is still in business, and that's a good thing. However, what being in business means overall is still to be determined as the months and years go by. There are reasons to support the thoughts of both pessimists and optimists, but it's not going to be clear for a while what is to be.
Thinking more about this I think trying to predict the death of MTH or the industry from a single data point is fruitless. Lionel and Atlas bought "only" 20% of MTH tooling? Could be that represented what fit their business model. Lionel isn't going to buy engines or cars that match their existing product, Atlas already is limited (they don't do steam, for example).
Of course there are financial considerations, and that to me looking back tells me that a lot of this was decided a long time ago and there was a plan (Mike isn't Russian as far as I know, but kind of reminds me of the admiral in 'The Hunt For Red October' "Son, the Russians don't go to the bathroom without a plan"). In retrospect:
1. The key to a lot of this is that he announced DCS was splitting off at the time of the original announcement, that they would support DCS/upgrade it. Thinking about it, the DCS group (yeah, I know, it is a couple of people or so),isn't going to go forward without knowing a revenue stream. Would you commit to buying a business when you didn't know if the prime customer was going to be operating or without knowing projected revenue? Simply supporting the existing base wouldn't be lucrative, replacement boards or people buying TIU/AIO components wouldn't generate much. Even being allowed to license it wouldn't do it, because they would have no way to know if anyone would license it.
Put it this way, if last year when Mike made his announcements everything was in the air, literally, the people taking over DCS wouldn't do it.
2. Given 1 above, then it is likely Mike when he had the announcement already had been talking to Lionel and Atlas and they already had at least a framework for an agreement, a handshake deal if you will. While Lionel would be unlikely to use DCS, Atlas would and of course Atlas would have the ability to license the dcs boards and use them. TMCC is an older, limited command control system, Lionel licenses it because quite frankly it doesn't compete with their products. MTH when a going concern never licensed DCS for the same reason. But if he had a vision of the future he could sell to the DCS group, where there was still MTH (but one that is maker of the trains only, not the command control system) and Atlas using DCS for both bought tooling and their own stuff, they would be willing.
3. The fact that Lionel and Atlas didn't buy MTH lock, stock and barrel is a good thing. If Mike was planning to shut down MTH, he would sell it for any price he could get as sole proprietor and Lionel could have bought the whole thing at a price they determined. That only 20% was sold off tells me that Mike wasn't willing to let it go for whatever.
4.But if 3 is true, why did MTH sell any tooling, if there were plans to move forward? Answer is in what we see today, those taking over the company didn't want to run the existing MTH, especially the repair portion of it. They wanted a stripped down MTH that would produce a limited range of products, likely what they saw as the most lucrative. So selling the tooling to Lionel and MTH made sense, as did closing the repair operation and the like. Again likely someone went over the numbers and figured out, to them, what would make sense.
5. But then why did some of the MTH only dealers close, anticipating this future? I can't answer that, since all this is speculation and inference. It could be they knew something of what was planned and figured in a BTO world, where shops contracted with MTH to build stuff, they couldn't surprise; could also be that MW shafted them, didn't tell them what was going on, and they thought likely MTH was no more (I suspect it was more the prior rather than the latter, but just my hunch).
6. Big thing to keep in mind is business deals take time, the reason this stuff is being announced relatively recently is it takes time to put together a deal. I never really thought Mike just decided to throw out a bombshell and a year later walk away, and the DCS deal should have rang bells in my head at the time. I suspect that before he made that announcement there were already advanced discussions, enough to make the DCS group want to go forward, that it was the details being worked out over the last year. In the big time business world it usually takes a year from the time the deal is announced until they sign on the bottom line, there is all kinds of diligence that need to be done, regulatory issues, deciding if some parts of the company need to be sold before it can happen, etc. Obviously MTH is small fry relatively, but again details take time.
So why didn't they announce all this last year? Likely because they had a framework of an agreement, a fluid one, and it is only now that the full parameters are in place. This happens in business too a lot. Once that framework was in place, Mike (again, this is just speculation, I have not 0 but negative inside knowledge of MTH) felt comfortable enough to announce to the customer base his intentions to retire.
Again, as many thought Mike announced his plans to retire with no deals other than DCS group done, and was letting the cards fall where they may, a lot of what has happened makes no sense. If Atlas and Lionel took this long to decide to buy tooling, they would have done it at fire sale prices; not to mention MTH 2.0 would need the year roughly from him announcing his intentions to now to figure out how they were going to operate, too once "MTH 1.0" ended.
We had dinner with a train friend couple last night.
In the MTH discussion that took place it occurred to me that with Lionel marking up MTH items 100%, the 80% of the tooling Mike still owns has intrinsically risen 100% in value since Friday. That is a game changer for MTH. Mike can now get more for his tooling now than before the Lionel catalog was released. And if Lionel sells a lot of MTH product at the new higher prices, Lionel and the other importers will want more MTH product. Could create a bidding war.
@Craignor posted:We had dinner with a train friend couple last night.
In the MTH discussion that took place it occurred to me that with Lionel marking up MTH items 100%, the 80% of the tooling Mike still owns has intrinsically risen 100% in value since Friday. That is a game changer for MTH. Mike can now get more for his tooling now than before the Lionel catalog was released. And if Lionel sells a lot of MTH product at the new higher prices, Lionel and the other importers will want more MTH product. Could create a bidding war.
Lets see how it sells. A former MTH caboose for 150 bucks when you still find them for less than a third of that?
Pete
@bigkid posted:Thinking more about this I think trying to predict the death of MTH or the industry from a single data point is fruitless. Lionel and Atlas bought "only" 20% of MTH tooling? Could be that represented what fit their business model. Lionel isn't going to buy engines or cars that match their existing product, Atlas already is limited (they don't do steam, for example).
Of course there are financial considerations, and that to me looking back tells me that a lot of this was decided a long time ago and there was a plan (Mike isn't Russian as far as I know, but kind of reminds me of the admiral in 'The Hunt For Red October' "Son, the Russians don't go to the bathroom without a plan"). In retrospect:
1. The key to a lot of this is that he announced DCS was splitting off at the time of the original announcement, that they would support DCS/upgrade it. Thinking about it, the DCS group (yeah, I know, it is a couple of people or so),isn't going to go forward without knowing a revenue stream. Would you commit to buying a business when you didn't know if the prime customer was going to be operating or without knowing projected revenue? Simply supporting the existing base wouldn't be lucrative, replacement boards or people buying TIU/AIO components wouldn't generate much. Even being allowed to license it wouldn't do it, because they would have no way to know if anyone would license it.
Put it this way, if last year when Mike made his announcements everything was in the air, literally, the people taking over DCS wouldn't do it.
2. Given 1 above, then it is likely Mike when he had the announcement already had been talking to Lionel and Atlas and they already had at least a framework for an agreement, a handshake deal if you will. While Lionel would be unlikely to use DCS, Atlas would and of course Atlas would have the ability to license the dcs boards and use them. TMCC is an older, limited command control system, Lionel licenses it because quite frankly it doesn't compete with their products. MTH when a going concern never licensed DCS for the same reason. But if he had a vision of the future he could sell to the DCS group, where there was still MTH (but one that is maker of the trains only, not the command control system) and Atlas using DCS for both bought tooling and their own stuff, they would be willing.
3. The fact that Lionel and Atlas didn't buy MTH lock, stock and barrel is a good thing. If Mike was planning to shut down MTH, he would sell it for any price he could get as sole proprietor and Lionel could have bought the whole thing at a price they determined. That only 20% was sold off tells me that Mike wasn't willing to let it go for whatever.
4.But if 3 is true, why did MTH sell any tooling, if there were plans to move forward? Answer is in what we see today, those taking over the company didn't want to run the existing MTH, especially the repair portion of it. They wanted a stripped down MTH that would produce a limited range of products, likely what they saw as the most lucrative. So selling the tooling to Lionel and MTH made sense, as did closing the repair operation and the like. Again likely someone went over the numbers and figured out, to them, what would make sense.
5. But then why did some of the MTH only dealers close, anticipating this future? I can't answer that, since all this is speculation and inference. It could be they knew something of what was planned and figured in a BTO world, where shops contracted with MTH to build stuff, they couldn't surprise; could also be that MW shafted them, didn't tell them what was going on, and they thought likely MTH was no more (I suspect it was more the prior rather than the latter, but just my hunch).
6. Big thing to keep in mind is business deals take time, the reason this stuff is being announced relatively recently is it takes time to put together a deal. I never really thought Mike just decided to throw out a bombshell and a year later walk away, and the DCS deal should have rang bells in my head at the time. I suspect that before he made that announcement there were already advanced discussions, enough to make the DCS group want to go forward, that it was the details being worked out over the last year. In the big time business world it usually takes a year from the time the deal is announced until they sign on the bottom line, there is all kinds of diligence that need to be done, regulatory issues, deciding if some parts of the company need to be sold before it can happen, etc. Obviously MTH is small fry relatively, but again details take time.
So why didn't they announce all this last year? Likely because they had a framework of an agreement, a fluid one, and it is only now that the full parameters are in place. This happens in business too a lot. Once that framework was in place, Mike (again, this is just speculation, I have not 0 but negative inside knowledge of MTH) felt comfortable enough to announce to the customer base his intentions to retire.
Again, as many thought Mike announced his plans to retire with no deals other than DCS group done, and was letting the cards fall where they may, a lot of what has happened makes no sense. If Atlas and Lionel took this long to decide to buy tooling, they would have done it at fire sale prices; not to mention MTH 2.0 would need the year roughly from him announcing his intentions to now to figure out how they were going to operate, too once "MTH 1.0" ended.
Great logical argument, however your timeline doesn't work. Mike has been thinking about this for sometime. Back 5 years ago he put fiber in his building for an Internet upgrade. He told me then "I will be able to get more out of my building if it has fiber in it". It was not cheap, all the utilities are underground in that business park which meant tunneling under the parking lot to bring it in. Once the building sold, it was a whole new ballgame. Last November/December there were intense negotiations with a buyer for all the O-Gauge tooling and keeping the company intact. No not Bachman, Lionel or Atlas. The buyer had plenty of cash; however at he end his kids and his staff told him they wanted nothing to do with model trains. The deal went out the window. What we have seen is not a year's worth of work but a matter of months.
As much "fun" as it appears Mike has spent a large part of his adult life away from his family watching the manufacturer process to insure he had the quality product we want to have. I am sure that has gotten old and with the money from the sale of the building, why continue to be a slave to toy trains if you don't have to be?
So there is still tons of products that can be made and if MTH is going to be in the parts business the tooling has to be used. In my opinion if someone offered Mike enough he would be willing to sell the remaining company minus the tinplate and parts business. So if any of you win the lottery next week, give it a shot.
Scott Smith
@scott.smith posted:As much "fun" as it appears Mike has spent a large part of his adult life away from his family watching the manufacturer process to insure he had the quality product we want to have. I am sure that has gotten old and with the money from the sale of the building, why continue to be a slave to toy trains if you don't have to be?
So there is still tons of products that can be made and if MTH is going to be in the parts business the tooling has to be used. In my opinion if someone offered Mike enough he would be willing to sell the remaining company minus the tinplate and parts business. So if any of you win the lottery next week, give it a shot.
If I were younger and had either a knowledgeable manufacturing partner or at least some financial backing, I would totally go for it. I think there will still be a ton of interest in the 3-rail scale and 2-rail scale portions of the market, and I think MTH is set-up to at least play some part in that.
We need a young entrepreneur with an interest in trains to which Mike can pass the torch. That said, I'm still very optimistic about a leaner, meaner MTH, and a DCS and/or parts spinoff. How about a parts business that also sells kits for hobbyists to build?? :-) I would JUMP on that.
With Lionel's insane price increase's it will be interesting to see how much of this stuff sells.
Sooner or later people that can afford their prices will say no.
@scott.smith posted:The buyer had plenty of cash; however at he end his kids and his staff told him they wanted nothing to do with model trains.
Scott Smith
Can you clarify this? I'm not sure I understand this sentence.
@MartyE posted:Can you clarify this? I'm not sure I understand this sentence.
I think Scott inadvertently omitted a "t" as in "the".
@scott.smith posted:
The buyer had plenty of cash; however at the end his kids and his staff told him they wanted nothing to do with model trains.
Scott Smith
@RidgeRunner posted:I think Scott inadvertently omitted a "t" as in "the".
@scott.smith posted:The buyer had plenty of cash; however at the end his kids and his staff told him they wanted nothing to do with model trains.
Scott Smith
The punctuation helps too.
Thanks
I may be missing something in all of this...
When there's talk about "parts" being a residual 'opportunity', ....how so? For most, if not all, of the run of MTH products, the finished assemblies, were all obtained from the Orient...China/Korea, mostly. WRT China-made assemblies, I'm sure that the parts thereof...nuts/bolts to castings/moldings to circuit boards...were all sourced locally. China (government) does not condone the production/shipping of parts as a business strategy. The technology, drawings, tooling etc., thereof and therefore is not liable to be a separate business opportunity. ...Unless all that is invested in and replicated/marketed by a new set of suppliers in more supportive (government) conditions.
And, speaking of "investment"... The other thing I don't see in the slimmed-down remnants of MTH is...investment. It's one thing to have a bunch of tooling...amortized, idle, usable...sitting around to make what has sustained the lion's share of this hobby for years and years...the so-called "Same, but's". Same item, but different paint/graphics, ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk.
What many of us look forward to each catalogue, each year, is something wholly NEW!!! It's what re-generates excitement, it upgrades the smiles, it opens wallets, it compensates the loss of testosterone in the demographics, it....oh well, you get the picture. I seriously doubt that there will be MTH-benefactors out there to make those "All New" type of investments ($$$$-sort) we dream of. Those number$ aren't small. The ROI is...what? Assured? Yeah, right.
A current player we know well that walks this tight rope is Scott Mann's Sunset-3rd Rail/GGD. Sure, he delivers on dreams...but with rising costs yielding a market-limiting price. And, the ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk manufacturing/marketing strategy is not part of his game.
And, wasn't it Mike's investment in new designs, new tooling, new marketing that was the epiphany for a rather tired, complacent Lionel 35+ years ago?
Ergo, the real future of the remaining MTH is not in focus yet. Besides, for all the announcements to date I still feel the MTH legacy has successfully peaked. And, for that I'm very happy with the results.
All of which is just MHO....nothing more, nothing less.
KD
Based upon limited but what I believe to be accurate info, in response to Scott's reference to MTH oriented LHS; my personal belief is that the LHS were substantially in the dark; but had just enough info so that some could "read the tea leafs." How badly any particular store owner got shafted (if at all) depended upon lease arrangements, product diversification and other business circumstances. No doubt, some LHS proprietors got shafted big time, while others were able to close their train shop and simply moved on.
One thing is for sure, those of use who gladly paid a bit more to support, benefited from over the counter purchases with test tracks/layout to run what we had purchased or were possibly purchasing , and simply enjoying our now closed LHS, are the big time losers, especially so if MTH had a USSR like "10 year plan" as Scott suggested.
If it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck; it most likely is a duck. However, oftentimes situations aren't what they seem to be, and aren't what we are told that they are. If there is an "agenda/plan" behind all of this, we will most likely never know.
"Live long and prosper!" (per Mr. Spock)
John, I have wondered what LHS owners knew a year ago, six months ago, but it is none of my business. I know one shop I will miss, and you will miss too. That owner is too much a gentleman to ever let any but his very closest friends and associates know his situation, and that is as it should be. I'll just do what all of us have to do; wait and see what happens as the months pass by.
@gunrunnerjohn posted:I'm glad I bought my 64' Woodside passenger cars at MTH prices, I just saw the Lionel prices!
I was concerned about Lionel and Atlas buying any tooling from MTH for this very reason.
Once again the MTH portfolio was cherry picked.
Hopefully the folks at MTH will be successful with what remains and we will see a normal product flow.
@Mike D posted:I was concerned about Lionel and Atlas buying any tooling from MTH for this very reason.
Once again the MTH portfolio was cherry picked.
Hopefully the folks at MTH will be successful with what remains and we will see a normal product flow.
Both Altas and Lionel had access to purchase any or all of the O gauge tooling. It would be logical that they purchased the most valuable and potentially profitable tooling for themselves.
@scott.smith posted:Great logical argument, however your timeline doesn't work. Mike has been thinking about this for sometime. Back 5 years ago he put fiber in his building for an Internet upgrade. He told me then "I will be able to get more out of my building if it has fiber in it". It was not cheap, all the utilities are underground in that business park which meant tunneling under the parking lot to bring it in. Once the building sold, it was a whole new ballgame. Last November/December there were intense negotiations with a buyer for all the O-Gauge tooling and keeping the company intact. No not Bachman, Lionel or Atlas. The buyer had plenty of cash; however at he end his kids and his staff told him they wanted nothing to do with model trains. The deal went out the window. What we have seen is not a year's worth of work but a matter of months.
As much "fun" as it appears Mike has spent a large part of his adult life away from his family watching the manufacturer process to insure he had the quality product we want to have. I am sure that has gotten old and with the money from the sale of the building, why continue to be a slave to toy trains if you don't have to be?
So there is still tons of products that can be made and if MTH is going to be in the parts business the tooling has to be used. In my opinion if someone offered Mike enough he would be willing to sell the remaining company minus the tinplate and parts business. So if any of you win the lottery next week, give it a shot.Scott Smith
Scott:
I can verify that the last five sentences of your first paragraph are accurate.
Pat
@Madockawando posted:Both Altas and Lionel had access to purchase any or all of the O gauge tooling. It would be logical that they purchased the most valuable and potentially profitable tooling for themselves.
No doubt is was logical for Lionel and Atlas. Highly illogical for MTH to sell some the better products in their portfolio to competitors and stay in business with the remaining average items. It is like McDonald's selling the Big Mac, Quarter Pounder, McRib and their fries to Burger King, then hoping to stay in business with the rest of the menu items.
From my perspective they don't really look like they had a plan moving forward without Mike Wolf that didn't take into account the fact they would potentially have a lot of unsold tooling. Now everyone is scrambling around trying to figure it all out.
I see the Lionel acquisitions going the way of the Williams line when they were purchased by Bachmann. Priced out of existence.
I also think it will be a while if ever before we see any sense of normalcy from what remains of MTH. These very limited custom runs are barely an indication of being in business. I know it's still early. I am just calling it like I see it. I really do hope they are successful. I am a big fan of the MTH products.
This tooling is in China correct? I wonder if China will allow it to be removed? Who gets to build the stuff for Lionel & Atlas ?
Sounds like a shaky deal to me.
Gunny
@SIRT posted:So who has the molds for the GP-35, RS-1 and RS-3 ?
I hope Lionel goes nowhere near that RS-1 mold. The best railking scale engine ever made but never done in Penn Central.
@gunny posted:This tooling is in China correct? I wonder if China will allow it to be removed? Who gets to build the stuff for Lionel & Atlas ?
Sounds like a shaky deal to me.
Gunny
Tooling made in China stays in China. It can move from builder to builder within China. Tooling imported in from the outside can be exported, but they don't make it easy.
Rusty
@Rusty Traque posted:Tooling made in China stays in China. It can move from builder to builder within China. Tooling imported in from the outside can be exported, but they don't make it easy.
Rusty
What if it's in Korea? I thought it was mentioned in the past that Mike's factory was in Korea.
There is also a Korean factory making at least " some" of Lionels current offerings.
@jini5 posted:I hope Lionel goes nowhere near that RS-1 mold. The best railking scale engine ever made but never done in Penn Central.
Given that the RS-1 is one of the current custom runs, I think it’s safe to say MTH still has that one. I’d been thinking about ordering another one since Mr. Muffin is doing a PRR version.
@RickO posted:What if it's in Korea? I thought it was mentioned in the past that Mike's factory was in Korea.
There is also a Korean factory making at least " some" of Lionels current offerings.
Korea isn't restrictive as far as I know.
Rusty
The tooling can be moved out of China after you pay the 50% tax on it. Korea has similar taxes on moving tooling out as well.
Scott Smith
Would be interesting to know who was interested in buying it, at this point that isn't exactly sensitive information since the deal fell through, but I respect the right of ppl to keep it private....though there is a pretty obvious company that would fit the bill of what was described.
Thing I don't understand is why would they keep MTH going? I don't know if Mike is still involved with MTH (likely he is , either as a consultant to help the new people through a transition period or still maybe even helping run it), but I don't understand why he wouldn't just shut it down, if he was tired and wanted to retire. He likely made some decent money selling the building he had (an office building without fiber access these days is at a big handicap if the company is even marginally using tech), there would have been the money he had over the years as proprietor of the firm that like any of us on here he had some of as retirement savings? Something doesn't add up to me,why did he even go to the plan B we see? Only thing I can think of is he was counting on the sale of MTH for his retirement, that maybe he was cash poor, and when the 'big deal' fell through was caught short handed financially. Maybe he was worried for the people who work for MTH, but that would be a problem if he sold it to another company too, they could very easily fire most of the people who worked for MTH, too......
One thing that goes against the current thing being put together in the last couple of months (in my thinking), is them keeping support for the Z4000 and redesigning it. Assuming this is MTH, not the DCS people, that doesn't sound like a decision that was made and implemented as part of something "Thrown together" in the last couple of months........if they were just producing more of the same old same old, they could simply tell the factory to make more of it, order the components, get the tooling working, but with redesign it is very different, even assuming relatively little new tooling.
I have seen weirder things in business, case studies in grad school were full of them, but this one still is a head scratcher to me as to why MTH still exists if the scenario Scott mentioned is how it played out (and again, just saying how I am thinking, not claiming what Scott and someone else has said is untrue, I have no reason to doubt what they are saying is true, saying given what I know there are missing pieces, that's all).
Will MTH survive all this? Someone thinks so, otherwise why keep it going? Are they just trying to extract every dollar they can out of the existing tooling (something Lionel did for years even back in the golden age)? Will we ever see anything new (like the Z4000)? Time will tell, if all we see are custom runs of existing tooling and little to no new stuff, that will tell the tale.
bigkid,
Just so you know where I am coming from. I have been supplying MTH's Internet and phone service for nearly 10 years. I was in the Elkridge warehouse with Mike the day before he took possession of it. It's been a whole 6 days since I last spoke with Mike.
I also know a person who was involved with the negotiations to buy MTH. This particular person was going to be the new CEO had that deal gone through.
Scott Smith
Fascinating Scott. I did not know that you did contracting work for MTH 
@scott.smith posted:Just so you know where I am coming from. I have been supplying MTH's Internet and phone service for nearly 10 years. I was in the Elkridge warehouse with Mike the day before he took possession of it. It's been a whole 6 days since I last spoke with Mike.
Do you know why their website is so slow these days?
@rplst8 posted:Do you know why their website is so slow these days?
I don't provide their hosted website.
Sorry,
Scott Smith
@scott.smith posted:bigkid,
Just so you know where I am coming from. I have been supplying MTH's Internet and phone service for nearly 10 years. I was in the Elkridge warehouse with Mike the day before he took possession of it. It's been a whole 6 days since I last spoke with Mike.
I also know a person who was involved with the negotiations to buy MTH. This particular person was going to be the new CEO had that deal gone through.
Scott Smiyh
Thanks, Scott, then yeah you would obviously know the inside story, mine was simply speculation based on how generally business deals happen. Obviously beyond that whatever is going on with MTH is Mike's business, why he chose the route of keeping it open and so forth is al just that. My one thought, though, is that looking at the comments on the various threads on here since this was announced, that from a business perspective what has happened is prolog and that it is the going forward that right now to me is fraught, uncertainty is not good for business of any kind. All I can do is wish all concerned well, if MTH fails it isn't good for anyone.
Are the Railking subways toast? 🥲
@scott.smith posted:I don't provide their hosted website.
Sorry,
Scott Smith
Maybe you should! 
@bigkid posted:. All I can do is wish all concerned well, if MTH fails it isn't good for anyone.
That's really the bottom line, isn't it? Wish them well and keep enjoying our trains and layouts while everything plays out. Clearly the market has changed since Mike first decided to sell MTH. Demand for trains skyrocketed during the COVID lockdowns and that has certainly expanded the market. This opportunity enabled MTH to continue successfully selling special pre order runs directly and through its dealers. Now, there is new opportunity . If MTH can continue offering pre order pricing (through dealers and or directly) on future product delivery at prices considerably less than Lionel (like they are doing with the countless pre order engine, rolling stock, and accessory announcements we've regularly seen posted on this forum), I believe they will be around for quite some time in some form or another satisfying that particular price point and demand in this market. But like you said, no one knows what the future holds and we can only wish them well and enjoy our trains while this all unfolds.
@gunrunnerjohn posted:Maybe you should!
I am a telecommunications agent. Think of it like a independent insurance agent or a stock broker. My services to MTH and all my customers is free to them. I represent around 400 Data, Internet, Telephony and Energy Providers. They bill the customer and pay me a small residual every month. Yes I could host their website with one of my providers if they wanted me to.
Scott Smith
@scott.smith posted:Yes I could host their website with one of my providers if they wanted me to.
I'm guessing it would be a whole lot faster than it is now. I think it's in the corner bathroom on a fifteen year old laptop right now from the speed! 
