RMT Warehouse Size

It may be a Warehouse of the Mind.

The warehouse is not all that big, but there are no windows, no electricity for lights and it's surrounded by an anti-energy field that drains the power from flashlight batteries.  Stuff is always being "found" in there when someone bumps into some boxes.  Or maybe it's a normal warehouse and somebody keeps breaking in at night and depositing toy trains.  Come morning, "Hey, look what I found in here today!"  Or maybe it's just a marketing ploy that we are all too tired of.

I've often wondered when Lionel or MTH catalogs a previously-issued item, whether it's really new, or being assembled and painted from warehoused parts.

The economics of O gauge trains have been weird, and will undoubtedly get weirder as the core demand group ages past peak purchasing power, and passes away.  The most affordable option would be that a consortium of hobbyists forms a co-op to develop a die.  Run production until the die wears out, and warehouse the parts in Idaho (or wherever storage is cheapest.)  Sell from that stock on a cost-recovery basis until it's gone.  No more "catalog surprises" or BTO.

Another option might be:  AutoCAD files hosted on a website.  $1 (or whatever) to download, and you 3D-print your model out of metal or plastic.  Maybe you take that file to a local machine shop with a high-grade 3D printer, or CNC mill, and commission a small run for yourself and your friends.  Motors are readily available, and 3rd-party electronics like ERR, QSI, etc., are already the norm.   Gears and gearboxes are more problematic.  I think of them as the "genome," or DNA of a model loco.  They determine so much about the mechanical "personality" of a train, and are not easily created or modified by the end-user hobbyist.  The loss of NWSL is a major blow in this regard.

Picture something like the warehouse in Indiana Jones movie. 

The RMT warehouse is probably like Doctor Who's Tardis - bigger on the inside than the outside.

Ted S posted:

I've often wondered when Lionel or MTH catalogs a previously-issued item, whether it's really new, or being assembled and painted from warehoused parts.

 

Nah...if a previously issued item is re-catalogued, it's from finished product sitting in the warehouse. The parts inventory comes from dismantled extra production.

As for RMT, the warehouse stories are, with isolated exceptions, is prrrrrrrobably a marketing thing.

---PCJ

Its a warehouse find, just not RMT's warehouse! 

Ted S posted:

I've often wondered when Lionel or MTH catalogs a previously-issued item, whether it's really new, or being assembled and painted from warehoused parts.

The economics of O gauge trains have been weird, and will undoubtedly get weirder as the core demand group ages past peak purchasing power, and passes away.  The most affordable option would be that a consortium of hobbyists forms a co-op to develop a die.  Run production until the die wears out, and warehouse the parts in Idaho (or wherever storage is cheapest.)  Sell from that stock on a cost-recovery basis until it's gone.  No more "catalog surprises" or BTO.

Another option might be:  AutoCAD files hosted on a website.  $1 (or whatever) to download, and you 3D-print your model out of metal or plastic.  Maybe you take that file to a local machine shop with a high-grade 3D printer, or CNC mill, and commission a small run for yourself and your friends.  Motors are readily available, and 3rd-party electronics like ERR, QSI, etc., are already the norm.   Gears and gearboxes are more problematic.  I think of them as the "genome," or DNA of a model loco.  They determine so much about the mechanical "personality" of a train, and are not easily created or modified by the end-user hobbyist.  The loss of NWSL is a major blow in this regard.

Almost like getting a "new DeLorean".

Nothing on the scale of “gigantic or enormous “ but a fellow train enthusiast bought out a local train shop (from the second owner) which had been a Lionel Service Station since the late 50’s.

The second owner sold it to my friend with the understanding that he would buy everything except the building and remove all items ,used ,the original Lionel Service Station tools and all the NOS Lionel stock.

There’s where the problem was.

When they got digging thru building after building my friend and his wife realized they had bitten off more than they could chew.

He told me it wasn’t one or two,not five or ten,but twenty or thirty of about every type of Lionel accessory or part you could think of since the original owner had started .

So there’s warehouses or buildings out there that could be full of train items yet to this day.

This one was in West Virginia and my buddy ended up just getting the Service Station tools,books and parts.

To this day I’m  not sure where the rest of it ended up,but the previous owner previously had advertised for years in magazines and had an internet retail site.

From Will Ferrell in ‘Elf’, it must be Ginormous!

It's all about marketing.  Walter is an expert at that.  I can run a "warehouse find" out of all of the RMT stuff I own.  Just be patient, another ten years or so.

I can’t recall if Walter ever publicly acknowledged where the production work was done, but the general consensus was that it came from the Sanda Kan factory in China — the same facility that produced K-Line’s products (as well as products for about 70 other model train manufacturers globally).

Sanda Kan ended up with most of K-Line’s tooling and unshipped merchandise when Maury Klein was forced to liquidate his holdings more than a decade ago. Sanda Kan was later acquired by Kader, Bachmann’s parent company, after Sanda Kan likewise ran into debt.

It’s possible Kader keeps finding boxes of product, either finished or unfinished, in the Chinese storage facility where Sanda Kan’s products were kept.

It’s also possible that the facility is completing the deco of each unfinished product on RMT’s order.

It’s unlikely, though possible, that the product was sitting in a domestic warehouse near RMT. But that would mean Walter would have to account for that for tax purposes each year and pay for unsold merchandise accordingly. I doubt that scenario.

Regardless, it’s all proprietary information, and only RMT knows the story, which it may not want to share.

Marketing 101.....

RSJB18 posted:

Marketing 101.....

Yes, we get it. It's still funny. 

Why do I keep thinking of Warehouse 13?

Jim R.

Not a CPA but based on your comment, is it possible this inventory was "written down for tax purposes" and sitting there tax free and no value??

Bart1 posted:

Jim R.

Not a CPA but based on your comment, is it possible this inventory was "written down for tax purposes" and sitting there tax free and no value??

 

Only after you paid taxes on it until it depreciated to zero value. That’s why warehouse retailers and wholesalers don’t like to sit on inventory for more than a year.

I believe that RMT's warehouse may be located in the basement of the owners house.  He seems to be getting the overruns and dead stock from the former K-Line brand. There is a chance that the warehouse finds are coming from the warehouses or manufacturers in China that ran the K-Line trains.  A while back a new brand by the name of O-Line popped up and it looked like K-Line stuff. IMO, the market is flooded with conventional trains. Perhaps that is why we see Lionel focusing on the more complex electronic stuff.

He can find all he wants.  I’m still not interested 

Dennis LaGrua posted:

I believe that RMT's warehouse may be located in the basement of the owners house.  He seems to be getting the overruns and dead stock from the former K-Line brand. There is a chance that the warehouse finds are coming from the warehouses or manufacturers in China that ran the K-Line trains.  A while back a new brand by the name of O-Line popped up and it looked like K-Line stuff. IMO, the market is flooded with conventional trains. Perhaps that is why we see Lionel focusing on the more complex electronic stuff.

I can verify that the RMT Warehouse is not in Walter’s basement. I saw his basement a few years ago. It was large and very empty. He was finishing it and getting ready to start his layout.

Scott Smith