Walthers April 2013 Flyer

Walthers attempted a re-entry to O a few years back with K-Line via the Terminal Train Shop and also stocked building kits, accessories etc.

 

My pure speculation is that the business model did not return the required ROI, and that the "headroom" for growth did not present a positive curve.

 

You have to remember that both K-Line and Lionel went through bankruptcy which in the long term, hurt.  Williams changed hands, and now Bachmann through Kader, controls the majority of manufacturing resources.  That leaves MTH as the only other stand-alone and I'll bet that Mike wishes to keep it that way.

 

One thing that Walthers did was to enter the OEM market in HO with their purchase of LifeLike et al.  That crossed the line from distributor to manufacturer and did not sit well with former supplier/competitors.

 

The other thing to realize is that standardization with electronics makes the investment palatable for inventory....unlike our O gauge family that continues to claim that proprietary is better and therefore more profitable......I would like to see the business case on this one.

Back in the day (as the saying goes), Walthers used to publish three very substantial catalogs:  N&Z, HO, and Big Trains (O27, O, and Large Scale).

 

But in case some haven't noticed, times have changed and they continue to do so.  Be that as it may, HO is still the largest and most profitable segment of the hobby, by far, so it's kind of natural for that scale, and to a lesser extent N scale, to receive most of that major wholesaler's attention.

All of their O scale cornerstone buildings were purchased by Atlas   Don't think Walthers has any O plans

The last Walthers "big train" catalog was around 2000. It had a NYC RS unit in Lightning stripes scheme on the cover with a Yellow Band with text.

You have to check the WALTHERS website each month for new O Scale and O gauge items.

 

Andrew

HO looks to be about twice as big as O. (At least on the auction site)

 

Generally, I see about twice as many HO items on the bay. For example, today:

 

158.6 thousand HO entries

78.2 thousand O entries

62.2 thousand N entries

Actually, I believe our (LHS) last 'Big Trains' catalogue from Walthers was around 2004 or 2005. 

 

Talking with our sales rep from W, the rather dynamic and/or ephemeral nature of the product lines/marketing/manufacturing strategies of the major players...Lionel, MTH, K-Line, et al...made the production of a printed catalogue almost impossible.  I mean, considering the lead time to put a catalog such as theirs together annually, when everyone waits impatiently for the semi-annual release of the manufacturers own catalogs...showing a rather completely new line-up of products.....what's the point???  By the time the W annual catalog is published, much of the sumo's content is null-amd-void.  And the order-by dates are looonnnggg past!

 

Also, the W catalog printing/publishing is financed by the manufacturers.  (Can we all say 'Well, duh!')  So, what would be the incentive for the Big Boys to seriously contribute to a second published compendium of products??  In the end, for instance, the sumo's product pictures (sic) were non-colored, black ink.  How boring.

 

The relative market volume speaks for itself.  The relative ebay auction figures above are fairly descriptive of this.

 

Of course, historically Walthers began their operation/catalogs back in the 1930's with O scale exclusively.   Basically, there was no HO, N back then.  Whereas we will probably never see another "Big Trains" catalog from W again, they do represent quite a few manufacturers' product lines serving the O market where other distributors have ignored.  Keil Line, Grandt, Northwest Shortline, Precision Scale, Berkshire Valley, etc..  PLUS, they have exclusive U.S. distribution rights for LGB and Maerklin, among others, in the large scale segments. 

 

I'm VERY pleased, BTW, with their decision to move their O-scale Cornerstone products to Atlas.  It's a PERFECT match.  Kudos to Walthers and Atlas for the move and future of those...and, hopefully, some new...products!

 

KD

HO is way more than twice as big a O in terms of market size.  N scale is also ahead of O in that regard by a significant amount.  O has come a long way since the early 1990s, but in terms of overall market share it still ranks somewhere below the top two.

Agreed Allan. My sources have cited HO as somewhere between 5x to 10x the size of O. At the recent iHobby show in Cleveland I spoke with all of the major companies and they all seemed to feel that HO had about 70% or so of the entire market. That includes trains, structures, scenery, track, etc... As someone who pays attention to all scales and models in several scales I would think that number is fairly accurate.

Some years ago, I asked the various Walthers representatives at the annual Milwaukee area TrainFest, about offering their fantastic HO steam locomotive shops & terminal buildings in O Scale. To a person, each one stated in unison, "The market simply isn't there for O Scale buildings of any kind!". Shortly thereafter, Walthers announced the sale of their Cornerstone Line of O Scale structures to Atlas!