Williams tooling

The question of where tooling resides is one that is often challenging to truly know.  In the case of Bachmann, which is wholly owned by Kader Holdings, the former Williams tooling more than likely resides at their main factory unused.  Tooling isn't normally sold in Asia.  Instead, the right to access that tooling at the factory it resides at is sold.  Factories own a majority stake in tooling, so they have a high level of control over how that tooling is utilized.  With Kader Holdings, there has been a policy since the late 2000's to only produce product for the companies they own which includes Bachmann and not produce for outside manufacturers.  Most likely, Kader has determined that the profit margin on the Williams products doesn't justify its production due to a shrinking O gauge marketplace. 

Will we see old Williams trains produced again?  It's hard to tell.  There is a lot of it out there in the secondary market at very reasonable prices and I'm sure that Bachmann is aware of that.  The price to produce new "Williams" items would lead to all kinds of threads on this forum decrying the insanely high prices.  In terms of where Bachmann sat in the O scale marketplace prior to cessation of O gauge production, the products were often praised for reliability and quality of the new locomotives they introduced, but at the same time criticized for lack of command control and features.  Proof positive that this is a difficult industry to be successful in. 

Here is a corporate history of Kader Holdings Company Limited from their website. 

Wow, thanks for that detailed reply Jonathan. Very enlightening. I was just browsing the few Williams items left at Trainworld and it's a shame that Williams is essentially gone.

@GG1 4877 posted:

...Will we see old Williams trains produced again?  It's hard to tell.  There is a lot of it out there in the secondary market at very reasonable prices and I'm sure that Bachmann is aware of that.  The price to produce new "Williams" items would lead to all kinds of threads on this forum decrying the insanely high prices.  In terms of where Bachmann sat in the O scale marketplace prior to cessation of O gauge production, the products were often praised for reliability and quality of the new locomotives they introduced, but at the same time criticized for lack of command control and features.  Proof positive that this is a difficult industry to be successful in. ...

Thanks for the thorough summary.

I don't think that Williams needs new tooling to be successful.  Menards has shown that there's a market for basic stuff if the price is right.  Williams could compete by reissuing items in different liveries and perhaps by bringing back some of their steamers.  The insane MSRPs hurt them - people saw those numbers and tuned them out - I never understood their pricing strategy.   

Kader/Bachmann is in HO, N, and G scales and probably didn't feel the O gauge market was generating the returns to make it worth diverting the focus from their other scales to support it.  However, I think they could have made it worthwhile if they had been willing to do some creative thinking as Menard's and RMT have done.   As an example, with RMT I have bought multiples of a particular car because each car had a different road number.  I have also bought other RMT products because the graphics included details like "return to" a particular railroad and location that resonated with me.  No need for new dies or a different product, just doing details and graphical things that make the product compelling to buy.   

I'm not expect Bachmann to give the Williams/WBB new life. Yes, Menards and RMT have carved out niches, and even MTH could be labeled a niche player now. Menards came out with a remote control system, and MTH already had PS3. Lionel has Lionchief for entry level and LC+2 and Legacy for hobbyists. I think most new buyers want some sort of remote control or smartphone control system. If I'm right, that leaves Bachmann with an R&D project or attempting a licensing deal to resuscitate the WBB locomotives for a market that's kind of crowded.

Yes, some still prefer conventional, but there's so much out there on the secondary market to compete with. Many like early RS and PS1 bring steam and diesel sounds.

Tough market segment to compete in with the WBB products despite their bullet-proof quality and pulling power.

WIlliams built very reliable stuff and WBB basically kept that going initially but let the product line dwindle over time.  The last iteration of the True-Blast sound system wasn't too bad but they really needed some form of command control. I think if WBB wanted to re-launch the line they should look into a partnership with Blunami to add Bluetooth & DCC ability to their O-Guage trains.  That coupled with a Menards price point would be great value.

@H1000 posted:

I think if WBB wanted to re-launch the line they should look into a partnership with Blunami to add Bluetooth & DCC ability to their O-Guage trains.  That coupled with a Menards price point would be great value.

But would Soundtraxx be willing to take on the support obligations that would come with providing Blunami cards to WBB and would the volume of cards sold to Kader/WBB justify that commitment?

@KarlDL posted:

But would Soundtraxx be willing to take on the support obligations that would come with providing Blunami cards to WBB and would the volume of cards sold to Kader/WBB justify that commitment?

I don't think Soundtraxx would want to take on support but rather license the Blunami technology for use by WBB. They could have Soundtraxx create a slightly watered-down version of Blunami software with preset defaults programmed into each product to keep the operation much simpler and package a rebrand of the current app for WBB. Both of these options should be easy to do and have very little cost associated. This would result in a nice boost of product recognition in O-Guage for Soundtraxx and Blunami.

Kader is a mass-market oriented holding company. It bought Bachmann Bros. in the 1980s while Bachmann was a mass-market train manufacturer like Tyco.

Bachmann’s transformation into a hobbyist-oriented company came slowly and, some would argue, less sincerely compared to its competitors. (Scale fidelity was often lacking in Bachmann’s products until the mass market for model trains shrunk.)

It seems like market expansion soon became a company initiative. Bachmann first began buying up competitors in England, where the train market remained strong in OO and N, before finally trying expand its realm into 3-rail O gauge, presumably with a distinctly toy train emphasis.

Bachmann has been silent about why its acquisition of Williams turned into a tale of tooling attrition instead of a robust division over the course of a decade. But we can guess that Kader, which certainly demands substantial profits from operations by its divisions, wasn’t happy with the size and sales of O gauge.

The Williams tooling is very much in Kader’s hands. As is much of the tooling from K-Line via the acquisition of the Sanda Kan factory (which got the tooling as a result of K-Line’s bankruptcy to offset unpaid production costs). There is reason to believe Kader (not Bachmann) has allowed those tools to be used in model production for other companies such as RMT and Menards at different points. No one ever acknowledges it.

But Kader doesn’t mind warehousing tooling. Perhaps some of it has gone to scrap. We don’t know, because Kader never speaks.

I spoke to a Bachmann/Williams salesperson at the Big E last week in Springfield MA.  He said they are working on a new locomotive in O Gauge/O Scale but are not ready to announce it as yet.  As far as the older tooling is concerned, he said that many of the locomotives are cheaper on E bay than what they can build them for at the factory.  They are not abandoning the Williams line and may introduce pieces when they can at competitive pricing.

@j2morris posted:

I spoke to a Bachmann/Williams salesperson at the Big E last week in Springfield MA.  He said they are working on a new locomotive in O Gauge/O Scale but are not ready to announce it as yet.  As far as the older tooling is concerned, he said that many of the locomotives are cheaper on E bay than what they can build them for at the factory.  They are not abandoning the Williams line and may introduce pieces when they can at competitive pricing.

Oh, I don’t know about that! I spoke with the Bachmann folks back in November. They pretty much acknowledged that the marketplace just wasn’t what they hoped for when the company bought Williams.

The fact is that Bachmann sidelined their own new Williams tooling — the 4-6-0 that was warmly received and sells for nice amounts on eBay — is a sign that Bachmann surrendered years ago.

The company also sidelined Williams’ freight car line. Tell me, what makes Bachmann’s China-based production more “expensive” than the freight cars RMT and Menards has been producing in China for $35 or less? C’mon, don’t tell me you really believe a representative who sidesteps reality to this extent.

No Williams-branded product has been newly produced through any tooling by Bachmann in six years aside from the Egg-liner motorized unit. If that’s not abandonment, I don’t know what is.

@Jim R. posted:

Oh, I don’t know about that! I spoke with the Bachmann folks back in November. They pretty much acknowledged that the marketplace just wasn’t what they hoped for when the company bought Williams.

The fact is that Bachmann sidelined their own new Williams tooling — the 4-6-0 that was warmly received and sells for nice amounts on eBay — is a sign that Bachmann surrendered years ago.

The company also sidelined Williams’ freight car line. Tell me, what makes Bachmann’s China-based production more “expensive” than the freight cars RMT and Bachmann has been producing in China for $35 or less? C’mon, don’t tell me you really believe a representative who sidesteps reality to this extent.

No Williams-branded product has been newly produced through any tooling by Bachmann in six years aside from the Egg-liner motorized unit. If that’s not abandonment, I don’t know what is.

Part of the pricing problem with Williams is the Bachmann strategy is a whole. The MSRP is highly inflated across every product line because they off dealers high margins. High volume dealers and distributors are usually paying 25% of retail and brick and mortar stores pay 50% when they buy from a distributor. As a result, “street price” usually ends up at 50-55% of MSRP. Brick and mortar stores can’t really compete with the big dealers so few carry much Bachmann product. This isn’t common practice in the O gauge market where margins are slimmer. MSRP on Bachmann stuff should always be taken with a grain of salt.

I spend some time watching Sam's Trains videos on YouTube.  The perception of what Bachmann in the U.K. today in HO is a bit different than what is being expressed here.

I went to a TCA train meet last weekend in Cleveland and continue to marvel at the amount of used and new-old-stock available at these meets on the secondary market. I sense most meet dealers are not brick-and-mortar store owners and, further, that most aren't big online or auction site sellers but are yet another source of supply.

I have most of what I need, so I attend these meets in search of a couple "needles in haystacks" like the Williams NKP Alco FA2s I found two years ago. Admittedly, I see a lot of heavily used items that would never interest me but I think a new hobbyist could easily fill most of a new collection's needs with good quality products at one of these TCA meets.

With all the inventory available in stores, online, and at TCA meets, it's clear to me why Bachmann has stopped producing more.

@raising4daughters posted:

With all the inventory available in stores, online, and at TCA meets, it's clear to me why Bachmann has stopped producing more.

Then why haven't Lionel and MTH followed suit?  Or, Menards for that matter?

If things are as you say and apparently Bachmann believes, then there's no future for new product in the O Gauge part of the hobby because there's too much old product out there that completely satisfies market needs.

This is nothing new.  For most of the last 125 years there's been too much old product.  This is, and always has been, a hobby built on both old and new.  But, new stuff still sells, and does so quite nicely, especially for Lionel, MTH, and even Menards.

I think the Bachmann's problem is that it hasn't been offering the correct new stuff, is of late coming to the conclusion that it doesn't know how to, and even worse doesn't want to learn, or invest in, how to fix its situation.

Mike

@Mellow Hudson Mike posted:

Then why haven't Lionel and MTH followed suit?  Or, Menards for that matter?

If things are as you say and apparently Bachmann believes, then there's no future for new product in the O Gauge part of the hobby because there's too much old product out there that completely satisfies market needs.

This is nothing new.  For most of the last 125 years there's been too much old product.  This is, and always has been, a hobby built on both old and new.  But, new stuff still sells, and does so quite nicely, especially for Lionel, MTH, and even Menards.

I think the Bachmann's problem is that it hasn't been offering the correct new stuff, is of late coming to the conclusion that it doesn't know how to, and even worse doesn't want to learn, or invest in, how to fix its situation.

Mike

Fair points, but I'd suggest MTH has somewhat followed suit. No more catalogs or stock items, just special runs. I have no data but I'm guessing they're producing less than 25% of what they produced 10-20 years ago. Still committed, but a niche player.

Lionel has a 125 year-old iconic brand synonymous with O Gauge. Menards has some unique advantages in retail, distribution, and IIRC a hobbyist owner committed to O Gauge and who might be willing to withstand losses. Both have better brand recognition that Williams/WBB.

Your last point is spot on. They weren't making the right stuff...making good, high priced conventional locomotives aren't  what a majority of new buyers want.

@raising4daughters posted:

Fair points, but I'd suggest MTH has somewhat followed suit. No more catalogs or stock items, just special runs. I have no data but I'm guessing they're producing less than 25% of what they produced 10-20 years ago. Still committed, but a niche player.

Lionel has a 125 year-old iconic brand synonymous with O Gauge. Menards has some unique advantages in retail, distribution, and IIRC a hobbyist owner committed to O Gauge and who might be willing to withstand losses. Both have better brand recognition that Williams/WBB.

Your last point is spot on. They weren't making the right stuff...making good, high priced conventional locomotives aren't  what a majority of new buyers want.

Good analysis.

Re MTH, I haven't parsed through all of their offerings, but with the exception of the WTIU (without which they won't be able to continue selling engines for very long) my impression is that everything is a rerun of an existing item with a different paint job.  Minimal R&D expense.