Walthers recently, released a

Walthers recently, released a new N scale, industrial building called "Central Beverage Distributors" which includes roof top cooling units so the structure could be used as a modern, dry warehouse or a cold storage, perishable one.

I understand they are also going to release a few more N scale, strucures but truly their main business and the one which creates the most revenue is HO scale.

Barry 

The only pressure Walthers

The only pressure Walthers will understand is "sales", and rightly so. N-scale generates far less sales dollars than does HO so they direct most of their resources to HO-scale. I had a discussion with a Walthers manager a couple of months ago and he informed me that while their HO sales are growing their N-scale sales are decreasing. He believes that the N-scale market may be shrinking.

Walthers has 0 interest in N scale

The only pressure Walthers

Well if walthers would make something that "N" scalers want...No one wants to buy and more than likely all ready have the kits that walthers is selling.  Most of those N scale buildings and kits have been around for close to to 40 years now.  Walthers Cornerstone has been pushing those same 20 to 30 kits for so long.  Walthers does not make anything new what do they expect?  

I count 2 fully dedicated "N" scale magazines,  multiple "N" scale dedicated web sites and more than half of the popular YouTube creators are "N" scale

On the other hand "N" scale equipment and rolling stock is selling very well.  

Dunno about Walthers but

Dunno about Walthers but Trainworx has been making a ton of excellent N scale stuff that has caught my attention over the past 10 years.  Wheels of Time as well.

We are talking Buildings and Structers

When life gives you lemmons

As its been pointed out by a few already HO is the big player in the game and from a financial stand point they will continue to get the attention they deserve. 

I am a N scaler myself and have found like my O scale friends at times you just have to deal with what you can get. One great thing with the Walthers buildings is that they can be kit bashed easily. Walthers  will still supports N, but likely at the same ratio as overall sales to HO. I would suspect this is somewhere around 25%-35% of HO sales. 

Its just a fact of life, but one of the reasons I enjoy N scale.... Not everybody is doing it!

Just looking at the Walthers

Just looking at the Walthers June 2018 flyer...You would not even know Walthers sells anything "N" scale from the front cover.  The 1st 6 items I can find that are "N" scale shows up on page 16 & 17 - Walthers used to mark all the "N" scale products with a different color N (I think it was red) than the HO -  If I recall the other scales had a diffrent color to make them easy to spot too.  You get to page 47 and you are treated to the Bachmann Empire Train Set,  Talk about something out of the stone age.  The set must be close to 30 years old now if not older.  It was old when I got back into the hobby. 

6 pages off "N" scale products in a  69 page flyer.  That is well below 9% dedicate to "N" scale.  Just looking at the HO cornerstone building offerings, 6 pages in the flyer dedicated to buildings.  The entire "N" scale walthers building comes in at around 35 buildings that you can buy today.  I did not included the out of stock and discontinued products.  1 page in the Walthers flyer list 25 HO buildings on sale that is over 2/3 the entire "N" scale cornerstone line.  And walthers wonders why they can not sell any "N" scale product.  Walthers Cornerstone is not providing anything for the "N" scale modelers to buy.   Or it is some lame gimick thing like a donut store.  

"N" scalers want to buy stuff but if walthers cornerstone is not selling it,  Walthers can justify and keep saying "N" scale sales have dropped.  No kidding walthers.  You are not selling anything for the "N" scale modelers to buy or want.

scratch

I got tired of looking at the kits. I have a few DPM kits but really I scratch build more than anything. I browse a forum that a lot of work done by a guy using sketch up. I have grabbed a few of his houses, Sears Craftsman style houses. He does have some modern stuff too. I print the pieces, laminate them to cardstock (cereal boxes) and then apply whatever skin I want. I browse google images to find a section of wall that I like the color on and then photoshop it down to scale size, make a full sheet of it and presto, i have a texture sheet I can print and use for the houses. Concrete buildings would be RIDICUOUSLY easy to do this with.

Team track models recently made a warehouse kit, cardstock, you print sort of thing that is a modern warehouse in metal siding or concrete.

The only pressure

I believe the Walthers rep about as far as I can throw him. I mean, he's certainly correct that N-scale generates fewer dollars NOW, but the rest is bunk and they had some opportunity here. You can't generate sales on product that doesn't exist and there are plenty of other players making good money with N-scale.

Of course, I have no interest or respect for that company any more in any scale. So that may be part of it.

This forum has a high HO bias (not intentionally). I spend a lot of time on some forums with a much higher N-scale population. Walthers has been reviled by the N-scale community essentially since they bought Life-Like and stopped making the wonderful N-scale product LL was making. So I think Walthers is blowing smoke. N-scale sales aren't decreasing. THEIR N scale sales have been decreasing, because they've done a useless job managing that part of the business.And it's a downward spiral.

Again, not surprising given how bad they are in HO too.

It is disappointing, because a lot of the structures Walthers brings to market are on the large size and would find much better homes on N-scale layouts than HO. 

It;s not as simple as

It;s not as simple as rescaling the drawings to make an N scale kit from an existing HO model. New molds have to be machined and the cost may not be justified if the N scale market is significantly smaller than that for HO. The companies aren't in business to make models; they are in business to make money by making models. The difference seems to be lost on some consumers.

Looks like those who are

Looks like those who are unhappy with Walther's offerings in the N scale area will have a new target.

http://mrr.trains.com/news-reviews/new-products/2018/05/stacey-naffah-becomes-walthers-fourth-president

I hear she hates N scale.

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Just kidding, relax.

Deane

I went the way of N scale at

I went the way of N scale at one time 25 years ago,I was active duty military and moved around a lot , so N scale appealed to me, back then N scale seemed as popular as HO, (production wise) it has since faded, as time went on I was frustrated for the very same reasons most of the replies to your post speak of, structures, details, available kits, looks great in HO is it available in N? I confess as I aged and my vision was not so sharp so HO was the scale I invested in, its where I started and had some stored away anyways, O scale is all over the board, 3 rail, 2 rail, expensive scale or cheap 3 rail toy like stuff..( I would love O scale 2 rail if it was more commercially available)  But maybe you could consider HO.. it will outlast all others, the volume of options vs cost out weighs both N and O scale...HOWEVER O scale folks  have a great ability to kit bash and be a bit more creative artistically, so if that's your desire check out O scale. No offense to N scale by the way,  I have seen some great N scale railroads. Choose your battles I guess. Good luck.   

World's Greatest Hobby Shows

It's been quite awhile since I went to one of these shows. Anybody know how much N scale stuff is displayed?

Jack

Do not take it personal

To enjoy life, one must not take the actions of others personally. They probably do not even know who you are.

For any company not just those supplying model railroad supplies the company has no obligation to the consumer. They can do what ever they choose knowing the consequences of the decisions they make could be either negative or positive.

Walthers, backed by data has decided to aim more towards HO than any other scale.  Not because they do not like N, they do not like Joe, Bob, Jack, Jill, Frank or whatever your name is.

But the bottom line is market data drives most decisions. 

Lastly if you do not like something I always say change it. If you do not like articles in MRH then write one yourself. If you want more N scale buildings maybe look into getting into the niche market of craft kits yourself. Who knows it could take off and you’ll be able to quit your day job.

Very well said Bessemer Bob!

Very well said Bessemer Bob! I could not agree more.  

your eye doctor told Walthers to ignore N scale

Again, Well said!

Well said Bob...

Could not have said it any better...!

Just sayin'.... Walther's

Just sayin'....

Walther's idea of "supporting" N scale is to re-release 20+ year old models (no new tooling...) at double the price or more. I'm looking at you, 5-unit Thrall container cars.

If you think N is dying, look on Shapeways....

Yeah, N is thriving on

Yeah, N is thriving on Shapeways. 

And I know plenty of N-scale builders and HO collectors. So I wouldn't start casting aspersions so fast...and I say that KNOWING I cast aspersions myself.

You are making an assumption that the quality of their data is sufficient and that they are making the correct inferences from the data and that then are making proper decisions from the data.

That may all be true, but they are human, so it is very unlikely. Any argument that presumes from the beginning that a given business decision is a good one, because it was the decision made is a bad one.

As I have said, I have been particularly critical of Walther's business decisions across their product line for a number of years. They are struggling, because the internet in particular, but also the rise of various low cost alternatives to injection modeling have undercut their business model. And I firmly believe that they have made bad business decisions because of it.

And to be clear, when I say I dislike or hate or whatever Walthers, I am referring to the business entity and the sum of their business decisions which I think have not been too great, not the people themselves. I don't know them and don't have an opinion on them.

I don't think Walthers the employees hate N-scale, I think they have made some poor decisions based on bad reading of the data and they continually double down. I think their marketing folks are covering for this.

I regularly think before I post. And one thing I think, from years working for technology HW companies is that ratio of good business decisions to bad approaches 1:1 at best. So waving it away as "they know their business" is just lazy. 

Thinking about Walthers in the model of technology companies (What can I say, I live in NorCal) They are a business that has been seriously disrupted by the move to direct sales and the internet. They are casting about for a new business model, but that new model doesn't put them in a dominant position.

So, in some sense it makes sense that they'd avoid N. The issue is that N was one of Life Like's big pushes. Walthers had a solid part of the N-scale market and they didn't seem to even try to figure out a way to make that into more. If they wanted to avoid disruption, they needed to disrupt themselves. Perhaps N-scale could been a part of that.

Alas, they didn't choose that path.

If Walthers is truly not supporting N scale

then that makes it easier for someone else to step up and create a new line of N products. With considerable downsizing of retiree houses on the horizon N seems like a good bet. I have some N rolling stock I'm saving for a possible smaller layout some day( although I prefer working with TT scale models). Manufacturers are coming out with plenty of new N scale rolling stock so new buildings seem inevitable at some point.....DaveB

Walthers N Scale Issue...

In Europe too

In Europe the big train show is every year at Nuremberg, which show everything new to be offered on the market.

The winner scale is of course  HO for new buildings offering.

There are not a lot of new buildings in N scale offered by the big European companies like Faller, Vollmer, Kibri or Noch; and if you look carefuly they are a lot of reissue or modified existing models.

So European N scale modelers suffer from the same poor offering.

I model in N scale since 40 years in American style, and have used, I believe, nearly each model offered on the N scale market; I speak about plastic models, many come from the Walthers Cornnestone line and before by Heljan.

Many are kitbashed and some scratchbuild, this was the only issue to have something quiet different on my layout from the catalog offering and in a way to try to not have the same model on my layout as my neighbourgh.

Since a few years I buy many models from the laser offering market and there are a lot of models with lot of character of course they are a bit priced but you have a big choice from tiny models to big one; N scale Architect is a good example.

For cities it's a bit more laborious; yes quiet expensive Custom Model Railroad as a  big offer of skyscrappers.

Until now I didn't have found other issues from kitbash and scratchbuilding to go out from the poor offer of structures in N scale.

I really look at the possibility to buy a laser machine to produce my own models, but this is far beside the purpose of this topic.

It's seems the manager of producer are not ready to go on with new model in N scale  because this market didn't produce enough money,  even if N scale is an always growing scale used by the modelers.

If a big manufacturer like Walthers go on the market with N scale models, sure this could be push the other one to make more offer in N scale structures and may be open the market, but sincerely I don't believe this happen.

They just have to product the

Here's the rub: They're not producing new molds in HO.  They're not producing or releasing new items in HO.  I you look close, you'll see they're maximizing their mileage out of the many properties they've acquired in their tenure as a model railroad manufacturer.  And right now, I dare say they have a warehouse of molds alone that they're not using simply for the shear quantity of molds they have versus what the market demand will bear.  You'll notice especially a high number of Lifelike kits, seeing how they own Lifelike, and Kibri kits seeing how they have a good agreement in space with Kibri.  They're not new kits, but they're new to us and I dare say they may take a couple sprues now and then and see what they can make when they mix things up a bit.  We're still buying them!

There's something more important here that is a cold hard fact: larger groups spend more money more often.  That's how it is.  There's another cold hard fact, HO is about 60% of the market, N scale is about 30%, the rest makes up the last 10%.

My uncle has a business in another dying industry, the commercial mailing business [I.E. targeted advertisement mail].  In his experience, the average mailing has a response rate of about 3%, with the rate easing towards 4% as you increase the total number of pieces you mail out.  This may mean that out of 10,000 pieces of commercial mail sent, his customers might realize 300-400 new customers from that circular who might not have otherwise thought the trouble that business with their presence - and this includes political mailings versus votes.  If your mailing is a little more targeted to specifically the people who are interested in your product, you might see that rate double to 6-8%.

So let us suppose Walther's makes a new kit.  All of the model railroaders are 100,000 people.  They send a cold call to those people announcing their new kit, from which they might realize 3-4% placing an order.  If everybody was one scale, then that means their ad turns into 3,000-4,000 units sold.  But we aren't all one scale, so instead, we might see 1800-2400 sales in HO, 900-1200 sales in N, and 300-800 sales in all other scales.

If there are new dies involved, the cost for the dies may be the same in all three scales, though the larger scales may see the cost of the dies becoming more astronomical as the size of the kit increases.
 

The footprint is only so big as the shoe...