Hornby R3124
42xx after modifications
‘Most people don’t understand how to change and readily accept the formats that are given to them.’
Author Mr Johnny Rotten
Well if that one sentence doesn’t sum up the overriding conservative, sometimes moribund attitude of railway modellers to the hobby and its future, I don’t know what does. Well, apart from the industry insider commentary in May 2015’s BRM on the matter of review samples for magazines. I wouldn’t want to suggest it was written by a half wit, only for the fear that I may appear to be being seen as over generous.
Twenty Years Of easyJet
So what’s easyJet got to do with toy trains? Well I see parallels in Hornbys recent actions with the low cost model development that has taken place within the airline industry that I was part of. Twenty years ago at the beginning of the information age, the likes of easyJet and Ryanair started on their journey. I’ll use easyJet as the example of change. This means that automatically I’ll reduce the numbers of people trying to out whinge each other about how bad Ryanair is. Any Ozmates or Kiwis that think us Poms can whinge really haven’t heard anything until you read a Ryanair story. Once read, Pavlov’s dog style, you have to up the ante by adding your own horror travel story, (it’s the law or something), embellished to be worse than the one you’ve just read. It doesn’t matter if you’re one of those slobs that throws your rubbish on the floor of the aircraft for some galleycat to clean up after you, delaying a turnround, you’ve paid for your ticket so you’re now entitled to run the airline, tell everyone on the internet how it should be done, and crucially, treat its employees like dirt. Apparently.
Hornby to my eyes are going for a ‘Lo-Co’ business model, low cost, not so much to us customers, though there have been and will be deals to be had, but in their operation, and commercial outlook. Low cost however is easily mistaken by idiots for low quality, see ticket collector sorry, purchaser, above. If you’ve worked in a highly competitive low cost environment the changes that Hornby have made make sense. If you’re still living in a world where the removal of the privilege of having free review samples amounts to an ‘epitome of sublime ignorance and arrogance at work’, then you have been sleep walking for the last twenty years or so. It was exactly those sorts of attitudes that allowed easyJet to capture their market so efficiently and relatively easily, and why so many of the competitors, putting it bluntly, died, or were swallowed up. easyJet took on the existing companies by starting with their running costs as low as possible, really simple things like cheap modern premises, no company cars, no discount agreements for other companies, and the clever use of high profile media and media promotions to sell direct to the buying public.
Ryanair
Marketing and PR 101
Now, I’ve no idea about the company cars, but there’s already some familiar elements in what Hornby are doing to how a Lo-Co cost business model works. New premises and modern warehousing, a different pricing structure for dealers, direct sales to the end user, clever use of contemporary media. Clever use, including ‘photobombing’ competitor announcements. This appears to have upset all manner of foamers who don’t can’t think past the regimented, ‘we’ve always done it this way approach’. Its extraordinary to think that there are 14 pages of largely garbage written about the review sample policy, 20 pages of largely garbage on can Hornby afford to sell direct, etc etc on foamers choice. What is really simple is this, that Hornby have staff with significant retail experience on board. They are of the generation that have got their heads around social media and how to use it effectively both in communication and sales. The industry insider clearly has no experience of using the internet to do whatever he does, though he does think the devil is in the detail in this marketing stuff especially that Hornby film ‘The Jumper’.
So a quick Google search finds: www.google.co.uk/search?q=Hornby+the+jumper I don’t think that’s what he meant. Perhaps if he’d paid attention to detail he’d have mentioned this film https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQPjMU0iAsI If he was so good at this marketing stuff he’d have at least found out what the Hornby J15 video was actually called before he wrote about its ‘faults’.
Its very interesting that since November 2014 we have had three brand new products being shown to customers in their pre production format at Warley, and now they are on the shelves. No pre announcements for the NE hoppers, LMS horse box and LMS suburban coaches.
Hornby is a huge name in the hobby, we play with ‘Hornby’ to the public perception, doesn’t matter if its S7/P4/2FS/OO/TT/N/HO, its all ‘Hornby’. I have few doubts that Hornby will continue to advertise in the analogue media, and produce their catalogue annually for a while to come. This will cover their ‘magazine’ requirements. For those potential customers that don’t use social media, or the interweb, they’ll lose out, get over it. The Lo-Co airlines cut out the travel agencies, you had to book direct, by phone. Within a couple of years or so the call centres blossomed and died, the internet took over for sales and administration of ticket sales. If you want to travel with a Lo-Co today you need the internet, or someone with access to it. The number of lost sales to those who don’t have access to the net is massively outweighed by those who do. There’s very little benefit in giving significant discounts to retailers if you can sell direct to the public via mail order, Amazon anyone? If Smiths Model shop is buying three engines, there’s almost no difference in the logistics to sell those three direct to the end customers, the public, from your own warehouse with a far better profit and yeild for Hornby.
Hornby have clearly realised this, if you want to know about their products, or buy them, never mind the bollocks, type Hornby into Google and get your debit card out. Simples.
