2017 Eclipse Car Statement

N SCALE SOLAR ECLIPSE CAR - #038 00 550 rel.9/17

Dear Customers and Dealers,

 

We realize that there is frustration over the shortage of the N scale Solar Eclipse Car released this September.  There is much speculation in the market surrounding this car, which we want to officially address here.

 

  1. The shortage:  The assumption in the market is that the shortage is due to an extremely low quantity produced.  This is not true.  The amount produced was just slightly below our average run, and not unlike other production runs that do not sell out at that level.  Therefore, the shortage is due primarily to the unusually high demand for this car, not the amount produced.

 

  1. Why Didn’t You Produce an Above Average Qty?  Again, the assumption in the market seems to be that we should have known how popular this car would be.  Very simply, we didn’t anticipate that the demand would be this high for it.  With all of our experience and past sales history, we could not have accurately predicted the demand for this car.

 

  1. Just Produce More:  Okay, so we were short of demand, why not just fire-up the machines and make more?  First, we are staying true to our policy and practice for over 45 years, as Keith and Dale Edwards operated the business, which has been not to go back and produce more when cars sell out.  Secondly, we produce a new batch of product every 30 days.  You can’t do that if you stop production every time a car sells out, and interrupt every phase of production to make up a shortfall which is always a relatively low amount compared to the original run.  It kills any profit to setup and produce for the small shortage and disrupts and even jeopardizes the release of other products for the upcoming months.

 

  1. Prices Above Retail:  It is unfortunate that some people are taking such advantage of the shortage.  Obviously it is the right of a customer to resell their car at whatever price they want to try to sell it at; however, we strongly discourage any authorized Micro-Trains dealer from selling MTL product above MSRP.  Micro-Trains has notified our dealers that we do not condone any such practice.

 

 

Going forward, Micro-Trains will continue to do its very best to produce sufficient quantities; however, unless we pre-order every product we offer, there will always be the risk of coming up short.  It is our full intention to sufficiently meet demand with every product, although we also recognize this is simply not possible 100% of the time without taking advance orders.  We hope you will also realize that this is part of our continuing business model that was set up by our founders many years ago.

 

Best regards,

 

Micro-Trains Line Co.