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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.