Leica, Lionel & Märklin

[ho_co]

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Quelle: Produktionsverlagerung: US-Hersteller Lionel will Märklin kaufen | FTD.de

Lionel steckte vor etwa zwei Jahren in einer ähnlichen Situation wie heute Märklin: Wegen falscher Modell- und Preispolitik litt das US-Unternehmen unter rückläufigen Umsätzen und hohen Verlusten. Auch Lionel hatte sich damals stark auf das Geschäft mit Sammlern konzentriert und die junge Klientel vernachlässigt.

 

My translation:

About two years ago, Lionel was in a situation similar to that of Märklin today: Due to poor model planning and pricing policies, the US concern suffered under declining sales and high losses. At the time, Lionel had also concentrated on the collectors’ market and neglected young customers.

 

For USAnians of my age, Lionel was the toy train of our childhood, just as Märklin is in Europe.

 

I don’t want to discuss Lionel or Märklin or any similarity of either with Leica

 

I was simply interested by the mention of a “collectors’ market” taking precedence over what is, at least in hindsight, a more obvious and natural one.

 

 

BTW—Eine Frage der Aussprache: Wird “Märklin” auf erste oder zweite Silbe betont?

 

Danke.

[stunsworth]

Sorry, I don't understand what you are trying to say.

[ho_co]

Oops. Sorry, Steve. Thanks for trying to make sense of it.

 

Per FTD, Märklin entered bankruptcy due to losing sight of its basic customer base, families and children, and concentrating too strongly on collectors. Lionel had previously done the same in the US.

 

Leica runs the risk of making the same error by trying to pursue both users and collectors. (I only recently learned that Leica's Japanese distributor is owned by Hermes.)

 

Saying that I didn't want to discuss "Lionel or Märklin or any similarity of either with Leica" derailed (no pun intended) any attempt at making sense of the post.

 

Leica's users/collectors tightrope has been discussed before and may not be worth the additional mention.

[lars_bergquist]

You are right. In the past (vide that sequence of absurd M6 'jubilees') Leica has risked 'musealising' itself. Now, catering to a kinky market where people place their cameras in glass cases, or even bank vaults, often without opening the carton, may be tempting in the short run, because the price elasticity in this strange market segment is small: The more expensive, the more 'limited' the edition, the more desirable. And in a capitalist economy, it does not matter what you manufacture, cameras or heroin, as long as you can sell it with a profit. But ultimately, two dangers loom: First, the niche is simply too small to sustain you. And second, the nimbus of the Leica rests not simply in its prices, but in supreme usefulness in taking photographs. Without that -- and you cannot live indefinitely on past glory -- you are just a supplier of very odd bling. Finis.

 

The old man from the Age when Cameras Were For Taking Photographs

[frozenace]

I love Märklin and I agree that lots of German companies are either too small or specialised to see the bigger picture in that they have to increase their volume to survive.

 

My dad is importing diabetes analysers from Germany into China and recently they have upped their prices by 20% without any consultation.

 

If companies keep on screwing their distribution channels, they'll go bust.

[georg]

Märklin went bankrupt because the owner family just saw in it a way to gain money, then it was sold to an investment company and a consulting company took their last resources.

But of course ftd always looks for the most simple explanation...

Leica just did a major investment against their collector-customer-base (professional camera system & cine lenses)

[luigi bertolotti]

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Intriguing comparision... I'm not involved in trains but a pair of best friends of mine are deeply into, with personal engagement in associations - magazines etc... so the parallelism Leica-Marklin had previously came to my mind... ; of course the basic divide is that cameras can be collectibles or user tools (even professional ones), small trains can be collectibles or children's toys... one market similar, the other two quite different: my idea, just to chat, is that a company like Marklin can survive on the collectors' market only... collectors usually are people that LOVE trains in themselves, and in the history THOUSANDS of different locomotives and wagons have been built, and each year dozens of new designs are built (not to speak of the different finishings of the same item for different raiway companies... a sector of collecting like the variants of the Elmar... ) : so there is a theorically infinite set of REPRODUCTIONS (*) that can be built... and this can feed a demand that can sustain one (or more) specialized firms: one of the friends I mentioned, simply budgets for each year 5/6 acquisitions or so... a son of hims already looks interested to follow his dad's passion...

But... probably there will be always firms that live on trading collectible cameras, but is uneven that a firm can live building cameras for collectors... not so about trains, imho.

 

 

(*) in capital, because the concept of "perfect reproduction", opposed to the is the concept of "originality" is the great difference between those two collectibles' markets.

[hector_jorge]

I`m a modelrailroader too, so I have my own opinion about the actual Marklin situation. For me, Marklin is selling less trains because today boys are more interested in computers and sports than in electric trains. The entry level train (an oval of track, an engine and two or three cars) devoted to 6/8 year boys, doesn`t attract them anymore. Years ago, most of the train`s factory production were that entry level sets and only few of them became large layouts. I think that Leica has nothing to do with that.

[ho_co]

There are indeed extreme differences between cameras and either "toy trains" or "model railroads," which are themselves completely different.

 

When I was a kid, I had a small Lionel layout, and a friend had a gigantic Lionel layout. The trouble with trains is just that your layout is in a restricted space. You can do a lot, like assembling trains in a switchyard--always fascinating to watch, either "in the prototype" (i.e. in the real world) or in a model--but your model is still in a closed space. Photography invites you to go out into the real world.

 

I soon realized that Lionel was a nice toy, but that model railroading was quite different, like studying the prototype and seeing the differences in the way different private companies (in the U.S.) did things. My friend lost interest in trains and moved to cars.

 

Lionel was a big name in its day. It went bankrupt but has new owners. It was superbly made, heavy-duty but non-scale equipment. Its main competitor, American Flyer, was much flimsier but advertised that its trains were scale models. They weren't. I wonder what happened to them. They're not around trying to buy Märklin.

 

Trains or computers or tennis or golf or cameras--each successful brand has its own history, and something might can be learned from each.

 

Personally, because of the "toy trains" aspect of Lionel, I would hate to see that brand take over ownership of Märklin. OTOH, maybe my respect for the latter is misplaced, because a certain amount of Märklin's production falls into the "toy trains" field.

 

I'm just interested in exploring the differences and similarities, and I think everyone has made a valid point or two.