On Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:42:56 -0000, simon put finger to keyboard and typed:
In order to have a trade account with Hornby directly, you need to have a
certain minimum volume of sales. Any retailer with sales volumes below that
has to buy from a wholesaler instead.
That's not particularly unusual; a lot of manufacturers have similar
policies. The difference is that Hornby is the only model railway
manufacturer big enough to be in a position to make that distinction.
Hornby's UK turnover is an order of magnitude bigger than all their rivals
put together, and their distribution model is correspondingly different.
But that doesn't mean it's harder for small retailers to get Hornby
products, because the fact that Hornby uses the wholesale channel (which
the other manufacturers mostly don't) means that there are several
competing wholesale suppliers that retailer can use.
If anything, the fact that Hornby uses wholesale distribution helps, not
hinders, them in the toy shop market, because toy retailers can get Hornby
products from the same wholesaler as their other products. Bachmann and
Dapol don't sell via wholesale, which means that a retailer which does want
to stock their products has to open an account directly, something which a
lot of smaller toy retailers - especially the ones that don't sell a lot of
model railway products - tend not to do.
Mark
--
Blog:
http://mark.goodge.co.uk
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