Red Caboose Moving Sale

[Ntrainz1]

Red Caboose Moving sale flyer:
http://www.red-caboose.com/marchflyer.pdf

Pricing is confusing.

Bob.

[bicknell]

10% off list qualifies as a sale now?

 ???

[GaryHinshaw]

Uh oh, I'm in trouble:

All auto rack$ and centerbeam$ are 35% di$count, they come with Micro Train truck$ and coupler$.

Thank$ for the head$ up, I think.

[Chulvis]

10% off list qualifies as a sale now?

 ???

Leo,

What kind of reaction do you think they would get from their dealer network if they offered discounts much larger than that? You have to remember that a lot of stores have this stuff sitting on their shelves. The returns would put Red Caboose under.

[flight2000]

10% off list qualifies as a sale now?

 ???

Leo,

What kind of reaction do you think they would get from their dealer network if they offered discounts much larger than that? You have to remember that a lot of stores have this stuff sitting on their shelves. The returns would put Red Caboose under.

Chuck,
The flyer says order through your local hobby shop, so does that mean you can get these for us at the discount? 

Your the closest I have that qualifies as a "local" hobby shop.

Brian

[seusscaboose]

heck... Chuck is on the Left coast and i still go to him for all my big purchases...  the only thing i grab locally is scenery... and that is all impulse buying...  this isn't a praise chuck thread...  but i agree with the last post.... I spell local C-H-U-L-V-I-S

[asarge]

The flyer says order through your local hobby shop, so does that mean you can get these for us at the discount? 

That wopuld depend on if Red Caboose would still honor the margins dealers get. If our price is the same as what RC sells it to you for, no dealer will be ordering from them AND honoring their sale pricing. More than likely they are protecting dealer margins though, they have before.

[bicknell]

What kind of reaction do you think they would get from their dealer network if they offered discounts much larger than that? You have to remember that a lot of stores have this stuff sitting on their shelves. The returns would put Red Caboose under.

You make a good point, but I all suppose it depends.

If they are selling a small quantity of stuff one time because they don't want to move odds and ends then I think there would be little damage to the dealer network.

If they are selling a large quantity of stuff, or this is going to be a regular occurrence then the dealers have every right to be upset.

The fact that the product is sitting on the shelves is probably a bigger issue for both parties....

[GaryHinshaw]

I'm surprised to hear that their stuff is sitting on shelves.  Whose?  As an example, I'd love to get more center beams, but FRT and Klein's both show nothing and N Scale Supply doesn't even list Red Caboose in their catalog anymore.  Yet Red Caboose is now dumping a bunch... is the market for these so over-saturated now?  Anyway, my next stop is FRT's special order desk. 

[Catt]

I think I'll pass on this one.

[Hyperion]

I love their autoracks and need a bunch more, but they can be had all day long for $25-30, and even at the super special pricing, it doesn't get any cheaper.

Seems to be that this special is, in fact, designed specifically for dealers.   In particular those that tend to charge closer to MSRP than mine, and most online ones, do. They seem to be wanting to move particularly slow-moving stock with the intent that it can be marketed to consumers at 35% off, which isn't so much a bad deal if you usually charge closer to MSRP.  For most of us here we probably regularly meet or beat this pricing from our LHS' or online pushers.

[lock4244]

Some of those racks are mighty tempting. I've decided that the late 1980's is where I want my primary focus to be (as a punk just getting into the railroad thing, all the initial wonder is tied to memories of that era) and some of those racks would be nice to bolster the fleet. Money, however, is the deciding factor... that and shipping to Canada.

[Chulvis]

I'm surprised to hear that their stuff is sitting on shelves.  Whose?  As an example, I'd love to get more center beams, but FRT and Klein's both show nothing and N Scale Supply doesn't even list Red Caboose in their catalog anymore.  Yet Red Caboose is now dumping a bunch... is the market for these so over-saturated now?  Anyway, my next stop is FRT's special order desk. 

I don't want to badmouth RC because as a model railroader I really love their products, but their practice of flooding the market with new tooling (Autoracks for example) has made dealers weary of stocking a lot inventory. I have said to many a customer that when they release 12 road numbers of an Autorack in three different road-names they are in fact depleting their own market and it showed. You could barley give those things away after a while. They did the same thing with the Centerbeams a few years back and lots of dealers got stuck with inventory they could not move, although that market has eased up a bit now along with the Coil Cars as they have not released any in quite some time.

I have called RC a couple of times this week and the phone was not answered so they either have Caller ID or are taking some time off.  ;D ;D ;D

[Walkercolt]

Yeah, Chuck, the coil cars are hard to get while some items we have are covered with dust. We ordered twevle number of some items for people who wanted them, but we didn't "stock" the autoracks, the centerbeams and several others. We had some Tropicana reefers forever and some beer cars we just unloaded a couple of weeks ago. Red Caboose hasn't been real cooperative with us at times. ???

[asarge]

We've slowly whittled away at our RC on the shelves. Just seems that lately people are trading things back in. We have a few Centerbeams and a bunch of Auto-racks. They overdid it on the auto-racks, as a dealer no way were we going to stock 12 road numbers of every roadname at that price level and even then after the first few releases they started spending more time on the shelves we still have a fair amount of one of our local roadnames. The Centerbemas sold better and we still have a few from re-runs and tradebacks. In our neck of the woods, the coil cars were by far the best sellers. Their discounting isn;t really marketed towards dealers but more meant to help dealers. Any dealer that was offering new release Red Caboose at 35% is or more than likely was.....a moron. I can see a dealer clearancing his overstock out at that price but not as normal pricing.