MicroAce - New Releases

[IST]

I had a conversation with Dapol management 6 years ago about developing a new N-gauge locomotive or wagon. They said it needs to be produced and sold at least 2.500 pieces to cover the tool making and producing cost. Of course it depends heavily on the price what you would like to get for one modell. But it is an old story, as we can see on the example of the Pendolino, 1.000 pieces on higher price could be enough.

Another question from me was a re-release of a model, but in a new livery (Shimmns wagon for Hungary): they said an order of 250 pieces would be enough for them to run again the machines.

[katoftw]

HS has MAs new releases up for MA does.

 

783 series Midori/Huis Ten Bosch

783 series Kamome

Keio 6000 series

103-500 in wakayama blue

103-500 in yellow

[katoftw]

http://www.microace-arii.co.jp/poster/img/15_02w.jpg

[JR 500系]

Interesting... wasnt the Midori/ Huis Ten Bosch released before in A0377? It also seems like the new HTB/ Midori is really pricy, although i thought there was another motor in the front 4 HTB train set so that both sets can run on their own & connection/ dis-connection is possible between the HTB & the Midori.. but there isnt, which kinda doesnt justify why it is so pricy...

 

Also, the other 783 series is meant to connect to the HTB set? Judging from the car numbers on the HTB, starting from car number 7...

[katoftw]

Last release was in 2003 for 19,XXX yen. So for it to be 37,5XX yen now isn't bad. But the price is just standard for Greenmax. 50% more than the Kato/Tomix equivalent.

 

Yeah I was a little weirded out by only a single motor car. As they do seperate for their final part of their routes.

[Guest keio6000]

MicroAce new poster includes a new release of the Keio 6000 in Keio beige with red stripe livery.  The difference between this release and the previous one is mostly that this one does not have a small keio logo on the cars.

 

I'm always happy for a new keio 6000, of course, but even so I may pass on this one.  Too similar to the one already released plus several i have in GM state.

 

Still, a nice enough release.

[Guest keio6000]

A new MicroAce Poster is out.  They keep putting out posters and announcing new products, but the actual manufacturing output is very very very far behind. Well, at least it shows that they are optimistic about getting back on track.

 

 

Anyway this poster seems to be a kumoyuni 82 similar to one that kato just did better plus more of their terrible tn couplers (tomix's are better)

[Densha]

Ha so they started putting additional parts and such on the poster to cope with 'only' two real new announcements.

[kvp]

Please correct me if i'm wrong, but the top right one has just been released by Tomytec, right?

[katoftw]

What a boring release poster.

 

Will be interesting to see what they release this month.

 

My Isaburo-Shinpei has been pushed back like all the others to "May-or-later".  Lucky I brought the older 2 car set back in Nov 14.

Edited March 18, 2015 by katoftw

[miyakoji]

Please correct me if i'm wrong, but the top right one has just been released by Tomytec, right?

They did KUMONI143-5, intended for baggage, whereas this one is intended for baggage and mail.  I like that thing in the upper left.  KUMOHAYU, never ever heard of it before.  I guess it has regular class seating as well as space for mail.

 

Anyone know what the difference is between cars designated for baggage and mail?

[miyakoji]

Found a little bit more, apparently 3 of these were converted from MOHA 72 series cars in 1969 for the Chiba area, they survived until 1980.  Although half the car did have seating, it was rarely or never used.

 

http://kokuden.net/mc53/sub.htm/sub-NiYuu/sub-Niyuu-yu74/sub-Niyuu-yu74.htm

http://www.geocities.jp/h6feet/album7-1.html

[ToniBabelony]

That KUMOHAYU looks really interesting, as it has a just slightly different design than other types in its class. I assumed it was an Iida-line thing, but I never expected it to have been for Chiba! They look more like something that would have ran on electrified mountain lines in the quiet hours to pick-up mail and deliver express goods to those towns that were hard to reach by road.

[katoftw]

So last night Japan time 2x Kiha72 MA sets went for 19,000 each.  Normally 20,000+, but since 2 auctions finished within a hour of eachother, they went for 1,000 less.

 

A MA 2 car Kiha 185 Tran Kyushu Express set went for 20,000.  :o

 

And MA cannot release some of their older models and increase their suggested retail price by 1,000-2,000?  Second hand models are going for 150-200% higher than suggested retail new.

[kvp]

There were lots of small farming communities east of Chiba and small scale rail freight was common until the privatisation. The 72 series got replaced by modified 101 series cars. Many 113 and 115 series emus had a kumoyu on one end. The last freight by passenger train was the newspaper service and it ended with the retirement of the 113 series on lines around Chiba a few years ago.

 

Ps: i think MA has problems keeping their current release schedule and a rerelease would sometimes cost the same as a new release but have a smaller market.

Edited March 21, 2015 by kvp

[katoftw]

Um?  The is only one Kiha 72 in existence and is runs between Hakata and Beppu on the Kyudai Line.

 

Yeah I am completely aware of MA problems.  Which is why I think doing re-releases now rather than releasing completely new models that require completely new tools and molds would be benfiticial to them.

 

As per some of the conversations in the past 3 pages.  Some models there is a market for.  Clearly MA needs capital since they have had a year plus of severely decrease income.  Rereleasing models that there is a market requirement for and that would cost them less to manufacture as the tooling is already developed, would be a quick way to gain some quick capital required to make a larger effort to all other parts of their business.

 

The point is.  They are broke, (only a guess, otherwise they wouldn't be suffering issues).  They have a market requirement for older models.  The market is willing to pay more for those older models.  MA nets more profit selling those older models at a increase price.

Edited March 21, 2015 by katoftw

[ToniBabelony]

There were lots of small farming communities east of Chiba and small scale rail freight was common until the privatisation.

That makes sense. Even Keisei had special famers' compartments in early morning trains until not too long ago.

[Guest keio6000]

ok ok ok - you guys scared me enough. i just bought from nariichi san the eidan-8000 "tozai line" release which is an absolutely bizarre release from the short time in which trains of the tozai line used otherwise hanzomon line 8000 stock.  nariichi-san only had one, it was on super sale, and, well, an eidan 8000, albeit in hanzomon colors was always on my "must get" list as i used to live at sakurashinmachi and commute to futakotamagawa (then known as futako-tamagawa-en) and shibuya regularly on this bad boy.

 

with this purchase, i now have a somewhat over-complete set of "eidan 6000/7000/8000" trains:

 

- Chiyoda Line Tokyo Metro 6000 (Microace)

- Chiyoda Line Eidan 6000 (Kato)

- Yurakucho Line Tokyo Metro (erp - i think- i dont remember) 7000 (Microace)

- Fukutoshin+Yurakucho Line Tokyo Metro 7000 (Microace - see my recent post)

- "Tozai" Hanzoumon-in-my-heart Eidan 8000 (MicroAce)

 

If i have the guts to remove the 'tozai line' tampo above the doors of the hanzomon, will be all set.

 

of course, two days after i buy this, microace will announce a "proper" hanzomon eidan 8000 based on the existing tooling for half the price, but so it goes..

 

collecting tokyo subways has been really nice, especially since kato has put out some great ones.  microace's are good too but kato's are superb. of coruse, now that they have a eidan 6000 they made to the rest of the crew, but kato's release schedules for such things is notoriously slow.

 

 

 

will microace-arii go bankrupt?   well, in the other hobby that i follow, diecast model airplanes, there is another firm, "falcon models", that is in a similar predicament.  citing "qa problems" with their china manufacturer, they have ceased production "until they find another manufacturer" or something like this.  the true believers insist they will be back, others of us are not so sure.   however, microace/arii is an old family business.   i suspect they will be back indeed, though the prices will never be so low again, i think.  also, it's about time they had a think about things like DCC and so forth.   microace has always been a company that you could love for only one reason:  they made models that nobody else would.  but technically, they never have been great.

 

[cteno4]

I don't think there has been any hard evidence that micro ace is in deep financial difficulties, just supposition here in the thread that could be also interpreted other ways. Producing stuff in China can be a real crap shoot and many of their issues with missed production dates can be due to these issues that are always happening. Lots of supposition by folks not in the Japanese market about what makes marketing sense in Japan, what sells, that have no idea of ma sales numbers, history, or market research in Japan.

 

I worked on a couple of office product items that were produced in China and my design partner did a bunch, all with mid to large retailers on the U.S. side and very experienced production managers and facilitators on both sides of the pacific and some pretty good factories in China and it was amazing how many places hang ups could occur in the process. We also lost some factories tha were either quickly shutdown (happens a lot ifor there is any trouble they shut down and the just pop later elsewhere when it's calmed down) or shifted to a new bigger client. Getting dies made or specialized machinery can cause bottlenecks from high demand even if the factory is ready to go otherwise. I can see ma having to continually juggle this.

 

The qa issue I think is all from those few models for sale from China. If those are seconds, that's normal there are always seconds in production, even on a good line. Yes these qa seconds sometimes make it out the backdoor and are sold on the gray market. There are also overruns of a lot of stuff (again part of the production process) and at times some staff will try to assemble these, sneak them out the back and make a buck on them if there is an easy and lucrative market. Even factories at times will do gray market over runs. We found this with one jewelry box we thought a knockoff, but the parts were cut exactly the same as the original factory run so they came from the same setup and at a volume that required the factory doing it as a whole!

 

Kato has also had some production slips over the same time period.

 

So I would not say the sky is falling, it's all supposition without any solid facts showing they are in deep financial troubles. This is one problem with the web as rumors like this can snowball with few real supporting fact and only one explaination given for those few pieces of information available.

[Guest keio6000]

So I would not say the sky is falling, it's all supposition without any solid facts showing they are in deep financial troubles. This is one problem with the web as rumors like this can snowball with few real supporting fact and only one explaination given for those few pieces of information available.

 

yes, you're absolutely right.   there's no point in speculating idly (thouogh on balance probably no harm - we're a tiny english language forum of no consequence).  however, an eidan 8000 for me is a "top 2 or 3 want"  that i've wanted for 20+ years now, i decided to take a 'safety' just in case.  microace has a lot of toolings that have real value and it could just be a matter of getting getting their manufacturing issues sorted.

 

also, i was a bit unclear or imprecise - i meant that the diecast aircraft company (falcon models) had huge QA issues with their suppliers.  i didnt meant to imply that microace did.  in fact, i found recent microace releases to be "just fine qa-wise" in that they were "built to the ma spec", which while lower than kato's overall by my reckoning, is still decent.  the real ma qa issues were from a decade or more before when they had those terrible motors in their 185s and other such EMUs.  I've always just felt that microace products are very 'cold" and sold without any "love", wheras in kato you can see the little touches that they really didn't need to do, but do anyway. this may be from the japan side, from the china side, or a bit of both.

[Densha]

It feels a bit like comparing a Piko train to a Roco train, both are fine but one is better. (In this case Roco)

 

Most MA trains I own are technically fine, there's only one with a flashing headlight problem but I the single Tomix train I own has the same problem. Most of my MA trains makes even less noise than some Kato trains. I only compared recent models of course, you just can't compare them with the older one.

 

MA's detailing level is as everyone knows a bit lower than Tomix and Kato's but still not bad at all. If they were that bad I wouldn't have that many models from them, even considering that those are MA-exclusive models.

Edited March 23, 2015 by Densha

[cteno4]

keio,

 

sorry i was referring to the qa seconds that folks were wondering about with those cheap ma deals from china.

 

Yes I have learned that if i think i really want a train to buy it as soon as i can as it is easy for it to be sold out and expensive to try and get on the secondhand market! The trains i usually like like this and have missed have been the worst as far as trying to buy later!

 

jeff

[katoftw]

Call it suppostion.  Call it lack of knowledge about manufacturing.  Call it lack of knowledge about marketing.  Call it whatever you want.  Something is up at MA.

 

They are only running at 20% factory capacity/output compared to 15 months also.  With some knowledge of manufacturing, this is a too long of a period to say nothing is wrong.  This can not solely be placed all on QA issues.  I don't think you can compared a regular 1 or 2 month production delays to what MA is currently going through with their production delays.

 

The suggested fix was just an opinion by myself.  If someone wants to run off with it and make it rumour, that is their choice.

Edited March 24, 2015 by katoftw

[cteno4]

Yes something may be but we really are not in a position to know what, it's all supposition, they may have a backlog of product and slowed production to clear that, they may have credit issues, it may be production issues, design or tooling issues, licensing issues, other internal business issues, who knows, we just don't have any real data to know whats up. It's a family held company so there is not a lot of public information to know. In the past MA has had ups and downs in releases, being a smaller company that happens. They have been notorious for release delays (the worst of the 4) for as long as I've been doing Japanese trains. This latest one has also seen kato have production/release issues over the same period. Supposing marketing and sales of various models in Japan would require a good knowledge of the japanes market which I think few of us know well enough to make more than a wild guess at.

 

It's just you stated with a lot of certainty that ma was having financial issues (how do you know they have severely decreased income?), I've just not seen anything concrete to base that on and a lot of other possible reasons for some of the few bits of information we have in the form of releases and delayed releases. Doing this leads others to believe it's true and that's how rumors start... Saying its others responsible for spreading your opinions is only true it you couch them as opinions and not as fact.

 

I've worked on enough product development, manufacturing and bringing to market projects that I've experienced a wide range of issues and worked with enough veterans to hear lots of permutations and combinations in situations.

 

Jeff

[katoftw]

It's just you stated with a lot of certainty that ma was having financial issues (how do you know they have severely decreased income?), 

Jeff

Jeff, are you serious?  Did you miss the bit where I said I was guessing???  From where I come from guesses are not factual.

 

As for severely decrease income.  No certainty on that either.  Was guessing also.  But you don't have to be a mathematician to realize production is decreased, therefore income would be effected.  How much would be a guess.  A guess!!!

 

I'm sorry if this post comes across as aggressive.  But you are puting a lot of words into my mouth.

Edited March 24, 2015 by katoftw