Affa Model Train factory closing in China

[cteno4]

I could have sworn I saw this somewhere on the forum but can’t find any reference.

 

Sadly a newer model train factory in china closed the beginning of August rather abruptly. This is causing turmoil for many smaller us and euro train companies as these guys were an alternate to Sanda Kan once they were terminating 3rd party work outside Bachmann. Looks like they also were doing financing with paying for moulds on smaller runs for smaller companies so the companies did not own the moulds so will either need to try to buy them from the holders of the company or start all over with making new moulds. Sounds like even those like concor that owned their moulds may have a time of it getting them back. Also since abrupt shutdown sounds like a lot of production runs stopped mid process probably.

 

https://www.con-cor.com/

 

this is the big ouch in offshoring this work. As he notes doing it in country is usually no longer cost effective and resources for small runs really limited or non existent these days.

 

my design partner did a lot of small product work with factories in China for companies here in the states (like hold everything, Macy’s, etc), and abrupt factory closings or them dropping clients for other jobs occurred a lot. So much so his business partner that had done the work for like 30+ years in China was always grooming a new factory to work with figuring they would eventually have to move on. Also having an agent in the country that regularly visited the factory and got to know some workers also was his standard practice to keep tabs on what was going on.

 

a big complexity for modern model train companies. Bummer for a number of them right now.

 

jeff

[katoftw]

Yeah some asked if it would effect Tomix or Kato. They didnt mention factory names though.

[scotspensioner]

The British RM web site has been looking at this in the context of Hornby possibly moving production.A number of US and European companies are among those affected

[cteno4]

From jim’s Blog it looks like at least 20 companies were affected in the us, represented at the NMRA meeting a few weeks ago.

 

even trying to move work to another Chinese factory is daunting but setting up your own at home is a really expensive task as Jim noted. Even trying to ramp up your own in house production can be really pricy as this is when friends with groing businesses that make a lot of their own product have needed the big cash infusions. Even harder here as you are not really increasing production because of increasing demand but because of lack of places to produce it and in a much higher priced production environment to boot.

 

im glad I ended up not venturing down the design/production route. A couple of good opportunities came up but I had enough knowledge from friends on the backside of the biz made me decide it was not worth the potential headaches for the payoffs. It really hurt to see my design partner get a lot of his designs ripped off (send a copy to China, clone it and sell it). He even had one really big client take photos of one of his production prototypes and had it cloned and into the store before the client store that ended up buying the design. Luckily they sued and won, but really awful mess. Another friend caught one client sending one of his prototypes to a factory for cloning (they had it for review and said they had misplaced the prototype) but luckily his agent in China saw it at the factory it was sent to and questioned them, then threats of lawsuits. Sadly the design eye talents of the buyers for stores are gone and they just grab things and have em cloned by the factory these days. Of course not as much an issue with model trains...

 

jeff

[gavino200]

China now has it's own fledgling model train industry. Competition must be harmonized. 

[cteno4]

Interesting we are always getting odd factories and suppliers of all sorts, usually from China sending us inquaries to our club website. New one today for a factory.

 

http://hobbyriver.com/about.asp

 

jeff

[nah00]

For those wondering what US companies this will effect:

Atlas (except locomotives and track)

Fox Valley Models

Bluford Shops

Athearn 

Intermountain

Broadway Limited

Red Caboose (what's left of them)

BLMA

And probably a few smaller companies I'm forgetting. Micro-Trains won't be affected as they are still made in the US but now they can charge whatever they want more than they already do. I scrambled to find a few Intermountain items I wanted since they were supposed to be re-released but that's up in the air. 

 

As far as I know this won't effect Kato locomotive, track, or rolling stock production but I believe some of their buildings are made in China. I don't know much about the manufacturing process of Tomix.

Edited August 20, 2018 by nah00

[scotspensioner]

I have a dio town 23-480 which is stamped made in China

[cteno4]

Luckily tomix has parent tomy toys for some manufacturing might.

 

jeff