World Kogei Closing

[disturbman]

They are closing operations on March 31st.

[Madsing]

Oh, really? 😢 You mean, closing down for good, like, forever?

[disturbman]

Yep, forever.

[Steve]

Oh no, do you know what happended to their Stuff?

 

Will someone take over their Stuff?

[SwallowAngel]

For now no plans beyond "We're shutting down" have been released.

They'll be liquidating their old/junk stock at an event at their physical location before closing down, but that's all.

 

No word about if they plan to pass any moldings/stampings or whatever along (à la Hattons and their closure), but I kinda doubt it...

 

Sad news though, I hope to pick up a kit before it's too late...

 

Edit: You can read more about their closure on their site's news column

Edited March 17 by SwallowAngel

[bill937ca]

A lot of these places are  garage operations like Shinohara was.  When the owner retires that is it. Capital is listed as 3 million yen or $20,114.25 USD.  

 

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ワールド工芸

Edited March 17 by bill937ca

[Nick_Burman]

13 minutes ago, bill937ca said:

A lot of these places are  garage operations like Shimohara was.  When the owner retires that is it. Capital is listed as 3 million yen or $20, 114.25 USD.  

 

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ワールド工芸

 

When Shinohara closed, Walthers took over the US line and Imon bought the rest. One possibility is that Imon might take over the tooling, they have the expertise to make kits and models.

 

Cheers NB

[cteno4]

Yes very sad, love their kits. I hope someone takes over their tooling and templates, but might be a hard match to find. It was fortunate that Sakatsu took over kobaru when they decided to get out of the parts business.

 

jeff

[RS18U]

8 hours ago, SwallowAngel said:

For now no plans beyond "We're shutting down" have been released.

They'll be liquidating their old/junk stock at an event at their physical location before closing down, but that's all.

 

No word about if they plan to pass any moldings/stampings or whatever along (à la Hattons and their closure), but I kinda doubt it...

 

Sad news though, I hope to pick up a kit before it's too late...

 

Edit: You can read more about their closure on their site's news column

Probably my TWP web page translation, but all I see is the 'junk' sale (although no date), and that they are stopping web sales as of March 20th.  Nothing specific about total closure?

[bill937ca]

Its there.

 

Notice of end of sales on the website
We apologize for the sudden notice, but sales and parts request services on our website will end on March 20, 2025.

 

March 31st is the end of the Japanese fiscal year and a common closure time.

 

[Wolf]

3 hours ago, RS18U said:

Probably my TWP web page translation, but all I see is the 'junk' sale (although no date), and that they are stopping web sales as of March 20th.  Nothing specific about total closure?

 

There was an email to buisness partners naming it full buisness closeure.

[RS18U]

8 hours ago, Wolf said:

 

There was an email to buisness partners naming it full buisness closeure.

Thanks, make sense now.  It was not clear to me on the web site site as it only talks about not doing anything with the web site as of March 20, not the whole business. 

[mags_minibuilds]

Oh no! That's a real shame, I just discovered them two years ago. Fingers crossed that someone will take it over. It's quite sudden since there were new product releases just a month/couple months ago.

Edited March 18 by mags_minibuilds

[maihama eki]

That is a shame. They had some really interesting offerings. I have a few of their kits. I guess I should be careful when assembling them not to lose any parts.

[cteno4]

I especially liked their newer economy kits that used plastic parts as well as etched metal and the etched metal had a bit more of the arunine folding style as well as a good price point. Seemed like it was a thoughtful blend of all the worlds out there and with lower price and easier assembly maybe a bigger market to reach.

 

jeff

[bc6]

I'm hoping to get a kit from them before they close permanently. I wish I knew about them before them closing soon.

[Martijn Meerts]

I have quite a lot of their kits (and 7 more on the way actually), so yeah, was definitely not good news to hear.

 

I know they've worked together with IMON on several projects (for example, the IMON branded Kiwa90 was actually manufactured by World Kougei), and not long ago there was a post on Mr. Imon's blog that IMON and World Kougei would be working on motorised chassis for DeAgostini H0 scale plastic kits.

 

I guess there's a chance IMON will take over (some) of the H0e stuff, since they already do some H0e kits, but I doubt they start getting into N-scale. I do know IMON has an H0e Baldwin loco planned for release sometime next year (I think), which I can only assume is the Kiso Baldwin, which World Kougei has released multiple times now, and in several versions.

 

[UnfinishedKit]

Some pics of the last day of mail order on Artpro’s blog

 

https://artpro.jp/model-train/world-kougei/

 

IMON appears to have good stock for now