Can we get oversea distributors of Japanese Trains?

[cteno4]

We have had some chatter about some of the kato items being picked up by overseas shops lately, and some talk on trying to get more folks in other countries like the us to carry japanese trains, so i thought i would start a thread on it to get folks thoughts.

 

we have discussed this a lot over the years in our club here (japan rail modelers of wash dc) and never come to a great conclusion on the matter. we would love to see more japanese trains sold here in the US and make it easier for those starting out to get stuff, but there are some hurdles this happening with the size of the market we are talking about. we all would be willing to support some us suppliers if the price were not horribly over what we could get directly from japan. biggest hurdle is that the japanese retail sources like hobby search, hobby world, rainbowten are so easy to use and even with shipping very reasonably priced, shipping sal for most things not a heck of a lot more than us shipping costs, and service is better than most we get from us sources. so this makes a very tough thing for a us source to beat for the lions share of the us market of folks that know how to buy from japan. if their prices are a fair amount higher than the japanese retail sources they are only left with the newbie market or folks just unwilling to order directly from japan. this is not a really great market for a us distributor, with more returns, problems, support, education, etc to do. the folks willing and able to buy direct from japan probably spend a lot more on average, know what they want, and figure things out for themselves.

 

here are a few of the things that usually come up in the discussion of the business end of trying to get more japanese train stuff in japan.

 

Margin and Distribution Channels

distribution channels are a bit different in japan and the us. there tend to me more layers in the distribution channels in japan with smaller, but very set markups. until recently discounting was not done a huge amount in japan and there was just not the room in the margins to do this. also not a lot of skipping distribution levels is done (ie go directly to the source or main distributor). in the us there is a lot more leeway in how distribution is done in general and srp and margins have a fair bit of variability. for a us distributor even local shop to get japanese stock they will have to get into one of the levels of the distribution chain in japan. this can get tough as many japanese distributor dont seem like they want to go overseas for business unless its going to be a big hunk of business to do export. us retailers usually want 50-100% markup to do a good retail business. this would mean to be competitive with japanese retail that will sell overseas they would need to get it at the bottom of the japanese distribution chain and this might not happen to overseas retails. a us distributor would be even in a harder place as they would need their traditional 25-50% markup plus the retail markup. a distributor may have a better chance at getting into the bottom of the japanese distribution chain to get a better price, but you still end up with a 3X markup from their price to final retail. internet stores help bring down the margins with lower overhead, but inventory costs and handling cost actually can be big on a small business like this.

 

Manufactures

can we get manufactures to distribute directly to us distributors. Kato has done this with kato usa to open up distribution directly in the us to us distributors. since they also do the big us train business they are already shipping over lots of stuff from overseas anyway so sending along japanese stock may be an easy proposition (if their manufacturing and warehousing are in the same places that is). kato has done this over the years and seems to cycle in and out with letting kato usa order kato japan stuff in the us. seems to happen for a short while then either low sales of support issues or some sort of internal kato japan vs usa thing goes on and they stop selling much japanese stuff (other than unitrak and buildings) and not supporting japanese stuff at all. this cycle may be some internal politics that goes round and round (everyone that has worked at kato usa has stories) or an indication of the problem of trying to push japanese trains into the mainstream us markets.

 

Tomix as far as i know never has had any overseas distributors directly. Mokei gets tomix, but apparently gets it from a japanese distributor not directly from tomix. not sure about his green max stuff. probably they see the us market for their stuff being so tiny compared to the japanese market (its like a 10 bigger model rr market in japan in the first place and maybe 1% of the us market is japanese so the total us sales would be 1/10 of a percent. probably not worth it to them to deal with at all. even if it were a few percent may not be worth the hassle with shipping, support, language, et.

 

Shipping

Part of the problem is the cost of shipping stuff over from japan. to make this economical for an overseas distributor it needs to be done by the container full, but then you have to wait till you fill a container to ship stuff over. other shipping methods just push up the markup really fast. This is what Mokei does for getting his tomix and greenmax building (he supplies most of the us sources for this stuff). it can be 6 months though between an order and why some tomix and greenmax buildings are out of stock lots of the time.

 

Inventory

with high just in time or direct shipping costs from japan and waiting for cheaper container shipments a us distributor would need to keep a pretty good inventory here in the us to keep the us market happy with speedy orders at good prices. higher inventory means less selection in retail since you have to invest more $$ in lots of each unit you cant then afford to have a really wide selection (this is what amazon does by keeping low inventory to get high diversity, but they force small orders and just in time shipping costs off on the suppliers and really puts it to them). this is totally against the main reason to get into japanese trains which is the shear variety of trains, building, etc there is these days. look at the tomytec line alone, they now have a few hundred products to stock alone!

 

Language

big barrier to lots of japanese doing business with folks overseas is language. they tend not to want to try to send business letters, etc unless the english is perfect, so if they dont have staff to easily do this they just dont do it. this is where Mokei got into the business years ago as he has a japanese wife who has done all his connections and communication in japanese. many us companies dont have japanese speaking staff to make this happen.

 

Getting a Critical Mass Market in the US

the other issue is what is the share of the us train market that might get conceivably converted to japanese trains? 5%, 10%? Right now its pretty tiny. to grow this will take a lot of education to get new modelers. converting those modeling us trains to japanese trains is hard to do -- this is most of what we see at the regular train shows, folks thinking its interesting but youll have to pry their santa fe loco out of their cold dead fingers! the only real hope is to grab new modelers or those coming back to it from a long gap and fresh eyes. this takes a lot of education to show folks what can be done. and here is the chicken and the egg as most newbies are the most scared about ordering from japan usually. But i think with good education as to the cool results you can have with pretty cost effective japanese trains and accessories and helping show folks how easy ordering from japan is it gets better. big thing about what JNS is all about and the jrm web site is trying to encourage folks and show them how to get started. doing more education down this path may be the best pay off for bringing new modelers into the japanese trains.

 

Supporting US vs Japanese Retailers

There is also a debate back and forth is it better to try and put as much money ordering stuff from the few us sources that happen now and then to help stimulate them as much as possible or is it better to pump all the money into japanese retailers (for japanese stuff) to stimulate them to keep up a good english website and overseas ordering system and with lower prices ordering from japan you can order more thus stimulating the manufacturers even more (although this is probably a drop in the bucket!). arguments can be made both ways.

 

Fear of Overseas Ordering

There is a fear of ordering from overseas by some modelers. some its just doing internet orders period us or overseas, some its using their credit card overseas and fearing fraud, some its fear of packages going poof over the pacific, some its fear language may cause a problem in the order. While my experiences have been nothing but positive from japan on all these accounts with a few hundred orders over the years, they are real either fears or experiences for some. Probably boils down to if you cant overcome the fear then you will need to pay a premium to try and find some way to order from someone here in the us that can get stuff from japan for you, but this will come at a big cost premium most of the time and usually limit what you can get which is again against one of the main reasons to get into japanese modeling -- the variety! some also just want to buy american, but the product is a japanese product usually made in china to begin with. buying in the us just means you want to pay a middle man or two in the us. this is good for our economy if its a proposition that works with reasonable volumes and prices, but if prices are really high and volume low its not really adding to a viable system.

 

the good thing is that younger buyers are lots less fearful of the internet and probably ordering overseas. growing up with the net has made them a bit more fluid in their buying and where/how they get things and look for things.

 

 

just thought i would throw these thoughts out and see what folks reaction to them is, other ideas, thoughts, observations, or complaints on them!

 

My personal feeing is we are not going to get a lot of distribution of japanese trains in the us and its a bit futile to try to stimulate it. Kato has a chance to maybe make it work with their set up to bring more stuff in, but they never seem to make it happen steadily. I do see a good opportunity to get more modelers outside japan doing japanese trains with more good information being put up on the web on how to get started.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[KenS]

Good thoughts.

 

I think you're right that we're not likely to see a lot of interest in Japanese companies marketing their Japanese-prototype lines in the U.S., there just isn't the volume there to make it profitable.  Kato is the big exception, as they already have the U.S. organization, shipping, and support for their North American models, so it's easy for them to include things that are ambiguous in origin, or even somewhat Japanese (their rural station set doesn't really feel U.S. in nature).

 

And they could leverage that for their trains.  I think in particular, with the recent interest in "high speed" trains, there's a potential market for that class of train.  Notice that all of what MB Klein is stocking are either Shinkansen or trains that have a streamlined look, with the only exceptions being the Unitrams and the Eiden 900, which their comments position as being for use with the Unitram basic set.

 

On the other hand, while it would be convenient if my LHS stocked a complete line of Kato Shinkansen and parts, that's never going to be cost-effective.  Even having MBK do it is a stretch. And while I'd like to encourage MBK, and considered buying an E2 (which I do want to get) from them, the full set is $264, vs $216 from Hobby Search.  It's a bit hard to justify that kind of premium (although the E2 expansion is sold out at HS, so I don't actually have that option at the moment).

 

International ordering and shipment is only going to get more convenient, cost-effective, and secure as companies (and buyers) get used to doing it.  That probably represents the future of International commerce (at least for specialty items).  Just as the web and places like MBK killed off many LHSs, direct sales from the country of origin are likely to have a cost and stock advantage over importers, and actually reduce the ability of people like Mokei to compete.

 

People who just want any old "high speed train" (or Greenmax building) will likely be able to buy something through an LHS or distributor, but serious hobbyists aren't likely to be served well enough by that channel, either in cost or selection.

[bill937ca]

One big obstacle is packaging.  I suspect most Japanese products do not comply with US labeling laws. For one or two vendors its not worth repackaging a whole product line.  The issue is moot when individuals import these items themselves as it is not a commercial import.

 

If Greenmax or Tomix were to come over here it would probably through a joint venture with a domestic manufacturer as Kato did with Atlas years ago.  So far there is no sign of this.

 

I don't see shipping from Japan as an issue.  Japan Post's rates are much cheaper than rates on this side of the Pacific.  After all Japan is an exporting nation.

 

On the whole my experiences with Japanese trains and ordering from Japanese dealers have been better than my experiences with many domestic dealers.  EMS while expensive provides many safe guards which you just can't get with parcel post.

[cteno4]

hmm this does not seem to be a problem currently with green max or tomix stuff that mokei brings over by the container full and then distributes to many local hobby stores in the us and i expect canada. he has been doing this for over 30 years (actually found some of my model rr mags from when i was a kid and saw his little ad in there from like 1977!). i just looked at a few new model power boxes and there is nothing on the labeling that i would expect was required like the plastics included, etc. quick search shows, oddly enough, that toys are on the exempted list for the main Fair Packaging and Labeling act that seems to cover packaging here and is aimed at quantity labeling and hazardous material labeling.

 

mokei seems to be have a distributor low enough in the distribution chain in japan that he can sell it to us LHS at a price pretty near japanese prices. even with his export costs. the list us price is about 15% above the japanese list.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Guest ___]

If not so caught up in my FOREX and horology stuff at the moment, I think this would be a great concept to get more involved in.

 

Bill, not aware of any US packaging standards. (granted I have never really looked in to it in any detail either)  I know power supplies or direct power supplied items need their UL listing, but aside from that, I wouldn't've guessed there is any other standard. I have seen with imported foods for sale within the states, a sticker going over the nutritional data to comply with FDA requirements. Could something similar be done for imported US products? I will note, I have never seen repackaging of imported items performed by imported such as J-List.

[cteno4]

Actually they are not required to have a UL listing unless an inspector were looking at it. might need a FCC stamp that it complies with signal broadcasting if that were possible--that is required. if something is classified for smaller children many states and i think the feds in a few years require you to have a certificate showing no lead and other materials in the product but thats not on the packaging, just certification you have to get from your factory and have ready for the gov if needed (just had to go through this for kids books and cdroms, not fun)

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Guest ___]

I recall when working on our manuals at bp solar for final assembly, that we were required per NEC 690 to list UL on all our packaging before we could let the modules out of the factory.

 

EDIT: After looking at the box that my 60w module I got there, there is no FCC documentation, but def UL number listed. I still should have all my NEC and required data from packaging and legal still on the reserve HDD. (Guess, backing up all my data before I left paid off.

[clem24]

I know in my city (Calgary), I might possibly be the only guy that models Japanese. One local LHS has some Greenmax (maybe 6 or 7 items) and some Tomix (about 3 building items hahaha) and occasionally will get some used items (the biggest lot being from a member on here selling them to the store hahaha). Heck, there's not even a Unitrack distributor in Calgary, just one up in Edmonton 300km away, and even then, it's not well stocked at all and VERY $$$$, so much so that it's actually cheaper to ship it from overseas. Anyway, it's sad, but this stuff just does NOT sell. I might be the only person in the whole city who buys them.

 

I've always envisioned doing up a layout at my local train show, and then in collaboration with say, HS or HW, have a few sets for sale that I can purchase at light discount (I know HW states on their site they'll give at least 10% if you order > $1,000) or even setup mail order for everyone who's too afraid to order overseas, plus make a few $$ on top. But the more I think about it, the more I think it just wouldn't fly. North Americans like their North American trains. And the people who are into Japanese trains, know where to get them from.

 

I hate to sound cynical but that just seems to be the reality. Otherwise, something like this just sounds very exciting to me, but again, the economics of it tells me that it's doomed from the start. I think it's way more about living out a passion than to actually try and make $$$$ out of it.

[cteno4]

on the federal end UL is not a requirement, just one of those things that folks have to say its met the specs that most codes and stuff want. its pretty much a given these days to have it, but does not appear to be a fed regulation. regulations on this come in at the installation/use end where code will require UL (or equivalent there are other certification orgs) certification for a product to be used in a building or fire marshal inspection (ie power strips etc) for local fire safety code. can fall under fed probably through osha for things used in the workplace.

 

the fcc cert is required by law if the piece can generate radio interference (ie cert that it is below the fcc threshold.)

 

cheers

 

jeff

[cteno4]

I've always envisioned doing up a layout at my local train show, and then in collaboration with say, HS or HW, have a few sets for sale that I can purchase at light discount (I know HW states on their site they'll give at least 10% if you order > $1,000) or even setup mail order for everyone who's too afraid to order overseas, plus make a few $$ on top. But the more I think about it, the more I think it just wouldn't fly. North Americans like their North American trains. And the people who are into Japanese trains, know where to get them from.

 

I hate to sound cynical but that just seems to be the reality. Otherwise, something like this just sounds very exciting to me, but again, the economics of it tells me that it's doomed from the start. I think it's way more about living out a passion than to actually try and make $$$$ out of it.

clem,

 

You came to the same conclusion several of us here at jrm have. first it sound exciting and interesting, but when you start to run the numbers and see the investment needed for inventory, etc, reality sets in. would be something of a passion.

 

i think your idea of the custom ordering service is a way to go about it, but probably cant get much of a discount off the usual retail from the shops unless you could do a lot of business. it would need to be for folks that would be willing to do like a 25% markup with a minimum order and then it would be more of a labor of love to get folks going than something to make a lot of $$ at.

 

i have friends that produce produce products mostly for wholesale. when the do some retail on the side they make a lot more per unit, but they find the time it takes to do all the little orders really eats up all the extra profit and is not fun work and gets in the way of creating new product which keeps the business growing/moving. i did a year at selling one of the cousteau CD-ROMs i made after it did its first year run in the stores (in the cdrom boom you were lucky if you could stay in a store for more than like 3 months). i had a good market to teachers and marine educators, but i too found that fulfilling 5-10 orders per day was not worth the maybe $35-70 in profit i made. it was nice to keep the product moving and got enough of a market that a smaller educational distributor picked it up after 2 year contract with sunburst was up and it sold well thru them for 3 more years and i got a little free cream profit off that stream and not going to the post office 2-5 times a week!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[clem24]

Although I do wonder how NewhallStation is doing since they're stuff is usually marked up by 300% over MSRP yet they still have stuff that are "sold out" on their website.

[cteno4]

I think he has contacts with more than one japanese hobby shop to get range of stuff he has listed. his harder to find items are not horribly hard to find if you can poke around some of the hobby shops in japan that dont ship offshore.

 

his markup is pretty extreme even with trans shipping costs. this is a way to make $$ on this system if you can find enough rubes (ie dont know  or folks scared enough to want to pay those markups.

 

the thing i dont like about newhall's business model is that it can give the impression to new comers to the hobby that its really expensive to buy japanese trains, which aint the case at all! if someone has the $$ and just wants the convenience of ordering from a one stop shop or hire a personal shopper for themselves great, but newhall is all over the place with searches, ebay included.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[bill937ca]

There used to be someone who went over to Japan and brought stuff back which he sold through classified ads in MR.  I remember his son going on the Yahoo JRForum after his dad died and clearing out the remaining inventory.  That is probably the most likely way it could be done.  Go over and buy until your are blue in the face and then sell off the surplus before you go back.  Then the trip would be a business expense.  And the business would probably be a labor of love rather than a return earning investment.

[bill937ca]

I think what really holds Tomix back is 100 volt power packs.  Who's going to pay to have the power pack upgraded to 120V before it goes on the market?  Probably the importer.  You really need the power pack for the Tomix switches, the constant lighting and other features.  Then on top of that there is the investment in inventory which makes it a very dicey proposition financially.

[cteno4]

Yes i remember him, he had a lot of greenmax stuff and i bought some of it.

 

yes if you can work writing off a trip to japan to have fun in hobby shops thats priceless!

 

there has been a chap on ebay selling off multiple copies of several different Kato sets. he must have done like 6 or 7 m250 addon sets of all things, no m250 power sets though! i was able to pick one up for $99 and an imperial train for like $89. i was planning on asking him here where he ended up with multiple sets of these different things. theres a story there...

 

cheers

 

jeff

[cteno4]

I think what really holds Tomix back is 100 volt power packs.  Who's going to pay to have the power pack upgraded to 120V before it goes on the market?  Probably the importer.  You really need the power pack for the Tomix switches, the constant lighting and other features.  Then on top of that there is the investment in inventory which makes it a very dicey proposition financially.

 

power packs are a really small part of the whole market though and there are lots of great alternatives elsewhere, dont have to be japanese to work. they are the only thing that probably has a lot of issues to import and use compared to buildings, scenery, and trains.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[KenS]

But lack of a U.S. compatible power pack would keep Tomix from marketing starter sets, and that's probably a significant revenue source.  A couple of my local hobby stores always seem to stock up on starter sets in the fall, hoping to sell to parents (and some apparently do sell, as I notice fewer sets there after the holidays). None Japanese, even in the place that stocks a few Modemo trams (and one Shinkansen).

 

If Tomix were going to enter the U.S. market, I think they'd want to include that segment of it.

[westfalen]

North Americans like their North American trains.

I think this is where you would be pushing you know what uphill rather than the economics or logistics of bringing Japanese trains to the U.S., if the market was there to make it worthwhile someone would jump in and figure them out. I think you could partly blame the model railroad magazines like Model Railroader, they have brief article on foreign railroads about once every 5 to 10 years. Perhaps if more American model railroaders knew a bit more about Japanese railways there might be more interest? How often do you hear, "I don't have any Japanese stuff because I'm not interested in bullet trains"? I'm sure this is not just restricted to Japanese trains though, in my two visits to the U.S. I don't remember seeing many British or German models in hobby shops either.

[cteno4]

Westfalen,

 

yep its the chicken and the egg. with a good market the importing would come, but without importing harder to grow the market, but not impossible.

 

this has pretty much been our experience at the train shows. casual interest from most us modelers, but just casual. we get a very small percentage that really get excited. usually they are new to trains or coming back to the hobby so its sort of fresh start time with them. we get a few that eek in from special interests or having traveled to japan and ridden the system. but again its a very small percentage. we pick up a member maybe once a year here in the DC area and its pretty big metro area with good train penetration. we are realizing that the pure train shows are dont getting us much return anymore on new members/converts, but we will keep our fingers in there some.

 

the new place we hope to find new modelers is now with cultural events or train shows aimed at the general public (not existing modelers). again you are working on small percentages since only a few percent actually pickup the hobby at all and then only a fraction go into japanese. But we do have a hope of increasing the fraction that go into japanese if some of their first experience are huge variety of really cool trains and lots of interesting scenes modeled. we get a lot of positive interested comments on having a lot of tall buildings and little city/town scenes. we can reply that these are not horribly un-prototypical to have these mixed so close with trains in japan. and last at events like this we hook the kids the most. their eyeballs pop out, literally! the quote 'so cool' comes out a lot. best quote when matthew asked one kid if they liked trains was "I do now!" (after seeing the layout)

 

foreign modelers in the us are pretty small fraction and japanese a small fraction of those with i think mostly european.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[bill937ca]

on the federal end UL is not a requirement, just one of those things that folks have to say its met the specs that most codes and stuff want. its pretty much a given these days to have it, but does not appear to be a fed regulation. regulations on this come in at the installation/use end where code will require UL (or equivalent there are other certification orgs) certification for a product to be used in a building or fire marshal inspection (ie power strips etc) for local fire safety code. can fall under fed probably through osha for things used in the workplace.

 

the fcc cert is required by law if the piece can generate radio interference (ie cert that it is below the fcc threshold.)

 

jeff

 

If there are no requirements then why do I see disclaimers?

 

WARNING Products offered for sale on this web page are NOT TOYS  

and are NOT INTENDED FOR USE BY CHILDREN UNDER THE AGE OF 14.

 

http://www.blwnscale.com/KATO%20N%20Scale%20Structures.htm

 

I've seen this on websites and individual kit packages.

[cteno4]

Bill,

 

i think these disclaimers are to try and exempt those products from being toys younger kids and thus falling under the regulations on toys for hazardous substances. thats not UL listing requirement, its to make sure certain hazardous substances are not in toys, sharp or dangerous things etc. UL may have some certifications on these things but UL certifications are not required directly.

 

on our kids books and cdroms we had to just get the certifications from the manufacturers to comply. there are a bunch of laws on toy safety in the us that cover toys, some for things in general and others to very specific types of toys (ie toy rattles).

 

im guessing its the paint on model trains that cant be certified for kids under 14.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Guest ___]

Bill,

 

i think these disclaimers are to try and exempt those products from being toys younger kids and thus falling under the regulations on toys for hazardous substances. thats not UL listing requirement, its to make sure certain hazardous substances are not in toys, sharp or dangerous things etc. UL may have some certifications on these things but UL certifications are not required directly.

 

on our kids books and cdroms we had to just get the certifications from the manufacturers to comply. there are a bunch of laws on toy safety in the us that cover toys, some for things in general and others to very specific types of toys (ie toy rattles).

 

im guessing its the paint on model trains that cant be certified for kids under 14.

 

cheers

 

jeff

 

No offense here Jeff, but I disagree. I did this for two years, at bp solar. Everything I went through when writing out a new manuals for both the contractors and private individual sales, I had to clear through HSE, legal, and global technology groups who insisted that UL listing was a mandatory requirements per the NEC. (And nothing gets connected to any power grid, whether public or private without meeting NEC regulations. I want to say NFPC has all NEC meeting 29CFR1912 or 15 or something like that. I can't recall the specs anymore.) I spent literally hours at a time in engineering board meetings with HSE and legal, the manufacturing as well as the process engineers, technology, and reliability doing process reviews on this stuff.

[cteno4]

Aaron,

 

no offense taken, but read what i said, UL listing is not a regulation requirement. what may be a requirement is meeting some of the standards for a regulation that a particular ul listing gives you. UL listing is not an official thing required by law, its just a testing house and there are others like it that do similar things (NRTLs national recognized testing labs), ie see if your product meets a particular set of standards. Those standards may be required by a regulation either federally or locally. other companies can do testing for these standards its just hat UL is the big boy. NEC has several testing labs and standards that will automatically give you nec compliance.

 

usually for consumer ul stuff its for fire hazard (ie shorting etc) and basically the standard that retail channel wants on a product to sell. it can required to be certified to meet certain specifications or the equivalent by local code to be installed into a building -- thats very common and why your solar systems all needed to be ul listed as they all had to be installed under local building codes and w/o it you would have to provide proof that the equipment met all the standards of the nec and have a lot more inspection. so its the practical thing to do for the bp systems (and most any commercial system) to be totally ul listed to avoid as much of this as possible.

 

NEC is building codes, it does not regulate standards or trade/sales regulation on consumer plug in stuff, just installed stuff. local fire codes could say regulate that only listed products can be used in public places but i dont know if those cover the home or not (ie can they come into your home to see whats plugged in), but i dont think it can stop the sales of a product (ie a 100v product). bigger issue with something like this is probably just the general liability of selling something like a 100v power supply that could catch fire. insurance companies will not pay off if they get a hint of something like that use and there is a fire (you are left to try and prove and force them to pay up at that point and they are good at fighting that!)

 

i had to go through a bunch of this stuff too the last couple of years with the books and cdroms to figure out what standards we needed and if we needed to get certification by a third party testing companies (ie like UL) or do it ourselves with the proper documentation, etc. its a mess and not fun to determine all the regs you need to follow and what they require. toys remarkably, except for a few exceptions, had little regulation and spotty at that, but that has tightened up the last couple of years. items covered have changed to to a much broader range.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Lawrence]

You are a lot better off than those of us in the UK, getting reasonably priced Japanes stock here is like locating hens teeth or rocking horse s**t!!  There are a couple of suppliers with hugely limited stock, then it is down to trying to pick up bits n bobs at model rail shows.  I don't think there is a shop within 250 miles of me that has Japanese stock and I only live just over 1 hour from Edinburgh

 

Does anyone know of a supplier in the centre of NY, my friend works in the financial centre there but is returning to the UK soon, perhaps I could get him to pick up some stock for me before he returns.

[David]

I think what really holds Tomix back is 100 volt power packs.  Who's going to pay to have the power pack upgraded to 120V before it goes on the market?  Probably the importer.  You really need the power pack for the Tomix switches, the constant lighting and other features.  Then on top of that there is the investment in inventory which makes it a very dicey proposition financially.

 

I should really post a proper review of the new Tomix/TomyTec cab controller (rather then the ongoing post about getting it to run well with regular equipment), but one thing I was going to point out is that the power adapter is not a fire hazard Japan only 100V unit. Rather it's labeled as 100-120V, 50-60Hz, with FCC and UL (US) badges. As the power supply lacks any Tomy/TomyTec/Tomix branding my guess it was just cheaper to make use of a generic power adapter - this could be repeated on whatever is the next interation of the Tomix controller.