Ukaflyer posted:Although BTO may seem a valid way forward from Lionel’s perspective, it seems that from a consumer need it is very black or white as if something will get produced or not.
Would it not be of value to both sides if Lionel announced which specific items were short of the minimum production run and announce if they get ‘X’ many additional orders then it can be good to go? A win win for both sides.
It just seems a bit clinical at the moment on how decisions are made to run an item into production and leaves people disappointed.
The question then becomes how long to keep the order extension open. A week? A month? 3-6 months? A year? I would guess the Berks were quite a bit more than being a couple of orders short to start production. It's pretty obvious that not one bit of steel was cut yet for molds, so they wouldn't have shown up this year anyway. And with the failure of Mega-Tracks, people are probably pretty gun-shy about taking risks at the Circle L Ranch.
Companies cost every product manufactured in design, material and labor out to the fraction of cent and the numbers have to add up to allow for a profit. Where I worked the anticipated sales of our industrial instruments were part of the calculation for production, and not for just one production run.
I'm going to guess at 500 bucks each MSRP, Lionel was going to have to sell a lot more Legacy Berks than all the FlyerChief Berks combined to approach a profitable number. Of course, Lionel could've always announced a 200-300 dollar price increase and wait for those complaints to roll in...
I'm also going to guess, the 80-85% of the S market wasn't too excited about the Legacy Berks. As of this posting, there's absolutely been NO nention about the cancellation on S-Trains Yahoo or S Trains-io. I don't recall much chatter, if any, over there when the Legacy versions were first announced, either.
Rusty
