Today we got the complete list of prices for New Items 2009 Marklin, Trix, Minitrix and 4MFOR that Walther's Trains will sell to North American Marklin Dealers.
Note that Marklin GmbH (Germany) has forced all the American and Canadian Dealers to buy trough Walther's Trains after they named them as their "Exclusive Distributor" for North America and Canada.
If you review my postings in our web site, you will find my predictions done a year ago, where I said "prices used by Walther's to USA Dealers in 2008 are just a laxative to keep Dealers shut up and to prevent a revolution among Dealers against Marklin Inc. and of course, against Fred Gates, the architect of all this mess, and try to say that Walther's was a fair and good decision for Marklin to name them "Exclusive""
Well, today I have the proof of what I said and AGAIN, I was right.
The prices Walther's has set for USA and Canadian Dealers for Marklin and Trix/Minitrix compared against the prices any German Dealer gets is a whooping average of 36% to 41% higher for USA and Canada Dealers.
One thing I do not understand, is that each item has a different percentage in its markup. It seems that they sell higher by what they believe it is a popular or nicer item thank those they believe are not that popular or not nicer.
Any way, this will kill almost 90% of the Dealers in USA that have no way to get merchandise from Germany, as they will not be able to compete against let's say Dealers such us [Micro Macro Mundo Inc.] and those other 3 big in USA and Canada.
We can sell (and we will) to end users LOWER than the price Walther's has set for Dealers.
Example: Our price for Marklin 36216 $ 132.81 Walther's price to Dealers $ 146.99 (Walther's offers a volume discount that can go to a maximum of 7% to Dealers based on Purchases on the previous years. Just very few have this amount. The most Dealers have just 2% to 4%. We had past year an 8% because of our larger purchases during 2007 direct from Marklin, that even with it, our buying price will be higher ($ 135.23) than our selling ($ 132.81) price if we buy from Walther's now.)
This is the same pattern they [Walther's] always had with all other products they carry such as Faller, Vollmer, Trix, Brawa, Preiser and many others, where the markup they have for Dealers is a minimum of 40% compared to the prices those same Factories sell to us Direct.
Of course, we have a factor unknown that is the exchange rate, however, all indicates that the cycle is going in our favor now and that the US Dollar will gain strength against the Euro very fast and maybe we will see soon Euros at $ 1.20 what will make even more attractive our prices.
We remain all our Customers and friends as well as SPIES that we price our products based in actual exchange rate at import time (release time for new items) and that we only make a very modest mark-up so all those that order "blind" from us get the advantage that they pay a fair price that will be set at shipping time and that can save them good bunch of money compared with those that pre-order at fix prices.
We can also have a pre-order price based in an exchange rate between a range, lets say between 1.28 and 1.33 Dollars per Euro but that will change in the same percentage that rate changes at release time if it goes over or under these rates.
We would like to have your opinion on this mater on how to price our products.
So be alert and have the eyes open to our new items for 23009 for Marklin and Trix Minitrix.
In the mean time, we demand to the new Management of Marklin GmbH to open again the Factory Direct program and have only one UNIVERSAL Price no matter what Country the Dealer might be.
We consider this measures and prices by Marklin and the Distributor to be a discrimination to all collectors on this Country as we, the Dealers, are forced to sell at higher prices than those in the rest of the World to only feed a Distributor that we do not need at all.
It is a fact now that repairs and spare parts can take several months before we get them back, that most of the new units damaged must be sent to Factory by the Tech Department of Walther's as they are unable to repair electronic boards and that is only be done every 3 month in average we were told.
We do not need this kind of service. WE can not deny that Walther's have done good progress in shipping in good conditions and protecting their packages and receiving stock from Factory faster, however, replenishing stock of regular items is an other story and they have NOTHING nor dates when they will get normal products back to stock.
This is damaging more our economics and our source of business and Marklin GmbH/Walther's must be liable for the lost of revenue of Dealers due their prices and policies.
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