Athearn Sold!

Ray Marinaccio

Active Member
I hope this will be a new beginning.
Hopefully Horizon Hobby will see the need to continue the reasonably priced kits and keep parts available.
 
Sad to see Athearn sold, but maybe some good will come of it. Customer service has had its shortcomings of late. I too hope they continue their standard blue box fare for us kit bashing types.

Greg
 

fifer

Active Member
New Age

With all the buying and selling in the corprate market today , and being involved in it for 31 years , I can tell you that SERVICE is almost a thing of the past.
Most employee's of big companies want to please the consumer but the companies can't provide it because of centralization of services.
Corprate America thinks everything can be done with a computer and we all know service ( the kind we need ) doesn't come from there, it is human contact we seek.
I hope I am wrong but I have delt with Horizon and others in the retail business and I think we could be in trouble.
Thanks Athearn , for years of true service!!!
Mike
:cry: :( :rolleyes: :eek:ops:
 

Vic

Active Member
Horizon is a big outfit. Looks like they just made themselves the exclusive distributor of Athearn by purchasing the company. They have done this with several other hobby products, mainly in the radio control field.
 

fifer

Active Member
Once Again

Boy I hate that word EXCLUSIVE.
In a thesourus does that also mean EXPENSIVE?
Mike

:cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :mad:
 

Russ Bellinis

Active Member
I'm not privey to their financial info, but it wouldn't surprise me if Geddes and Macias overextended when they bough Athearn. Then they find out that they have to constantly develop new product which costs more money. Finally the margin on the "blue box" kits is so low, that someone having to order a missing truck because someone at the factory forgot to put it in, or someone at the hobby shop opened a box and stole a truck costs them more than they made on the kit to start with. If they get to keep running the company with someone elses money, I can see why they would sell. Athearn is one of the few companies in the model railroad field that listens to customers and tries to address problems with product changes. For instance, they used to glue the ready to run passenger cars together until modelers complained that they couldn't get them apart to add interiors, weight, or lighting packages. The new ready to run passenfger cars are not glued.
 
P

philip

Russ: I was at a friends house and he owns one of those HO RTR John Deere Caboose. It snaps together on one end and the other end has two unremovable tabs that prevents disassemble. What a pain in the :curse: Those tabs are modern technology:mad: It could be taken apart but would ruin the model! What were they thinking?:sleeping:


philip:rolleyes:
 

marc gast

Member
Horizon

Mike,

I agree with your 100% on the Horizon and the "Corporate" no human wanted issue.

I have also delt with Horizon and was not pleased at all with the service. Also, they could care less about the mom and pop shops. Also, Horizon's new policy is they sell to only those with "Store Front" operations. They won't even sell to Walther's. Now what does that tell you.

Horizon buying Athearn is only a gimmick to fill the void which they have ignored for many years. Supply the industry with a good selection of model trains, if any. I see no futher improvements with this purchase.

Although I don't model much in HO anymore, Athearn is off my list.

Marc:mad: :curse: :curse: :curse: :mad: :mad: :curse: :curse: :mad: :curse: :confused: :curse: :mad: :( :curse: :curse: :confused: :confused: :confused: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:
 
Top