New 2010 items have been posted in our web site

The new items for 2010 are already posted in our web site.

Please visit the link above to see what's new from Marklin, Trix, Minitrix, Brawa, Vollmer, Faller, Viessmann and Preiser.
Also this year, we will carry LGB, POLA and Kibri as result of purchases from some of our Manufacturers of these new Brands.

344 items arrived in one large shipments

344 items arrived in this last shipment from Marklin, Trix, Faller and Vollmer.
We can say now, that we are well prepared to face the season 2009 and that our Inventory in Faller and Vollmer is almost 98% of the products on the program of each of these Manufacturers including a very large selection of discontinued items that we still have stock. If you have the time, we invite you to browse each of these Manufacturers in our web site www.rocousa.com/faller.asp

and www.rocousa.com/vollmer.asp and take advantage of our very low prices nobody can bit us in USA.

Do not forget to review Preiser at www.rocousa.com/preiser.asp We offer the lowest guaranteed price in the Continent and our stock is more than 97% total production in HO, N and Z gauge.
In 1 gauge and G gauge we are not well stocked due low demand on those gauges, but we are able to bring any item you need in our next regular montly shipment.

Also, now for Marklin, we offer upgrades from conventional or Delta units to Digital at cost of decoders plus locomotive, no labor charges. If you see any locomotive in our database you like and need it Digital, we will install the decoder for you at cost of decoder and no charge for labor.

Survey running in our web site

As many of you have noticed already, we are inviting some web surfers to enter in our web site survey.
This is a survey very easy to answer and will take you less than 2 minutes, just a few clicks.
Please note that all answer are anonymous, so we can not know who wrote or punched what.

We have received some comments requesting all sort of stuff such as the cost of shipping a product.

The survey does not indicate name or e-mail of user, so there is no way for us to answer any question you may have.
If you have any questions, please use e-mail to us at rocousa@rocousa.com and we will be happy to answer your questions or deal with your concerns.

If you need more info in a particular item, e-mail us, do not request that on comments on the survey as we will not be able to know who you are.

And please, say what you really think without any restriction. (any way, we do not know who you are). This will help us a lot to improve or make the changes our Customers and viewers want.

Thank you for participate.

PD: Not all visitors are invited to the survey. This is not in any way a discrimination, it is just the way the people of the survey work. They say in this way is more realistic that having the opinion of each visitor.

Any way, you can refuse the survey without problems or restrictions to enter our site.

Faller bankruptcy update

On Friday, 28th August 2009 Gebr. FALLER GmbH has filed a petition in bankruptcy at the Inferior Court of Villingen-Schwenningen. Dr Volker Grub was duly appointed interim judicial receiver in bankruptcy.Grub is willing to reorganize FALLER.

Gütenbach / 2nd September 2009 – The appointed interim receiver in bankruptcy, Dr. Volker Grub, considers FALLER to be able to assume a sustainable development. He said that FALLER is a major brand, comparable with Märklin.

Even though the sales figures have decreased, FALLER remains the undisputed market leader for model railways decoration.

That means house and building models, miniature figures and terrain construction materials.

To reorganize FALLER it is necessary to modernize radically the production processes and manufacturing plants.

To this end, it is essential to perform a concentration of staff and premises.

Dr. Grub pointed out that FALLER has still a difficult course to follow.

All persons involved, shareholders, employees, trade union, customers, banking houses, the staff pension association as well as all other creditors will have to cooperate in that task.

It will be unavoidable to dismiss some staff.

However, the production site of Gütenbach will be maintained.

The family of owners rallied round Mrs. Ursula Herbertz is prepared to commit itself one more time financially.

It is Grub’s intention to submit a financial rescue plan intended to settle the outstanding liabilities amounting to some nine million euros.

Grub proposes to submit this very year the financial rescue plan to the vote of a general assembly of creditors, so as to be able to leave again the bankruptcy procedure early in 2010.

For any further information, please turn to: Dr. Volker Grub

FALLER filled for BANKRUPTCY

Again, as we set and predicted, Faller has filled for Bankruptcy due to insolvency.
You may read the report on the link given (click on title above and then on translate to read in English).

All these Manufacturers that have enforced the use of Distributors are on the same path. Faller was not an exception.

The prices set by Walthers in USA to Dealers of Faller was more than a 30% higher than prices Dealers can get in Germany and many times, even higher than those we sell to our end users.

We have been buying Faller for over 15 years direct in Germany and we always told them to deal direct with their Dealers instead to go trough distributors, that only make things to go wrong, prices higher, slower service and always in not enough quantity.

The recent bankruptcies of Marklin, Roco, Fleischmann, Jouef, Lima, Rivarossi, and many others must be a clear sign that Manufacturers are doing something wrong.

What are they doing wrong? Not hearing what Dealers say and not taking care of the needs of Dealers and end users.

Having conditions of sale that are not equal to each Dealer is also part of the problem. If a Company does not have an equally and fair price for ALL its Dealers, is directly going to hell, because Dealers form alliances using the one with best conditions to get what they need, but normally this will be less purchases than if they go direct to the Factory and all have the same price.

The export department Manager at Faller has been for many years a blind non sense incompetent person that never saw that Markets like ours (America) was open for millions of Customers if only we cut have direct supply of goods at good price without having to use any Distributor to make more affordable their products to end users and also, produce items that are more American look alike as those made by Cornerstone.

This last Faller notice concern us very much, as we saw for some time now, that they were discontinuing a bunch of stuff and the new items were very few and not interesting at all.

At this pace, soon the European Train Market will be over and I believe that the hobby will have tough times to model in good quality using products from German Manufacturers.

Hope Faller can come out soon of this mess they (and their Export Incompetent Manager) have created.

We still have VOLLMER that we believe is even better in quality for buildings even when they do not have the large selection that Faller had, but the Company seems to be held in a more open view of how business are done in the 21st. Century open global markets.

Walther's sells at more than 40% higher than us

For all those that are receiving the WALTHERS FLYER on the Mail, due the incorrect and unauthorized violating privacy use of the Marklin Club mailing list, to try to take advantage offering all sort of products including all those that we and many of the Marklin Dealers also carry, it is a good idea to compare the prices they have against ours.

In a review of the "SPECIAL PRICE" they show on the last Flyer April 2009 (sale ends 05-31-09 they say) we have found that ALL the products we also carry such as:
Faller, Vollmer, Preiser, Wiking, Bush, Noch are priced way above 40% from our listed price in our web site www.rocousa.com

Marklin and Trix are also offered DIRECTLY to end users, so now we have a new competitor.

But we can rest easy because their prices are way above 20 to 30% higher than ours.
For example a 37187 set for $ 559.99 when our price is just $ 397.23 what about that ah?
A 43614 for $ 149.99 when our price is $ 110.27
A 46329 for $ 144.99 when our price is $ 117.39

So this is just a confirmation of what I have being saying for many years: Walthers does not care for Dealers and much less for users. They want the pealed potato and that's it.

They always fought against Dealers trying to buy direct with the argument that we had advantage over Distributors, well, they are doing the same selling direct to end users, and unfortunately, every day it is a new idiot on the street that believes Walthers is the God of the Trains and will buy from them instead of searching where to buy the same item for a lot less.

Oh well, an other day

Big jump of Euro against Dollar

Today we had a big jump of the Euro against the US Dollar.
These are not good news and those who say they know about currencies, are saying that Euro will be even more stronger, what will have as a result, new higher prices for all those items imported from Europe.

As many have noticed, some items have arrived previously to this rise and can see that for those items we got, the prices were adjusted lower, so we keep our word to try to have the best price possible within the range of our possibilities.

To help a little bet, we have not increased our prices on all what we have in stock, so you may take advantage of those very low prices.

Brawa, Faller, Vollmer, Preiser and 4MFOR new items 2009 published

We have published the new Items 2009 for Brawa, Faller, Vollmer, Preiser and 4MFOR.
From the page of new items, you can navigate to the specific page you look for.

Orders are being taken to assure not only availability and faster shipments but lower price.

We invite you to browse our pages for the latest news on new items.