Model train magazines continue to sell well. In some newsagencies they are among the titles achieving good year on year growth.
Model train enthusiasts are passionate about their hobby. Money is often not an b=object for feeding their passion.
Newsagencies with strong model train magazine sales have an excellent opportunity to leverage this with allied product purchases, often with good GP north of 50%.
I was fortunate last week to be at Spielwarenmesse, the international toy fair in Nuremberg/Germany, the world’s biggest toy fair. This fair is massive. The Melbourne and Sydney gift fairs , for example, would each be less than 10% of the size.
One hall of Spielwarenmesse is dedicated to model trains. I was fascinated by the range and the potential for businesses. I was looking at in relation to my work with newsX0press, researching growth category opportunities.
The most interesting part of the model train hall was watching the people there, mainly guys. They wandered around like kids in a lolly shop, in awe of what they were seeing … and, it was easy to get drawn into their passion.
Passion is important in retail. The more we can serve the passion of a cohort of shoppers the more rememberable our businesses will be. When it comes to model trains, some in our channel have the traffic already. The next step is to use this as a base for growth.
The trains hall was one small part of what what I was at Spielwarenmesse to check out.
I’m planning on going next year as I have invites from a couple of the model kit manufacturers and know a high end truck model manufacturer based locally that attends every year.
Both model trains and kits have a big market that I think many underestimate. The trick is you need to be a specialist to know what to buy as there is alot of competition online and in specialist stores and it is very price sensitive on certain lines.