[lornecherry]

The fact that no major distributor handles Kyosho does not bode well ...if you noticed the major mail order Tower Hobbies also dropped the Kyosho line a few years back; that was surely a kick in the teeth for an already low NA market share.

It may not be strictly Kyosho's fault though ...the high Japanese Yen combined with different N. American buying habits (we tend to like things big), and the high price of the car, have created the perfect storm for their marketing manager.

Although dictating that a hobby store must put a track into valuable real estate has its merits with respect to bringing people into that store over ordering online, ultimately it's the hobby store that must want to do this; I'm sure many franchisees shied away because it's risky to give that much space to a product with questionable acceptance here in North America, let alone one that's selling at the same price as much larger hobby-class cars that are already widely accepted.

Closed distribution usually backfires faster than detuned Fiat in a Saskatchewan snowstorm. And these are already a tough enough sell at $200-300 US, without silly restrictions on how they can be sold. Open up the distribution; lower the price before they get cloned or grey-marketed anyway, and simply get kids and adults racing at a reasonable price. There, I've made my marketing peace.

In spite of the hard distribution issues, the idea of micro-sized hobby-class racing has a definite market niche with so much potential – many have tried to do the Internet ranking and lap timing before but have failed. Kyosho has all the all the tools to make it work and addressed every complaint we had on the well-loved Epoch. Longer run times, questionable quality, scale detail and lap timing were all things we wanted to address with the Epoch's successor.

I only hope I’m wrong about the distribution …I really want this to work.