Hello!
It was a very exciting year! When we were finally able to start J-Scale in March, none of us expected to be overwhelmed with such a response by the end of the year. So at this point we would like to thank everyone who accompanied us on this journey! Thanks to our customers, thanks to our suppliers and thanks to the friends and colleagues who made the idea possible. None of us would have expected that after less than a year our small warehouse would be too small already and that we would have to move to a new, larger warehouse in the same building in December, which was my personal highlight in 2023.
Unfortunately, the sudden success did not only have positive sides. We are roughly 2 months behind in getting pre-order items into the shop (don't worry, we have most of them pre-ordered ourselves as stock, so no one should miss anything), and there are probably a good 300 items in the shop without item description or product photos. However, we are very pleased that our suppliers were able to cope with the increase in our order quantities without any problems, so on that end apart from the usual and expected delivery chaos in December, everything went smoothly with our suppliers.
But positive developments are also emerging. We are pleased to be able to start 2024 with 2 new faces in the office who will strengthen our team. We hope this can get us back to our usual speed quickly. There will also be a lot happening with our range of products! Right at the beginning of the year we are happy to finally be able to include products from Chinese manufacturer “Changming” in our shop. Our first large shipment finally arrived between the holidays and we're looking forward to being able to check them all and add them to the shop right after the New Year. Of course, this will be announced again in a separate newsletter so no one will miss out!
There is also a lot to happen beyond N Scale. We are starting to continually increase rolling stock in H0 gauge, and in January we will receive our first delivery of Z gauge material from Rokuhan. Thanks to the many customers who encouraged us to take this step!
Hopefully in the first quarter we also will permanently add Kato and Tomix track systems to the shop as planned (and as announced in numerous individual discussions). Hopefully the first sets will reach us already at the end of January.
In November we visited our first local “model railway fair”, which we think to have been successful for us. We also want to expand this commitment, albeit initially on a small level. So if anyone would like to visit us, we will be in DRESDEN at the Rudolf Harbig Stadium on Sunday, January 14th, 2024, and in BERLIN at the Marzahn Freizeitforum on Sunday, January 21st, 2024 as participants in the Modellbahnbörse there. Anyone who would like to exchange a word with us away from the stress of sales can also do so at the 18th EXPERIENCE MODELLBAHN 2024 in DRESDEN from February 9th to 11th 2024. Although we will NOT be represented there as a dealer, but we will help out at the Interessengemeinschaft Nippon (IG Nippon) display of their portable japanese layout, so you can definitely talk to us there. Otherwise, we are of course happy to welcome anyone interested in visiting our offices in Berlin Spandau. A short headsup is requested here, we are really just an office and not an actual store, so we want to make sure that we are really “there”.
I hope that we can continue to serve and inspire a large fan base in 2024 with new suppliers and the H0 and Z track systems added to our portfolio, and we look forward to being able to continue to pursue the hobby of “Japanese model railways” with enthusiasm.
At the end I would especially like to thank my wife and my daughter for all their understanding for all my overtime. My personal thanks also to my friend V., many things would not have been possible without you. Thanks to the two communities IG-Nippon (ig-nippon.org) and JNS (jnsforum.com), which I would like to recommend to anyone who is interested.
The whole J-Scale team wishes everyone a happy new year 2024! We look forward to another great year with you!
Yours
Stephan
