Coker Tires philosophy, from the latest Issue of HRD

[Greg Myers]

In the resent issue of Hot Rod Delux Tommy Lee Byrd writes ; " In many cases, Coker Tire restores original tire molds and puts them back into production to create authentic tires. If the molds are not serviceable, Coker Tire seeks out the original blueprint drawings in order to build a new mold. As a last-ditch effort (if the mold and drawings are not accessible), the company will track down a true original tire and reverse-engineer it. Coker Tires licensing relationship with companies such as Firestone results in period-correct tires with the appropriate branding, sizes and style."

Read through this a few times. Does it ring true to the modeling industry? In some ways and some ways not? and why not? Coker has been around for quite a while and are quite successful, wouldn't you say?

[Ace-Garageguy]

Coker tires are very nice, and certainly not cheap. And though the market for period-correct tires is miniscule in the overall scheme of things, apparently the big tire manufactures are not charging crippling licensing fees, possibly in the enlightened understanding that real car guys kinda pay attention to the brand of rubber that's on a vehicle, and that "Firestone" (or whatever) logo on the sidewall is good advertising.

Pity the same philosophy doesn't extend across the model car industry as well.

[bbowser]

Pity the same philosophy doesn't extend across the model car industry as well.

You would think the free exposure / advertising would be payment enough, but apparently not. Too many lawyers!

[Aaronw]

Coker tires is a pretty neat resource for model cars too. It can be a useful site to see what you might have found on a car of a particular vintage, particularly if you are trying to go factory stock on a kit that doesn't offer that option out of the box. My only complaint is I wish they gave a better run down on the approximate dates and uses for their tires, they appear to assume the buyer knows what they need.

As far as the licensing I don't think you can really compare the licensing of a $500 tire with a $25 plastic model. From my understanding they don't change the cost just because it is an inexpensive product, so Coker might pay for the licensing fees with a dozen tires, where Revell might have to sell several hundred kits to do the same. Model cars also have the potential to include multiple licensing fees, one to the manufacturer (Ford, GM etc), one to the custom rim maker, aftermarket speed parts etc, maybe even two sets of tires, the stock Firestone tires and the Goodyear performance tires.

It sure would be nice if the 1-1 manufacturers saw it as free advertising, but unfortunately most don't.

Edited March 29, 2014 by Aaronw

[Art Anderson]

Coker tires is a pretty neat resource for model cars too. It can be a useful site to see what you might have found on a car of a particular vintage, particularly if you are trying to go factory stock on a kit that doesn't offer that option out of the box. My only complaint is I wish they gave a better run down on the approximate dates and uses for their tires, they appear to assume the buyer knows what they need.

As far as the licensing I don't think you can really compare the licensing of a $500 tire with a $25 plastic model. From my understanding they don't change the cost just because it is an inexpensive product, so Coker might pay for the licensing fees with a dozen tires, where Revell might have to sell several hundred kits to do the same. Model cars also have the potential to include multiple licensing fees, one to the manufacturer (Ford, GM etc), one to the custom rim maker, aftermarket speed parts etc, maybe even two sets of tires, the stock Firestone tires and the Goodyear performance tires.

It sure would be nice if the 1-1 manufacturers saw it as free advertising, but unfortunately most don't.

If one were to look up, and read, the decision by the Supreme Court Of The United States, regarding the "counterfeit new parts" for American made cars back almost 30 years ago, it should be very easily understood why carmakers don't just give access, free of charge. Basically, the Court ruled that in order to protect their component parts from direct copying, the automakers had to step up, protect ALL their designs, patents, copyrights and trademarks against ALL comers, be they 1:1 parts makers, toys, model kits, even down to the likes of Gummi candies. And, that, my friends, means licensing. Oh, and the ruling does extend, by reason of precedent, to manufacturers of just about everything you can imagine, not limited to just automotive.

Art

[Greg Myers]

Art, that decision by the Supreme Court Of The United States doesn't say one word about what the manufactures should charge for a license, dose it ?

[Art Anderson]

Art, that decision by the Supreme Court Of The United States doesn't say one word about what the manufactures should charge for a license, dose it ?

No, of course not. However, before anyone thinks "carte' blanche", keep in mind that for any company to cover it's "intellectual property" (which is what designs, logo's, the shapes of car bodies etc. are) it takes a bit of staff, and that doesn't come particularly cheap--lawyers, either in-house or outsourced don't work for peanuts. There are costs involved in protecting intellectual property, and the money has to come from somewhere. Also, licensing fees collected by a major automaker aren't a significant source of their income So, companies probably charge sufficient royalties to cover most if not all, their expenses.

As for licensing free of charge to the licensor--as a form of advertising, well I rather doubt that the advertising impact would be very worthwhile, so there goes that idea. At any rate, while licensing royalties may sound huge, may grate on our collective nerves--in the larger scheme of things, they are but a cost of doing business for model companies--and not nearly the large thing on the balance sheet.

Art

[Greg Myers]

I don't agree with your opinions, sorry.

[Deano]

I don't agree with your opinions, sorry.

So, what are you disagreeing with and why, or are you just being contrary for the sake of being contrary?

[Greg Myers]

What Art said in contrast to what Coker Tire does.

[Ace-Garageguy]

There's always so many excuses and "reasons", like how much legal effort and time it would take to license tire logos to model car companies CHEAP, etc., and I just say bull.

Any competent attorney can draft a generic licensing agreement in a few hours. If I can afford to have an attorney do it for my own work, a tire company can surely afford it. It's petty cash chump-change to an outfit like Goodyear of Firestone.

And, ANY advertising is and always has been a write-off. Any costs incurred by licensing the logos could be entirely written off with a little creative accounting. IF THERE WAS ANY DESIRE to allow model companies to use tire logos, there ARE EASY COST-EFFECTIVE WAYS TO DO IT.

Personally, I'd have a much better attitude towards buying a specific tire company's product if I didn't get the impression they were nickle-and-dime happy, and all bound up with lawyers chasing every single cent. A little perspective and realism would be nice to see in the world, where every single damm thing wasn't about the dollar.

And maybe allowing model companies to license tire logos cheaply wouldn't actually generate any revenue from advertising, but by what metric would you decide that? You don't have to PROVE advertising is effective to write it off. And it surely wouldn't cost them anything either.

It's just pig-headed "that's the way it is" reasoning, which isn't reasoning at all.

Edited March 31, 2014 by Ace-Garageguy

[Harry P.]

What I don't understand is why all model kits used to have branded tires, and everyone was happy... and suddenly now "licensing fees" are being blamed for the blank generic tires in today's kits.

Weren't licensing issues in play 20 years ago?

Did the tire companies all decide to jack up their licensing fees so high that all the model manufacturers can no longer afford them? Seems unlikely.

Or... as I suspect, was is that the model companies, in an attempt to save a few bucks, decided to stop paying any licensing fees altogether to the tire manufacturers, and just put generic blank tires in kits.

[Rob Hall]

What I don't understand is why all model kits used to have branded tires, and everyone was happy... and suddenly now "licensing fees" are being blamed for the blank generic tires in today's kits.

Weren't licensing issues in play 20 years ago?

Did the tire companies all decide to jack up their licensing fees so high that all the model manufacturers can no longer afford them? Seems unlikely.

Or... as I suspect, was is that the model companies, in an attempt to save a few bucks, decided to stop paying any licensing fees altogether to the tire manufacturers, and just put generic blank tires in kits.

It looks like Round 2 has their act together as far as deals w/ the tire makers though...

[johnbuzzed]

It's an investment in marketing. I would imagine that Coker has a lot more $$$ to spend than do the model companies, and the products they sell directly reflect on the original manufacturer. And, I would also imagine that the people who buy and use Coker tires have more $$$ to spend than a majority of car modelers do ( I mean no slight or disrepect to anyone out there). They bring the products wherever they go, as a result, many more people see the product in-person and up-close; those people are potential consumers of the same products as many of them probably share the same interests- i.e., hot rods, classic cars, muscle cars, whatever.

[Ace-Garageguy]

It looks like Round 2 has their act together as far as deals w/ the tire makers though...

Could you elaborate on that please sir? I haven't bought any Round 2 models yet, and I'd like to know what their approach is.

[Rob Hall]

Could you elaborate on that please sir? I haven't bought any Round 2 models yet, and I'd like to know what their approach is.

It's pretty obvious...look around the forum at pics of any recent Round 2 kit... white letter tires, stamped sidewall slicks, branded tire sets, etc. compared to Revell's blank sidewalls...they must be doing some licensing deals..

Edited March 31, 2014 by Rob Hall

[Greg Myers]

[Art Anderson]

What I don't understand is why all model kits used to have branded tires, and everyone was happy... and suddenly now "licensing fees" are being blamed for the blank generic tires in today's kits.

Weren't licensing issues in play 20 years ago?

Did the tire companies all decide to jack up their licensing fees so high that all the model manufacturers can no longer afford them? Seems unlikely.

Or... as I suspect, was is that the model companies, in an attempt to save a few bucks, decided to stop paying any licensing fees altogether to the tire manufacturers, and just put generic blank tires in kits.

Harry,

Licensing has been around for about as long as plastic model kits! While not cars, aircraft manufacturers such as Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, Lockheed-Martin expect model kits of their aircraft (even aircraft made by companies they bought up but no longer manufacture) require licensing, whether civilian or military (bear in mind that US Military aircraft are designed in the private sector under "request for proposals" or "RFP's" and if a plane is the winning design, it gets manufactured and sold to whatever branch of the US military--and then of course there are civilian aircraft, from "general aviation" to huge airliners--all those planes stem from intellectual property owned by their respective makers. With model car kits (even the promotional model cars which are what sparked the hobby as we have come to know it today), licensing has always been part of the equation as well--just enforced and tightened up considerably after that decision handed down by the SCOTUS back in the 1980's.

But, you raise a good point: Model companies striving to save a few dollars. That has always been an issue, just as it is with any manufacturer--after all, they are in the business to make money, not just "trade" dollars. From perhaps the middle 1960's until about 10 years ago or so, the "big hogs in the litter" where model car kits are concerned was not your LHS, or even the wholesalers who supply them--rather it was the succession of "Big Box" retailers--the "...marts" of the retail industry. And, those mass retailers were in the position of being able to literally dictate the price of the vast majority of the merchandise they stocked/still stock.

Now, were say, Walmart to decide to stock model kits again all across their chain, that can easily add up to several 10's of thousands of kits of any subject they decide to buy. And therein lies the rub! When Walmart was buying upwards of 25,000 to 30,000 of any one model car kit, they were in a position to dictate the price at which they would buy them--model kit mfr's could take it or leave it. Consider that for what, a good 15yrs or so, the "standard" price point of a model car kit was pretty much cut in stone, at $10. Now, regardless of what the "Consumer Price Index" might indicate for inflation, inflation is something that affects every industry, every segment of the economy differently. Over time, the prices of some goods or services (and/or the costs of manufacturing those goods) might be pretty stable, a few might actually go down, and yet others might well rise, some more than others--all cost-driven.

But, if the biggest buyer of say, model kits, especially if their focus is on low prices, ALWAYS THE LOW PRICES, says that say, $10 MSRP (actually they are concerned with the net price they will pay for whatever merchandise line they want to carry), without regard to what the manufacturer may face, then something has to go, corners wind up getting cut IF the particular manufacturer wants to make the sale to their potential massive (and largest) customer. Back at that $10 price point for a model car kit, it became a matter of mere cents per kit here or there, perhaps down to even a fraction of a cent. If labor costs went up (either wages or benefit costs, for example) then something else had to be cut (be that making a new deal with a supplier, whatever), or else the price paid to the manufacturer had to go up. It was this almost unholy reliance on the Big Box retail market, for example, that ultimately drove Racing Champions/Ertl, and ultimately, Revell Monogram, to move their model kit production overseas (for that matter, a great many other consumer products manufacturers did exactly the same thing--by reason of the power that a retailer or two had over them). But even with production gone "offshore", costs still rise. Even China is undergoing inflation, the cost of transportation across the Pacific goes up regularly anymore. So, if a model kit manufacturer is caught in that "middle" between their "customer" on one side, and the costs of production/costs of transportation on the other side, with neither being willing (or perhaps able!) to change their "mood" in all this--other things have to give--and I am pretty convinced that this was the case at Revell--the licensing costs of making a Firestone or Goodyear branded model car kit tire simply could no longer be sustained.

Round2 operates on a considerably different business model than this, however--they are in the business of "Nostalgia"--bringing back those much-loved older model car kits, and not worrying about the Big Box stores anymore (for that matter, given that no mass-retailer today stocks model car kits all the way across their chain of stores, nor even year-round anymore, nobody in the model kit industry has to deal with their price-point intransigence currently), and as a result, their price points are what they are--no longer tied to the concept of the same price per kit year-after-year, and that's pretty much the way of it with the other companies as well. BTW, that's been the way of it with model kits from virtually every country other than the US where plastic model kits are widely sold.

Who knows (I sure don't!)? Somehow I would suspect that the tooling sections of those old Monogram "branded" tire molds probably still exist, and now that they appear to be relatively free from having to "Kowtow" to Bentonville Arkansas, it seems to me that they could fairly easily go back to including branded tires in their kits--but of course, that is a decision they have to make--after they've looked at all the ramifications.

Art

[Brett Barrow]

Like it or not, everything Art's said has been spot on.

And, on a positive note, the upcoming Revell-Germany LaFerrari will have branded tires.

[Greg Myers]

Now, were say, Walmart to decide to stock model kits again

They are in my neck o' the woods. have been for quite awhile too.

[Ace-Garageguy]

Like it or not, everything Art's said has been spot on.

Yes, and all of us with brains in our heads are fully aware of the business dynamics that result in cost-cutting. BUT...

It's pretty obvious...look around the forum at pics of any recent Round 2 kit... white letter tires, stamped sidewall slicks, branded tire sets, etc. compared to Revell's blank sidewalls...they must be doing some licensing deals..

So it's also pretty obvious that cost-effective licensing agreements CAN be and ARE being worked out, without killing kit sales or driving anyone into bankruptcy.

It's simply a matter of who wants to bother getting it worked out. Some companies do, some don't.

Edited April 2, 2014 by Ace-Garageguy

[Greg Myers]

In the resent issue of Hot Rod Delux Tommy Lee Byrd writes ; " In many cases, Coker Tire restores original tire molds and puts them back into production to create authentic tires. If the molds are not serviceable, Coker Tire seeks out the original blueprint drawings in order to build a new mold. As a last-ditch effort (if the mold and drawings are not accessible), the company will track down a true original tire and reverse-engineer it. Coker Tires licensing relationship with companies such as Firestone results in period-correct tires with the appropriate branding, sizes and style."

Read through this a few times. Does it ring true to the modeling industry? In some ways and some ways not? and why not? Coker has been around for quite a while and are quite successful, wouldn't you say?

When I first read this ( and thus my request to you to "read through this a few times) I was amazed at how this would / could apply to the model car industry as a whole, dealing with the entire kit as well as just the tires. So instead of reading about tire molds replace that with model car molds.

[Dave Van]

Can't say it better than Ace and Art already have......

Two items.....

The model companies reverse engineer kits all the time......two I got to help on....Dragon Circus Wagon from RM and AMT/MK Imperial. Both these, and many others, were reverse engineered.

License fee's can be debated forever. I got a REAL good education when we entered the NASCAR hobby market back in 1985. Our first license was with GoodYear. They charged us $25 a year, a sign contract release and a product sample. This is ALL that is needed to protect the company in EVERY area of the law. Copyright, liability and trademark law all covered 100%. The choice by some company's to turn licensing from protection under the law to a profit center is a completely different topic. We can talk about it forever.....but we can't change it.

Edited April 2, 2014 by Dave Van

[Brett Barrow]

Yes, and all of us with brains in our heads are fully aware of the business dynamics that result in cost-cutting. BUT...

So it's also pretty obvious that cost-effective licensing agreements CAN be and ARE being worked out, without killing kit sales or driving anyone into bankruptcy.

It's simply a matter of who wants to bother getting it worked out. Some companies do, some don't.

I've been saying the same thing, citing that Round2 has tire deals, so why doesn't Revell? As I mentioned, the Revell-Germany LaFerrari will have branded tires, so this bodes well for the future. We'll have to wait and see if Revell US starts doing them too.

[Brett Barrow]

Can't say it better than Ace and Art already have......

Two items.....

The model companies reverse engineer kits all the time......two I got to help on....Dragon Circus Wagon from RM and AMT/MK Imperial. Both these, and many others, were reverse engineered.

License fee's can be debated forever. I got a REAL good education when we entered the NASCAR hobby market back in 1985. Our first license was with GoodYear. They charged us $25 a year, a sign contract release and a product sample. This is ALL that is needed to protect the company in EVERY area of the law. Copyright, liability and trademark law all covered 100%. The choice by some company's to turn licensing from protection under the law to a profit center is a completely different topic. We can talk about it forever.....but we can't change it.

A whole bunch of early Polar Lights and Moebius sci-fi kits were reverse engineered Aurora kits, Revell's done it to Rommel's Rod and Tijuana Taxi in addition to the Dragon Wagon. Round2/AMT's "Leif Ericson" space ship had some original parts reverse engineered after they were lost when it was converted to the glow-in-the-dark "UFO" mystery ship. The Neil Armstrong face from Revell's Astronaut kit was lost and had to be reverse engineered...

I'm sure there's many more.

Edited April 2, 2014 by Brett Barrow