Ring Out of Business?

[TwinStar]

We’re setting up a Free-mo layout this weekend  and one of our regulars is a very large and well known retailer. They’re being told that Ring is out of business and they’ve had modelers calling this week scooping up the last of their Fred stock.

Any intel about this?

[William Brillinger]

Ring shipped an order to me last week and I talked to them yesterday about some other orders I expect to ship next week.

[nodcc4me]

I sent an HC in for repairs and received it back a few days ago. An email note from TR did not mention anything about shutting down.

[G8B4Life]

Sounds like someones just trying to stir up trouble, or extra business. Given how secretive Ring is about many things I doubt anybody would know in advance, we'd all know at the same time when it when Ring announced it .

- Tim

[KPack]

For some reason the FREDs are not being produced currently, and that is being noticed.  I don't know why, but my guess is that parts are an issue to obtain, or maybe he just decided to move full to Railpro and nothing else.  I believe that back during the height of the pandemic he was having a hard time getting certain parts to assemble circuit boards.  That's probably still the case now given the rise in inflation and shipping problems.  I'm currently not concerned.

[Alan]

@William Brillinger

Bill, do us a favor and let us know immediately if in fact Ring is closing so we can harvest hobby shop inventories.

[William Brillinger]

I will certainly do that.

[TwinStar]

Sounds like someones just trying to stir up trouble, or extra business. Given how secretive Ring is about many things I doubt anybody would know in advance, we'd all know at the same time when it when Ring announced it .

- Tim

Tim,

I can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth. This is a very large retailer and their Ring sales are a rounding error. They came to me asking for information and I told them I had no idea but that I’d ask.

Jacob

[William Brillinger]

They came to me asking for information and I told them I had no idea but that I’d ask.

Perhaps you should contact Ring instead of perpetuating such a rumor?

As a dealer I can tell you that aside from some longer delays in OCT-NOV product seems to be flowing at it's normal pace right now.

[TwinStar]

They came to me asking for information and I told them I had no idea but that I’d ask.

Perhaps you should contact Ring instead of perpetuating such a rumor?

As a dealer I can tell you that aside from some longer delays in OCT-NOV product seems to be flowing at it's normal pace right now.

How am I spreading a rumor? I presented the question that was asked of me and I asked the same question here. If they can’t get in touch with Ring them how would I assume to be able to? It seemed that a good group to query was this one. I didn’t realize everyone was so touchy.

[William Brillinger]

ok, I contacted Tim Ring.

This is in regards to a large model train retailer that only purchased EOT's.

Official word from from Ring:

We stopped production of our EOT devices which is all that they bought from us.
This will allow us to focus on our RailPro products which is a great thing for RailPro.

End of Story.

[William Brillinger]

How am I spreading a rumor? I presented the question that was asked of me and I asked the same question here. If they can’t get in touch with Ring them how would I assume to be able to? It seemed that a good group to query was this one. I didn’t realize everyone was so touchy.

People tend not to read question marks. They read the headlines and draw conclusions. By not trying to get an answer from ring yourself first you perpetuated or created the perception that Ring may be out of business. A simple email to Ring on your own would have clarified the situation and not induce a sense of panic in the Railpro community.

[KPack]

Ring's response was what I expected.  Though I will say I'm bummed that they won't be producing the EOT's anymore.  I could use several more of them.  Had I known I would have purchased before production stopped.

Good to see new products and new sound files coming out.  The only thing I hope is that releases of sound files can somehow be sped up.  I personally would love to see duplicates/alternate files of some sounds (two recordings of the EMD 16-645E3 would be great).

-Kevin