The Gebr. & Cie GmbH is a toy manufacturer in the Swabian M¤rklin is today particularly well-known for its model railways.

History

has an eventful history. The company was created 1859 by Theodor Friedrich William and began first with the production of doll kitchens.

By a changeful firm history, particularly in the initial years, the model railway, after conception of the table railway in the track width "", became generally accepted 00 as the most important product for into the 1930er years. To date primarily at Christmas as carpet length developed track width and/or size conditionally, a model railway could be operated now also all year round on substantially smaller surface. The name "for 00 "for the yardstick 1:87 one changed 1950 in "half zero ", with to abbreviation used today "the H0 ". By the rapid rise of the paragraph numbers of model railways in the 1950er and 1960er years became one of the largest offerers of model railways. 1997 took over the up to then independent company Trix.

Since beginning 20. Century was the enterprise in the property of the families Friz and Safft. At the 11. May 2006 was sold the Gebr. GmbH to the British banking syndicate Kingsbridge Capital. The new partners see potential for a market growth due to the collect Reputation of the mark; medium-term a reorganization and a resale are aimed at. The mark enjoys a Bekanntheitsgrad of 95 per cent in Germany; a value, which ranks still before Coca Cola. The sales was supported by the staff.

In recent time made not only attentive by innovations in the model course sector on itself. In the night to 18 January 2005 into the company-owned museum one broke in. Were stolen the exhibits of the historical trace 1 as well as all issued vehicles of the trace 0 and the ships of 1910 ago, steam engines and irreplaceable prototypes of the trace 00 (H0). The oldest vehicle of the museum, the first locomotive of 1891, was stolen likewise. The damage amounted to over 1 million euro. The Kriminalpolizei could be already seen the case in March 2005 to clear up and the exhibits is since May 2005 again in the exhibition.

Enterprise and market

In recent time the firm assumption of Trix and the far use of earlier GDR play goods production resident in Thuringia (sun mountain) became salient, in order to adjust the high labour costs of the manual work at the traditional location a part.

The market for high-quality play goods is for years under pressure, since itself for technically interested children and young people apart from the classical leisure topics sport, model construction and model railways also the computer into the children's rooms moved. tried this trend under maintains the connection to the specialized trade to meet, as a trend was launched to always collecting tank models with high order and complex processed, which address however at the very front a small and financially strong public advanced age. This clientele was partly bounced also again, as equivalent or - similar models were brought in large color and printing on variety to proud prices to the market. Collecting tank models of locomotives cost usually over 200 euro, up to course sets like the "Northlander", which is acted as collecting object privately in the order of magnitude of 1700 euro. Who wants to collect as collecting tanks with on "completeness", must be extremely financialstrong; at last DM times in the beginning of the 2000er years amounted to the sum price of the products of a catalog of the usually-collected track width H0 approx. 65,000 DM, and approx. a quarter of it waited for the annually supplementing procurement of new publications.

Also took own paths to the control engineering of the model courses; the so-called Motorola format used by was exclusively, and provided with functional losses long time, which concerned the of the control of locomotives. In recent time again attempts were undertaken to provide for the product "model course" a broader basis: committed a tradition break and offered entering he sets in the Christmas business also with Discountern.

The competitors of (essentially meat man, Roco) have the same problems in the reason, with the exception of meat man however all became already abroad active. Thus for example with Piko all locomotives are manufactured from the simple "hobby program" in Asia. In addition, the manufacturing of a part of the product range is already paged out after the Far East, which caused however so far no quality A BOSOMs. Also exzellente models of American model course producers manufactured in China confirm this.

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