What is Sonic Models?
Remember how good Bachmann’s ‘Blue Pullman’ was? Or the Graham Farish Class 350? Both models were the handiwork of Sam Leung, the proprietor of Sonic Models.
Sam worked for Bachmann Europe’s parent company Kader for 15 years. He started working on US products and then worked on models for Italy, Japan and, latterly, the UK market, which brought him into contact with the late, great Merl Evans, as well as Graham Farish design guru Colin Albright.
Having left Kader, Sam didn’t want to let his experience go to waste. After all, he knows the entire process of making a model, from the drawings all the way through to mass manufacturing. And so Sonic Models was born.
But why the UK market? And why ‘N’?
“I chose the UK market because sales and volume makes it a lot easier to get into as a starting point,” Sam explains.
He launched his first models into the
‘N’ gauge market because he’d spent a good portion of his time at Kader working on ‘N’ gauge projects. He may move into different markets, but he wants to build his business up “step by step”. That said, his next project will be a ‘OO’ gauge steam locomotive, although he’s keeping tight-lipped at the moment about what that might be.
Doesn’t the demanding British consumer put him off? If anything, he says with a chuckle, the German market is more demanding than we Brits.
It’s never been easier to commission a model from a Chinese factory, but being on the other side of the world from your factory is always going to be problematic. Sam’s advantage is that, by comparison, he’s only just down the road from the factory he’s using. “The customer wants as much as possible,” he says, “whereas the factory will do what’s easiest to manufacture. I’ll be able to go to the factory, to monitor what’s going on and to use my experience to find a balance.”
Sam wants to develop Sonic in stages, so at the moment he’s only interested in producing models under his own brand.
“I want to focus on my own models,” he says. “That way I have more freedom. I can decide what details, what functions and features
I want to include.”
Sam intends to use his manufacturing know-how to include some special features into Sonic Models products. For example, the forthcoming ‘N’ gauge GWR ‘56XX’ 0‑6‑2T (due, Sam hopes, in March 2020) includes electrical pick-ups on the trailing truck, which is new to British-outline ‘N’.
And ‘OO’, he laughs, offers more space for special features!
But Sam is keen that his models won’t just be good to look at.
“I want to focus on reliability more than detail,” he says. “You can add as much detail as you want but the model has to work. And the factory has to actually be able to produce it. I will strike that balance.”
Anyone setting themselves up in business needs to be able to rely on family members for help and Sam is proud that his son, a budding railway enthusiast, came up with the name and his wife devised the logo.
“Sonic is the name of a Japanese ‘Bullet Train’,” he explains.
Sam has also been able to rely on other friends too. Former colleague Colin Albright acts as Sam’s UK consultant while Revolution Trains looks after marketing and distributing models. He has no plans for his own Sonic Models website, however.
“Everything goes through Revolution,” he says. “I’m just too far away to communicate effectively!”
Sam’s also keen to avoid the long waiting times between announcing a product and that product being available to consumers. The ‘56XX’, he estimates, will have taken 15 months from announcement to shop and, ideally, he’d like to get that down to a year.
“I want to provide another choice,” he concludes. “I want to be able to offer reasonable price and reasonable detail and, of course, reliability.”