Thank You Danny! We are very fortunate that you make this video for us
Hello Danny,
Quite great cinema that you show us there. Thanks for the impressions. Maybe I will manage to visit the event next time. Thanks for the video.
This was a brochure that I made together with Uwe on my exhibition.
It was originally written in German I just pushed it through google translator into English.
So there may be some strange translations:
Bing and America
For every German toy manufacturer, the USA was a large sales area for their products. This also applied to the Bing company from Nuremberg, the largest toy manufacturer in the world between 1900-1932.
How much sales the Bing company achieved on the American market and how large the export quota was has not yet been researched, but one can imagine that the USA was of great economic interest for the company, as it had sales offices and constant trade travelers on site . From 1917 these were supported by the Group's own central sales organization CONCENTRA from Leipzig.
Americans loved German toys and had the financial means to buy such toys for their children.
This is why collectors can still find many beautiful and rare pieces in the USA that were spared from World War II.
But it was not always easy to gain a foothold on the American market, especially the isolation and reprisals after the First World War made it very difficult for German producers.
But Bing has also found a way to rebuild sales in the USA, on the one hand through cooperation with American manufacturers, on the other hand with the help of family members who founded satellite companies on American soil (e.g. John Bing New York).
America at that time had 3 major toy manufacturers that also produced steam toys.
The oldest is Weeden, there was “Empire” from Metal Ware Corp. as well as Jensen.
The Louis Wolf company was added at a later date.
Bing and Weeden did not actually work together, but were tough competitors, sparked by the mail order company Sears. The Sears order catalog was very popular in the United States.
As a big buyer, Sears had a lot of purchasing power and tried to set prices with it.
Among other things, there were differences of opinion with the Weeden company about the purchase price of the steam engine model No. 14.
As a result, Sears asked Bing and Doll for a cheaper copy of this Model 14.
However, this was so popular in the US that Bing and Doll were unable to meet production and delivery dates. Sears was forced to buy from Weeden after all, but at a higher price than before.
Bing also began working with Empire after World War I to regain a foothold in the American market.
John Bing New York ordered the very popular Empire B30 model, but with the Bing USA label.
In 1928, Louis Wolf and Bing merged under the Bing-Wolf brand.
With the bankruptcy of the toy industry of the Jewish company Bing in 1932 as a result of the global economic crisis and political changes in Germany, the Bing-Wolf company also ended
Very nice camera work Danny, interesting gathering & some fantastic displays there.