Reynauld's Stocks the complete line of Marklin products, we are an authorized Marklin digital dealer and repair center. We have been representing Marklin products since 1987 and for the last eight years have received the Marklin Outstanding Achievement Award. We have an extremely large Marklin inventory which consists of many rare and limited items. We also stock all the regular cataloged items. When it comes to Marklin, Reynauld's is your one stop shop!!!
The Beginning
In 1859, when tin smith Theodor Friedrich Wilhelm Märklin
(1817-1866) made his decision
to start producing doll's house accessories of lacquered tinplate, you
can be sure he had no idea he was founding a firm of world renown. It's
possible the idea came from his second wife Caroline (1826-1893), whom
he had married the same year he made his fateful decision in the royal
Württemberg borough of Göppingen, where he had lived since
1840. At any rate Caroline, a disciple of political economist Friedrich
List, brought great energy and a brilliant talent for organization into
building up the business. Just a few years later they had to move into
bigger living and working premises because of demand for their products.
The death - in an accident - of the firm's founder
in 1866 was a severe blow, and only the hard work and determination
of his widow kept the company from collapse. She wanted to keep the
business going for her three sons and so, for twenty years, she put
up with extreme hardship. Caroline remarried in 1868, but the help she
had hoped for in bearing the burden never came.
Unhappily for her, the children seemed to have no interest
in the toy business. It was not until after the death of his stepfather
that one of the sons, Eugen Märklin (1861-1947) picked up the threads
- albeit only as a side-line, since he had a well-paid job elsewhere,
as had his brothers. Finally though, on 1st March 1888, he decided with
his brother Karl to found an unlimited trading company, and to incorporate
their parents' business in this.
The years
that followed, like those that had gone, were not free from worries
about the company's existence. But optimism, an inherited determination
and far-sighted business sense enabled Eugen Märklin to over-come
the difficult times. It has to be noted, too, that without the hard
work and encouraging help of his wife, the early phase of building up
the business would not have gone so successfully. It was during this
time that Eugen Märklin made the astute and- in the best sense
-fateful decision in 1891 to take over the Ludwig Lutz tinplate toy
factory in Ellwangen, a company whose products had been prized for decades
at home and abroad because of their beauty. (Gradually, because of old-fashioned
production and marketing methods, Lutz had become unable to compete
effectively). The era of hand-made products was over. Eugen Märklin
offered the Lutz work force the chance of resettling in Göppingen
and thus keeping their jobs -something which showed a sense of social
responsibility which in those days was far from being a matter of course.
The know-how which long-serving and experienced staff specialists brought
with them was, of course, a benefit to the company. Eugen Märklin
clearly recognized not only the weaknesses of Lutz production methods
but also their strong points, and for his own business he found a middle
road between cheap mechanical mass production with lithographic printing
and costly, hand-made production by craftsmen. And that's how it stayed
- give or take occasional changes in stress on certain products - until
the end of the tinplate era.
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