Found this discussion in a different forum. I just went to the Hobby Lobby site and no trains now.
Not sure if this has been posted here yet.
Rich
Except for some good deals on scenery, I wouldn’t consider it a great loss. Hobby Lobby’s train selection has always been fairly small, as well as overpriced (around $160 for a Bachmann 2-6-2!?). I don’t know if it’s the same for all of them, but that’s how it’s been with the one here.
my local one did got a bunch of stuff cheap
about the only stuff i ever bought there, i could have gotten somewhere else. besides, they were closed on sundays around here and that was when we “Godless heathens” went mall crawling.
grizlump
The one in College Station, TX has restocked a few items. They’ve discontinued the DPM buildings, but they do have a limited amount of Woodland Scenics material again.
I picked up some Woodland Scenics figure packs, not sure if my local one has any scenery left, I might go check.
As mentioned this isn’t a huge loss. It wouldn’t really affect me if my LHS hadn’t of closed; now it’s either go to Augusta Georgia or the internet, but now this makes it hurt just a bit, mainly because now those are the only two ways to get a lot of scenery items now.
All the Hobby Lobby in Alexandria carried (trainwise) was some sets, some individual cars, a limited selection of track, some figures, vehicles, a limited number of structure kits and some scenery items. Nothing to really get excited about. Now I’ll just have to order my items and tack $10 onto the total.
The only good Hobby Lobby is for around here is the paint selection. As long as they keep that, no real loss.
I love it----all Hobby Lobby was was a little retail chain that is now cutting out whatever comes within its ken to cut. Soon they’ll be selling nothing but knitting supplies and scrapbooking supplies----then pooooof, nothing.
That happened to 2 chains up here-----White Rose and Leisure World.
[:-,]
A few years ago Hobby Lobby split off its west coast operations into a seperate chain called Hobby People, so we dont have them anymore but Hobby People is absolutly worthless for trains [tdn]
They only carried a few (if any) bottom dweller Bachmann trainsets, no rolling stock and only a pittance of scenery supplies, also Bmann bottom feeder items.
I only go there for basswood, Tamaya paints and GapZap, everything else I get from the real LHS - Whistle Stop Train.
That’s what’s know as the Catch-22 of inventory management. They don’t carry more of it because it doesn’t sell, but it doesn’t sell because they don’t carry enough of it.
I once asked the local genius manager at Target why they didn’t stock a particular brand of decongestant in the size I liked, and he said, “It doesn’t sell.” So I pointed to the empty spot on the shelf and said, “Well, you’re right. It’s hard for customers to select it when it isn’t there.”
The loss is to the city where HL may have been the only retailer left that sold any Model Railroad items. At one time you could get deals on Model Power buildings. Now all that is left is the paint department & a few Woodland Scenic items. If you got there in May you could get some items from the clearance section (50% off)
On this & other Forums I don’t know how many model railroaders got their start with a HL train set. We will see how long those stay in the store. I suspect they could be a loss leader item till next Christmas.
Yeah, we had a snack machine where I uses to work. Suddenly they stopped carrying the most popular snack. I asked the vendor why and he said they couldn’t keep it in stock in the machine, so they quit carrying it. So I asked couldn’t they drop one that no one liked and double the popular one? - no that was against company policy.
Paul
I go to Hob Lob for;
basswood
paint
paint brushes of all kinds, prices and quality
chain (jewerly dept, yes you will get some funny looks [:D])
glue, glue and more glue
India Ink
assorted tools
cork
glaze
matte medium
hot glue sticks
Every Hob Lob in my area is always packed with people, and because they dumped the train set stuff doesn’t mean they are going out business.
You are really missing the boat if you didn’t realize they are a hobby supply store. I print off the 40% store coupon and stock up.
Paul the lack of logic stated in that last line is why I firmly beleive most companies could be better run by chimps pushing buttons at random.[(-D]
That’s what’s know as the Catch-22 of inventory management. They don’t carry more of it because it doesn’t sell, but it doesn’t sell because they don’t carry enough of it.
That’s what happened to the Hobbytown USA locations near me. 5% trains, 95% RC stuff. Owners said train stuff just didn’t sell.
Every time I was in those stores I saw a dozen people come in looking for train stuff. They saw there was nothing worth buying and walked out. Never saw a single person look at the RC stuff.
I pointed this out to the owner that he only had train customers coming and leaving without buying anything cause there was nothing worth buying. He shook his head and said yep, people just don’t buy train items anymore.[D)]
He completely missed the point that if he had better train inventory he probably would have had a dozen customers buying things while I was there. This is why he failed.
I’m not sure about this. We had one of those stores in our local mall. They did have some train items, but in my mind it was all overpriced (otherwise known as full retail). So would we have bought there anyway?
[:-^]Whoops!
There goes another lollipop stand…[:-^]
“I firmly beleive most companies could be better run by chimps pushing buttons at random.”
yeah, but where are you going to find chimps with MBA’s?
seriously, though, i dont’ think enough businesses know the difference in sales and marketing. my understanding is that sales is trying to get people to buy what you offer and marketing is trying to provide what people want to buy.
when i started out in business years ago, i had no formal training so i went to prospective customers and asked them what they needed and what they were comfortable paying for it. upon learning that, i tried to acquire the inventory that would move and at a cost that left me some “wiggle” room. that method worked for me up until the time i retired.
maybe, Hobby Lobby like many other retail outlets has a regimented corporate structure and the people who run the purchasing department are not in touch with those who are trying to sell what they have bought. much less the customers.
way back when K-Mart first got into financial trouble it was discovered that they stocked the same items in every store. their fall/winter clothing line even included hooded parka coats in their florida and gulf coast locations.
if HL really cared about the model train business, you would think they would hire a consultant, if necessary, to steer them in the right direction but model rr stuff is probably such a small percentage of their business that they don’t really care.
not a rant, just the way i see it.
grizlump
Who said these particular chimps need MBA’s ???
A lot of the trouble is that there are too many layers of management in retail chains, who have no idea about marketing, so “company policy” applies to all the stores, irrespective of where they are located. If the local manager was on a sales commission, selling what he knew would sell, and layers of management chimps were eliminated, the CEO would probably have a much closer and better look at the market overall, so you wouldn’t be selling fur coats in Florida, or swimwear in Alaska.
Dennis