This fellow bought the hobby shop in Northampton, Ma many years ago.
It carried all hobbies as I recall. Moved it to Hadley, Ma a short ways then to Springfield.
When the Basket Ball Hall of Fame was built he had to move across the river to West Springfield where the Amherst train show is held every year. Stayed there for many years. I went there many times. Too bad. Many modelers in the area must buy online now. I have seen the shop shrink the past ten years.
Rich
It’s sad, but nothing new here.
To quote the retiring owner:
~ Times are changing and it’s tough to compete with online retailers.
~ The interests of people are changing.
~ Not as many hobbyists as there used to be.
~ The younger kids aren’t as interested as they used to be.
Rich
Noting the comments of the retiring owner, they seem a bit out-of-touch. Blame the closing on kids attached to there phones and interests changing. IMO, easy straw-men to knock down.
Yes, times are changing and the way people shop is changing too. If the guy is too old or mentally too old to adapt to the modern market trends which is online shopping, then maybe it’s time for him to thow in the towel. But same can be said for other brick and mortar operations. Adapt or die. Horse and buggy gave way to automobiles too.
I have gone there on weekends and noticed not near as people over the years.
The owner has made special request from me. A friend in the local club use to do all the DCC conversions/repairs for the owner
Many restaurants even closing in the Springfield metropolitan area. Some have been around for years.
Times are really changing.
Rich
Wonder if this is the same shop that I went to when I was at UMass in the early 70’s. Heard it changed around then, not sure if moved or may have been when he bought it. It was north of the center of town if I remember correctly.
I moved too far away to stay a customer.
Sad, I am expecting my local LHS to close anytime. The building is for sale. Afraid I don’t do a lot of business there, as the selection is quite limited.
Good luck,
Richard
I hate to fall into the trap (at least, it’s almost always a trap) of sweeping generalizations because the more nuanced analysis is usually the more accurate. However:
a. the millenials and younger are doing less shopping because they aren’t very successful at gaining a ‘living’ wage. The market these days is the service industry, and that’s for people earning $75K an up who can afford to pay for those services. The youth of today are earning minimum wage, or a few bucks more. So…;
b. On what do they spend their disposable income (let’s not get into the still-living-in-mom’s-basement stuff.)? Food. Delivered increasingly. That doesn’t come cheaply. Skip the Dishes. Data plans. New smartphone every 18 months when their provider sends them an email saying they can get the latest-but-one for about $180. They don’t buy cars, they take transit, and they don’t save for a house. They expect that mom will bequeath her house to them in time;
c. Meanwhile, at the other end of the life-span, many of us have begun the dying off of the early boomers, and certainly their parents are either dead or within three or four years of their ends. It’s a dwindling market;
d. Those making a good wage are compara
After a quite long period of decline, the hobby of model railroading is enjoying some kind of a resurrection on my country. Maybe we owe this to “ambassadors” like Miniatur Wunderland and a growing awareness that trains are “green”. Nevertheless, hobby shops are heading the way of the dinosaurs here as well. There is not just a single reason to be blamed for that. Adding to what Selector has said in his above post, one of the reasons is the growing second hand market and the easy access to it via the various auction sites. For quite a few model railroaders it is the only way to remain “in business”, as current pricing has put the hobby quite out of reach for the young guy earning his hobby money on the paper route or the retiree depending on his state pension, which has seen quite a few cuts over the last years. Hobby shops cannot survive on selling structure kits and scenic materials alone.
^From the young model railroaders tired of being used as a bad argument in straw man’s arguments all I can say is… thank you for stating all of the above.
[quote user=“selector”]
riogrande5761
Noting the comments of the retiring owner, they seem a bit out-of-touch. Blame the closing on kids attached to there phones and interests changing. IMO, easy straw-men to knock down.
Yes, times are changing and the way people shop is changing too. If the guy is too old or mentally too old to adapt to the modern market trends which is online shopping, then maybe it’s time for him to thow in the towel. But same can be said for other brick and mortar operations. Adapt or die. Horse and buggy gave way to automobiles too.
I hate to fall into the trap (at least, it’s almost always a trap) of sweeping generalizations because the more nuanced analysis is usually the more accurate. However:
a. the millenials and younger are doing less shopping because they aren’t very successful at gaining a ‘living’ wage. The market these days is the service industry, and that’s for people earning $75K an up who can afford to pay for those services. The youth of today are earning minimum wage, or a few bucks more. So…;
b. On what do they spend their disposable income (let’s not get into the still-living-in-mom’s-basement stuff.)? Food. Delivered increasingly. That doesn’t come cheaply. Skip the Dishes. Data plans. New smartphone every 18 months when their provider sends them an email saying they can get the latest-but-one for about $180. They don’t buy cars, they take transit, and they don’t save for a house. They expect that mom will bequeath her house to them in time;
c. Meanwhile, at the other end of the life-span, m
In typical milennial fashion, all I can say is “Okay boomer.”
Two replies in and the thread has turned into another PHONE BAD, KIDS STUPID argument in spite of Jim’s best efforts. All of the economic problems that push my generation away from expensive permanent hobbies are the fault of the generations that came previously. You made the world, we’re only adapting to what you did to us.
On the topic of hobby shops - adaptation isn’t too hard. One local store expanded to hosting train-themed parties, and that did very well for them. Another is only three years old and doing excellently because they do about 90% of their sales through their website. People tend to think they’re a bigger company than they actually are because of this, but it keeps the locals happy because there is actually a store that keeps things in stock. The root cause of hobby shop closures, in spite of what many in this forum whine about, is not the “younger generation,” it’s the owners either refusing to change their operating practices, or simply just retiring due to old age.
The hobby is changing. Not dying. Young people are definitely interested. But because of the economy (don’t lie to us - it’s not doing any better for those of us only recently entering the job market from college), if we can’t afford large layouts and brass locomotives and 50-mile drives to the closest hobby store lost somewhere in the suburbs, we turn to other means of satisfying our interest: digital simulators, a single annual railfanning trip to another state, or RPM meets where the return of satisfaction is high without the investment in physical space that “normal” model railroading requires.
Yea, well, you’ll have that.
Mike
Scott Adams (Dilbert) had a podcast. He was saying earlier this week that our attention span has shrunk since the cell phone
Movies were always hit or miss. Maybe 1 out of 10 would be good, and now he never goes to a movie. He can watch all sorts of videos on his phone, watching a 30 minute sitcom on TV seems like a major time commitment to him. My TV watching is local news, business programming and sports. I haven’t watched a sitcom in years.
Adams 62. So it’s not just millenials that are addicted to their cell phones. We went out to dinner and there was a family of 8. All looked old enough to drive. 5/8 were on their cell phones. You don’t get that instant gratification from model railroading.
It has nothing to do with interests, but it does economy. Nothing new here.
The world is always changing. We can’t stop that. When I was young I had no interest in model railroading. I didn’t even know it existed. Even if I was interested, my parents barely kept food in our stomach and clothes on our back. Hobbies are not a necessity in life and never will be.
You can’t say that the change in youth culture is what’s causing the small mom and pop stores to close. It’s the parents and older generation controlling the money and spending. The issue is that it costs so much more to survive today than it did 30 or 40 years ago. People didn’t have internet bills, cell phone bills, cable bills, etc. Also we spend a lot more on healthcare and medicine compared to years past.
The plain and simple fact is that it costs so much to exist today, we have to save every penny we can to go towards something else. This is why Walmart thrived and we rely on China and imports so much. No simple solution to turn this around. Not looking to turn this into politics. So let’s leave it at that.
Ed
There’s a lot of younger kids in the hobby but,they shop on line so they can buy more with their hobby money. Sadly not many bother to attend train shows because of the cost to get in and buy at near full price for new cars and locomotives.
I’m retired and I can’t afford to pay full price at a hobby shop so,to get more bang for my hobby money I shop on line.
I didn’t say anything about student debt, or about the endless production of degrees in the humanities. I do think it’s a problem, and a huge ethical failure for universities, but…I did not mention it. Yet, if you ask those who have those problems, you’ll find that they are disappointed in the results, and in the burdens they bring. For example, how do they repay their $40K in student loans when they earn minimum wages? Maybe joining a hobby would help to take the sting out of it.
[quote user=“xboxtravis7992”]
b. Yes I like food. Don’t you too? But my physical hobbies are not neglected. I spend plenty on railroading and other hobbies like book collecting and
The times we live in have never been better and never been worse. Young people in my days didn´t have much money to spend on a hobby or even the time for it. They were busy starting their own lives, usually on a tight budget, even with a degree of an elite school in their pockets. Anybody thinking that young graduates start their career on a top salary has spent way too much time watching the idiot box. It has never been that way and it will most likely never be that way. To climb a ladder, you have to start at the bottom. Tough luck, if you have not received an education with left you with skills needed in business. Than you have to start crawling towards the ladder before you can climb it.
I sometimes have the feeling that the “instant gratification” generation has lost any sense for some basic facts of life, one of which is earning comes before spending.
If you’re still in school, you’re not a Millennial. That’s Gen Z.
The oldest millenials are 40. We’re well into adulthood and they’ve already classified the children of the millenials as Alpha. A lot of us are already putting kids in high school.
Let’s not miss the forest for the trees here.
Those comments attributed to the retiring hobby shop owner in the newspaper article were simply the observations of a man who spent most of his adult life owning and operating a local hobby shop. From his vantage point, he saw his sales decline with the onset of the Internet hobby shop. He saw traffic in his store declining, and he took note of the fact that his remaining clientele was aging. Every time that I walk into a local hobby shop, I notice the same thing.
Someone drew an analogy to the horse and buggy giving way to the automobile. I think that analogy actually makes his point. I look at my grandkids entertaining themselves today. Model railroading has given way to Fortnite. Let’s face it. We old timers grew up playing with trains so we continue to do so. Today’s kids are growing up with computer games.
As for the Internet hobby shop, I am of the opinion that it did not kill the local hobby shop. It was simply a way to meet us old timers needs more cheaply than a brick and mortar store presence. When I lost all three of my local hobby shops, all three retiring owners closed down because the monthly rent payments ate up too much of their monthly revenue.
Rich
Anyone born between 1981 and 1996 is a millenial, the oldest being 39 now. Trust me, I was definately born in that year range and the youngest being 23. Yes there are plenty in school my age too, oftentimes people who defered college due to religious or military service, or people who who are in hard STEM based degrees that often require more time than a “four year degree” would suggest. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/17/where-millennials-end-and-generation-z-begins/
To quote the article: “Most Millennials were between the ages of 5 and 20 when the 9/11 terrorist attacks shook the nation, and many were old enough to comprehend the historical significance of that moment, while most members of Gen Z have little or no memory of the event. Millennials also grew up in the shadow of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which sharpened broader views of the parties and contributed to the intense political polarization that shapes the current political environment.” While myself and my sister are on the later end of the millennial age group, we both tick off all those requiremts to being part of the generation.
As for Gen Z and model railroading… I know quite a few “zoomers” into the hobby too. A large chunk of active model railroaders in my area are kids younger than me just fresh in college or still in high school.
“richhotrain”
As for the Internet hobby shop, I am of the opinion that it did not kill the local hobby shop. It was simply a way to meet us old timers needs more cheaply than a brick and mortar store presence. When I lost all three of my local hobby shops, all three retiring owners closed down because the monthly rent payments ate up too much of their monthly revenue.
Rich
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Before I leave Europe nearly eight months ago, I had a “friend” who has a good hobby shop which was going quiet well
His son begun to open a internet online shop which allow my friend to work with internet and his hobby shop.
The result where excellent, first for the online shop but also for the conventionnal hobby shop.
Many customers who bought on Internet where very happy to make a visit to the hobby shop and more interesting this online shop has open a new interest for the conventional shop, this ended by a really increase of sale on the internet shop but also in the conventional shop
Further in Belgium where I lived, the gouvernemental trade observation has show if online shop work well and are the brother of a conventional shop, if the online site is well done and show many good pictures of an attractive live shop people who order online often come to visit the shop and buy too in the life shop.