Since I moved to South Jersey a little over a year ago, the only local (read, less than an hour away) hobby shop has closed because the owner retired and he could find no one interested in taking over the business.
Now I’m driving over an hour (one way) to a well-stocked shop with a very knowledgeable owner who is also considering retiring.
I know I can mail order almost anything, but there is something very special, comfortable and helpful about being able to hold and examine a potential purchase…even talk about it with the shop owner, before taking the plunge.
What’s happening to our hobby shops. Anyone out there want to open one in South Jersey, near the shore? I’d be a regular customer and so would a number of other guys as well as a club in the area.
When I first moved to Arizona in 1983, there were 10 or so hobby shops in Tucson. Now there is only one. Owners retired and no one stepped in to take over, some went bankrupt or were evicted from the buildings they were in and couldn’t afford another location, and on-line sales definitely had an effect on them. The owner’s attitude put a couple of them out of business.
The one that is still in business is in an Ace Hardware store. They offer discounts that make them competitive with the Internet dealers, or they would probably have also folded by now. They’re 80 miles from me and are the closest even at that distance, but having an opportunity to see the item up close and personal instead of relying on a manufacturer’s glowing description sometimes makes the trip worth while.
Running a hobby shop may well be the most difficult small business to run. In addition to what lines to stock you have to consider how many of each name railroad to purchase. Guess wrong and you could have sold more or have capital tied up in inventory that isn’t going anywhere. Add to that a “well stocked” hobby shop may have an inventory in excess of $250,000 and the limited edition runs that ought to be outlawed make it difficult to plan. Now add fickle consumers who clammor for oddball items and then don’t want them when they finally see them or check it out at the hobby shop and then shop the internet for price. It’s no wonder some of the owners are crabby individuals. Now add in what an experienced modeler really nees from a hobby shop. it isn’t advice as he or she should know most of what they need after a few years. Its the same with the magazines. How many starter railroad articles can you read before you know every step? So why do you need the magazine. Well reviews of eauipment for one and scenery ideas for the second. Now that the free publications like the Keystone Modeler are available that cover the equipment I would be most likley to purchase and the asnwer is I don;t need the magazine either. I’ve had three shops close and don’t have the time to travel further for supplies. I have also reached close to the saturation point on rolling stock and engines. Mail order serves me well at this point and probably will for the rest of the time I will be in the hobby. the one exception is a local internet business that is less than one mile from my home. When I called them they don’t want walk ins and I would have to have my orders sent by mail. I don’t deal with them. here they could have probably get a hundred dollars a month if they let me order over the internet and pick up at the store but it can’t be done.
Retail is changing. With the Internet and Big Box stores, shopping has changed. Sure I like the hobby shops, but the nearby one doesn’t carry much in trains - and what he does have is mostly Lionel at list. Two others have closed in the last couple of years. So I shop at shows or on the Internet - it’s cheaper and the selection is better.
But I do enjoy a well stocked hobby shop when I can find one while traveling.
In my opinion, hobby shops should focus on service as much as sales, and I don’t mean just being friendly and helpful. I mean offering services you don’t get elsewhere, like these:
Get an Alps printer and print custom decals - customers design them and bring their computer files, and the hobby shop prints them. While the decals are drying, the customer is bound to find other stuff they need/want. This service requires a small investment and I think it’s guaranteed to increase traffic in the store. It could also be a really cool on-line/mail order business.
The machines that they use to cut out laser-cut kits cost about $10,000. Imagine customers designing their own scratch built buildings, putting them on a portable drive and bringing them to the hobby store to buy material and have it cut out on their laser machine. This is another mail order possibility, and it would be popular with model airplane and dollhouse enthusiasts, too.
How about a decoder installation service? Free if you buy the loco in the shop, $30 including the decoder if you bring in the loco. Offer it as a while you wait service with the choice to come back later to pick up the loco.
If they are out of stock, a hobby store should order the item and have it shipped directly to the customer’s home - postage paid. Sure, you lose a little profit on the item to pay the postage, but that customer will return.
My local hobby store is often out of the item I need. They are so poor at maintaining stock that I rarely go there. APICS is the system of inventory control that the big-box stores use (have you noticed that they are rarely out of stock?). APICS works for small businesses, too. It isn’t cheap and there is a lot to learn, but it can make a huge difference in terms of having the items on hand when customers ask for them.
I know this thread is about shops that close because the owner is
Most of the model shops I have known that closed down did so for one of two reasons:
They were crummy or poorly run.
The owner retired or was running it in his spare time and ran out of spare time.
Reason number 2 shut down what was shaping up to be the best shop around here, because the owner’s wife’s health declined, and he didn’t want to be away. I can’t argue with that.
I think it’s less a problem that the Internet retailers compete directly for customers (a lot of LHS’s have an online store anyhow), but that the young folks are more Internet-attuned and tend to open an online store rather than a brick & mortar one, when they feel the semi-masochistic urge to go into business. Therefore, as the old folks retire, they’re not being replaced as quickly.
Here in the Raleigh / Durham/ Chapel Hill and Triad areas of North Carolina we have 4 train shops that I know of that sell mostly model train related stuff. Then there are the crafts shops too in addition the hobby shops like Michaels and A.C. Moore, etc…
Now in the New Orleans area since post Katrina (where we lived until then) I know of three shops that still sell model trains, but they are actually in Jefferson Parish in the cities of Metairie and Kenner, which are just outside of New Orleans proper.
I’m far from being an economic genius but I think that one of our problems in this day-and-age is our expectations and fears for our future; this screams at us daily in our current banking crisis and in the heat of this “political campaign.” The banks ain’t loaning money and the keywords with the politicians are “security” and “guarantee”. People want the “security” and “guarantee” of a well-paying, secure job one bereft of “risk”. Their are risk-takers out there but the majority of people, I venture, want the “security” and “guarantee” well-paying and risk-free employment. A sizable number of the posts here on the forum dealing with hobby-shop-closings attribute that shop closing to the retiring owner being unable to sell his business.
A substantial percentage of current hobby shop owners opened a new or bought an existing shop using borrowed funds; a great many used the loan guarantees of their veteran’s benefits or qualified for a small business loans. Few, I would venture; did it with money from savings. My favorite local got started using funds from an already successful (small) business. This (hobby) business took a number of years before it became perpetuating; the hobby shop was bought by one of his sons and–assuming that his maintenance of inventory is an accurate indication–is doing well. I do not know whether it is maintaining itself with saved funds or whether it is maintaining itself with a line-or-credit from a banking institution but there was something on one of the local television stations earlier this week stating that one of our local banks has either suspended or severely curtailed lines-of-credit to small businesses.
My grandpappy was not a notably successful farmer but he did eke a hardscrabble existance from it; his two sons, however, never saw any return from his endeav
We’ve probably all heard the expression “if you’re not a part of the solution, then you are a part of the problem”. This affects local shops - if you don’t shop there, they will probably suffer. I confess I’m in that category. Our LHS is about 15 miles from here, has a fairly decent stock and is run by a retiree who is a model railroader. I drop in from time to time, but there’s really not much that interests me or that I might need. Like many in the hobby for some time, I have a decent selection of supplies on hand and only need the occasional small item like some glue.
The shop doesn’t carry Floquil paint and only a bit of acrylic railroad colors, so I have to look elsewhere. Also while I have a lot invested in HO scale, my current focus is On30, and this shop has nothing at all for this scale. Everything that I’ve bought in On30 has come from Internet sources, either shops or directly from the manufacturers. I can’t imagine him carrying On30 stuff due to a lack of others locally into it. So I can’t really support the LHS because he doesn’t carry what I want.
Sure he can order stuff for me, but that way means most of the items are priced so high that I probably couldn’t afford them. I did buy my DCC gear from him, an MRC Prodigy Express set. Cost me over $200.00; just around that time Micro Mark had the same outfit for $99.00. So you can see why I don’t get high end stuff locally!
The demise of the hobby shop can be cause by several factors-the owner passes,the owner becomes ill or disabled,killed by old line thinking,killed by full price and last by not least the failure of the owner to move into modern times and sell on line.
Many savvy shop owners have gone modern and sells on the internet,offers discounts etc…
Those that hasn’t and believes in the old school methods the end is nearing.
We must be lucky here in Mpls., St. Paul, MN as we’ve got several hobby shops that cater to train enthusiasts such as myself. Scale Model Supplies being the largest and most well stocked for all scales, Hub Hobbies (two stores, HO & N) and a few others. I’ll consider myself blessed!
Discount sales over the internet make most brick-and-mortars a tough proposition to sustain.
The major selling point store owners offer is when they say, “If it stops working, how are you going to get it fixed on the internet?”
Okay, but in 25+ years of model railroading, I have yet to take something to a hobby shop for service, and I’ll bet there are a lot of people like me.
Don’t get me wrong, I love hobby shops, and I’m glad Caboose Hobbies is in my town. But they’re having troubles too, and they do a good mail-order business. The average retired guy who just “wanted a little shop” isn’t going to be able to survive much longer.
Here in Colorado Springs, there are two train shops that seem to be doing very well. The one that I shop at is always very well stocked, and if he doesn’t have what you want, he will go out of his way to get it for you if need be. I asked, and was told that business is good, and there are no plans of shutting down.
Caboose Hobbies up in Denver seems to be doing OK as well.
My LHS sells online as well as brick-n-morter. In addition to having a photo of each item they carry, they post up-to-the-minute availability info. I found a long-discontinued and hard to find WKW Cornerstone series kit on their website this afternoon, they only had 1 in stock - so I logged-in and ordered it and will pick it up on Saturday.
If more shops would offer service like this, they wouldn’t all be dying out.
The two in my area, which are solely devoted to trains, seem to be doing pretty well. I was in Bruce’s the other day, and he was unpacking a pretty sizeable Winter inventory. And the one in Roseville is still as well-stocked as ever, so I’d suppose we’re pretty lucky in this area. Luckily, they service most of Northern California, and there are quite a few of us in this end of the state that do a lot of driving to them because we pretty much know that what we need will either be in stock or readily available on special order. The owners of both hobby shops are very ‘people’ oriented, and they both have really good sales crews.
Judging by the crowded stores I been in I think the “bad economic” times only applies to wall street and the bankers…The bars and night clubs seems to be doing their usual crowded business on Friday and Saturday nights.
Heck they are building a new condo complex on the Southside of town and down around Delaware they are building a new shopping complex…Never seen anything like it.When finish it will be nice.
NS seems to be business as usual.
I know the current economic crunch hasn’t help or hurt me.Life goes on as usual for me.
Absolutely! That’s how the modern hobby shop owner will survive.Unlike his older counter parts he won’t cuss the Internet but,will use it as a business tool.
You bring up some good possible revenue idea. But there always seems be another side to most of the great ideas:
Get an Alps printer and print custom decals - They have not been made in years(quality problems) and the call for decals is going down(all those limited run cars/engines). Notice that there are less decals arriving from Microscale?
The machines that they use to cut out laser-cut kits cost about $10,000. Read more like $30,000 plus for a system that can do the precision stuff required for scale model railroading. And like a lot of the computerized equipment, you need it working all the time to pay the cost of getting it.
How about a decoder installation service? Free if you buy the loco in the shop, $30 including the decoder if you bring in the loco. Offer it as a while you wait service with the choice to come back later to pick up the loco. There are lots of decoder install services out there, and $30 sounds good, but there are a lot of ‘warranty’ service as customer manage to mess up the decoders.
If they are out of stock, a hobby store should order the item and have it shipped directly to the customer’s home - postage paid. Sure, you lose a little profit on the item to pay the postage, but that customer will return. Shipping time/cost is one of the largest cost items around - and you want the LHS to ship it free because he could not keep it in stock(due to Walthers not having enough of them to start with)?
My local hobby store is often out of the item I need. They are so poor at maintaining stock that I rarely go there. APICS is the system of inventory control that the big-box stores use (have you