On my last trip to the local hobby shop in Greenville, I went to get on I-85 South and saw the northbound lanes at a stand still. Turns out a truck took out one of those electronic message boards and blocked all six lanes. I had to take US 29 home and all the lights on that road seemed to be timed so you get ever last stinking one of them red. It took me twice as long to get home as it did to get there. Not dealing with that pain-in-you-know-what drive as part of the reason I buy online.
Perhaps you don’t agree because I got caught up in being cute and didn’t communicate clearly. My point was really that in our 24/7 world, stores that aren’t open Sundays get left in the dust by retailers, or e-tailers, who are.
I’m blessed with 3 stores within a half hour’s drive where I can buy styrene on a Sunday. Since I work on Mondays and Tuesdays, it’s much less likely that I’ll be stopping by one of them Monday or Tuesday. But a place that’s open Sundays instantly gets my business, because then I could finish my project on Sunday. If there weren’t a place I could buy it on Sunday, I’d be more likely to drop my order on the Internet on Sunday morning and postpone the project until the following weekend.
The point is that a lot of customers now expect you to be open Sundays, and if you aren’t, you’re at a disadvantage. When I worked in retail, my “weekend” was Tuesday and Wednesd
Blah,blah, blah.
Guys, this thread is beginning to resemble Elliot’s Trackside Diner.
What is the point?
The LHS is dead. If it isn’t gone already where you live, it will be gone soon.
When I first starting working after college in downtown Chicago in the mid-60’s, there were 3 large hobby shops and several small ones that we would visit on our lunch hour. By the beginning of the 1980’s, they were all gone.
When I started into the HO scale side of the hobby 8 years ago, there were 3 fully stocked local hobby shops within a 20 minute drive of my house in the Chicago suburbs. They are all closed now.
So, the Internet is where I go to buy anything and everything that I need.
So, the LHS is dead. If you can find one, and if you like it, enjoy it. It will be gone before you will be gone. So what?
Even when all three local hobby shops were still open in my neck of the woods, I couldn’t always get exactly what I wanted if it wasn’t in stock. No one gave me the opportunity to “try before you buy”. If they didn’t have it, I could order it from my LHS and get it within a few days and usually at a 20 percent discount. So, no big deal.
The one thing that I miss about the local hobby shop is the ability to ask questions and get answers and advice from a knowledgeable assistant in one of the three LHS. When the LHS closed and the owner retired, that knowledgeable assistant was gone for good. So, I turned to this forum for Q&A and solid advice, and I get it.
Forget about the Local Hobby Shop. It’s gone. Its era is over. At one time, the largest corporation in the United States was the American Leather Company. Can you find it today?
The more I think about it, the less I miss it. Long live the Internet!
Rich
For me, the Train show has replaced the LHS. Each year there are 2 or 3 three within an hour’s drive from where I live. And another 8-10 within 3 hours (don’t go to all of those, but some).
Enjoy
Paul
Change is inevitable, that is the reality of things, but Fedex or UPS deliveries and internet/ email access to internet hobby stores cant really replace the human factor that has been characteristic of retail sales since Roman times ( yes, there was a healthy commercial aspect to society even then; it wasn’t always sandals, soldiers and statues). That human factor is what disappeared along with brick and mortar LHS’s. This forum does an excellent ( and entertaining ) job of serving as an alternative, in part, to that loss. Many of us are far less " the lone wolves" we otherwise might be, because of it. One other loss is the tactile one- you can’t touch it, as some seem to lament. But, if you remember those display cases at the LHS in our youth- filled with brass engines and such- the store owner wouldn’t let us, as kids, handle those either, so all we could do was look and dream. Today- same thing- when perusing an Internet store’s website ! Cedarwoodron
That is a great point, and I agree wholeheartedly with it.
I have met some great friends through this forum that I never would have met otherwise, LHS notwithstanding. While I have never met any of them personally, through email, we have shared a lot of experiences and helped each other with our layouts and other train related agendas.
Rich
Rich,Here’s the other side of the coin…I’ve made several long time friends at LHS and got to visit home layouts that is usually kept from public viewing.
I have several friends on forums and have several invitations to visit their layout when or if I’m ever in their area.
I even got to meet several of this forum members at the Berea train show!
I do miss the Saturday morning gathering of the faithful at a well stock small hole in the wall hobby shop.I will cherish those enjoyable Saturday mornings as long as I live and I didn’t mind the the 30 minute drive to get there.Of course I picked up the needed supplies and maybe a kit or two.
All to sadly this shop closed 16 years ago(seems like yesterday) and many of the group has passed including the owner…
Larry,
That is certainly an interesting perspective.
When I got into the HO scale side of the hobby 8 years ago after a 40 year hiatus after running American Flyer trains as a kid, I made my first visit to our LHS with my wife in tow because I felt intimidated visiting a model railroading only retail shop.
I no sooner got in the door when the owner pounced on me and quickly sized me up as a newbie. Although this guy suffered no fools, as I later learned, for some reason he took a liking to me and helped me time and time again even though I always amused him with my lack of knowledge about the hobby and about the prototype.
There were always a number of characters in the shop. They hung around and B.S.'d but never bought anything. Some were older than me, some were younger, but all were aged 50 or older. I avoided them like the plague, and my knowledgeable store assistant buddy often told me that I was wise to do so.
So, I never developed any friendships among the LHS crowd. Good to hear that your exper
I also had the benefit of Saturday morning donuts and coffee sessions at my local LHS until just three years ago. I always made it a point to leave with some purchase, not as a compulsion, but as a courtesy. I was a relative youth, but I enjoyed the old heads’ conversation and the social aspect of it. These days, the only regular replacement is the quarterly flea markets/swap meets put on by the local RR club. I have traded with a number of these exhibitors for almost a decade, know them by name and do still make it a habit to buy a car or a restorable diesel to boot. But…I sure miss those Saturday mornings… Cedarwoodron
I am sorry to hear about the Happy Hobo closing down, I spent a lot of time and money there as a teenager. Loved driving the 20 miles or so from Brandon to shop there in the 80’s.I travel around a lot and I notice most of the shops that survive do a good mail order/internet business and offer discounts. I have always heard store owners complaining about mail order, train shows, discount stores, customers getting older, etc. for the last 30 years!! Way before the internet was common. I never understood why these same shop owner could not use a train show to move inventory and get new customers or use the internet in the same capacity. A lot of Hobby shops I visit seem to be dust collecting museums of yesterdays merchandise priced at list. To be fair the shrinking of disposable income for many folks and lack of decent jobs in many areas isn’t helping, but for a hobby shop to survive this would make getting into e-retailing ever more critical. I don’t know why , but I always find these discussions interesting.
Don (original owner) moved the store from Hillsborough & Dale Mabry up to Waters Ave in 1991,then retired and sold it to a younger guy, Kevin, in the mid 2000s. The store size was cut in half, and things were okay until poor customer relations and a less vigorous business sense resulted in significant earnings shortfalls. Then the new guy moved the store into a Publix-anchored strip mall in 2008 ( with greater visibility) but things went downhill, with the poor economy and the new guy’s refusal to market online or at local/regional shows ( every 3 months). Finally, with no new product coming in, he sold the remaining inventory to one if the regular flea market exhibitors( at the shows) and when I passed by the storefront just a week ago, it was still empty. Just plain sad, as I had traded there since the mid 80s when I came to Tampa. Cedarwoodron