Wondering....

[CK]

Well, there will not be a lot of people disagree that our hobby is changing. I guess a lot of us started our hobby about some 20 to 30 years ago. Way back when, there was no internet. Information flow is very low. So we are not that picky about the accuracy of kits as there was not that easy to put our hands on detailed information about our subjects.

Now, internet is as common as TV in every home. We have tons of information about our building subject. Our demand for accuracy and details jumps in folds. A so so kit in the past could still sold pretty good but would not get much interest today.

For injection mold kit manufactures, it becomes an issue. When they cater new kits for the mature market, their kits have to be more accurate and with a lot more details. The kit cost goes way up. The profit margin may be higher but the number of sales goes down. These complicated kits in the past 20 years are driving new kids away as they are too expensive and too complicated for them as beginners. Hence the mount of money that manufacture can fetch from a new kit does not get better. Only the investment is bigger as the development time and mold cost increases. This increases the risk of making a new kit.

However, if new kits go back to the more simple approach, we the mature modellers complain and refuse to buy them. It is very difficult to find the middle road. Therefore we have not seen a lot of new kits coming out in the past 5 years. Selling old kits with up-grade kits becomes more attractive. How many of us will buy an re-issue of an old kit that we did poorly years before? At least I have done so. Unfortunately, this cannot increase the overall market.

The internet also breaks downs trade barriers that were there before. Merchants close to the source can sell overseas and cut out the middle man and even the retailers as long as the shipping cost is lower than what the retailers can beat.

Selling expensive resin kits are not local retailers can easily survive on. We will definitely see the LHS going out.

3D print will only be for a small elite group of modellers that have the skill to design them. In general, the craft skill that a lot of us older modeller process is longer master by younger people. They do not have the opportunity to practice when they are kids. Basically, they grow up with computer keyboards, not knives, screw driver, and files.

[SteveNoble]

If my LHS is anything to go by then I'm not surprised that many of them are dying out. I asked about Bare Metal Foil and he'd never heard of it, nor did he want to. I asked about Tamiya TS sprays, no chance, Mr Color paints, nobody has heard of them. Ebbro kits, who? Fujimi, you can only get them in Japan, Hasegawa, same!!
He finally must have heard of Ebbro because he got their Lotus 72e into stock, wow, £59.99!! when HLJ have it for well under half that price. I'm all for supporting a local shop but there are limits. That's what forced me to buy from the internet. Now that shop has gone, closed down. Am I happy about that? No, but he didn't cater for his customers. Had he done so he would still be here...

[jaws]

Interesting thread indeed...
Hard to say what the consumer will have available in the near future. But seeing stores close like KMart, and JCPenneys, and Sears, times they are a changin
Now we have self checkouts (cashiers will soon be gone). Amazon is thriving. Then things like CD's are gone heck COSTCO does not even carry blank CD's anymore and laptops don't have CD/DVD drives. OK not all about the hobby...but
It is about marketing and how we as consumers obtain the items we want.
Hobby shops are going to always be around. But to survive have to be versatile in many areas of supply. RC, Crafts, Model Rail Road and so on.
Getting the high detail stuff we all thrive for is not going to be in a Hobby shop. Like Steve mentions that kit for double the price is not what we would go to that "Store" for. Paint and supplies is what we go for.
Hope we are always able to go to a store and hold that kit we would like to get. Or shake that bottle of paint to really see the color inside.
Reality is more and more people don't go shopping they buy on line.
BUT all that said the Hobby is doing just fine IMO. Just wish I lived in Japan where all the cool stuff is at.

[Noddy]

If my LHS is anything to go by then I'm not surprised that many of them are dying out. I asked about Bare Metal Foil and he'd never heard of it, nor did he want to. I asked about Tamiya TS sprays, no chance, Mr Color paints, nobody has heard of them. Ebbro kits, who? Fujimi, you can only get them in Japan, Hasegawa, same!!
He finally must have heard of Ebbro because he got their Lotus 72e into stock, wow, £59.99!! when HLJ have it for well under half that price. I'm all for supporting a local shop but there are limits. That's what forced me to buy from the internet. Now that shop has gone, closed down. Am I happy about that? No, but he didn't cater for his customers. Had he done so he would still be here...

He wasn't interested in carrying Bare Metal because you were 1 in 1000 people through his door and Ebbro, Fujimi and Hasegawa were all problems at his supplier not necessarily his choice. I used to deal with one of the largest hobby distributors in the USA on a wholesale level: they were unable to get any of those brands and I couldn't place large enough orders to justify trying to use a different distributor. Same with the paints: his "buy-in" to carry one more line would be huge. The rack and the stock to fill it would be a huge gamble.
His £59.95 price point was also forced upon him by what he had to pay his distributor - which was very likely the same price as HLJ would sell you the kit for. It certainly wasn't a conscious decision based on what he thought the market would bear. Unfortunately it was more like desperation to even carry such an item. He had to hope someone would come in who just had to have it that day and was willing to pay full retail for it.
Saying "he didn't cater for his customers. Had he done so he would still be here..." is a pretty arrogant statement. Just because he didn't carry the items YOU wanted doesn't mean he could have survived by carrying them. He more than likely couldn't offer them at an advantageous price or you were one of a tiny subset of his customers or any number of reasons why it didn't make economic sense to offer them. His money makers were probably R/C followed by armor followed by aircraft followed by classic cars. If he also catered to coins, stamps, dollhouse miniatures, etc then any of those categories probably came much higher up his demand scale than model cars.
All of this talk about what LHS should carry or how their pricing should be more competitive is great - but pointless as it is NOT a level playing field. The internet shops aren't even competing with your LHS - in pricing and selection they're competing with the distributor who sells to your LHS. (sidenote to others who may not know the business - you surely don't think your LHS is able to buy directly from any of the manufacturers, do you? That just doesn't happen. They buy from distributors with large warehouses and line cards of what they offer. Years ago they had guys out on the road showing the LHS what was new.)

[turboF1]

For good or for bad one can go to Amazon, eBay and specialty shops online etc. and that rare kit, paint color or tool is sitting by your door when you get home. How can you beat that? It’s nice to reminisce about the old days but the good days are here right now with MFH, 3D printing, and direct access to Asian markets.

[SteveNoble]

If my LHS is anything to go by then I'm not surprised that many of them are dying out. I asked about Bare Metal Foil and he'd never heard of it, nor did he want to. I asked about Tamiya TS sprays, no chance, Mr Color paints, nobody has heard of them. Ebbro kits, who? Fujimi, you can only get them in Japan, Hasegawa, same!!
He finally must have heard of Ebbro because he got their Lotus 72e into stock, wow, £59.99!! when HLJ have it for well under half that price. I'm all for supporting a local shop but there are limits. That's what forced me to buy from the internet. Now that shop has gone, closed down. Am I happy about that? No, but he didn't cater for his customers. Had he done so he would still be here...

Saying "he didn't cater for his customers. Had he done so he would still be here..." is a pretty arrogant statement. Just because he didn't carry the items YOU wanted doesn't mean he could have survived by carrying them.

Whilst you make some valid points. The fact remains if you don't or won't cater for your customers you won't have a business for long...

[Noddy]

Whilst you make some valid points. The fact remains if you don't or won't cater for your customers you won't have a business for long...

Like it or not he can't cater to everybody. You want bare metal, I want some obscure decals and a p/e set, next guy wants quality brushes, and on and on. The LHS owner has to place bets on sure sales because nothing kills a business like dead stock. He can spend his money only 1x so does he gamble on specialty items or go with what sells over and over again even if it is not what you happen to want? Keep in mind the specialty items are also lower profit margin - I'll almost guarantee that.

[stubeck]

The two model shops in my local town also specialize in RC cars. They have supplies and plastic models, but I see them making most of their money off of having new kits as well. He's constantly posting pictures of the new models as they come in, as well as being super competitive on pricing. Sure, I can save $10 on a kit by buying online, but I'd rather support local when possible.

[Noddy]

The two model shops in my local town also specialize in RC cars. They have supplies and plastic models, but I see them making most of their money off of having new kits as well. He's constantly posting pictures of the new models as they come in, as well as being super competitive on pricing. Sure, I can save $10 on a kit by buying online, but I'd rather support local when possible.

Talk to the owner sometime about how often he spends a bunch of time explaining everything to someone who then purchases online to save $10 and then comes back to him expecting free help when they can't get stuff to work out of the box or they break something. In my experience across multiple shops - most of them now gone - the owners are of an age and a type that are only too willing to help people but have become jaded / burned out and are now more inclined to rant and rave about the changes in their industry.

[MoFo]

Like it or not he can't cater to everybody. You want bare metal, I want some obscure decals and a p/e set, next guy wants quality brushes, and on and on. The LHS owner has to place bets on sure sales because nothing kills a business like dead stock.

So he says "yes sir, I will order that regular catalog item from my distributor and call you when it arrives," and enjoys making a sale without any inventory risk. If he's particularly smart, he'll even reach out to local modelling groups and tell them he'll give them a slight discount if they want to pre-order items that way, since it's beneficial to him as a business owner.

Or, y'know, he can tell people to go buy stuff elsewhere, and then get outraged when his sales plummet and he goes bankrupt, because they have, in fact, bought it somewhere else.