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Hobby Shops, then and now


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I've been living in the Northern Virginia area just outside of DC for decades and its pretty sad whats been happening to this hobby since I rediscovered scale modeling as an adult. We had a good shop called Granddads just outside the beltway that catered mainly to the model train crowd but they were sufficiently diversified to satisfy the average modeler, unfortunately they closed when the owner retired and moved away in the early 2000's. We also had Pipers Hobby  in Fairfax that catered mainly to the aviation and armor enthusiasts but they just closed last March cuz the owners widow decided to hang it up and retire to Pennsylvania. There used to be a Hobbytown USA in Manassas but they disappeared years ago. There's a shop called Hobby Hanger in Chantilly not far from where Piper used to be but they are almost exclusively a radio control hobby shop, but at least I can get paints and modeling tools there. I discovered there is a Hobby Lobby to the south of us in Woodbridge but that's a bit of a trek in heavy traffic ( I-95 south is the pits no matter what day or time anymore ).  It baffles me...I live in a major metropolitan area with a lot of high income neighborhoods not to mention a heavy dose of both active and retired military ( who you think would help support this hobby ) but there are so few choices. The only saving grace is a strong IPMS membership in Fairfax and a first rate model car club with MAMA ( Maryland Automotive Modelers Association ). Brick and mortar shops are a dying breed....as are scale modelers.

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I've been living in the Northern Virginia area just outside of DC for decades and its pretty sad whats been happening to this hobby since I rediscovered scale modeling as an adult. We had a good shop called Granddads just outside the beltway that catered mainly to the model train crowd but they were sufficiently diversified to satisfy the average modeler, unfortunately they closed when the owner retired and moved away in the early 2000's. We also had Pipers Hobby  in Fairfax that catered mainly to the aviation and armor enthusiasts but they just closed last March cuz the owners widow decided to hang it up and retire to Pennsylvania. There used to be a Hobbytown USA in Manassas but they disappeared years ago. There's a shop called Hobby Hanger in Chantilly not far from where Piper used to be but they are almost exclusively a radio control hobby shop, but at least I can get paints and modeling tools there. I discovered there is a Hobby Lobby to the south of us in Woodbridge but that's a bit of a trek in heavy traffic ( I-95 south is the pits no matter what day or time anymore ).  It baffles me...I live in a major metropolitan area with a lot of high income neighborhoods not to mention a heavy dose of both active and retired military ( who you think would help support this hobby ) but there are so few choices. The only saving grace is a strong IPMS membership in Fairfax and a first rate model car club with MAMA ( Maryland Automotive Modelers Association ). Brick and mortar shops are a dying breed....as are scale modelers.

Steve-There is a Hobby Lobby in Leesburg just off of 28 that may be a bit closer for you. I was in Hobby Hanger maybe a month ago, I believe there were maybe 10 car kits on the shelf and half the paint rack was empty. They did have an entire row of aviation models and like you said, there is a lot of R/C stuff.

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I've been starting to collect old model train magazines, in (possibly unrealistic) anticipation of having the space in the not-too-distant future to get back into that particular hobby. The ones I find most interesting at the moment are from the late 1940s and early 1950s. Besides the incredibly high standards of scratchbuilding, craftsmanship and electrical sophistication of train modelers then (entirely contrary to what the "everything is better now" contingent would have us believe) one other thing really stands out.

During this period, MOST HOBBY ITEMS WERE MAIL-ORDERED...from catalog sellers or direct from the manufacturers from ads in the mags...not unlike the online ordering of today, but just not as immediate.

The slow but steadily increasing proliferation of hobby-shops in the 1950s was hailed by train modelers as a wonderful thing...where you could actually see and touch a kit or locomotive prior to purchasing it, and even possibly talk to an actual live human who knew something more than the words in the advertising blurb. Shops that stayed abreast of changing and developing hobby interests (like plastic armor and aircraft and car kits and RC planes, for example) experienced very nice and stable growth.

It's funny how we've gone full-circle, and that, with triple the population now, it's next to impossible for a physical hobby shop to be a viable business proposition.

Speaking from a point of view of slightly more than 70 years, I've seen the hobby shop business for now 65 yrs, since my first Gowland & Gowland Highway Pioneers, worked for avery large full-service hobby shop for 10 yrs--during college and for a few years afterward, shopped several dozen hobby shops stretching from Indianapolis to the Chicago area for nearly 50 yrs--and even owned my own store from 1984-1992 (when I closed that to go full-time resin casting).

Early on, hobby shops had mostly wood and or Strathmore Board (a fine, hard smooth paper product) kis for model railroading, a smattering of wood & diecast metal model railroad cars, metal locomotive kits, brass rail, basswood ties and tiny railroad spikes--model airplanes were either solid wood (like Strombecker) balsa & tissue (such as Comet) or larger balsa gas powered kits that you built up much like a real airplane, then covered with silk, and used "dope", which is a fast-drying lacquer having great shrinking properties.  Those flying models were either gliders (like sailplanes), or rubber-band powered--and if we kids could scratch up say, $3.50-$4.00, perhaps a Cox Thimble Drome Baby Bee .049 (that's .049 cubic inch displacement to you younger guys!).  The model railroad side of things was pretty much dominated by the likes of Mantua Metal Products (which became Tyco by 1960 or so, and the product lines of William K. Walthers Sr--considered by most to have been the Father of the model railroad industry, having started that about 1940--all manner of milled basswood, cast metal car ends and fittings, even stamped nickel-plated thin steel passenger car sides, with milled basswood roofs and floors--and diecast metal trucks--even scale non-opening cast metal couplers (you coupled those early Walthers cars by hand!).

By about 1951 or so, plastic model kits began sneaking in--but, believe it or not, many hobby shop owners literally sneered at them--they saw plastic model kits as mere toys--not worthy of shelf space in their stores (which catered mostly to teenagers and adults--anything plastic being little kid stuff!). choosing to leave those upstart plastic toy model kits to the likes of dime stores.  It wasn't until the mid-1950's that enterprising shopkeepers saw the value of stocking such plastic model kits as were then coming on the market--many old "traditional" hobby shops ignored plastics to the point of their fading away into oblivion, believe it or not  By the late 1950's, in model railroading, Athearn (formerly Globe--Irvin Athearn also introduced the model world to the very first Gowland & Gowland plastic model kits before bowing out of those, leaving Lew and Royal Glaser of Revell to rise up, bring them out as Highway Pioneers kits--and along came Aurora Plastics, and a former flying model aircraft kit designer, Paul K. Lindberg came on the scene with a growing line of plastic model kits.  Monogram Models, who began business in 1945-46 with solid wood model kits of WW-II US Navy warships, followed by quck-build balsa & tissue scale model flying model airplanes, got into molding plastic model kits--their first plastic model kit being PC-1, a 1/20 scale Kurtis Midget, which hit about 1954 or so--followed very quickly by their long-selling Kurtis Offy Roadster in 1/24 scale.  By 1960, the last of Monogram's wood airplanes with plastic detail parts were fading from the scene--molded styrene ruled in Morton Grove IL.  Revell kits ruled hobby shop and variety store shelves by the middle to late 50's, mostly with aircraft & ship model kits, only dabbling in model cars--model car kits being pretty much the "stepchildren" of the hobby industry, until AMT Corporation blew the lid off the can in 1958 with their wildly popular 3 in 1 Customizing kis that we all today have come to love.  On the model RR side of things, the Atlas Corporation introduced "Snap Track", brass rail and plastic ties, which mimicked in HO scale the sectional track used by Lionel, Marx and American Flyer in larger sizes.  New also, from Atlas" was their "Flex Track", which looked just like Snap Track, but with tie strips that allowed you to bend their 36" sections to fit whatever radius, whatever sort of S-curves you wanted--they even brought out flexible cork roadbed to lay it out on--and switches (turnouts) to match.  Revell took a brief turn into HO trains, but while their rolling stock failed miserably in the marketplace, their styrene building kits still survive to this very day.  The 1960's also saw the rise of fabulously detailed brass HO steam loco models, from the likes of the Japanese companies, Tenshodo and United--brought in by the importer Pacific Fast Mail--and at what we today would consider to be bargain prices--anywhere from about $50 to perhaps $100 for a Union Pacific 4-8-8-4 Big Boy articulated.  One wife was shown in a cartoon in Model Railroader, exclaiming to her husband that at $69.95, his United Nickel Plate Berkshire should have been nickel-plated!  On the wooden flying model side--the 1960's saw the demise of rubber band-powered balsa & tissue models, gas powered control-line planes ruled (with engine sizes from .19cid up to .60cid --all 2-strokes, using methanol with castor oil added (kinda like miniature Lawn Boy mower engines!)--but by the end of the decade, R/C systems became more available, from the likes of Kraft and CitizenShip (they were out of surburban Indianapolis).  Imported engines, SuperTigrre from Italy, and numerous makes from Japan were slowly taking down the old domestic US model engines, such as McCoy and K&B.

As for the 1970's and beyond, I'll leave that to others, simply because most of us here were either young adults, or "coming of age" by then--but I think I've laid out, if more than a bit wordy--some of the story of the development of the hobby shop,and the merchandise lines that they carried, in my lifetime.

Art

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I'm out in the wilds of Western Massachusetts and we still have an 'old time hobby shop' here that always has what I need in an emergency and when I'm in a kit buying mood. I don't even look at prices ... I'll support him to the end. He has been trying to retire and sell but it's been a few years and no takers yet. He is a small store but has die casts, RC, trains and many other hobbies covered.

We are extremely fortunate to have a resource like this so close.

Hobby World

171 Grove St. (Rt 8)

Adams, MA 01220

 

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Yup, Hobby World is my go-to shop as well. He is less than a mile from my gun shop, so I can get there quickly, and he always has what I am looking for, and then some. When I can get to the other end of Massachusetts, I visit The Spare Time Shop in Marlboro, ALSO a great shop to get to.  The LHS may be a dying breed, but this old fart will not stop patronizing them, until I stop.........................!

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We also had Pipers Hobby  in Fairfax that catered mainly to the aviation and armor enthusiasts but they just closed last March cuz the owners widow decided to hang it up and retire to Pennsylvania.

I need to get out more. That's a real shame. Piper's was a nice shop, and it's been a long time since I was there. I live in MD, and don't get out that way much since I no longer work in Chantilly. About all that's left here is a local chain called Hobby Works (there's one in Fairfax in a mall at 236 and Pickett Road).

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I will miss the good local shops here...I went to Hobby Depot in Tempe often over the last 9 years. 

Rob, if you want a small road trip, try http://www.johnshobbyshopohio.com/ down in Mansfield. Granted, I haven't been there in 3 years since we moved back to Phoenix, but it is/was a great place.  I drove down from Akron and even Warren a few times. Lived in Mansfield when we first moved back to Ohio in 2006 as that was my home town as a kid.

Make sure you call to verify the hours, sometimes he closes for different things going on.

Russ

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As a hobby shop owner I'll chime in on a couple of things.  The current mark up on model kits is 40%.  It takes at least 40% profit margin to keep my doors open week to week and month to month.  If all I sold was kits I would just break even and never be able to save for building repairs, etc.  When you charge into Hobby Lobby with your 40% off coupon you are not making them anything.  They are hoping you will also buy lots of glue, paint, and your wife will buy a ton of the higher margin products.  Paints... you'd have to sell them a thousand bottles a week or more to make money.  RC parts have a respectable margin hence why so many shops go RC only.  Detail parts you can never carry what the next guy wants, your inventory would have to be humongous and remember good old Uncle Sam taxes us on that unsold inventory.  

Next there are the customers.  I have a wonderful customer base but there are those that always try your patience.  I had one customer buy a kit and then bring it back opened because it did not have the engine in it he had thought it would.  Really it had the wrong engine and you expect me to take it back and lose money?  Next thing you know he is bad mouthing me all over the internet for being an A-hole.  Remember ninety-five percent of the attitude you receive will be dictated on your attitude when you walk in.  

Not one single manufacture sends out any kind of learning aids for hobby shop staffs.  They don't even inform us of new products like the emails the public can sign up for.  My shop has over 14,000 different products and no one can know how each and every one works.  I encourage my staff to be involved in as many hobbies as possible since that is the best and easiest way to learn.  Still none of us have the time to research every new product that comes through our doors so you the public must be slightly tolerant if we don't know the answer to every single question you can ask about each item.  

Hobby owners are a tight knit bunch.  We have our own publications, private forums, and trade shows where we interact with each other and talk.  We know what is going on out there.  We know that you can always buy it cheaper on the internet, so don't remind us, that is insulting.  I have never met a hobby shop owner yet who does this to make lots of money, we all do it because we love hobbies.  

Want to own your own shop?  You're right in thinking that owning your own building is best.  Next be prepared for the serious cash outlay.  I have $300,000 in inventory and it is never enough for our customers.  New products come out weekly and customers expect you to keep up with them.  Oh and before you buy you'll find out just how hard it is becoming to find a distributor or manufacture willing to sell to you.  Keep in mind the more you buy the better your terms so as a small shop just starting out you will never get the discounts the bigger established places get and people will constantly walk in, look around, and remind you of how much cheaper they can get it at XXXXX.  But you'd better believe that after they buy it at XXXXX for $2.00 cheaper they will come back to you because a part is missing out of the kit.  Oh and if you don't replace the kit then you're an A-hole all over again.  

I've had a few people come in, get mad for stupid reasons, and insist they are going to put me out of business.  I honestly, truly, absolutely hope they would try by opening their own shop.  Then they'd see just how hard this business really is.  

A huge thank you to all of those that support their LHS no matter where you are.   You are appreciated more than you think.  Have a bit of patience with us and once we get to know you the rewards are greater than anything you'll ever find online.  

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One of our local stores just closed up shop last week. Hobby Alley here in Edmonton was mainly RC but over the past few years had been stocking more and more model kits. The serivce was great, and they were always willing to bring in anything that wasn't on the shelf. Pricing was a little more than online, but when you factor in shipping, they were cheaper. Plus they were convenient.

In speaking with them, on of the big reasons for there closure is similar to what Rusty alluded to above. 

THe RC guys were big money makers. Big margins. However, online shopping killed their sales. Guys would come in, pick their brains, check out the inventory, figure out what they wanted, then go home and order online. And then once it arrived, they would come back to the store for help in assembly or setup. And if the shop didn't help, they'd be out there slamming the "horrible service." 

At the end of they day, he says it just wasn't worth it anymore. Model kits and slot cars weren't enough to pay the bills.

Now in Edmonton, a city of over 1 million people, we have only a couple of options for hobby shops. None of which are in the west end, so if I want to go get kits or supplies, it's an adventure.

*sigh*

 

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I'm afraid the traditional hobby shop is fading away.  On line shopping gives the buyer an almost unlimited choice of products, something no hobby shop could hope to do. I prefer to buy from my local hobby shop when I can, but they  have a limited stock. 

Another factor is that the majority of plastic modelers are getting up there in years, (myself included) and you just don't see that many younger people getting into the hobby.   My local modelers club has over 70 members and we only get one or two models (on a good month) from junior  model builders in our monthly contests.

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Just came across this topic and it sure brings up some great memories.  About 1953 or 1954 at the tender age of 12 or 13 I began building model cars.  We had a local hardware store that also carried model kits (cars and airplanes), glue, paints, brushes, etc.  It's main business was devoted to all things hardware and had the model stuff in one of the back corners of the store.  The only kit that I remember spending a lot of time on was '49 Mercury.  After building one up I began "customizing" it by adding modeling clay for fender skirts and reshaping the rear fenders, removed the door handles, hood ornament, etc.  Everything at that time was brush painted and I remember I had trouble with the paint on the modeling clay.  My memory says it was a really impressive build but I think in all reality I would probably have a great laugh over it now.  Don't recall what happened to it....probably blew it up with cherry bombs.  that's what we all did with our built models at that time.

During this period the place was called Town and Country Hardware....it is still there doing hardware business primarily but has continued selling model car kits, paints and supplies.  Big on Pinewood derby and scout stuff too.  Now named Nankin Hardware.

I still drop in when near the old home town and look around, even bought a kit and some bottle paint last time.

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