Hi All,
All your comments I read with interest having been a modeller for 60 years and attempted most disciplines and interests, I also owned my own Model Shop, which has unfortunately gone, like so many others.
For purely financial reasons a shop owner must stock what sells the fastest and gives the best profit margins, in my time and probably the same today it was the current 'Fad' that helped pay the bills. In the 80's it was electric buggies and all their spares that kept us going, today it appears to be Drones.
I have always had a love of model boats but when I bought the shop I was into flying scale and as a business owner promoted trainers and all their kit offering trimming, first flight testing and to some even lessons, this helped increase the footfall from local aero clubs a bit but not much.
After the Fad of the time, it was keeping 'All the bits' one might need generally, including adhesives, balsa and ply, covering, paints, nuts and bolts and so on and all this stuff costs an absolute fortune.
Members of the Boat club I had been a member of a few years before started coming to the shop when they knew it was me who owned it and they bought a few bits but constantly asked me to start stocking Boat stuff, Lesro, Caldercraft, Billings kits etc soon joined the boxes on the shelves and then Couplings, propshafts, fuel tanks, marine engines and thicker plywoods and GRP resins...but hardly anyone ever came back and bought this stuff.
A K&S rack was a major purchase for a model shop and you had to have the whole thing including all the aerofoil and wing spar sections of brass. Apart from being the worse thing to stock take and restock, the price labels fell off the strips of metal and so on.
Anyway, now...over 30 years after closing the shop, I am still using my old stock of shafts, couplings, motors, K&S metals and strip hardwood planking!!!
Granted we have had a couple of recessions and you can't eat model stuff, but modellers are a fickle lot in the main and any shop owner who tries to please everyone, unless they have won the lottery, will go to the wall after a few years. The overheads to run such a shop are horrendous and from newspaper reports are likely to get worse.....The old adage is still a good one..."If you want to make a small fortune, start with a large one!"....very true of the model business.
Anyone thinking of trying to start a model business today, these are my recommendations, Don't give up the day job....Pick a niche in the market and don't deviate from it. Don't rent or buy a retail premises (Money PIT) work from your shed or garage. Don't borrow money from the banks to fund it, they'll take back the free umbrella they gave you for opening the account as soon as it starts to rain.
I drive 40 miles each way to support the nearest proper model shop to me, for all the rest...I'm afraid I buy it on line....It's desperately sad but we reap what we sow. It took me 15 years to financially get over the loss of the shop and we lost our house as well, so you can't blame me for being cynical........Let the Model shop buyer beware.
Ron.