Just got an email from my local hobby store saying the Chariot kits were in. When I took a ride to the store, they were all gone. "All" meaning all six kits they ordered. Same thing happened with the Seaview kits awhile back. Still waiting for that one. I asked the manager why they did not order more. He said they are special orders mostly and sold quickly. I asked if he thought maybe this meant he should order more for the shelves. Manager got testy and walked away. So, I guess I will got to the internet as there are plenty out there. So much for trying to support the local hobby store!!!

i agree. my local hobby shop could care less about getting the lastest kits. they say no ones buys sci fi kits anymore.
well, maybe if they had them on the shelf they would get bought.

We have a Hobbytown USA about 30 miles from here. That is the closest, largest hobby shop around here. They have 2 aisles of military, 2 aisles of cars and at the end of one of those aisles there are a couple of Polar Lights kits, Lindberg dinos, revell dinos and a Dr. Jekyll kit. Even one of the guys working the store one time said that if a kit is coming out this week they will probably not have it for several months. I am curious to see how long it takes for them to actually get the Charriot & space pod kits in that store. For what it is worth.....They DID do good sales with their old PL 1/350 scale Star Trek 1701A kits. It's gonna be a long time before Star Trek kits do not sell.

A tactic that rarely fails is to offer to pay a 1/2 down or full price deposit on the item you want for them to special order a kit for you.
Like the old saying "Money talks..."

They do and they don't sell. They don't appeal to a broad audience, but the die hards buy. I try to anticipate how many I will sell immediately, and then hopefully have one or two for the shelves. Even the Battlestar Galactica kits sold poorly. I think I sold three vipers and one Cylon.

We haven't had a good hobby shop in my area really in 20 years. The couple so-so ones we do have cater mainly to R/C airplane guys, as well as R/C cars and trucks. The less expensive indoor R/C helicopters have really caught on too. But, the plane guys spend the big bucks generally on kits, supplies by the ton's, radio's, and so on, so that is where the bulk of thier inventory is geared. I don't blame them. As much as I love model kits, they are most loved by a dwindling percentage of us middle aged guys who in another 20 years may not be building ourselves because of age-related inabilities, or we've died! LOL. Sad, but true I think. I have to give the Hobbytown store that's about 25 miles from me credit, he stocks a ton of kits, and he has repeatedly tried to start a model club, and it just fails every time he does. It's wierd. Sadly though, most of the kit's he buys are what "headquarters" probably offers up, and nobody buys this stuff. Some of it's had more birthdays in his store than I have.....How many snap-tite lowrider kits with hopping action does one vendor deserve? :dude:

I shifted to buying most of my kit's on the internet several years ago. Many of the "list" guys, vendors like Dean Sill's of Dean's Hobby Stop for instance, who I got mail lists from for years, now offer up quick service, special orders, and can get just about anything via the internet or phone. Works for me. I will have them save up a bunch of stuff I want and just do a big order a couple times a year. There's dozens of other great sellers just like Dean. Ebay has been for the most part a pleasant experience as well, for both buying and selling. I can't tell you how many car shows I have lugged box loads of stuff to, and didn't sell squat in a whole weekend. Wasted time, money, and effort that I would have otherwise spent with my family.

Price is another issue. I go to antique shows, one big one in particular every year for many years. I see many of the same vendors, offering the exact same crap at huge prices, year after year. They complain, complain, complain....But, do they budge on prices? No! So, keep lugging this junk and complaining until you get back to the real world. LOL. I'm a DEALER, I'm willing to make a DEAL!! You want to buy 15 kits from me? Your gona' get a deal!! :woohoo:

My LHS is all R/C stuff and a few tanks now that it was bought from the estate of guy who owned it for a hundred years. The model kits are now stored down in the basement ... except during R/C car season when they get shoved aside so they can setup their competition tracks.

I ran out of #17 blades last week cutting up the Seaview etch and dropped over to pick up some more. I took one of the etch with me to do a little "look at me look at me" ;-)

The new owner looked at it, said "is it for a tank?". I said, "no, it's for a submarine" (not even mentioning the Seaview yet) and he just turned and walked away. :rolleyes:

I'm thinking the old lady running the shop way across town gets my business now.

I think that the old lady across town will be more appreciative of you than the new owner of your LHS.:)

The continuing saga of the fall of the LHS is beginning to sound exactly like the arrogance that destroyed the once lucrative mom & pop video stores of the mid-80's to late 90's; the owners would only stock what THEY wanted, and then went broke when their customers abandoned them for the larger stores that carried what the customers wanted. :(

Hers is actually a nice little shop - an ecclectic mix of kits and sundries ... all coated with about 30 years of dust. I wouldn't be surprised if there were original issue Aurora kits sitting under the piles. Hmmmm - might have to sop by there on Friday and see if I can dig up a Moon Bus :)

I live in a city with more than a million other people. We have 3 hobby (model) shops. One is tiny and owned by an Oriental family and gets in all kinds of Japanese kits at great prices but stocks little else. I think they buy their couple of Moebius from the same place as I do (KarenLee Hobbies) and then double the price (near $57.00 for the pod???) and One is larger and just a tiny bit eclectic - they've never heard of Moebius and the teenage salesclerk could care less about models. One is quite large and has great prices but pretty much refuses to go near science fiction because it just doesn't sell. I brought in the Seaview kit to show them and the response was the last lot of Lost in Space stuff just sat on the shelves for years and didn't sell.
When I was a kid I lived in this little tiny town (that was eventually swallowed by this city) and five blocks away on our main street was Brown's Department Store, all of a thousand square feet. In the back they had eight feet and three shelves of model kits that I beetled my way to instantly every time we went shopping. All the old Revell and Monogram and Hawk box scale kits of not just mainstream but all the "space age" kits as well. Atomic bombers and Mercury spacecraft and missiles and Big Daddy Roth. And their stock changed constantly. About once a year I have a recurring dream that I'm me, now, back then, twenty bucks in my pocket, and I go into Brown's and buy all the kits I missed then, and I take them home, to my old house, and hide them away so that they're waiting for me now. And invariably I wake up so happy.
It's nothing like buying them off EBay. It's the old kits on the shelf, searching through them never knowing what you'll discover, not just the thrill of discovery, but the thrill of finding something you never knew existed before, of discovering "This is what it looks like?", "This is how it goes together and works?" And it's being a kid. I have to admit, even if it's not quite the same thing now, Moebius does bring back a lot of being that kid again.
But if you're fortunate enough to still have an old dusty hobby shop somewhere in your world, enjoy it! Some of us can only dream about them.

Believe me starseeker2, you're not the only one who has that dream!:)
I'll bet that somewhere within 50 miles of you are all the old kits you want. It's just a matter of finding them. They'll be in shops, warehouses, attics,etc. You can't see 'em, but they're there!!
In the '90's I found a newsagents with dusty boxes along the top shelves, out of reach unless you had a ladder. One box was square. I asked if I could have a look and lo and behold it was the Glow Hunchback!! I paid $3.30 for it!! The other boxes were games and puzzles. Another time I was commissioned to build some 1/12 sports cars and when I got to the guys place he showed me some kits he wasn't interested in. I bought a mint, sealed Rommels Rod for $80!! This was only a few years ago. I also bought a collection of 420 aircraft kits off an elderly gentleman a few years ago for $500.
The point is, they're out there- you just have to take the time to look.
Sorry for the ramble- sometimes I can't help myself.:o
Maybe it's a good topic for another thread...

Chris.:)

Luckily HiWay Hobby looooves sci fi, so he always stocks up (I mean, he still has Kazon Torpedoes!).

It's just the really expensive stuff he passes on, like Fine Molds, which he says he has trouble selling.

A few months ago I asked the clerk at my semi-LHS if they would be carrying kits from Moebius Models or Monarch Models...she responded in a monotone that "no, we're just going to carry what we know...Revell, Monogram..." ...made me very sad...although I kind of got a clue that they were sorely out of the loop when, a couple months before that, I scored the PL Go-Kart kit there and a guy who I assume was one of the owners said, "we'd better order some more of those"... :drunk:

I too find that the local guys a bit of a personal disappointment. :confused:They have ailses of main stream, R/C. diecast and railway stuff yet only about a 6ft wide x 4ft high section for sci-fi/fantasy models... When I asked the bloke at the counter he said there is no real demand for that sort of stuff and that they were also having supply issues from suppliers/agents here in OZ. :rolleyes: It was nearly 6 months after its release that the Airfix's Dr Who Welcome Aboard kit hit their shelf.

There aren't any stores in 50k radius around me that I've been in contact with taht carry much in the field of sci-fi/fantasy. However there is a store in Sydney that has a back room filled with sci-fi gear but they are over a 1000 Km from me. They have a web site of sorts, but I'm still waiting on a reply about the Seaview I sent them last December!!! So now I pretty much buy all I want from the States via the web and todate I haven't been dissapointed with any one I've dealt with form there. :thumbsup:

So maybe it's a world wide crisis... :p

...and that makes me even sadder...:cry:

Just got an email from my local hobby store saying the Chariot kits were in. When I took a ride to the store, they were all gone. "All" meaning all six kits they ordered. Same thing happened with the Seaview kits awhile back. Still waiting for that one. I asked the manager why they did not order more. He said they are special orders mostly and sold quickly. I asked if he thought maybe this meant he should order more for the shelves. Manager got testy and walked away. So, I guess I will got to the internet as there are plenty out there. So much for trying to support the local hobby store!!!

This sounds like my LHS in Mississauga. ON Canada

Then be thankful for Steve Iverson and his contemporaries, who have my business for as long as they will be in business.
But I will support my LHS as far as paint, cement, brushes, tape, putty, blades, etc. are concerned, and as you guys already are aware, those do add up to a pretty penny themselves.

AJ, if you mean Sheriffs in Parramatta, Jeff's only recently found out about Moebius and Monarch. I let him know about them at the Brissie Hot Rod Show and he ordered a stack of them from J&B over the phone while I was standing next to him. They should be in stock by now.
You're spot on about the shops here not caring too much about kits that are out of the mainstream, but I've found Hobbyrama showing some interest. They just sold their last Seaview and I talked to one of the more switched on guys and he knows all about M&M. He's a figure/scifi modeller himself so there's some hope there...
Last week I talked him into buying the last Revell Riff Raff Spitsfire kit they had!!:thumbsup:

Chris.:)

I refuse to do business with my two local hobby shops.

In both shops I'm constantly followed and repeatedly asked if I found what I'm looking for.

I will not support a business that treats me like a shoplifter.

Its kinda sad because one of them I've been doing business with since I was a kid in the early 60's.

The Hobby shop owner sould have had a better attitude. If they didn't have the kit they should have offered to order one for you. On the flip side you could have phoned and had them hold one for you when you got the email.

A hobby shop owner should also be interested in all subjects. Not to humour the customer but to learn as much as he can about all aspects of the hobby.

I would not want to be in customer service as I have seen annoying customers hang around the hobby store for hours and the owner had no choice but to be cureous to this annoying person.

I refuse to do business with my two local hobby shops.

In both shops I'm constantly followed and repeatedly asked if I found what I'm looking for.

I will not support a business that treats me like a shoplifter.

Its kinda sad because one of them I've been doing business with since I was a kid in the early 60's.

Sounds like they're just trying to be uncomfortabley helpful. I hate that too.

Maybe the guy is just delighted to have a customer and wants to be "right there" if you need help. Why not engage him in pleasant conversation and mention that you are just browsing for some neat sci fi kits. You might find that you share common interests and develop a rapport with the chap.

Huzz

Holding kits for people is a tricky business. I can see both sides of the story as I buy a lot of stuff, but also own my own shop.

Soooooooo many times I get badgered by someone about a new kit. Is it here yet? Is it here yet? Is it here yet? When it comes in the guy says oh cool. I just wanted to know when it was coming out... Or he says cool, I will be in SOMETIME the week after next to LOOK at it... Screw that. Money talks and the new kit walks. Give me a deposit or at least make a firm comittment like hey cool I will be in Friday on my way home to BUY one. I get tired of excuses... I couldn't get in, I was busy, etc. I run my own shop and am open 9 hours a day 6 days a week. Since you can drive from one end of town to the other in 10 minutes, I can't believe people can't find time to make the hop over. You can always pay for the model over the phone and either pick it up or have me mail it to you ($5 local).

It is also hard sometimes to anticipate demand or other circumstances. I got 6 chariots, and not counting my own kit, that gave me five for sale. I had two already sold... so that left three for general sale. Well both of the guys that were comitted for one wanted two... leaving one. But then all/most of them were defective so each guy bought one, and I returned three for credit. All that happened in about the course of two hours on the day the package arrived. I could have called a couple people to say hey the Chariot is in, anticipating having two or three on the shelf but then since they were all defective I would up with none.

The Hobbytown USA in Louisville has all the bang on kits! I was thrilled to see Moebius there! They were a bit pricey, but I do all my kits from Cult myself. However I have given other LHS chances and am extremely dis-appointed. I called and I have visited. It's so bad in Frankfort Kentucky, that you can't get a paint brush or unless your painting a battleship, not much of a color selection either. A bad location doesn't help them. They mainly sell comics.....They have a great selection of old Polar Lights kits. I called way before the Pod came out and they said "We don't really sell that many models......If your looking for some PL kits, they would be a good source to tap into. For details, just contact me.....

I live in a small town north of Milwaukee, and we have 2 great hobby
stores that carry alot of models (Greenfield News and hobby, and Model
Empire.) I also have a Hobby Town right down the street from me, and the owner will order any model I want. :thumbsup:

I asked my local hobby shop if they were going to be stocking Monarch or Moebius models. He said he'd never heard of them.

What a world, what a world.

I do see the hobby stores viewpoint, but don't always get to the email. I guess I was a bit let down that the Chariot and Seaview kits were gone so quickly. Also, with so many cars and military kits on the shelves for months and months, I just suggested to maybe order more kits from Moebius and Monarch. I am glad they are available and would love to see many in the stores. Hopefully for the store owners, they continue to sell out!!

Unfortunatley the internet is the only way to go for most peaple these days as many small towns do not have Hobby stores . The nearest one to me that atualy sells science fiction stuff is 10 miles away and it is not very coprehensive. It does seem to be true that it is a specialist market. I will give you two examples , firstly you can still get the
product enterprise limited edition fab 1 and second i just ordered the 16 inch Gort statue limited edtion discounted from £175 to £50 both thesemodels have now been out a whileand only made in small numbers but obviously not bieing snaped up. (yea i know we are bieng riped of to hell here in england but if we order from the states anything over $18 is subject to a high tax when it gets to England) kidcury

You know I remember growing up and going to the mall with my parents and the highlight would be going to the Hobby store. Well I am now 43 years old and all have gone away, even all the Hobbytowns in the malls.
I had three (two) in my area (Massachusetts).
The first is a small store and has started the change from all models and going to radio controlled, paint balls and computer repair. You know I went in looking for a certain color for my LIS Chariot and they were out of it. I asked the owner when he would be re-stocking it and he said that he probably would not. He did not seem to care. I noticed that he only got one LIS Chariot (good thing I did not get it from him because it was $10.00 more than retail).
The second one was a good one (looked like all Hobbytowns filled with models hanging from the ceiling) but he to was going more for radio controlled. Well the store burnt down earlier this year and he packed it in and never reopened. Figures I had a $60.00 gift certificate that I received for Christmas that I wanted to spend. (and I was going to go there a day before the fire)
Well let me tell you. I found the Hobby Shop of my childhood if not better. The store is further to get to and takes about 40 min but is so worth it. You can tell that the owners care. The store is called The Spare Time Shop in Marlborough, MA. and I think that they are great. I so hope that they do not fall off like all the others have. The are so helpful and knowledgeable about everything. Great service in my eyes. You should see they have isles that are filled with models from floor to ceiling. I go crazy every time I go in there. They have every item that you could ever need or want.

They do and they don't sell. They don't appeal to a broad audience, but the die hards buy. I try to anticipate how many I will sell immediately, and then hopefully have one or two for the shelves. Even the Battlestar Galactica kits sold poorly. I think I sold three vipers and one Cylon.

Where in Florida is your store? If it close to Auburndale I may have been there. If not I soon will be. I'm always looking for new hobby stories.

Paid a quick visit to my other semi-LHS and saw that they are carrying the Chariot...after seeing the Seaview on the shelf there for all of three days before it disappeared, I continue to believe that, unlike the other semi-LHS, they will continue to carry Moebius Models! :thumbsup:

If they AREN'T REALLY hobby type people but just "store owners" they may not have a clue about what sells, or whats popular. Our local Hobbytown was catering to the kids playing war games. they sold 2-300 bucks a week in figures, paints and the like. They hired more kids who played the games, and knew little else. They had a poor selection of everything else. I asked why they had no flat white by any manufacturer. They hadn't noticed. They had no Epoxy glues, or Xacto supplies either!!! Well that was 3 months ago. The store is gone now. Good riddance!

The Hobbytown USA in Louisville has all the bang on kits! I was thrilled to see Moebius there! They were a bit pricey, but I do all my kits from Cult myself. However I have given other LHS chances and am extremely dis-appointed. I called and I have visited. It's so bad in Frankfort Kentucky, that you can't get a paint brush or unless your painting a battleship, not much of a color selection either. A bad location doesn't help them. They mainly sell comics.....They have a great selection of old Polar Lights kits. I called way before the Pod came out and they said "We don't really sell that many models......If your looking for some PL kits, they would be a good source to tap into. For details, just contact me.....
and therein lies the reason that you WONT see new genre kits at a lot of shops. these guys ordered the polar kits thinking theyd sell well and move off the shelf quickly. theyve still got em. dead stock can kill a small store. ive seen shops with leftovers that are over a decade old. you think these folks are gonna belly up to the bar for more genre kits?

I've been luckier: of the three LHS I've asked about carrying Moebius, the one who did claims they can't keep them on the shelves. Now that I have a chariot kit, I'll show it to the others. I'm betting one place will appreciate the quality right away; the other- I don't know how they'll go. But they're just a few blocks down the street from the shop that already carries Moebius.

The problem that many hobby stores have is that they never dispose of old stuff.....every square inch of shelf space in a store costs money....every bit of shelf space needs to be generating sales.
If there is too much old inventory on the shelves it is taking space that should be occupied by new stuff that could be selling at a good margin.
When I was in the retail side of the business we made a habit of clearing out old inventory on a regular basis. Sometimes we ended up selling real dogs for less than our cost, but that was a rare occurance. Our philosophy was if it's a dog - get it gone at some price - better to sell it at a loss than throw it in the trash and write off the entire cost.
Ususally our clearance sale items would sell at a reasonable mark-down....

Dead inventory will choke a small business - but too many hobby store owners refuse to shorten their margins on dead stuff to clear it out because they believe that sooner or later they'll find that one guy who wants it bad enough to pay full price! Trust me, that one guy isn't gonna walk thru your door often enough to save those old kits for him!

After buying kits for a retail store for 25 years I can tell you that there is a certain percentage of everything you'll buy for a store that isn't going to be a hot seller....If you don't get those items out of your store in a timely manner before long your shelves are going to be choked with slow movers and you won't have money for new products.
The Mark down sticker is a necessary part of the business!

We always bought new kits in every genre...I tried not to let my interests in the hobby influence my buying - this is another major error that shop owners make in that they only buy what interests them - that is a stupid strategy since the customer doesn't care one iota about the owner's hobby interests.... A sucessfull store needs to have the widest possible range of kit genres.....

Ok, so much for my philosophy of hobby store inventory control

Dave

dave you're absolutely correct. its exactly the same in the halloween business. loads of mom and pop costume shops are that way about masks, and will keep the stuff till the rubber rots (literally). and then they point to their wall of "no-sales" and will say "masks wont sell". same goes for the personal taste thing. i know of a guy whos shop is dying, right now, because hes trying to force his clientèle to buy the stuff he wants them to, rather than the stuff they want.

I used to work in a model car shop in Sydney for about 12 months. The boss refused to get new stuff in until the stock ran down. No discounts on dead stock, no brownie points to good customers, etc. The customers gradually went to a rival shop and it actually got to the stage where we were opening the doors for no reason. I quit just before the shop went under. It was an established, respected shop(20 years) before this clown bought it a couple of weeks before he put me on. A year later, it was gone..

Chris.

The problem that many hobby stores have is that they never dispose of old stuff.....That's a great post. :thumbsup:

The problem that many hobby stores have is that they never dispose of old stuff.....every square inch of shelf space in a store costs money....every bit of shelf space needs to be generating sales.
If there is too much old inventory on the shelves it is taking space that should be occupied by new stuff that could be selling at a good margin.
When I was in the retail side of the business we made a habit of clearing out old inventory on a regular basis. Sometimes we ended up selling real dogs for less than our cost, but that was a rare occurance. Our philosophy was if it's a dog - get it gone at some price - better to sell it at a loss than throw it in the trash and write off the entire cost.
Ususally our clearance sale items would sell at a reasonable mark-down....

Dead inventory will choke a small business - but too many hobby store owners refuse to shorten their margins on dead stuff to clear it out because they believe that sooner or later they'll find that one guy who wants it bad enough to pay full price! Trust me, that one guy isn't gonna walk thru your door often enough to save those old kits for him!

After buying kits for a retail store for 25 years I can tell you that there is a certain percentage of everything you'll buy for a store that isn't going to be a hot seller....If you don't get those items out of your store in a timely manner before long your shelves are going to be choked with slow movers and you won't have money for new products.
The Mark down sticker is a necessary part of the business!

We always bought new kits in every genre...I tried not to let my interests in the hobby influence my buying - this is another major error that shop owners make in that they only buy what interests them - that is a stupid strategy since the customer doesn't care one iota about the owner's hobby interests.... A sucessfull store needs to have the widest possible range of kit genres.....

Ok, so much for my philosophy of hobby store inventory control

Dave

This is where e-bay can actually help a hobby shop that is not moving items! Have a portion of your shop sell old stuff online! That will open your visability to a much larger audience!

Great post Dave!

MMM

This is where e-bay can actually help a hobby shop that is not moving items! Have a portion of your shop sell old stuff online! That will open your visability to a much larger audience!

Great post Dave!

MMM

the problem is that the mentality that hangs onto the old stock is usually unwilling to try new venues like ebay or sees the fees as cutting into the profits theyre trying to maintain by not discounting the stuff.

Man... I'm glad my LHS owner is all about making sure he has the new stuff. He's sold quite a few of the Moebius offerings, as well as selling out of the Nosferatu from Monarch. He's of the "old-school" hobby store mindset. (Old-school as in "Aurora figure & sci-fi kits as an equally viable stock item compared to the standard plane, tank & car kits.") He does tend to hold stock on the shelves if it's not moving frequently, but doesn't let that stop him from ordering the new stuff. I'm kinda glad of that.... every so often I can find something at his place that's been out of production for quite a while.

Its bad enough trying to keep up with new releases and special orders but I just had someone ask if I sell medicated bandages and wound care supplies !?!?!?!?!?!?!

I guess I could have sold them a Doctor Deadly if that was out...

We used to keep a written list of goofy stuff people asked for....The one weird item I remember was "a Stuffed Owl"!

Dave

:confused:

Taxidermy is a hobby. And I think Dremel and X-acto are missing the boat: "Use of other brands of bandages or dressings will void the tool warranty!"

Its bad enough trying to keep up with new releases and special orders but I just had someone ask if I sell medicated bandages and wound care supplies !?!?!?!?!?!?!

I guess I could have sold them a Doctor Deadly if that was out...

You could have sold him a bottle of superglue.

(sort of joking as CA glues wre originally designed for battlefield quick closing of wounds)

The hobbystore by me gets Moebuis kits in regularly and if he runs out that week by next week he has more back on the shelf and plus whatever other kits other companies are coming out with:)

Ultimately, you've got to remember that the hobby shops are there to make money. How many folks in our local area - that you know of - are in to SciFi? I bet the number is well under a dozen....

SciFi just doesn't sell as well as Armor, aircraft, R/C or the like because we're a really small niche w/in the niche hobby of modeling. As someone suggested, offer to put down a deposit on the kit(s) you want when you know they're about to become available. The HobbyTown USA doesn't accept a pre-buy - or at least the two times I've asked about it - nor does the independent fellow in Jacksonville, AR. However, both will put in a special order for kits if they don't have to purchase an entire case.

The LHS owner of Rail And Sprue did that for a while on the Polar Lights kits when they first came out because folks wanted those kits and he could order by the case or even onesy-twosy from one or two of his distributors. However, once sales started to drop he was forced to order a case of whatever it was and if he didn't have enough to sell at least half a case, then he wasn't willing to purchase them. As a for instance, the first two or three cases of PL Refit kits he got in sold out, so he ordered one more. Over a year later he still had three of those four (to a case) PL Refit's on the shelf.

:shrug: I'm not saying that all LHS folks are great or perfect, just that you've got to try and see it from their perspective. Most are in the business because they love some aspect of the hobby, but all of them are in the business to make money, not lose it. It's frustrating, I know, but there are always alternatives to brick & mortar - sometimes you can even special order from another brick & mortar store.

...I'm not saying that all LHS folks are great or perfect, just that you've got to try and see it from their perspective...

That's not the problem. We Americans are wannabees: wannabee big businessmen, wannabee ultra-rich. Our problem is seeing things the way we should, namely, that we're all consumers. In reality, the most successful businesses never forget what it's like to be a consumer.

The trouble is the American consumer wants top quality goods at bargain basement prices. They want things to have Mercedes quality at made in the Phillipines prices. At least in my town ( a retirement and snow bird haven) people remember prices from 1941 and skip over the last 70 years of higher prices AND higher wages. They remember when a tube of glue was $ .15 but don't remember having only a quarter in their pocket at the time. Now when a tube of glue is $2 they complain about it, without realizing they have a $20 in their wallet... but they act like they still have that 1941 $ .25.