The Internet and The LHS

Cookie Sewell’s Guest Editorial in the November 2007 issue of FSM touched a nerve. And it’s been nearly half a year and the nerve is still … teched.

I too grew up in a time when the local hobby shop was not an endangered breed.  When I was 8 years old and discovered Monogram kits and Estes rockets, I could walk to one (the name now escapes me) just down Van Dyke Rd from where we lived.  Later, when we moved to rural Michigan, there was one two blocks from the high school I attended in which I spent many hour discovering exotic kits from foreign manufacturers like Hasegawa, Tamiya and Airfix.  And throughout my childhood, I could get Testors’ square bottles of paint, model glue and other supplies from any drugstore or five and dime.

The shop on Van Dyke closed before we moved – which meant it lasted maybe three years.  The Capac Hobby Shop always sold more yarn and dollhouse furnishings than models – and that’s all they sell now (or did; last time I was home they were still open, amazingly enough, given the demographics of the area).  Perry Drugs, along with every other drugstore, five-and-dime and even major discount retailers like Wal-Mart, Toys-R-Us and Target no longer carry anything related to scale models.

Local Hobby Shops (LHS) have always been a tough way to make money in the 40+ years I’ve been alive – and that’s the bottom line: making money.  If you don’t make money, you don’t stay in business.  Period.  Time and again over the past ten years I have heard the lament that mail order and the internet are killing the LHS, but that’s like blaming the pneumonia for the death after a long bout with cancer.

LHS fail for three reasons: they’re poorly run, they’re in an area whose population will not support them or the owner calls it quits.  We’ve all been to the shop with the rude and/or ignorant sales staff.  Just as frequently, the owner has a passion for one segment of the hobby and pursues it to the exclusion of all others.  Like it or not, you can’t succeed in most area on just plastic models – you need RC, trains, rockets and other “building” hobbies as well.  Demographics are also a huge factor.  If you don’t have a population that includes enough middle-aged men with disposable incomes and time for hobbies … well, you know.

My club started in a great little shop in West Dundee, IL.  Elaine covered all the bases but she was in an area where there just were not enough people partaking in any of the model-related hobby activities to which she catered (and that was R/C cars and planes plus plastic models) to stay in business, even with word of mouth bringing people such as myself in from 45 minutes or more drive afield.  She told me, as we helped her pack up the shop, that she had not made a profit in 7 years.  It was not for a heroic lack of trying.

The shop closest to me, where I buy all my supplies as well as the occasional kit, has been a fixture on the main drag of Mundelein, IL for decades. (I have had veterans of boot camp at Great Mistakes ask, oh by the bye, is that train place on 45 in Mudelein still around?  And it is!) Ron’s Hobby has a loyal customer base because he does everything right.  He has a great selection of model railroading stuff for the older generation and the best selection of rockets for the younger. He has every tool and basic scratchbuilding supply you could ask for.  He has enough kits to provide for the birthday/Christmas shoppers though kits are not his main focus.  He’ll special order anything you want if he can get it for you (which is how I get my Revell Germany kits) In short: the perfect LHS.  And on that sad day when he finally retires it will all be gone.

I love my LHS … but they are a dying breed because times change.  And the scale modeling hobby has changed for the same reason.  There are many factors why model building is no longer as common as it was when we were kids, but the one that’s most commonly blamed (after videogames) is the Internet. And the Internet  – or more properly, the mail order and online shops that use it – are routinely blamed for “killing the LHS”. Double whammy.

I, however, would submit that the Internet has not only saved the scale modeling hobby, it has enabled it to flourish, albeit in a new and different form. Evolved, if you will. I can now get a model of darn near any subject I want (except, apparently, for a 1/48 scale J-22A) after a half hour of diligent web surfing, and maybe a few phone calls.  We are in a Golden Age, when even the most esoteric of paper projects has an injection molded kit depicting it in some scale. We have paints that claim to replicate exactly the colors used by defeated nations 60+ years ago (when no one was keeping notes, or those notes burned up in a bombing raid).  We can now argue of the exact position, length and shape of the pilot’s relief tube in an aircraft that was pushed into landfills by the thousands before I was born … and those arguments can flourish because of the Internet.

Moreover, I can now make my living – paying my mortgage, my car payment, my utility bill and groceries – selling the models I love on the Internet.  And so much more:  Because of the Internet I can connect with people the world over who love sci-fi models as much as I do.  StarshipModeler.com has contributions and participants from folks on every continent.   I have had friends from countries as diverse as Australia, Brazil and United Kingdom who love sci-fi models as much as I do sitting around my kitchen table here in Vernon Hills, IL, arguing the merits of particular kits.  And almost strictly because of the Internet and my website, we survivors of Elaine’s hobby shop have been able to bring together a group of like minded modelers to form a club in the local area (one of at least four –so far – in the US that met through the StarshipModeler website).  We’ve been an IPMS chartered club for six or seven year now.

Mr Sewell, in his editorial, extolled the virtues of the LHS.  I certainly do not want to negate those – but let’s face it:  in a great many cities across the USA, there are no LHS.  If you have one – or more, as I am truly blessed with here in the greater Chicago area – patronize them.  They can get you the models you want at less than you would pay at a mailorder place plus postage.  But regardless of whether you have an LHS, there’s a cornucopia of wholesome modeling goodness on the Internet.  And you can find people who share your enthusiasm for your favorite subject there too.