Model Shop v The Internet/Mail order

[johnco]

Whilst model shops are a great place to go to, the good ones are so few and far between, the average ones seem only to sell the bog standard items and the poor ones only have railway toys amongst their stock
All my fellow members at our MRC bemoan the fact that there are no decent model railway shops in our immediate vicinity and to get to a good one involves a tidy journey. Bearing in mind the cost of fuel (an average car does about 8 miles to the litre of petrol) the cost of mail order becomes attractive even though you have to wait a few days for delivery. We are going to end up with a few good shops in the UK and the main sellers will be the box shifters. Out of the ordinary items and components will only be available from specialist suppliers.
If you find a good model shop, please do your best to support it or another part of our hobby will disappear.

[Bufferstop]

Bite the bullet. Every other large purchase you make buy it from a bricks and mortar model shop, even if you have to get them to post it to you. If you have a local, independent model shop check out if they stock the bit's and pieces. If they don't, tell them what you need. For what it costs them to keep in stock some of the expensive stuff that the box shifters sell, they could have a whole range of smaller hard to get items. You are more likely to go in for a few bits and pieces and come out with an impulse buy locomotive than the other way around.
John W
aka Bufferstop

[poliss]

If these shops are so good why haven't they set up an online shop? Don't blame the customer for out of date business practices.

[Dragonfly]

I tend to favour the bricks-and-mortar shops, particularly local ones, as supporting your local businesses is more important to me than giving eHattons a wad of cash, even if it is a few quid cheaper. That said, I have just placed a pretty big order with Hattons.

I suppose I'm quite lucky, though, in that within 15 miles radius of Stoke there are four model shops (The Hobby Goblin, Alsager Models, Haslington Models, Trident Trains), so after visiting each a few times, you get to know what their strengths are, so if there's something you want that you know one of them does, may as well go and get it in person.

Have also got to agree with Mr Bufferstop with regards to impulse buying. With eHattons I tend to just go on, looking for something specific, and just get that (or even decide against it. When I can't see something in the flesh I'm much more likely to just close the window, even if it's something I did specifically want), whereas today, for example, I went into Trident Trains for some ballast and came out with a brand new Bachmann A1. Go figure.

Also, a lot of online stores don't do much in the way of second-hand stock. It's just not the same as buying from a real shop. I suppose eBay has won over the second-hand side of things anyway, but I challenge anyone go to a shop like RBS in Long Eaton (a real Alladin's Cave for second-hand stock) and try and tell me that a surf on eBay is anywhere near as enjoyable.

[Bufferstop]

If these shops are so good why haven't they set up an online shop? Don't blame the customer for out of date business practices.

A well designed and fully functional on-line shop doesn't come cheap, ask any web designer and they will tell you the tails of folk who tried to do it on the cheap and discovered it required more of their time than the shop itself did. There are some activities that are perfect for on-line trading, and those are the ones the box-shifters concentrate on. The really useful independent shop comes into its own when you know what you want to do, but not what you could use to do it, talk to the guy behind the counter and he pools his knowledge with you and together you come up with a solution on bits that he has. Show me a programmer who can even write the schematic for doing that, let alone translate it into HTML, PHP or XML. You might say it's just collaboration but collaborative software is still in it's infancy, there are a host of activities that just cannot be conducted via the 'net, so when we come across one we need to give it all the help we can.

[poliss]

If they haven't got an online presence they'll go bust. No amount of sentiment will save them. Even tiny shops such as the Crab Pot Model Shop have an e-commerce website.

[Bufferstop]

It's not sentimental to try to keep going something that provides a service that cannot be delivered via the web. Going beyond open the boxes, plant the buildings apply some scenery it's not long before you start asking how can I do this. That leads on to finding out and needing to examine what's available, often the items that fall into this category aren't stocked online, and the small one man companies that produce the bits are often too busy, maybe out doing the day job, to talk to on the phone. Apart from show stalls and swapmeets the only place you stand any chance of actually examining the item is at the small one man shop. I don't know if you've noticed but the larger chains of shops (who also trade on-line) rarely have anything that's not on the website and - aren't too knowledgeable about the goods and neither are they too keen on opening the boxes so that you can answer the query yourself. Their real world shops actual working just like their website with the customer being his own deliveryman. The sort of place I don't want to see wiped out by box shifters is exemplified by The Locoshed. He seems to be doing ok ATM but he has to work bloody hard to make a living from it and doesn't have the time or money to develop a web based store. He has a listing on UK Modelshops and will happily get something in for you and ship it out to you, and he'll do his level best to match anyone else's price. The big difference is at least 50% of his stock simply doesn't appear on the big boys web sites but that's what generates his income. If we lose these places the hobby will simply become an exercise in setting out the contents of so many boxes.
I'll put my soapbox away now.

[Dragonfly]

If they haven't got an online presence they'll go bust. No amount of sentiment will save them. Even tiny shops such as the Crab Pot Model Shop have an e-commerce website.

Simply not true. Sure it's a handy feature, and you'll do more mail-order business, but that's no replacement for customer-through-the-door, no indication of how good a shop is, and certainly no indication of somewhere that'll go bust.

Of my four local shops and two semi-regulars, only two have e-commerce sites. All six are doing fine. The only online presence the other four have are that someone's mentioned them on review/shop listing websites, with address and postcode. That is all they need, so if someone Googles "model railway shop [TOWN GOES HERE]", their shop shows in the results. In fact, that's how I found 3 of my locals.

[trainlover23]

If they haven't got an online presence they'll go bust. No amount of sentiment will save them. Even tiny shops such as the Crab Pot Model Shop have an e-commerce website.

Simply not true. Sure it's a handy feature, and you'll do more mail-order business, but that's no replacement for customer-through-the-door, no indication of how good a shop is, and certainly no indication of somewhere that'll go bust.

Of my four local shops and two semi-regulars, only two have e-commerce sites. All six are doing fine. The only online presence the other four have are that someone's mentioned them on review/shop listing websites, with address and postcode. That is all they need, so if someone Googles "model railway shop [TOWN GOES HERE]", their shop shows in the results. In fact, that's how I found 3 of my locals.

You beat me by a few minutes. In a lot of cases internet shopping is NOT cheaper and can be a lot of hassle if things go wrong. One company I worked for would not touch anything if a customer bought it in for repair if it been bought on the net.
A net shop is NOT cheap and can be very time consuming to run properly. If it is not up to dsate imagine the moans on here " Went on XYZ`s web site said they 3 in stock but actually had none blah blah moan moan". Use you local model shops or else thye hobby will die

[poliss]

Before the Internet the ONLY shop close-ish to me was Bakers in Gillingham. Now I have hundreds to choose from with a much wider range of products than ever before.
If the Internet isn't making model shops without an Internet presence go bust then why are so many closing, and why the reason for this topic in the first place if everything is fine and dandy? The owner of Norwood Junction Models said about the closure of his shop "The internet has had quite an impact on retail sales, people can just get things online."
Look at your high street for examples of other types of shops that thought they didn't really need the Internet. Virgin, Zavvi, Woolworth, Comet, Game all gone and Argos are in big trouble too.

[Dragonfly]

Virgin, Comet, Game, Argos... They all have/had e-commerce sites...

[trainlover23]

Whilst model shops are a great place to go to, the good ones are so few and far between, the average ones seem only to sell the bog standard items and the poor ones only have railway toys amongst their stock
All my fellow members at our MRC bemoan the fact that there are no decent model railway shops in our immediate vicinity and to get to a good one involves a tidy journey. Bearing in mind the cost of fuel (an average car does about 8 miles to the litre of petrol) the cost of mail order becomes attractive even though you have to wait a few days for delivery. We are going to end up with a few good shops in the UK and the main sellers will be the box shifters. Out of the ordinary items and components will only be available from specialist suppliers.
If you find a good model shop, please do your best to support it or another part of our hobby will disappear.

1] Define a GOOD model shop

2} Where are you based???

Poliss it is up to the shop owner to decide wether or not he has a web site or not surely. As Bufferstop states they are VERY expensive and time consuming. Not all web site store are cheap far from it in some cases

[poliss]

"Virgin, Comet, Game, Argos... They all have/had e-commerce sites..." Sure they did, but they relied heavily on their B&M stores while others just have internet sites.
Sure it's up to the owner if he/she wants to be successful or close down. Who are the biggest click to buy button pushers in the world? The UK of course.

[Dragonfly]

You can not claim that that is the reason they went bust. As I wrote before, a lot of other places rely primarily/solely on their bricks & mortar shops and are doing fine. In fact, the chains that have taken the place of Woolworths (B&M, Home Bargains, Pound Land) are doing very well. Whereas Argos does to a LOT of business online, and as you said yourself, is struggling.

Woolworths failed because of competition from Home Bargains, Pound Land, 99p Stores, etc. Comet failed because it couldn't compete with the new merger of Currys & PC World. Virgin failed because it invested in the wrong things at the wrong time, and was hit hard by the recession. Zavvi was just Virgin rebranded, so they could sell stock over Christmas without having to honour any gift vouchers.

Sure it's up to the owner if he/she wants to be successful or close down.

You seem stuck on the illusion that those are the only two options. But as I pointed out before, many model shops don't have an online presence, nor are they closing down; they are doing fine. You can argue your opinion all you want, but that fact stands.

[b308]

The online stores tend to only stock the run of the mill RTR stuff which is useless for the modeller who makes his own stuff, I use my local model shops because they are proper model shops and stock stuff which I need for modelling rather than just assembling a train set... That's isn't meant to sound elitist, it's just that the online stores are not a lot of use except to supply basic rtr stuff, once you have moved beyond the "box" modelling and into scratch/kit/bashing then they are of little use.

With an eye on that other thread I'll make a prediction, if the true independant Model Railway Shops and Cottage-style manufacturers ever cease trading then our hobby will disappear...