ORIGINAL: raptureboy
Yep and thats why we have only walmarts. You obviously have never owned a small business before. The little mom &pop stores are not making a killing even the francise stores. If you are not marking up your items at least a 100 to 150% you will be out of business in no time. In fact it is the small items that have the most mark up because they have the least cost and offer the retailer the most opprtunity to make a profit. So having lots of kits on the shelf that carry only a small M.U for the guy who might come in once a year to buy one really doesn't pay.
ORIGINAL: Lamoilleriver
My obligation when it comes to spending money is to maximize its exchange to my benefit. The argument of paying more for an item because the local LHS owner is a nice guy and we want to keep him/her in business is not relavent. Maybe the LHS owner should sell his product for less because he/she wishes to see his customer have more money left over to feed their family?
I think that most people don't know or realize just how small the profit margins are on R/C goods. here in the US in order to operate a hobby shop you must buy from Great Planes and Horizon as they have exclusive rights to about 75% of what is produced. They both sell customer direct so the LHS has to price match if he wants to sell. That means that for the most part on kits ( ARF's too), engines, and radio gear they are making about 20% to 25%. On building materials and hardware it's about 45%. It's really hard to pay 4.00 to 12.00 per square foot of retail space with profit margins this small. In order to survive a hobby shop owner has to have fast inventory turn around. This means he has to stock what sells. Inventory is tracked and what sells the quickest is reordered, what sells slowly is dropped from the inventory list. As rule of thumb, when I was a manager at one of the SF Bay area's largest hobby shop I would not order anything I knew would not sell in 30 days. Most kits can be ordered and delivered in just a few days. When you order from you LHS, he pays the shipping, you pay the local sales tax. If the kit or ARF arrives damaged, he deals with it not you. I support my local guy because I know that when I need something I can just call and order it if he dosen't stock it. For those of us that have been in the hobby for a while, we are a small percentage of sales. It's the new guys that are paying the bills so the shops must cater to them not us. Operating a hobby shop is not as easy as it looks, mybe we should all cut or local guy some slack and be happy he is there at all.