The price thing you are so wrong. The hobby has never been cheaper. It’s a numbers game, the high street stuff is many millions of customers, model aeroplanes is tiny tiny. The reason these companies are in trouble is selling with a small margin, go start a model company and see what things really cost to make for the numbers sold. It’s where HH went wrong here and had to close. Discount to dealers, dealers use discount to undercut the opposition and no one makes enough money to survive.
The hobby is going to be a Ferrari owners club hobby and prices will have to reflect the tiny numbers doing it.
Consumer numbers have grown, so household goods came down in price, more sold. Increase in population has not increased hobby sales as there is too much fun stuff to spend money on and our hobby is not like it was in the 80-90’s where it was one of the coolest things to do with engineering and flight involved. Pnp killed the hobby, there is no pride in turning up at the field with a new model you crafted, so people get board quickly and move on. Quads took all the skill from rotary flight, easy to fly and assembly to fly smoothly. No challenge = boredom.

Hobby dies with our generation....