Does anyone know how much expense in A hobby Shop
Ergo60
Which Rider's is your local shop ?
But I bet if you go to Heliproz to buy a Telescope you won't find it.
You see my point is that a place like Heliproz has the whole country as a market so they can afford to specilize. But your LHS and the operative word here is local, needs to be more diverse to survive. Now you are correct about the service issue and I agree there is no excuse for second rate service. But it is important here to compare oranges to oranges. I work in a hobby shop and there are some thingsI go to Heliproz, G8lakes and Rick's myself.
There are things that my shop just can't afford to stock and there are certain heli specific parts and supplies that we have no demand for. But when a heli guy comes in the store and expects us to have that certain part for heli which BTW I didn't sell it to him and he is the one and only guy using this equipment. I will make an honest effort to order it for him , but chances are he could go to Heliproz and get it faster and cheaper.Then all of a sudden we suck cause we couldn't compete.
Also we sell our product at competitive prices which is what the distributors call SMAP or MAP and I know what kind of margins we make selling at those prices and the profit is slim in many cases.
So when I see a place like Heliproz selling product at just a couple bucks over our cost I have to wonder where the cuts are being made because there is no way a LHS could survive at those margins. Yes I realise they deal in volume but like I said before they have the whole country as a market.
So just remember to try to make a fair comparison because for the most part I think LHS's provide a great service to the hobby customer.