ORIGINAL: ckangaroo70
Tower Hobbies was in business before the ARF boom!
Yes that is true, but the response does not address my assertion that ARF sales will not go down in respect to kit sales. Tower Hobbies was in business when the closest thing to an ARF were the crappy Lanier plastic and foam monstrosities (My first plane was a Lanier Slo-Comet). By your argument I could show that IBM should still be able to run a large business that sold typewriters simply because they used to. This is obviously false; the market changed and IBM changed to match. If they hadn't they wouldn't be around anymore...
I don't think I'll be holding my breath for Great Planes to go under or “cut their own throats”, if they did it won't be due to their sale of ARF's, it'll be because the whole hobby has gone into the crapper. That would be bad for all of us; the builders and the flyers.
Who said that they needed to quit selling ARF's? I could care less about them selling ARF's, and I hope they are making a ton of money off of there imported Planes. My gripe is " Please quit discontinuing good kits"! Even though we may be the minority, there are still plenty who would like to build, and there are also many smaller Companys that still count on the builders money that buys tools, covering, glues, wood,etc. etc. etc.
Yes, this was poorly written by me. It should have read:
I don't think I'll be holding my breath for Great Planes to go under or “cut their own throats”, if they did it won't be due to the dicontinuation of kits; it'll be because the whole hobby has gone into the crapper. That would be bad for all of us; the builders and the flyers.
I guess I'm up to .04
Scott