This is a great story about beating a store owner to death. A man comes in my storewanting to buy a O. S. engine. Now i have a small margin on these engines. He tells me I am $10 over tower. I offer it at $5 over and he says no. The next day he comes back with the same offer and I point out that with shipping I'm only $2 over. This is not good enough. This was Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday he calls and tells me he has to have the engine by Saturday and I make the same offer. Still he's not happy. On Friday he comes in and is mad because I won't sell at the tower price. By now I've pretty much had it and didn't care if he ever came back. I felt i had been more then fare. I told he to call Tower and get overnight delivery and of course we all know what he said about overnight shipping cost. Saturday morning he was in telling me he would take my offer. I was so tired of him i told him that the price went up $15 over Tower to cover the my up set stomach. He bought the engine and said he would never come back. MY store and me are better off. I've told this story many times and now laugh about it . Maybe I could have handled it different but for some reason it felt good to stick it to this guy.
Thank all of guys that feel that a good LHS is important, you are the reason I stay open. Dennis

I just had to add that everyones experience seems pretty much the same around the world. Here in Australia some items are MUCH more expensive than can be found in the USA, even with international shipping. BUT 90% of stuff can be got locally at around the same price not inc shipping.

My LHS, ALWAYS will meet or beat an Australian competitors price if you ask, if you dont ask, dont expect him to. He's honest if he cant or knows that you can get it cheaper elsewhere. EG: I wanted a YS63S, straight off the bat he says, try Singapore hobbies or Central hobbies in the USA. Being so far from the rest of the world some importers here dont even try to match prices, therefore the retailers cant, he knows it and it ticks him off. Im currently putting together a 2m pattern plane, when it came to getting some specialised parts he told me to buy from elsewhere as his prices cant get anywhere near it. BUT when it came to the big purchase, like the OS140RX, he beat every price in Australia, online and in the magazines, I "Could've" got it from USA or Singapore for about $50-80 cheaper inc the shipping but "IF" I had a problem with it and it needed warranty work, Id be out because it would have to go back to the USA, the return shipping alone would make the total purchase more expensive than being able to return it to him to deal with. However having said that some of the suppliers/importers here in Australia are pathetically slow with service so . . I recently bought some servo's from him, I went in armed with the info on prices and ponted out that for the price he wanted I could get them shipped from the other side of the country, he beat the inc shipping price by 10% and had them for me in the same time I'd have waited. For me thats what I want, to support the local guy at the right price.
You CAN NOT expect your LHS to survive on selling you the low $ items alone. Like everyone says, talk to them about meeting prices or at least getting within the other price plus shipping.

Have you ever noticed that the better 'friend' you are to the local guys the better pricing you get..

when i originally got into the hobby i walked into my LHS and got a good package at a decent price. but the discount was probably only 5%. and i really had to bargain for it.

now on my $$#%^ plane (coded just incase the wifes looking) i do even ask for a price i "know" he will look after me.

on an average i get between 10 - 15% without even asking.

but the thing is I now dont care because i realised that while ive been a part of this hobby this guy has probably spent hours and hours answering questions chasing products and prices and giving general advice.

I've got my moneys worth out of this guy just from his advice, so in my mind the planes and gear are free

If my LHS actually had what I needed and fair prices I would buy from them. Usually I just go in for the stuff that I don't want to wait to get in the mail. Their prices are very high and they don't replenish what's been sold very quickly. It seems like lots of times when I've gone in to get something and they are out of it they say that they'll have it back in soon but they don't. I think they have cash flow problems.

Piper Chuck - true... we shouldn't expect to get the same deal. but I agree with DadsToysBG in that he still tries to work with the customer. So the guys turns out to be a jerk... but I'm sure DadsToysBG has had tons of good customers come out of lowering the price a little as well. But that's not even the key... the important thing is trying to find how to best work with your customers. If the customers says nothing then you gain nothing... I would never go to a store that if I said "I can get this cheaper somewhere else for cheaper" and he curtly replies "then go somewhere else". In fact, that's the store I absolutely hate (that I only go to if I absolutely cannot find what I'm looking for anywhere else regardless of price!). It's that "if you can't see the value in my shop then I don't need or want you here" that kills me.

DadsToysBG on the other hand would seem like a great LHS owner. Unless, of course, that engine was like 10 bucks, then he'd be a rip-off :-).

Oh yeah and Piper Chuck - in China you can almost get everything for less than half of the original price when you bargain... THAT is bargaining. hehe... I'm kidding... I agree with your definition.

Well, just yesterday I found out why my LHS might not have been as willing to deal with me as they normally would have: early next year a HobbyTown is due to open just down the road from them. The general feeling is that the LHS' days are numbered. Looks like this family owned vs big box retailers vs online purchasing question might be in the process being answered for us.

Here's a toast in your honor, family owned shops; may you rest in peace []

Most large retail store will not carry much RC items because they know the mark up is low. If they do they will sell at full retail. I know this because i have a Hobby Lobby 60 miles from me and I get people that will drive to me because of the pricing. Example, car fuel there is $35 a gallon. Dennis

Boy!!...ya don't want to say.. "Tower has it for less" to the guy in my town..he gets ALL bent out of shape and rambles on about supporting his hobby store![X(]

Sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Small store knows competition is coming so it starts alientating existing customers? Bad business move. They should be doing everything possible to win loyalty before the new shop opens.

Here's what I did on my last big purchase. I got the plane at the LHS for a bit more than Tower then I made a wish list on Tower's site for all the other items I needed to go with it (flight pack, engine, and other accessory stuff you know) Printed the wish list off and took it to the LHS. Got what they had in stock at Tower's price and ordered the rest from Tower. What it amounts to is I gave the LHS a chance to play and they did the best they could. It was amazing the amount of stuff I had to order from Tower just to complete the plane that the LHS did not have and that includes the wheels and wheel collars ect.

As others have said already, I usually buy at the LHS when I need it, and online when I want it. It's not an inexpensive hobby to begin with, and not everybody in the hobby has unlimited resources, myself included. Having said that, there are two LHS's in my area, and I'm a customer of both. One is privately owned and the other is a Hobbytown USA franchise. Where I differ from some others in this topic is the way I see the Hobbytown franchise being just as much of a family owned business as the smaller shop in town. The franchise is owned by a family and the employees are all family or friends of that family from what I can tell. I don't know them all by name but they remember me when I walk in and that counts for something. I've bought two ARF's from them this year which probably would have cost a little less online, but not much. Having owned a different kind of business in the past, I'm not averse to talking shop with this owner, so I have an idea of how they sometimes struggle to stay afloat, and I hope my business plays a small part in helping them do that. Again, others have said it before, but I'll reiterate, I want these shops to be around when I NEED something as well as when I want something, so I try to strike some sort of balance between what I buy through eBay or other online resources with what I buy from the LHS. However, I don't feel responsible for the success or failure of either shop. In the end, I hope everybody wins, but in reality, somebody's bound to lose. It's a free market system, and my only real obligation is to do what's best for me in terms of enabling me to continue in this wonderful hobby. I appreciate what LHS owners have to go through from a business perspective, and I know most of them will go out of their way to help us out, so I wish them every success.

nost of the time I order from my local hobby shop becase of the fact that I'm lucky enough to have a shop that cost usually $10 t0 $20 less then most items from tower. I am a supper saver member but even if the order was more then $150 were I get the shipping free I still usually find it ia my hobby shop cheaper. So I don;t mind driving the hour to get the the shop. now if something wasn't on hand I usally call him then run for it. other then that i might get a radio online if I wasn't a spaciffic channel. but 90 % of the time I just run to the local shop.

Well gotta give credit where credit is due. My LHS called me up today and offered to work out an issue I was having with some hardware. They are just going to swap out my defective items and hand me new ones to minimize my down time. Very classy move, and one that will bring me back again. I'm a perfect example as to how so little goes a long way.

Good for them, hope they can make it.

I took the family to visit my parents in Tucson, Az for Thanksgiving. For grins I decided to visit the nearest hobby shop. Turns out they are only 10 minutes from Hobby Barn. Nice place. Also managed to discover one of the Hobby Bench stores in Phoenix when we got off the interstate for a break while heading back to Tucson after visiting the Grand Canyon. I decided I need to move back in with my parents. Unfortunately, at 45 going on 46, I doubt they'd be interested in having me back home for more than a visit.

3 lhs in 10 mile radius,,old guy is semi retired and you never know when he's gonna be open and is the farthest away, I see him once a year////next is actually an art supply store who is trying to branch into RC, however he openly stated to me that ,he would drop a price if asked but other than that he was charging all he could,,,$28/gal fuel....where right up the street from him its $19/gal but now we come to a whole other problem at the last lhs, they are into cars, there are 4 or 5 planes, a half stocked great planes hardware rack,,they got upset about people coming in asking if they were going out of business because they wont keep any stock..they say they will order anything you want but werent going to keep stock because it moved too slow...I can do that from right here.....they had decent prices, they matched tower.....makes ya wonder about tower sometimes huh? ..I'm into 1/2a and am friendly with all 3 of them but they dont have what I need for the most part...Rog

I know what you mean,I go to buy parts and a lot of the time the LHS doesn't have them and they say.."we can order it" and I say.."so can I"!
I go to get should stock items..not looking for hens teeth or anything...I was after a prop tach..nope ain't got one today,looking for a quick fill valve..."oh we are out of that one..jeez!

Come on guys. Try owning a store. What do you buy, how much, how fast will the sell, at what price. what will sell the most. The store owner has to look at the total picture for his customer base. Sure you have 6 on the wall and they hav'nt sold in months, then in one week every thing goes out the door and before he can replace it someone come in and he is out. Dennis