Starting a Hobby Shop

[bdgiantman2]

I have been tempting over the possibility of starting own hobby store business in greater Denver area with a strong emphasis on ship building and hobby woodworking in general. Would also include woodburning for making kits and potentially a 3D printer. I admit that I don't know anything about CNC which some people have been making incredible items using.  With permission would like to partner with certain individuals selling merchandise.  Just trying to get a potential feel for clientele and overall feedback about starting up such a business.

 

Brian D  

[ccoyle]

Are you thinking about starting a brick-and-mortar business or internet/mail order? Hobby shops in general have had a tough go of things in recent years, and ship building is a pretty niche hobby (I can't speak to the popularity of 'hobby woodworking in general').

[Snug Harbor Johnny]

  You could consider starting an ETSY shop online.  The overhead costs are minimal if it is home-based, and ETSY collects applicable sales taxes and handles the money side of the transactions ... although there are fees for that.  It took my Admiral a couple years to gain a reputation for her historic costume products, but she's done OK as a 'cottage industry'.

[ScottRC]

On-line is the only way to make a go at it because the market is so specific and margins small.  Ask any of the number of folk here on MSW who are running hobby specific businesses.  The overhead and supply chain costs to maintain a storefront is no longer affordable, hence why the decline of the traditional hobby shop.  Starting small, like with ETSY as was suggested, or with Facebook Market is a start.  

[palmerit]

I'm building a Midwest Model and it has something in the section about paints and what kinds to get that quaintly said something like "talk with your local hobby shop for options". Oh, how I'd love to be able to do that.

 

Nashville is a pretty large metropolitan area and outside of Hobby Lobby, Michaels, and (the closing) Jo-Annes, I don't know what hobby shops we even have. I've never found one. I think there is one large local toy store that has a middling collection of plastic models and some model trains. Maybe a few small wooden models. I bet there were more hobby shops around town years ago. There were probably stamp collecting shops too. I remember as a kid in the 1970s and there were probably 3-4 stamp shops I'd go to with my dad in Buffalo. I imagine those have been closed for decades. 

 

My wife is a quilter and when we moved here there were several quilt shops around town. Now there are one or two. We actually make trips to Paducah, KY and (in a few weeks) to Hamilton, MO because those are famous "quilt towns" with several shops. When in NYC, I think my wife found the only quilt store in Manhattan, and it was on the 10th floor of an old office building in midtown.

 

Years ago, my in-laws opened a hobby shop in my home town. They owned the building and my mother-in-law was the only employee. We tried talking them out of it, unsuccessfully. They owned a small business doing roofing and siding, so they thought they could just open up a store when my father-in-law could not do the physical work anymore. We tried to get them to add an online store and pointed them to resources that would make that easy but they were convinced that they could make it work. After a significant outlay of funds to buy merchandise, much of which they never sold, they closed the store after a couple of years, had to sell their house to pay off the loans, and had to live in the back rooms of the store. Their store had a good bit of traffic when the store first opened. It quickly trickled down to a handful each day. It was small, not in a place that attracted walk-in customers, and they made the mistake of having merchandise that could easily be purchased online and at big box retailers. 

 

I really try to buy local when I can. But when I'm buying hobby stuff, I know what model I want, I know what tools I need, I know what paints I need. I'm not going to just buy a model that the local store has in stock to support a local business if it's not the one I want. I'm going to order the paint I want, not just take what's in stock locally. I'm going to order online and get what I want when I want it. And I'll get it in a few days usually. There's usually no rush. When I was a kid, I'd go to hobby shops that had a huge variety of models but that was my only option. 

 

I love the thought of having a local hobby shop. If you have some unique items and you're in the right place it could work. Just sharing my thoughts. I would not be surprised if model companies agree to only have one or two distributors in a fairly wide geographical region. agesofsail.com sells Vanguard kits. I don't know of another company in the US that sells Vanguard kits. Maker spaces are kind of popular, but that's a different space from a hobby shop.

 

On the hobby model work working side, I visited a Lee Valley store in Niagara Falls, Ontario a while back while visiting family. It was nice to be able to browse and see things in person, though I probably would still have just bought stuff online. I think because they do so much online business, the brick-and-mortar (at least this one) seemed more of a maker space with classes you could take and machines you could use - they had a big glassed off area in the back for those spaces. I think the idea was to get people interested and skilled in the hobby and then you have a captive audience for selling them (expensive) tools.