Ever since this wonderfull thing called the internet showed up, everyone has gotten a serious case of "LAZY BUTT"

Sit at home and order everything...even groceries! What a joke. And we wonder why the unemployment rate is soaring.

Geez, I have never had a LOCAL hobby shop. The internet is great. Driving always over an hour and a half to a shop and finding nothing has always been my lot. "I can order that for you" was their mantra. Now I can do it myself.

Tired of hearing this crap about LHS's.

Harold

But going to the hobby shop gets you away from the wife for a few. To me its worth it

Then you shouldn't be married.

Harold

When I want something, I usually want it today.  I also want quality over price.  I figure that if I don't support local businesses, they won't be there when I need them.  My biggest frustration is that so many people buy on price alone, that it is really difficult to find quality products anymore.  Everything is just plain cheap even if the price isn't. 

Hobby shops are not a big deal in the final analysis.  After all, it is a "hobby."  I can live without a hobby if I have to.  Finding quality in necessary or essential manufactured products is almost impossible.  People buy on price and the easiest thing to take out of a product in order to get the price down is quality.

You hit the rail on the head Russ. And Harold, I dont mind marrige, i just like to have an excuse to go for a ride every now and then. Besides, My wife lets me play with trains!

I have a feeling that all retail bricks and mortar mom and pop stores days are numbered, to be replaced by a few big box distribution centers in local areas for goods that too bulky, heavy, or perishable, to ship. 

1984 and "Brit-Lem" ???

But. . . .  Remember when telephone service had long distance charges?

Successful internet mail order depends on cheap fast delivery services that are not priced or taxed by location. If that goes away or becomes some form of corporate monopoly,  (e.g. Fed-Ex buys UPS and the USPO gives up parcels) then everything could change again.

Only things guranteed in life are death and taxes, so i figure they will find a way to tax us to death

Saw this response to the CNN article in the comments section.  Thought it was very well written and presented some great points. . .

 

It's funny how different the tone of the exact same phenomena can be when you're talking about two different groups of people.

These businesses are able to shop around for the lowest-priced suppliers, bring in their Chinese-made crap for pennies, jobs are fleeing overseas at record numbers to find the lowest-priced labor on the globe, the race to the bottom goes ever onward, and most every article or commentary you read about it says "Oh no, you can't blame businesses, you can't blame 'job creators', heavens no, that's just supply and demand!  That's just regulations!!  That's just any old excuse we can come up with, but it's justified, we swear!!!"

Then consumers start to do the same crap, getting their crap direct from the Chinese laborers that are building it to save themselves a buck in this dismal economy, and now all of a sudden the sky is falling.  We can't have consumers shopping around to save a buck!  No way!  Why, all those poor 'job creators' may have to actually sell something with a real perceived value and offer a level of service that is actually worth it, and that's just too much to ask, isn't it?  

For decades retailers have been pushing out their experienced salespeople making living wages and bringing in pimply-faced teenagers that don't know their *** from a hole in the ground at minimum wage, for decades this has been occurring, to the point now where retail has joined fast food as the quintessential "kids" job, and they're going to moan about the fact that their customers are merely using them as a place to browse?  Cry me a river...

Customers would buy stuff in your store if there was something to justify the markup over those online retailers.  Just because you physically bring the product into your store and shove it on a shelf somewhere does not ENTITLE (boy, do I love throwing THAT word back at these people) you to a premium price.  You want 5% over Amazon?  Give me something worth that 5%.  Hire knowledgeable salespeople that actually know what they're talking about.  Treat me like I'm a valued customer and not cattle being run down a chute to a register.  Start selling products that AREN'T Chinese-made crap that can be bought at every other retail establishment, identical product with a different brand label on it.

Mail-order has existed for 150 years; people were ordering entire houses out of Sears & Roebuck catalogs before the automobile was even dreamed of.  Brick & Mortar stores were able to compete for a century, so what has changed?  The race to the bottom can't go on forever.  Welcome to reality, retailers...

There's one thing that an internet store can't provide and that's the ultimate hands-on experience.

My suggestion to a LHS would be to have in-store operating layouts and the bigger the better. You have to have something to draw folks away from the boob tube and that just might do it. It might even get some kids interested in the hobby as well. Since I'm into S scale, I've always had to rely on mail order or shows to get "S"tuff, but still enjoy visits to the 3 excellent LHS's within an hour of my house to get scenery material, etc. and to just enjoy the atmosphere. I'd hate to see them go.