Continuing the discussion from Things you loved as a kid that you still love as an old person:
I agree that video games killed other hobbies. Video games are too fun, but also expensive.
The only people I know who have anything close to models have Warhammer stuff or LEGO stuff.
In Arizona we have a lot of “male” hobby shops. Trains, models, rc car specific stores. Plus Rockler, talk about manly!
But many such hobbies are no longer strictly male. Women do model kits, trains, woodworking. And it would be bad business to ignore them.
Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s are akin to Hobby Lobby
I’m curious as to how we’re identifying something as a hobby shop. I’m going to start with Wikipedia’s definition of a hobby shop, which is a place that sells recreational items for hobbyist. When I think of a hobby shop I think of a place that sells models (planes, tanks, trains, ships etc., etc.), R/C cars and planes, and games including table to miniature war games, role playing games, and board games. I’ll throw in stores that primarily sell video games as well.
While someone’s hobby can be restoring, maintaining, or customizing their automobile, I don’t think of places like Autozone as a hobby shop. A lot of people who shop there are repairing vehicles for themselves out of necessity or to save money rather than because it’s a hobby.
I would hazard a guess that hobby shops have declined in large part because there are other activities competing for people’s attention these days. I don’t know anyone my own age that’s into model railroads but I know they must exist. There’s a model RR store in nearby Jacksonville, AR that also sells plastic modes as well. There’s a Hobby Town in North Little Rock and Hobby Lobby does sell models and modeling supplies.
Thanks @Tripolar for ending my hijack before it gathered more steam.
Ref this
I agree there’s been a decline in dedicated small retail female-oriented hobby shops. As you say. And we agree there’s been a decline in male oriented small hobby shops too. We could probably quibble about which decline is more severe or complete, but that’s small potatoes compared to …
The (IMO) elephant in the room: The gigantic growth in big-box female hobby / craft shops and the absolute total 100% absence of any competing product in the male space.
Yes. I know about Home Depot / Lowes. But hardware stores and homeowner DIY were almost certainly larger markets relative to GDP or per capita back in the day than now. Everybody’s Dad did DIY; many of our kids not only don’t, but can’t. No interest, no skills, no experience. and therefore no tools or materials from HD/Lowes.
I’d make the same argument about e.g. NAPA auto parts. I was a gearhead in HS & college. As were many teens in those 1970s. In my father’s post-WWII era, damn near any man/boy who could afford a car at all worked on it and or hopped it up. By comparison to those days, car mods and personal car maintenance are dead, dead, dead. When was the last time you saw a “speed shop” catering to selling car nuts all the go-fast accessories?
If someone wants to argue that a lot of the sales volume has moved online and is hence invisible to casual drive-by inspection, I won’t disagree at first. Clearly it has for retail goods in general.
But I will ask them to justify why that shift to online is, or should be, vastly different for traditional male versus traditional female hobbies. And especially if one recognizes that most male hobby toys, tools, and materials are bigger, heavier, and dirtier than the more traditional female toys, tools, and materials. I.e. lumber is sold in a yard; fabric by the yard. Big, heavy, and dirty, are the antithesis of what goes nicely in the online Amazon + UPS model.
I’m not sure that traditional male hobbies have collapsed while traditional female ones have thrived, but so far the evidence cited against seems to me to be mostly beside the point: largely true but also largely irrelevant.
Good point. I’d done my prior post before seeing yours.
While I don’t disagree with that definition, I think that most stores which carried anything in what you describe probably only carry (or carried, past tense) one or two of those.
The traditional hobby shop, as described by the OP, was more focused on model/crafts-oriented hobbies: plastic models, model trains, model rockets, model and R/C planes, slot cars, R/C cars, etc. And, sometimes, they specialized in a particular subset (such as stores that only carried model trains). Even here in a big market like the Chicago area, I’ve seen several long-standing hobby shops like these close up in recent years.
Gaming stores, which typically carry board games, specialized card games (like Magic: the Gathering, Pokemon, etc.), role-playing games, and miniatures games (like Warhammer or Heroclix) tend to be their own thing, though some might also carry comic books, and there are undoubtedly some that also carry more traditional hobby supplies. (There used to be a Hobbytown USA store near me; they carried both model-based hobbies as well as role-playing games, but then, I knew the owner, and he was a big RPG player, so that may have entered into it). With the growth in various forms of face-to-face gaming in recent years, that segment of “hobby stores” seems to be doing OK, at least around here.
And, then, video game stores tend to be their own thing, as well, though I’m sure that some carry card games and/or RPGs, too.
And of course there is the 800-pound gorilla of hobby shops that is almost dead, Radio Shack.
I mean come on, men with disposable income aren’t exactly an ignored demographic. If there was real demand for some mythical male hobby lobby it would exist.
Ha! I was just about to mention Radio Shack! As an electronics geek, that was my favorite stop. In their heyday, when they carried just about everything, you could walk in looking for a specific electrolytic capacitor you needed to repair a 1945 GE table radio and they guy at the counter would say “Aisle 3, Bin 5.”
I miss that place.
Also, as far as online hobby shops go: this is anecdotal, but back in 2020, when I was largely stuck in the house, I got back into model trains, and began to buy stuff for N scale trains (track, cars, locomotives, buildings, etc.)
There were several U.S.-based online stores which I shopped from, which specifically focused on model railroading (though most of them also had one brick-and-mortar store, too); within the last year, two of them, which had been in business for many years, abruptly shut down. Similarly, I’d bought a few things from an English online strain store, which had been around for decades, and they, too, shut their doors fairly suddenly a few months back.
While I have no doubt that online hobby stores had taken share from the brick-and-mortars, they, too, aren’t necessarily thriving.
I question that “feminine hobby” stores have thrived. Around here, there used to be Jo Ann Fabrics and Pat Catan’s all over the place, but Jo Ann’s is struggling, and Pat Catan’s was bought out by Michael’s. Michael’s is still around, but it’s the only one, and that’s not much use if you categorically refuse to shop there (there was some very malicious stuff going on with their takeover of Pat Catan’s).
There are still a couple of model train shops around here that have hung on tenaciously. They all seem to be located in 1950s era strip malls on streets that used to be important before the Interstate highways came in. I doubt if they could get together and pull in enough fans for a decent train show, but somehow they stay in business.
Great place, even for those of us who are not electronics geeks. They were valuable when I was fixing up a 1975 electromechanical pinball game. They didn’t have everything I needed, but they had a lot.
Just for fun, I once asked the guy behind the counter if they had a Gottlieb AB-123 flipper coil, because I needed one. The guy thought a moment, then said, “I dunno, but if we do, it’ll be in Aisle 3, Bin 5. If we don’t, we can order it.”
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a store that only carried plastic models. In Plano, Texas, they did have a hobby store that only carried model railroad products but I don’t know if they’re still in business. I haven’t been there in more than 30 years and I only went because a friend of mine’s father was huge into model railroading.
Other than the model RR store, I’ve only seen one other store my entire life that was so specialized. We have a store in Sherwood, Arkansas almost 100% dedicated to Games Workshop (table top miniatures war game) products. They sell a handful of other miniatures, as well as paint and other hobby supplies needed to build an army, but otherwise it’s all GW products. I don’t know how they stay in business, but if something happens to GW this store is going to have to pivot quickly to stay in business.
In the 1990s, there were a lot of gaming stores that opened in the D/FW area primarily dedicated to selling Magic: The Gathering and other card games. And as quickly as they appeared they went out of business. I’m guessing a lot of them were opened by people who had no business trying to run a business. The successful gaming stores I’ve seen tend to diversify their stock. Lone Star Comics (whom I was briefly employed with) sold comics, books, RPGs, miniatures, paints & hobby supplies, collectible card games, manga, and miscellaneous junk like plushies.
We had a HobbyTown in Little Rock but it closed a few years ago. The one in North Little Rock is still going strong. They sell R/C cars, various plastic models, board games, RPGs, educational activities for kids, etc., etc. I go there when I want to find modeling tools that aren’t normally available at my local gaming shop.
As a kid, I remember reading comics books in the early to mid 1980s and seeing ads for Lone Star Comics and Mile High Comics. Years ago I got to make my dream come true and got a job at Lone Star which had nine locations at it’s height in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. In the early 2000s they closed up shop and switched their business model to selling comics online. Yeah, there aren’t as many hobby shops around as there used to be.
Apologies if I wasn’t clear: I meant that “most hobby-type stores only carry model-type hobbies, physical games, or video games, but not many carry more than one of those broad areas.”
And, yeah, among the “modeling” hobby stores, while there was/still is a sub-specialization in model trains, I suspect that there were fewer (if any) that specialized in a different type (slot cars, R/C planes, plastic models, etc.).
Not only is the demographic for modeling hobbies largely* older guys, but from what I’ve seen, most of the hobby shops that have closed their doors recently did so because the owner was older, and wanted to retire.
*- not exclusively, of course; there are younger guys, and some women, too, of course, who are into any and all of those hobbies.
I live in a town with a population a bit under 40K. The Hobby Lobby has two or three aisles of model cars & planes, model rockets, train set stuff, etc. Menards (a similar chain to Home Depot or Lowes, but smaller) has buildings for model train dioramas. There are two role-playing game stores with games, miniatures, and paints. One of those also has remote control car supplies, model train supplies, and stuff for doing ceramics, I think. There are two card shops that carry both sports cards and collectible card game merchandise. One of the card shops also carries comic books. There is one coin shop. The local model railroad club has a permanent space with a very elaborate 16 foot by 70 foot HO scale train diorama.
The other day.
Phoenix metro has Hobby Depot, Hobby Bench (two locations) and Andy’s Hobby headquarters, all plastic models and railroad. There are several R/C plane stores that I can’t name because I don’t shop there. They all seem to be doing good.
Auto World, the old friend from my childhood, is back in business as mail order. They even still put out a paper catalog!
Of course, there are also about 15 quilt stores in the greater metro area, and a number of scrapbooking only stores.
We had a huge (too big for this areas income) hobby shop in what was once the better shopping areas of town and it sold a little of everything i bought a few games from it but my beef with it was they had a tiny rpg section and treated the rpg players like dirt becuase a lot of the employees were religious and well that was satanism …
I wasnt too sad when it announced it was closing