# The Decline of Traditional Male Oriented Hobby Shops **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 13, 2024, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-traditional-male-oriented-hobby-shops/1002846 "2024-06-13T20:32:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 6
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2024, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-traditional-male-oriented-hobby-shops/1002846/6 "2024-06-13T21:19:39Z")
Thanks @Tripolar for ending my hijack before it gathered more steam. Ref this > [@Things you loved as a kid that you still love as an old person](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-loved-as-a-kid-that-you-still-love-as-an-old-person/985565/112): > > That, and those stores are benefiting (?) from the shrinkage of specialty hobby stores. JoAnn fabrics, and countless other specialty hobby stores are now all gone, especially with online availability for a lot of things. So it _looks_ like there isn’t shrinkage in the retail side of things, but if you look more closely… 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? > [@Things you loved as a kid that you still love as an old person](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-loved-as-a-kid-that-you-still-love-as-an-old-person/985565/112): > > But again, internet business eating at all levels of the retail space is IMHO a bigger issue. 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. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decline-of-traditional-male-oriented-hobby-shops/1002846)._