The Decline of Traditional Male Oriented Hobby Shops

Cafe Society
41

I’ve noticed the decline in “male” hobby shops. They’re generally small places that sell plastic models (ships, planes, cars, and the successors to those old Aurora monster models), motorized model airplanes, and the like. The kind of place you could get sheets of balsa wood, wooden dowels, and nesting’telescoping brass tubing in various sizes. Testor’s enamel paint, plastic model cement that smelled of toluene, model airplane dope, model rockets and their motors. “Resin” plastic model kits for the truly committed.

They’re still around, if you look, but they’re not as common as they were even ten years ago. I suspect drones have taken the place of motorized model airplanes and model rockets. Plastic airplasne/car/ship/monster models that cost less than $2 back in the 1960s are now luxury items with prices far beyond inflation – they cost $50-$150 these days.

42

There has been a hobby shop near me in Chicago’s western suburbs for the past 30+ years. My impression is that it is primarily trains. Never googled it until just now.

I’ve driven past frequently but never stopped in. Given the consistently empty parking lot, I’ve long sorta suspected it was a front for some illicit activity. Was shocked quite recently when I drove past and saw several cars in the lot. Must have been holding an event of some sort.

43

We’re looking at a bunch of things happening. The influence of the internet sales and big box stores affect every part of the hobby business. Traditional gender based hobbies aren’t as gender oriented as before, although there still is a divide. The popularity of particular hobbies has changed over time also. Hobby stores weren’t the exclusive outlet for hobby goods in the past, they had to share the space with toy stores and department stores (usually as part of the toy section). A number of hobbies have grown more expensive also, as well as those traditional hobbies replace by electronics and other technology.

So we see changes, but all those changes may be the result of ever fluctuating socio-economic factors. Overall there could be growth in the hobby business, and still possible growth in local brick and mortar hobby shops.

44

I shop there fairly regularly. Yes, it’s 100% trains, despite the more generic-sounding name. It’s reasonably busy on weekends, and they also seem to do a pretty good business via their online store, for non-local customers.

45

Funny you should mention that, because in my current big project, nesting brass tubing was the one thing I couldn’t get from a local retail store, and had to find online.

46

One of the purposes of a retail space is to introduce people to the hobby who aren’t currently in the hobby. A thirteen year old boy who knows nothing about Warhammer might go to the mall with his parents and be mesmerized by what he finds at the Warhammer store. Though I suppose the very idea of a mall might be a bit antiquated these days. As someone who has been painting miniatures for a few years, I still like going to retail spaces because they sometimes carry products I haven’t thought of using. Weathering pigments for example. It’s hard to brose for things online when you don’t know they exist.

A $2 kit in 1965 is the equivalent of $20 today and you can still buy model kits in that price range. I purchase some Star Wars kits and an A-10 Warthog a few years ago for less than $20 each. No. I haven’t assembled and painted them yet. But I think your broader point is valid. The main market for models, other than Gundam, appears to be males in their 40s or older. I suspect the market is headed for a demographic crunch as their main customers continue to age and fewer younger people purchase models.

47

I know we had Legos back in the day, but they didn’t compete with models like they do now. All of my friends’ kids are nuts about Lego sets that have to be put together in a certain way to create a facsimile of a real life or movie vehicle. Those are what have replaced the models we did as kids, back when Legos were just free form building blocks.

48

Some modern kits may be, but you wouldn’t find a modern monster model struck from the old Aurora molds for $20.

49

You can’t print knives, tweezers, glue, paint, sandpaper or really large kits.

Buying paint on-line? It’s about 50% more and takes days to get there.

Isn’t this the webite that loathes Walmart and other big stores that steal customers from “mom n pop” stores? So y’all should be supporting the local hobby stores.

And there is a market for $200+ kits. They exist, they’re in the stores.

50

In the SW suburbs is Leisure Hours Hobbies which actually moved around five years ago from its longtime stripmall location to a larger (semi*)standalone location. So they seem to be doing okay, at least on the surface.

*They actually share the overall building with a used car dealer but it’s separate from the inside and much larger than the old location.

51

I feel like there are a number of things in play.

First and probably foremost, online sales have killed the majority of the local niche stores. When I was younger, if you wanted something hobby related, you had your local five and dime type place, your local toy stores/discount stores, and your local hobby store, in that order in terms of specialization and time/expense. But all that vanished when you could go online and find that specific engine or plastic model, etc… as well as the paints you really wanted, as opposed to what you could find. The same thing happened with other specialty stores, like sporting goods I suspect.

Second, I feel like a lot of the attraction of the older hobbies was a certain… boredom(?). I mean most of these are very intricate and time consuming, and the sort of thing that many boys/men did because they didn’t have a lot of other options on a rainy/snowy/sick day. But these days, the TV landscape is different, and the presence of video games/social media make those days a lot more interesting than they were in say… 1984, when the best thing available was gluing together the rotor of your Mi-24 helicopter model on a rainy day. My boys will occasionally do stuff like plastic models (they’re 10 and almost 13), but given the option, they’ll always play Minecraft or watch TV versus old-school hobbies.

That said, I can’t say I’ve really seen a decline in specialized hobby stores. They’ve always been thin on the ground, and maybe now they’re marginally thinner at worst. But I think now they’re more of a community gathering point- there’s always a gang of RC people chatting at my local HobbyTown about RC stuff, and usually some people chatting near the trains too. And I think that’s the point- you can always go online and get your HO gauge track cheaper, but you can’t really go discuss the ins and outs of new vs. old Lionel engines anywhere else.

But there’s been a HUGE decline in other brick and mortar sources. There aren’t really standalone toy stores anymore, nor are there five-and-dime stores. The big discount stores no longer really carry hobby stuff, except for the traditionally female stuff like crafting, scrapbooking, sewing, etc… And here at least, the Hobby Lobbies, JoAnn, and Michael’s stores have more shelf space devoted to crap like papercrafting embellishments than they do to all the older tradtional masculine hobbies like plastic models, balsa wood airplanes, model trains, etc…

52

You won’t but those aren’t exactly the kind of kits a young person wants anyway. Not only is the subject matter outside of their scope of experience, modern models are just lightyears ahead in terms of how they look. Those Aurora remakes are designed for the nostalgia crowd.

53

Well, these guys are getting their stuff somewhere – online, I suspect.

54

I did want to amplify the last line of @kenobi_65’s post - a lot of the remaining brick-and-mortar specialty stores ALSO do a lot of online business, so the retail serves in part as storage space for their more rare collectibles. The remaining specialty sports collectors card store I mentioned is probably surviving due to that, based on a similarly low number of actual vehicles (and it’s been around decades, so they probably own the land) in the lot.

Something similar with the few used book stores I see around, something else that has drastically declined from they heydays of my youth. The ones I still frequent in and out of town sell their inventory online through Amazon or dedicated online book finders, especially for out-of-print / collectors books, the ones that used to be wrapped in plastic on the special room in the back.

So I suspect a lot of the surviving specialty stores are moving to a hybrid position, retail for walk ins, for long term customers, a place to share interests, but with a great deal of the actual selling going on through the web where they’re not limited to a geographical number of buyers.

55

That wouldn’t surprise me. I buy a lot from a shop in Oregon with a big physical footprint (lots of tables sized for Warhammer) full of merchandise but it’s also all listed on eBay. They’re doing fine overall but a lot of their sales are online because there aren’t as many distributors for some games compared to something like 40K, where I could name at least three local places off the top of my head.

56

I remember during the sports card boom of the 90s there were multiple shops in my town that only sold baseball, football and basketball cards.

Those that survived into the 2000s pivoted to either Pokemon/Magic/Yu-Gi-Oh as well or comic books. I don’t think any of them survive anymore, including the comic book shops.

57

Those big stores are probably better labeled “craft” rather than “hobby” stores…even the ones with the word “hobby” in their name.

58

And THAT’S what’s missing from this post-HO-Scale society.

I got my 10,000 hours in, doodling. My secret? I was bored: doodling during grade school, doodling in my room (I’d ask for a ream of copy paper for my birthday every year).

So I tell my design students to hang out at a coffee joint (or park/bar/home alone), without their phones, until they’re good and bored. Then see what they write/draw/think about.

I’ve been doing that a lot lately, getting plenty of caffeine and filling sketchbooks with a lot of ideas.

59

You should see our local comic book shop (Graham Crackers, but probably true of smaller ones as well). Up to a dozen smartypants hangin’ out, discussing everything from Star Wars to jambalaya to Elon Musk, and maybe a comic book or two.

60

The key for a successful business, though, is not just to have a bunch of fans hanging out at the store. You also have to have some way of making income from them. Do they buy something from you every time they stop in? Do you have rooms or tables that you rent out, for them to use to do their hobbies? Maybe it’s just a coffee shop in the corner, where they get something to drink while chatting?

If they’re just coming in to chat, well, that’s cool and all, but it won’t keep you in business.