Another LHS closing...sign of the times

[Out2gtcha]

20 minutes ago, Rob Owens said:

Taxing internet purchases will no more benefit LHS's than raising the fuel tax will decrease oil consumption or  raising the tobacco tax will force people to quit smoking/dipping/chewing.  People buy where they do (on-line, brick 'n mortar, or combination) because of preference and economic (spend time vs. money) advantage.

 

 

I wholeheartedly disagree.

I dont really consider the tabacco reference viable in this case as addiction can be a huge factor to quitting tobacco, and while I love modeling no one is physically addicted to it.

I do exactly what a lot do; calculate the cost of driving, + tax + cost of item at the B&M shop, then stare and compare that to online price + shipping.

9 time shout if 10 the online purchase wins because of availability and overall cost to me.

 

I 100% guarantee that if all else was equal if I got charged shipping AND tax on line, with the same item right down the street from me, I'd go to the LHS every time. I can't speak for all, but tax online would definly benefit my LHS.

[Model_Monkey]

On 2/12/2019 at 9:25 AM, Radub said:

My nearest model shop is still standing. But on the same street there are at least four empty premises that used to be clothes and shoe shops. On the same street there also used to be two shops selling electronics (TV, sound systems, computers, etc) and they closed too, one is now a cafe and the other is a phone repair shop. All shopping is changing, not only hobby shops. Brick-and-mortar hobby shops closing is not the "death knell" of the hobby. The hobby is thriving on line. High-street shopping of all kinds is under pressure from skyrocketing costs such as rent, utilities, wages, taxes. The hobby is fine, you should be worried about the rest of the world around you. :-) 

Radu 

 

Agreed, the hobby as a whole globally seems to be doing well.  But the hobby is definitely changing.  We see so many wonderful products continue to come to us from manufacturers in Asia and Eastern Europe.  But I wonder if the closure of so many manufacturers in Western Europe and the US over the last decade and more tends to indicate that the issues are very complex and dynamic.  Had shopping for kits and supplies merely shifted from stores to online, kit manufacturers in the West who went out of business should still be in business. But they aren't.  This indicates that the market has changed considerably, and continues to change.  The problems are much more complicated than just a shift of shopping from brick and mortar stores to online retailers or an issue with sales taxes.

 

In the US, it looks like there are just a few manufacturers left, including Lindberg (Round 2) and Moebius, now.  Round 2 occasionally re-releases old Lindberg and MPC kits.  How many are left in the US designing anything new?   Who would have thought 10 years ago that Lindberg might actually become the last man standing in the US?

 

Some food for thought: 

 

Many of us were deeply saddened when Hobbico went bankrupt due to declining sales and massive debt, followed by its liquidation.  Revell/Monogram in the US was closed with employees released, and assets moved to Germany this past year under Quantum Capital Partners, an international investment group.  Major production by Revell Gmbh ("Revell Germany") is thought to actually occur in Poland, not Germany.  Experts here could confirm or correct that.

 

Serious financial problems for major hobby producers continue in other Western nations, too. You may recall that Airfix had been owned for 20 years by Humbrol (which also owned Heller for a time).  Humbrol, originally the Humber Oil Company (Humber Oil's name became "Humbrol"), which then became a paint company years ago.  Humbrol purchased both Airfix and Heller by 1986 and had been producing Heller and Airfix kits at the Heller factory in Trun, France. Humbrol collapsed financially in 2006 due to declining sales. 

 

In 2006, Airfix and Humbrol paints were bought by Hornby, known for making model trains including popular "Thomas the Tank Engine".   Heller was sold to a French jewelry manufacturer but is now owned by Maped, a French stationary company well known in the UK for mathematical instruments.   Airfix continued to design and package kits in the UK but Hornby outsourced Airfix manufacturing to India. The Airfix factory at Kingston upon Hull, UK, was demolished in 2008. 

 

Hornby suffered a financial collapse due to declining sales just a year or so ago.  London Stock Exchange rules required a mandatory takeover which was done by Phoenix Asset Management.  Hornby CEO Steve Cooke was forced to resign a year ago last September as part of the takeover.  The BBC attributed Hornby's declining sales and stock value collapse this way: "The major reason behind the decline Hornby declared was two fold, with the decline in the number of (now aged, and hence older) collecting customers, and a lack of interest in modelling as a hobby in light of the digitization and advancement of the internet games industry." 

 

How big is the video game industry? 2015 world-wide revenue was reported as $91.5 billion.  That's larger revenue than that earned by the world-wide motion picture industry that same year.  Think about that.  And the video game industry is changing, too.  It's shifting from the West to Asia.  Nearly half of all video game revenue is produced in Asia with China as the number one producer of video game revenue.  Video game revenue growth is huge.  For example, Indonesia was projected to see a whopping one-year revenue increase of 52% in 2016 alone. Thailand's video game revenue was up 42% in the same single year.  That's right, 42% increase in just one year.  See: https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/newzoos-top-100-countries-by-2015-game-revenues/ 

 

Asian plastic model kit manufacturers such as Trumpeter (Zhongshan, China), Tamiya, Hasegawa and Fujimi (all headquartered in Shinzuoka, Japan), Academy (South Korea and The Philippines), etc., seem to be doing much better than Western companies. 

 

Interestingly, Hornby's major model railroading competitors included Bachmann Industries, originally founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania but is now owned and headquartered in China. Its products are produced at a Chinese government-owned factory in Dongguan. 

 

Hopefully, Airfix is doing better under Phoenix Asset Management ownership and that Revell Germany is doing better under Quantum Capital Partners. It is very encouraging to see new releases announced.

 

I love Revell's new 1/32 scale P-51D-5 (thanks, Radu!) and have a Revell Spitfire Mk.IXc on the way, shipped to me in the US from a vendor in the UK.  Will order more.

Edited February 14, 2019 by Model_Monkey

[MikeMaben]

Not gonna get political here but taxes and regulations

play a major role in who survives and who doesn't.

 

 

[Model_Monkey]

Agreed.

[Radub]

The hobby is changing all the time, from the very beginning. I discovered the internet around 1995 and went on forums such as rec.models.scale or Hyperscale. Even then there were people woried about closing shops, manufacturers closing down, impact of games, children not interested, etc. All of these are old tropes. The hobby is stll here. What drives the hobby is the interest, the  "cool factor": you see a model in a magazine, on the internet, on a competition table and you want it. That is all. There are plenty of distractions around. As long as people get "stirred" by a scale model, the hobby will survive. Having said that, I find myself less and less "inspired". Increasingly, many models you see these days are filthy corroded derelicted wrecks with crappy paintjobs. Models just don't look "realistic" anymore, and they used to! Look at model magazines from 10 years ago, you will notice the difference. I am not saying that this fetish for filth and ruin is "killing the hobby" but all I am saying is that I find myself saying "I wish I could build like that" less and less. That "death of inspiration" is more frightening to me than anything else in this hobby. 

Radu 

Edited February 14, 2019 by Radub