Category: Hobby Shops
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Scale Model Kit Building Is Craft Beer In Styrene
Here’s two parallel experiences; buying a plastic model kit in a hobby shop and buying a six-pack of craft beer at the local Dan Murphy’s. In both cases you are basically paying out for a pig in a poke. The externals are generally confusing…the plastic model kit has either great box art or horrible writing,…
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Who Decides And How Do They Do It?
I walk the kit aisle in the local hobby shop and wonder about the choices that have been made – and I’m not sure about all three tiers of retail trade; manufacture,selling, and buying. The maker of the plastic model kit needs to make a fair few of them with a profit upon each sale…
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Curtiss Tomahawk – Part One – De Sales, Boss! De Sales!
Boxing Day Sales are a potent lure for many people in the town – if they have been abstemious during the pre-Christmas rush, have not over-indulged at Chrissie lunch, and are not trying to clean the house …they can rush out and try to buy the things that the retailers weren’t able to flog off…
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When You See Behind The Scenes…
A casual question in the local hobby shop sent my heart to my boots. The brand of paint to which I had pinned my hopes – the brand that I had determined to change to – the best material with which I have yet worked – had lost their Australian distributor. What I saw on…
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Hobby Money – Part Two – When They See You Coming…
I understand certain things about economics. Such as, everything costs something; time, money, trouble, blood, ec. In the case of items sold by shops the situation of the shop can noticeably influence the prices charged. Knowing this all along doesn’t mean that seeing it in operation is rendered any less distressing when your pocket is…
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Going Into Business Sale
Not as common as the opposite – the ” going out of business ” sale, but infinitely more useful to all concerned. I’ve seen both types and from both sides of a sales counter and I much prefer the former to the later. The Chinese have a commercial tradition that says the first customer in…
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The Nakajima Nate
Or Nakajima Ki-27 if you want to be technical. This one slipped through the studio without being photographed on the sprues – but that happens sometimes when you get distracted and are anxious to start doing something. It was a Sunday afternoon visit to an old hobby shop that started it – the shop is…
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No Stash
Gasp! Shock! Horror! What kind of monster would say that? No stash? No collection of model kits carefully stored for the future? No hours spent gloating over future happiness or profit? What sort of world…? Well, a world of immediacy – of freshness – of learning and instant gratification. A chance to be a kid…
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The Wrong Light
When I used to sell Epson inkjet printers in a camera store I was frequently asked about colour management. It’s a topic that makes or breaks photographers and more often causes tears than smiles. Fortunately at the time when some manufacturers introduced even more complex methods of operation, a few saw the need for a…
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Convair 440 – Part Two – How Much For That Busted Box?
When I was engaged in retail trade in cameras and photographic goods we would occasionally receive a shipment of equipment that had a tough passage. External cardboard cartons might have been roughly handled by the shippers and ended up dented or breached. We rarely had evidence of tampering or pilfering, but it was possible. Trucks…
The Little World 