Category: Hobby Shops
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Who’s A Dealer and Who’s a Wheeler Dealer…
And how can you tell the difference between them? Perhaps we should mention a third category first – the retail dealer. a. The Retail Dealer has a shop – sometimes an on-line one, sometimes a physical store. Sometimes a combination of the two, if there are enough staff with enough expertise to run it all.…
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Ustar
Never heard of ’em? I never did until I started patronising Hobbytech out in Myaree. Then I found an increasing number of products from this Taiwanese firm on their tool and material shelves. I experimented with a few things, then bought more. Not every product was world-beating, but they were all workable, and some were actually…
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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…
The Little World 