Local Hobby Shop (LHS) Initiative

We've been thinking about putting together a initiative to help support local hobby shops on our forums by offering them a dedicated channel where they can engage their RC fan community at a local level to promote their products, services and sales.

Some Background:
When I relocated to Oregon and rebooted my interest into the RC hobby I found myself racing my cars and trucks around the yard alone because I did not know where the "locals" hung out. I discovered that there was a local hobby shop in town and after chatting with the owner about where the local folks played and raced he told me that they were probably just racing around their yards the same as me since there were no public tracks in our area at the time. Naturally I was a little discouraged to hear this.

I found myself wondering about how I could locate other like minded RC enthusiasts. Maybe there were others out there who were also looking for folks to share their RC model hobby with.

I decided that I would build a website where RC fans could meet and discuss our hobby together. The website would have to have a local focus because there are already a ton of National and International oriented RC websites and they are not very good at building local community. If I want to find people to go out bashing on Saturday my online friends from out of state and overseas aren’t going to be able to come out and play very easily.

Since the website would be locally focused we could use the website to organize get togethers to race and bash our cars and trucks. I returned to the local hobby shop and discussed my plans with the owner who was supportive and allowed me to put a index card on his bulletin board with the website name and address. That website attracted a bunch of locals who also told their RC fan friends and we grew quickly. We had a modest success on our hands. I still remember how great it was when we organized our first get together and we got to put faces to the online screen names.

Back To Now:
At this point I should admit that I have not been a good local hobby shop customer lately. I attribute this to two main reasons:

- Our local hobby shop, the very one that inspired me to start a RC website, has failed me many times when I needed a part.
- There had also been too many occasions where I ordered a part from our local hobby shop and the part took longer to get than if I had just ordered it online myself. There were a few instances where they ordered the wrong part so I waited even longer still until they could rectify the order.

I admit it is unreasonable to expect that a small local hobby shop have the parts I need in stock considering the hundreds of models on the market. Even massive online only businesses like A Main Hobbies and Tower Hobbies don’t always have the part in stock that I need and they have huge warehouses. There is just no way a local hobby shop can compete with the inventories that those businesses have.

Where local hobby shops can compete is in customer service and hands on products. Being able to look at a product in person with your own eyes and hold it in your hands trumps looking at pictures on a website as does being able to talk in person with someone knowledgeable. Of course there is also the instant gratification aspect of being able to slap cash on the counter and walk out with product in hand.

I love the RC hobby but I don’t envy the local hobby shop business.
It’s got to be very challenging for local hobby shops to try and keep up with the latest RC trends plus maintain their inventory with stuff that is needed and won’t sit on the shelf costing them money.

If I owned a local hobby shop I would create a website to offer online sales to compliment my in-store sales, but that’s just me and I have the expertise to do so. Not many local hobby shops have the expertise to setup, operate and maintain a online store.

I believe that if local hobby shops had a opportunity where they could keep their finger on the pulse of what RC models are trending in their area they could better anticipate customer requests. It should also benefit a local hobby shop if they had a locally focused online community that they could engage with to promote their products and services. This is where I think we can help.

We should offer local hobby shops individual dedicated forums where they can engage their local RC fan community directly. Some of the larger National and International RC forums have implemented a similar system for RC manufacturers.
The local hobby shop should have full authority in their forum to promote their business and services with the intention of turning online shoppers back into local hobby shop buyers.

What Would It Look Like?
We will build a section on the Southern Oregon RC Forums called “Local Hobby Shops”. This section would in turn host the individual local hobby shop forums. Structurally the local hobby shops section would resemble the current major sections such as “Cars and Trucks” or “Aircraft” sections with the individual hobby shops in their own forums in this area.

Quid Pro Quo:
We don’t intend to charge local hobby shops for their dedicated forum. All we ask is that they promote their forum to build their local RC community. Just as hanging that 3”x5” index card on a bulletin board inside a local hobby shop helped launch a successful website we believe that local hobby shops would in turn benefit by hanging index cards on their bulletin boards promoting our website with the address to their dedicated forums.

I look forward to hearing your comments on this subject.

I made a PDF file with a four-up index card that will print on normal 8.5" x 11" paper. One sheet makes four cards to hang in your local hobby shop.
Check it out and let me know if you think I should make any changes.