Retail Price, Hobby Shops, & Discounting

Why don't M&M come in 50 lbs bags

-Hudson

The 20 kilo bags aren't good enough for ya!?? GEzzzzz that's picky.

Paul

Wonder why nobody considered making a 2 oz sausage instead.

Actually there are quite a few different brands/types of dogs now that come 8 to a pack. Kahn's brats for one. Any outfit that makes a larger size fat hot dog.

Andy

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I assume it has something to do with Xacto knives, soldering irons and motor tools.

On 25 Jul 2003 05:50:08 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@aol.comspamthis (Dave Henk) shared this with the world:

Dave, I soooo wish I lived within driving distance of your shop.

Kent

Don't feel bad having to explain that. I used to be quite interested in buses, as well as trains. For thirteen years now, I have been driving a transit bus eight hours a day, and I don't even want to look at a bus when I get off duty!

Nothing wrong with it. I do agree.

They do? I wouldn't know good beer from what flows in a urinal. Never took a liking to any alcoholic beverages. (Maybe that's what's wrong?)

I actually found a package of eight (8) hot dogs!!! I forget what brand it was, but it sort of shocked me...all my 52 years it's been eight buns to a package and ten hot dogs (unless you're into Hebrew National and they give you seven...)

For the same reason big gorillas have two inch......oh, never mind!! :-)

So, Dieter....when's the cookout at your place? :-)

Gee, all I got to do is go to some local hobby shops to find that!! Or go to Allied Trains in West LA without waving a few hundred dollars in their face. They treat you like you just crapped on their floor.

caught! That is what the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was all about! Standard Oil was broken up due to this.

Jim Bernier

So go to Walmart for your trains :-)

If a big box supplier sells at less than its cost of goods--less then the distributor sells to the local hobby shops, for example--then the locals can always go their and buy their stock. They'll get it cheaper and make sure the box box boys don't have it in stock.

Very few retailers, if any, sell at a loss unless it is just a clearance sale. The big box boys make better wholesale deals based on their volume discounts.

But even with that, my local hobby store, The Train Shop in Santa Clara, CA, has prices at least as good as any I've seen anywhere else. If they can do it, anyone can. Rent is PRICEY here in Silicon Valley even with our recession, and I suspect Vern pays his folks OK. He has enough knowledgeable help in the store, has a return policy, lots of variety in stock, and will order anything you can tell him how to order if he doesn't know the vendor. All that and good prices, too.

I think that some hobby shops make bad business decisions and try to charge full boat retail, scrimp on service, and then complain when folks shop and places which have low prices and no service instead of a place with high prices and no service.

Ed.

in article snipped-for-privacy@nospam.hotmail.com, Jim Bernier at snipped-for-privacy@nospam.hotmail.com wrote on 7/26/03 10:22 AM:

The Big Box retailers get certain "perks" that the smaller retailers never even dream of. When I was at Home Depot, when we opened new stores, many of the vendors gave the initial start up order for the store for free - no cost to Home Depot. We did show a cost for inventory and tax purposes, but, as a manager in the store (and having good contacts at the buying office) I was able to find out what orders the vendors were sending to us that were the no cost items. Another "perk" in volume purchasing, and dated purchasing, was special discounts. I remember McCulloch Chain Saws would offer an additional 5% discount to all stores, if they purchased a certain dollar amount in a single order, before a certain date, and booked receiving of the goods, by a certain date. Usually the order was 2 - 3 times what a normal store would sell, during a normal season, but, we found ways to place the orders, then have parts of the orders transfered and shipped to other stores, and we would get the benefit of the discount at our particular store. Another discount never seen by the smaller retailers was the rebate. If a buyer promised to purchase X,XXX,XXX amount of dollars per store, by a certain date, the company as a whole would receive a huge rebate from the vendor. We would receive truckloads of Ames rakes, shovels and wheelbarrows in late October, because our particular store didn't make it's minimum, so the buyer would dump the stuff on us, so he could get his rebate. Wanna talk about some nasty, heated words flying across the phone lines, orders being cancelled, then re-placed, and DMs and VPs getting involved. Bottom line was, the rebate that the company received, was much more then the cost of the orders placed to make the minimums for the under-selling stores. I'm not sure how it works in the hobby industry, but I am sure similar things take place. The small retailer can't touch the rebates and discounts that the larger ones receive. Another thing we had, was loss leaders... such as cans of propane gas. We actually showed on our order sheets, that we were paying more for them, then we actually sold them for, and, in theory, the "store" itself, was paying more for the propane. But, again, due to the sales numbers at the lower prices, because of the discounts and rebates, the company, in the long run did make money on the items, it just didn't show on the bottom line at store level. While I worked at HD, I never worried about a local retailer outselling me, or having more stock then me, or out pricing me. I had many more resources then he could ever dream of having, and in many cases, I was actually the supplier for a number of small outlets (at both HD and when I worked for Lowe's, also), that paid at wholesale, more through their jobbers for the same items that I was selling at retail. Jeff

Most stores will have loss leaders that bring people in hoping it will encourage more sales. An example would be milk.

CBix

I always purchased what I could afford in the hobby shops and what I couldn't afford to pay the hobby shop, I ordered by mail (discounted). I saw a lot of nice train and hobby stores come and go and the owners were all pleasant to talk to and deal with.

The instant gratification is worth a lot to me. Plus the people one meets in the hobby store. Owners, employees, fellow modelers.

Bill Bill's Railroad Empire N Scale Model Railroad:

Last night after the club ran an operating session, we had a discussion on the history of hobby/model railroad shops in Atlanta....

Of course, there are many honest shop owners in the business, but there have been several notable examples of those who are, shall we say, less than scrupulous?

If you could ever untangle the good guys from the thieves in the business around here in the last thirty years, you would begin to see why hobby shops come and go with such regularity.