Bill Hamilton wrote:
>
> And people wonder why brick and mortar hobby stores are failing left and
> right.
>
There's nothing "sinister" about how retail is changing around the
world, it's business evolution driven by consumers searching for the
lowest cost. Custom manufacturing in colonial times was replaced by
standard products produced in factories because they were cheaper to
produce. Main street shops were surpassed by mall shops a couple
decades ago because consumers could find more shops in one place,
reducing the number of shopping trips and making shopping easier. Where
malls aren't possible, big box shops dominate for the same reason. But,
evolution is relentless and now malls and big box shops are scrambling
to compete with online shops which have cheaper prices (sometimes) and
convenient shipping (sometimes). Keep in mind, the consumer is driving
this evolution because of the relentless search for cheaper prices.
The only new wrinkle about online evolution is that for the first time
ever, the new approach can be used by new and old stores alike. That
is, any brick-and-mortar that wants to stay in business need only
embrace the new approach and change their business model to use it. So,
the savvy ma/pa hobby stores adjusted years ago to the new approach and
started both selling online and purchasing online themselves, to stay
competitive. Personally, I buy from a number of online hobby/surplus
stores that were originally brick-and-mortar. And on the other side of
the coin, whereas before a shop might only have one supplier of plastic
model kits, now that shop can buy kits from anywhere in the world,
probably at lower prices. All business owners have to constantly
re-evaluate their own processes, for lots of reasons, to stay in
business. Any store that doesn't adjust will lose ... not because of
evolution, but because they failed to adapt to evolutionary trends.
The biggest failing of ma/pa shops (and small computer consulting firms)
is that they get too comfortable with how they did things yesterday.
That might have worked for our parents and grand-parents, but change is
more rapid now with regard to communication, purchasing and logistics
(the main ingredients of business), requiring more self-evaluation at
more frequent intervals.
I had some personal experience with this issue when web sites first
started appearing on the Internet. As people who knew exactly what was
needed technically, many new customers sought us out to help. Although
such simple tasks wouldn't fuel our revenue needs, we knew that the
aggregation of those tasks would be "good money", so we focused our
skills on the area for a couple years. The problem, however, was that
ma/pa shops were looking for something for nothing. They didn't want to
pay a couple hundred bucks for a simple web page that could be seen by
literally millions of people, even though that price was competitive
with their long-standing "yellow pages" entry seen by a couple thousand
people. The more they counted their pennies, the more their online
competitors snatched up the dollars. Everyone, including the shop
owners, saw the change happening (it was reported in every paper,
magazine and news report almost daily for many years) but not everyone
took "action" to ride the wave instead of being crushed by it.
The best advice I can give to anyone who likes their local ma/pa store
(regardless of what they provide) is to "ask" them if they provide any
online service (even if it's only for local consumption). If enough
loyal customers ask them about such things, even the most stubborn ma/pa
owner will figure out it's time to change. Without that communication
between consumer and retailer, both will be responsible for the demise
of that shop ... not evolution and the rest of the market. After all,
they don't even know that shop exists.
Frank P.
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