Unfortunately, I don't have much of a choice anymore.
In the past 25 years that I've lived in Sarasota, I've seen literally a dozen hobby shops come and go (including one that was wooden ships only).
Was there enough of a customer base there to even begin such a niche type operation?
All we have left within 60 miles is a train shop and a few shelves at a Michael's craft store.
Fortunately the train shop carries Model Master enamels and acrylics, plus they have a full line of adhesives, sheet styrene, brass, tools, etc., which carry over from trains to plastic models.
As far as plastic kits, decals, photo-etch, resin, etc., it's the Internet or nothing for me.
Given the diversity of subjects and the aftermarket materials produced, could any LHS retailer carry everything their customers would want? Probably not. When you plan on it, that's when the customer base disappears. That and customer interest change with the release of new offerings, which arrive on the market faster than they can in many cases be stocked. A challenge for all retail operations is anticipation of what the customer will be purchasing 6 months in the future.
This time of year brings us all sorts of Christmas decorations and gift ideas. As a former retailer who had to make these purchasing decisions while at buying trips in May/June one has to make some hard choices. One such choice was what color of lights will people want to use to decorate their homes...do you risk the presumed popular choice that the vendor is offering or do you remain conservative and get a little of each. Nothing worse than stocking up on white colored lights and have everyone want blue ones instead!
Same holds true for scale modeling and its associated products. Something good is announced, you think wow these will sell and within a week of their arrival the product has been torn apart in such a way there is little if any interest from anyone to purchase it. Great you're sitting on two full cases! What was thought to be "the product" to get customers into the store is now a major drain on capital and will have to be disposed of at a huge loss of margin.
Anything that needs to be dusted off twice or more is a non moving product...a product which for all practical business purposes should have not been stocked. In the hardware store I managed we had to review daily which SKUs we were going to discount and/or discontinue. Given the vast number of SKUs we stocked, there were still items which someone wanted which we didn't carry. The options were offer to order it or refer them to someone local who did.
One of the lost arts in retail is salesmanship. A good retailer knows not only how to close the deal, but also get add-on sales as well. Selling a kit, offer the right necessities...glue, paint and tools to assemble it. Those General Category items are the core of a LHS retail profits...sadly many a LHS has forgotten this fact (which has been the topic of discussion in the trade mags).
A LHS can no longer be all things to all customers. The customer base is too diverse (niche) and the margins too thin to offset the overhead to maintain inventory to meet it.