It was fun
- Thread starter OneStopRC
- Start date
Gary Seven
Rocketman
[MENTION=12570]Old Man[/MENTION]; Taking a beating from what? Price pressure from the Chinese or BS regulations, or both? Seems to me the industry is exploding (just look at DJI, not that I'm a fanboy), at least WRT MR. But I can see how low margins, too many competitors, and gov't. regulators knocking themselves over to hose the industry with new regulations can be a killer. :upset:
Old Man
Active Member
The hobby business is not limited to multirotors but also a great many other genre's. The economy still has not recovered to the extent the media has been reporting and hobby items are typically discretionary purchases. Internet sales have for years hammered on store sales and many store owners have to maintain a secondary business or occupation to keep things going. If that hobby business also happens to sell cloned Chinese gas engines they frequently end up cannibalizing their selling stock for spare parts since the Chinese have an unusual warranty policy. They warrant the engines, the dealer does all the work for free, and never gets reimbursed for the parts that were taken from all the new engines the dealer can no longer sell. It's similar with multirotors as well. If the dealer wants to keep his customers they handle warranty and parts replacement work out of pocket, hoping the manufacturer will eventually come through.
I'm not suggesting this is what has happened with OneStop but I know most RC hobby shops have not been staying alive through sales of hobby products. Far from it. A couple Phantoms a week will not put much food on the table, nor will a couple of RC engines or ARF kits. Do all of them and you'll clear a few hundred bucks. The up side has few hobby "shops" actually maintaining a store front business, which also has the downside of preventing them from selling some products due to distributor requirements, but at least they don't have to pay for commercial retail space. So they become just another www in the address line to choose from. The business is ruthless with competition and for the vast majority the only way to come out with a million $$ is to start out with 2.
I'm not suggesting this is what has happened with OneStop but I know most RC hobby shops have not been staying alive through sales of hobby products. Far from it. A couple Phantoms a week will not put much food on the table, nor will a couple of RC engines or ARF kits. Do all of them and you'll clear a few hundred bucks. The up side has few hobby "shops" actually maintaining a store front business, which also has the downside of preventing them from selling some products due to distributor requirements, but at least they don't have to pay for commercial retail space. So they become just another www in the address line to choose from. The business is ruthless with competition and for the vast majority the only way to come out with a million $$ is to start out with 2.
Gary Seven
Rocketman
Geez. Sounds exactly like the business I'm in (the wine biz). :disturbed:
Racerx1962
Member
Do you guys think that there is a market for a shop that focuses on MRs only?
SamaraMedia
Active Member
Found some good deals at your shop, service was exceptional, too bad it didn't work out for you. Good luck in your next endeavor.
We just had one open here in Salt Lake. The prices are really high for everything but that's to be expected when you have to cover the cost of the physical building, permits, etc plus you have the automatic 7% sales tax mark up.
It's got to be hard for the little guy to try and keep current stock for a product line that's evolving so fast. Best of luck to future endevors Dean.
MadMonkey
Bane of G10
Brick & mortar? I HIGHLY doubt it. Even our local heli guru has to sell RC cars, planes and MRs to stay in business, and we have a ton of guys flying helis in DFW.
R_Lefebvre
Arducopter Developer
That's like they say "How do you make a small fortune racing cars? Start out with a large fortune."
Old Man
Active Member
If the shop is in a mall his floor space cost/sq.foot is high so unless he's selling a lot of different "something else" to diversify his inventory anticipate a liquidation sale not too far down the road. It's really hard to make a dollar when overhead is high and you're competing against your suppliers that often undercut you by selling consumer direct. That's how the demise of the neighborhood RC hobby shop started.
People have learned they can see something in a brick and mortar shop that can be looked up on the internet. If they like it the search changes to one seeking "best price". At that point the China vendors become known to the prospective buyer via Amazon, Google, and E-Bay. The consumer starts to feel a little anger when the local store won't (can't) sell for prices as low as those being advertised by the foreign sellers. Generally the consumer gives no thought to the value of local "hand's on" assistance and a potential easy warranty return policy. Both of which can turn out to be priceless when certain components fail to work as advertised.
People have learned they can see something in a brick and mortar shop that can be looked up on the internet. If they like it the search changes to one seeking "best price". At that point the China vendors become known to the prospective buyer via Amazon, Google, and E-Bay. The consumer starts to feel a little anger when the local store won't (can't) sell for prices as low as those being advertised by the foreign sellers. Generally the consumer gives no thought to the value of local "hand's on" assistance and a potential easy warranty return policy. Both of which can turn out to be priceless when certain components fail to work as advertised.
Last edited by a moderator:
Bartman
Welcome to MultiRotorForums.com!!
Good luck in the future OneStopRC, come on back and see us from time to time.
I also tried to open a shop and sell/build/design for the shop, it's a ton of work. Like [MENTION=1612]tstrike[/MENTION]; said, things change so quickly that it's hard to invest in inventory and if you go too big with nay one purchase to improve your pricing, you run the risk of being stuck with a bunch of it. there's also the risk of selling to customers that aren't as self-motivated to learn and they can drain all of your time insisting you spoon feed them every least detail. all in all, it's a hard road to navigate. kudos to [MENTION=5659]OneStopRC[/MENTION]; for trying
I also tried to open a shop and sell/build/design for the shop, it's a ton of work. Like [MENTION=1612]tstrike[/MENTION]; said, things change so quickly that it's hard to invest in inventory and if you go too big with nay one purchase to improve your pricing, you run the risk of being stuck with a bunch of it. there's also the risk of selling to customers that aren't as self-motivated to learn and they can drain all of your time insisting you spoon feed them every least detail. all in all, it's a hard road to navigate. kudos to [MENTION=5659]OneStopRC[/MENTION]; for trying
Bartman
Welcome to MultiRotorForums.com!!
Good luck in the future OneStopRC, come on back and see us from time to time.
I also tried to open a shop and sell/build/design for the shop, it's a ton of work. Like [MENTION=1612]tstrike[/MENTION]; said, things change so quickly that it's hard to invest in inventory and if you go too big with nay one purchase to improve your pricing, you run the risk of being stuck with a bunch of it. there's also the risk of selling to customers that aren't as self-motivated to learn and they can drain all of your time insisting you spoon feed them every least detail. all in all, it's a hard road to navigate. kudos to [MENTION=5659]OneStopRC[/MENTION]; for trying
I also tried to open a shop and sell/build/design for the shop, it's a ton of work. Like [MENTION=1612]tstrike[/MENTION]; said, things change so quickly that it's hard to invest in inventory and if you go too big with nay one purchase to improve your pricing, you run the risk of being stuck with a bunch of it. there's also the risk of selling to customers that aren't as self-motivated to learn and they can drain all of your time insisting you spoon feed them every least detail. all in all, it's a hard road to navigate. kudos to [MENTION=5659]OneStopRC[/MENTION]; for trying
OneStopRC
Dirty Little Hucker
Thank you all for your kind words...
It was an interesting and enjoyable venture, one that I poured my heart and soul into. Unfortunately, I had seen around a 90% drop in sales when the FAA started to stir up the crap, I found it hard to find suppliers that wanted to deal with the size company I had.
Most suppliers want you to buy in bulk, as mentioned above. I know they want to sell big amounts to keep the prices low, but when companies (mentioning no names) want you to buy a minimum of 10 items at say $120.00 a piece, that is a lot of money to sink into one product. One company I was referring to, they did not care about my funding, it was buy it or get off the horse.
Some items I had, they became stagnant, vendors were changing items without informing me which left me with old product that no one wanted. On top of that, getting ripped off by people using shipping addresses in the USA as a proxy to a country I did not ship to, for the same reasons I did not ship to them in the first place. Another venue I used was the popular online auction site, I can't tell you how many issues I had with people on there.
Do I think a Multi-Rotor brick and mortar store will last?... absolutely not, not in the USA anyway and certainly not in these unstable times. The Chinese are flooding the USA with product to the extent where no one can compete, and as mentioned above, go in with 2 million and come out with 1 million.
Vendors are hard to buy from, I found one vendor that would not sell to me as I did not have a "brick and mortar" store. I did have a 2000 sq ft storage facility, of where I spent most of my time. For the pure fact, someone could not visit my products for sale, they wanted nothing to do with me.
Could I have made it work for longer?, yes I think I could have, if I had the financial backing I could have bought more product. There comes the other problem, no bank will touch you for at least 6 months, within that 6 months is a critical time in any startup business.
If you are looking for parts, there are several good online retailers, they have been around for a while and I hope that they continue to keep going. Your best bet is to feed what you can into those guys, because at the end of the day, you are the ones who keep them alive.
My thanks to everyone, my special thanks to Bart who allowed me to sell via this forum. This forum did a lot of good for me, it is a great forum and I did enjoy helping out where I could.
Dean
It was an interesting and enjoyable venture, one that I poured my heart and soul into. Unfortunately, I had seen around a 90% drop in sales when the FAA started to stir up the crap, I found it hard to find suppliers that wanted to deal with the size company I had.
Most suppliers want you to buy in bulk, as mentioned above. I know they want to sell big amounts to keep the prices low, but when companies (mentioning no names) want you to buy a minimum of 10 items at say $120.00 a piece, that is a lot of money to sink into one product. One company I was referring to, they did not care about my funding, it was buy it or get off the horse.
Some items I had, they became stagnant, vendors were changing items without informing me which left me with old product that no one wanted. On top of that, getting ripped off by people using shipping addresses in the USA as a proxy to a country I did not ship to, for the same reasons I did not ship to them in the first place. Another venue I used was the popular online auction site, I can't tell you how many issues I had with people on there.
Do I think a Multi-Rotor brick and mortar store will last?... absolutely not, not in the USA anyway and certainly not in these unstable times. The Chinese are flooding the USA with product to the extent where no one can compete, and as mentioned above, go in with 2 million and come out with 1 million.
Vendors are hard to buy from, I found one vendor that would not sell to me as I did not have a "brick and mortar" store. I did have a 2000 sq ft storage facility, of where I spent most of my time. For the pure fact, someone could not visit my products for sale, they wanted nothing to do with me.
Could I have made it work for longer?, yes I think I could have, if I had the financial backing I could have bought more product. There comes the other problem, no bank will touch you for at least 6 months, within that 6 months is a critical time in any startup business.
If you are looking for parts, there are several good online retailers, they have been around for a while and I hope that they continue to keep going. Your best bet is to feed what you can into those guys, because at the end of the day, you are the ones who keep them alive.
My thanks to everyone, my special thanks to Bart who allowed me to sell via this forum. This forum did a lot of good for me, it is a great forum and I did enjoy helping out where I could.
Dean