In other words. the old Caboose Hobbies has died. I use to buy lots of stuff from them.
Thanks for the report.
John Bouck said:
In other words. the old Caboose Hobbies has died. I use to buy lots of stuff from them.
…
Yip, as far as large-scale items, it has indeed pretty much died…one short aisle filled with LGB American-themed items and that’s it. I can’t blame the guy; we are, us guys, (large-scale) at most four percent of the model train market. The guy’s not an idiot…he used to own his own successful real 1:1 short-line railroad and I’m sure he didn’t spend more than four percent of his resources there on any four percent of his market. Retail floor space at Caboose is about four percent of the store. Sucks for us though.
I don’t know how they’re doing financially. I haven’t been out there since the opening, but everything I’ve heard is that whole operation is first-class, no shortcuts, and the staff is friendly.
I would be curious to know what percentage of sales large-scale trains and accessories represented in the old Caboose Hobbies. I don’t think it’s likely I’ll run into the old owners to ask them; maybe Kevin might run across them in his travels.
It’s not a good omen that there’s no large scale in the “INVENTORY” section, and in the LS “scales” filter, nothing shows for rolling stock or locomotives.
For large scale, it’s not going to make it with web sales it seems.
Perhaps as a local hobby shop it’s going to be fine.
Greg
So far it looks like they’re not particularly interested in online sales. Their website is barely functional and apparently incomplete.
My primary interest in Caboose Hobbies was always as a source of materials for scratch building. Things like Grandt Line parts, etc.
Maybe the local market should show them there is a market by ordering your stuff through him.
A couple three decades ago, I got my local hobby shop to order an O ga. craftsman kit. They were HO and N and carried a full line of bass wood lumber at 3’ long. At first he told me I could save money going direct, I countered with safer through him and he relented.
In the next possible issue of Model Railroader his store was mentioned in a Western Scale Models ad! He comp’d me a lifetime 10% discount!(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-money-mouth.gif)
I was protecting my bass wood source.
There maybe hope after all. Even if it all mail order, and no I don’t mind the postage cost. I guess time will tell, however if more people order large scale materials through the Shop, they may expand what they carry either on the shelf or just on line.
Paul
Hmm… not trying to be a downer…
Several “locals” have checked in and been disappointed, and really, the few LS people who live in the area probably cannot support expansion with their purchases alone.
Running a business needs to have some risk, and you decide what kind of store you are, i.e. your business model.
The original Caboose Hobbies was interesting, was not a cut-rate web sales only store, but clearly had a low enough overhead to have enough stock and good enough prices to have good internet sales. They advertised and had built up a name and following. They had technical support people at the store.
The new Caboose is clearly not set up for good internet sales, 8 months after opening. The full list pricing in the store won’t make internet sales attractive.
I hope they find their “niche”.
Greg
It took 'em the better part of 6 months just to get prices on the inventory in the store. The web side of things will come along in due course. I think everything with respect to this re-launch is taking much longer than anyone had expected or hoped. Part of me is surprised they didn’t just maintain the old site with updated inventory, but I’d imagine they decided that was going to be more trouble than building a new interface from scratch.
With respect to the inventory in the store itself, it’s a great resource for the small scale modeler. The wall of scenery items is pretty cool, and having just gotten into On30 in the past year, I’ve taken advantage of it on a few occasions. As has been said earlier, the large scale selection is, well, “disappointing.” In reality, though, the large scale selection at the “old” Caboose was but a fraction of itself compared to when I first started going there in the 90s. In the last few years, they had some LGB, some Bachmann, and some Piko. Prices were okay-ish on some stuff, but their Bachmann loco prices were high. On one hand, I’d love to see more, but on the other, the large scale stuff they had at the old store didn’t do a whole lot of turning over, so I can’t say I blame 'em for not stocking it here. Good for visibility of the scale, but that’s about it. Their current prices on their LGB seem a bit steep, but prices on LGB have always struck me as steep. Can’t really say where the fall competitively with the other folks.
The biggest “missing” element–for me–is detail parts. This is true across all scales. They used to have walls and walls of detail parts for large scale, O, HO… They’ve got a fair amount of HO detail parts, a much smaller selection of O scale (naturally, as I’m getting into O scale and could use a wall of headlights, air pumps, and stacks to choose from) and a ridiculously minuscule amount of large scale parts. It’s probably a good thing I did my part to clear the old Caboose’s shelves of parts, but I guarantee you I’ll need something that I don’t have on my next project. (Class lamps?)
To me, it seems as if the new team took a look at what the high-volume items were at the old store and focused primarily on those. Makes sense, but it was the not-so-high volume stuff that gave Caboose its unique vibe. I stop in there once or twice a month or so for this or that, but I’ve walked out of there empty-handed more often than not. (Free popcorn notwithstanding.) In fairness, I haven’t been doing a whole lot of building to where I need materials (outside of my On30), so I haven’t had the projects requiring me to spend money.
The overall vibe in the store is very positive.
And they stock my book. 
Later,
K
Kevin Strong said:
…Free popcorn…And they stock my book.
I guess that Rubel guy really is one sharp character!