Lhs

[Rok_Dok]

The trick to the hobby shops is you gotta train 'em! You gotta take your junk in there and show 'em what you got. Then you'll kinda see the lightbulb turn on. I had the exact same experience at the one good hobby shop in town here. They all looked at me weird at first. But I just kept coming in and buggin' 'em. And I showed my stuff to them. Now they carry Axial beadlocks and all sorts of driveshaft parts, they have the Axial crawler on order, etc.

I think the killer is that many hobby shops have to go through specific distributors (or something like that) so stocking things like RC4WD beadlocks or aftermarket chassis and other things that aren't distributed through "normal channels" can be difficult.

We also have like a hobby shop like Big Mike described. D&D nerds that know jack diddley about anything. Those types are just straight-up un-trainable.

WOW you got it pegged..... Because hobby shops see YOUR stuff they just go and order willy nilly. The thing with a successful hobby shop is you have to be flexible!!! I cant go order all the Kanai stuff from Kyosho cause in 3 months there will be a new revision and most times the distributors will not take it back. I cant justify carrying 10 axle cases for the tlt's, I have owned 2 or 3 tlts in the past and I still dont stock them cause most of the crawler guys order it online anyway. You can not afford to be a niche market but you cant carry everything, If every 3rd customer came in looking for crawler stuff we would carry A LOT but its every 30 or 40th customer that asks and you just cant do it.

 

[Big Mike]

You gotta take your junk in there and show 'em what you got. Then you'll kinda see the lightbulb turn on.

That's what I did. After 3 or 4 "what truck is this for?" questions I happened to have it in the car one day, brought in inside and plunked it on the counter. When I pulled the body off and they saw it was pretty much a TLT chassis that's exactly what happened - Light Bulb!

Now they just let me roam around behind the counter and grab my own stuff!

 

[STEEL_CITY_CRAWLER]

well, my area is getting pretty decent with the LHS for crawlers.

there's AB chalres which is starting to cater to us crawlers (PLUS they seem to have a decent scrapbooking section to occupy the GF whilst i drop $50 to $100 on some parts for the crawler...)

my next bet for parts would be Steel City hobbies (no relation to my screen name...) they are showing mild interest in crawling, but they are big onb the R/C drag racing scene, which is also a form of R/C that is very familiar with the custom made projects. not rock crawling, but i don't get looked at like i have weird things coming out of my head...

and we do have a couple of hobby towns around, to but i got to those as a last resort just because if it's not a traxxas, they want nothing to do with it...

 

[rockwerks]

MY local LHS? what is that? the closest one is 97 miles away and when I brought in my crawler the owner asked what kind of abortion I had in my hand. Then proceeded to tell me a stock TMAX could do everything my crawler could do. MY local LHS at this time is you other venders here.

 

[clodstall]

well the LHS i go to is about 15 miles away. when i first went in there about 1to 1-1/2 yrs ago,they were kinda interested in the whole thing.even the owner bought a highlift to go and play with. him,his wife,and kids made it out to one of our club events one sunday. that was great.he is really into the nitro thing as well as alot of them.it is Town Town Hobbies in Fuquay Varina NC.i get all kinds of deals when i go in now because of all the $$$$$ i have spent and will continue to spend in there as well. i buy most of my stuff from the vendors on here.