THE Cub Report, 04.24.2011- Version- Aeropostale vs RC

During the first weekend that I’ve officially had “off” in over 30 weeks, neither F1 nor AMA/Monster/Supercross were racing. Seriously, what good is a weekend off if there is no good full scale racing to watch on the tube? “Sigh”. So with no racing to watch I was left with plenty of good ole’ fashioned “family” time for the Easter holiday. Oh what fun it is having a house full of family- eating up every bit of food in the house, randomly breaking things I spent months searching for on E-pay, scuffing up my immaculately prepared hardwoods, and using my man-cave as a place to store jackets/shoes/shopping bags/misc-crap. Oh and… the A/V system I’ve spent hours upon hours fine tuning in my man cave now sounds about like a Kraco head unit wired to a Sparkomatic booster to some Jensen 3-way 6×9’s due to little fingers pushing in very expensive dust caps and big boy fingers playing with all the settings. I guess the system in my man-cave didn’t sound ghetto enough to suit some of the teen types roaming around my house, so they thought they’d kindly “fix” it by changing all the settings. Nothing that some time with an RTA and some pink noise won’t fix, but still, a pain in my rear.

Anywhos…. so… Saturday I got the family out of my house and took them to the mall, I figure give them a chance to destroy someone else’s property right? 🙂 And while walking through the mall we walk past a store called Aeropostale. Much to the delight of the tween/teen crowd in my fam, everything in the store was 50% off. That’s right, 50% off everything at the “hot” place to shop if you are a 12 year old girl.

Now YOUR Cub Reporter seldom gets to a mall, but… I’m in some sort of hobby shop several times every week. Because of this I just about s*!t green twinkies when I saw that Freak’n everything in Aeropostale was 50% off. I mean…. when was the last time you saw a local hobby shop take even 10% off everything in the store, let alone 50. And just why is it that you will never see a local hobby shop have a 50% off sale?

You will never see your LHS have a 50% off sale because they can’t. Period. It’s impossible for them to do, or at least to do and make one penny. Where Aeropostale is paying jack-diddly-squat for a shirt they sell for $20, your LHS is paying 180 for a truck they are selling for 200. And yes, you may have doubted the rumors you’ve heard that your LHS doesn’t make much on selling you that new T-Maxx, but it’s true, there is a bare minimum mark-up on kits/rtrs. And while other products your LHS sells (like tires, glue, etc) may have higher mark-ups than kits, you’d be extremely hard pressed to find anything they double their money on. Simply put, hobby sales are a low margin/high volume market.

But…. just because there isn’t much mark-up in rc doesn’t mean that hobby shops shouldn’t have “sales” right? I’ve been visiting the hobby shop nearest my house for over a decade and in all that time they’ve never once had a “sale”. Heck, they rarely mark down old stock, for example- they’ve got Losi XX a-arms marked at the same price today that they had on them over a decade ago. Are they just too lazy to mark’em down, or are they just holding out to get the full price out of them? Wouldn’t blowing them out to make room for a new product that might make a profit make more sense? Every hobby shop owner is different of course, and ultimately if they are still in business they are doing something right, but a sale every now and then can not hurt. There isn’t much mark-up to play with, so of course they have to get innovative on how to make it work, but it can and should be done. So how about it hobby shop owners, how about coming up with a special “sale” to stoke sales every once in a while? Your customers will love you for it I promise (and it just might keep some of them from just sitting at home and ordering on-line).

On to a different subject…

RPM announced one of the coolest products I’ve seen in quite some time last week, their new shock shaft guards. When I first saw the pics of them I thought “Those look just like motocross fork guards for an rc truck, how trick!”. RPMs new shock guards are simple, made from their legendary plastic, and should help keep you from working on your shocks as much. Three thumbs up and can’t wait to get my hands on a Bunch of them.

And on to yet another subject….

Some guys are into style, some are not, but if you want to be one of the way-super-dope guys on the drivers stand take a look at a Nixon. Nixon watches are solid timepieces (with swagger) that come with a price point to suit any budget. Oh and, Nixon supports guys like TP199, Jason Ellis, Tony Hawk, and Bob Burnquist. Take a look at my favs The Murf and Rotolog, Brian’s fav The Newton, or one of their ceramic pieces if you want something truly uber. Nixonnow.com is their site if you feel like treating yourself to something cool instead of spending every cent on your rc.

Also…

I hear that Brian has a Traxxas lined up for the Tuesday review. Which Traxxas I don’t know, I guess you’ll have to tune in Tuesday to find out.

Lastly…

Brian reported that last weekends “Bunny Bash” at a local HobbyTown USA turned out to be a bunch of fun. I gave Brian all sorts of crap about an event called “rc musical chairs”, but he said all the participants had a blast. There really is a need for more “bash” only events to be run. There are soooo many bashers out there that aren’t going to touch a track with a 10 foot pole, yet have no problem driving 2 hours+ to bash in a HobbyTown parking lot. Racers have tracks to meet other people like themselves, but bashers do not have the same equivalent. Holding more bash events will help bashers meet up with other like minded people, and like pretty much everything else on this planet, the more the merrier.

That’s it for this week, support your LHS, local tracks and bash spots!

YOUR Cub Reporter