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Opening a LHS
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<p>A store will be nice but a Internet service will help you alot.</p><p>Discounts bring in the sales, a little bit back to the supportive client base tends to generate more sales as they spend percieved savings or dont get eaten alive by taxes.</p><p>There will be times you are going to sit there with no one in the store while your utilities hum away... up to deal with UPS you go. Boxes to open, stuff to inventory and all kinds of things going on.</p><p>Communications with your distributors, junk mail piling in as soon as you get your business license and wonderful telephone charges are going to be really good.</p><p>When you do have a day off from the shop, are you going to lay awake wondering if you left the coffee pot on during the night?</p><p>What are you going to do when people come in who dont know beans between a Athearn Blue Box and end up buying the nice Intermountain RTR because they dont have all of those tiny parts?</p><p>The ones you remember are those who return asking why the couplers wont work with the old black plastic things off the trainset?</p><p>There is one trend that is difficult for me. Have a product get announced, wait a year until you learn the ETA from China or wherever then wait some more. Can you stand to carry 10 or more BLI engines on your invoice with each person asking you if you know when they are coming? Never mind those who need to layaway some items.</p><p>And maybe one or two items finally arrive only to have the customer go Yuck! I dont want THAT! back into stock it goes. It will be tough to dust off the Walthers kit sitting on your shelf a year while the exact same kit flies out of Ebay for 5-7 times retail because it is out of production and everyone wants it. </p><p>My personal secret is to find a BIG club that is well manned and just starting out. The revenue alone from that is almost worth the start up pain. Some stores do hold seminars, others try to run a club and more tend to sell on Ebay as a store.</p><p>And finally what are you going to do if Mr Picky arrives and demands the most obscure little lost-wax brass casting item that has been OOP for 50 years? If you are not feeling too cool and have a temper, dont be thundering from behind the counter when a simple "Hi" or assistance might be much more pleasant to the customer.</p><p>Be careful when a spouse calls in by phone a very large christmas order sight unseen for her husband with a credit card ready. "I want a choo choo that whistles and talks" ok,... $450.00, anything else?</p><p>Keep your hobby a hobby.</p>
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