kbastro
professor emeritus
Reged: 04/20/08
Loc: Running from Clouds
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astronomy stores going out of buisness?
#5627044 - 01/16/13 09:23 PM
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does anyone know how many well known astronomy stores have gone out of buisness in the past 15 years??
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Raginar
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 10/19/10
Loc: Rapid CIty, SD
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Re: astronomy stores going out of buisness?
[Re: kbastro]
#5627055 - 01/16/13 09:31 PM
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Probably quite a few. The rise of the Internet really messed with people's business plans. Those who failed to adapt seemed to fail or were reduced to other plans. The problem with buying locally is really a taxation issue. When I can get something cheaper with shipping (and no taxes) I really have no motivation to buy locally. That coupled with MSRP requirements from companies really make it difficult for the local guys to compete. For instance, we have a hobby shop that sells a limited selection of Meade and Celestron gear. But, it's never quite the stuff I need. And, their large telescopes just don't move. I think the LX90 they've had as a floor model has been in there for years...
Only large warehouse type places such as Astronomics, OPT, or Anacortes are able to really make a difference and I imagine if we looked at their books we'd find that online sales account for a large proportion of their profits.
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wolfman_4_ever
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 07/15/11
Loc: El Segundo, Ca, So. Cal
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Re: astronomy stores going out of buisness?
[Re: Raginar]
#5627075 - 01/16/13 09:45 PM
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Main reason i won't buy from OPT. Outrageous California taxes and the shipping cost. Free shipping from out of state vendors is hard to beat. (Those that say they won't fib about the cost of an item when shipping over seas better be buying in state)
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Bill Weir
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 06/01/04
Loc: Metchosin (Victoria), Canada
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Re: astronomy stores going out of buisness?
[Re: Raginar]
#5627091 - 01/16/13 09:55 PM Attachment (152 downloads)
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Profit margins in the astronomy buisiness are small. Many are also smaller in floor space than their internet presence might suggest. I've been in many in Canada and they all had smaller floor space than I had expected. What once was actually a large one in Toronto has recently close. Also don't believe Anacortes is all that large. A year ago I stopped in there and was surprised to see how little floor and wall space was dedicated to Astronomy and Bird. The attached photo says what they are really all about. There were probably a dozen guys working there and only one of them had rudimentary knowledge of what I was asking about. The rest all seemed more than well aquainted with their other product line.
Bill
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stratocaster
sage
Reged: 10/27/11
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Re: astronomy stores going out of buisness?
[Re: wolfman_4_ever]
#5627107 - 01/16/13 10:02 PM
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There was a Pocono Mountain Optics that opened up here in Las Vegas, NV sometime in the mid to late 1990s. I had read on-line that they had a lot of positive reviews from buyers in their original location out east. I was excited to have them locally. It was a very small shop, but that's where I purchased my first "serious" equipment. But then the owner retired, I think, and they just closed up some time in the early 2000s.
That only left Scope City, which has recently closed its doors.
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herrointment
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 03/12/11
Loc: North of Hwy. 64
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Re: astronomy stores going out of buisness?
[Re: stratocaster]
#5627182 - 01/16/13 10:44 PM
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A picture is worth a thousand words.
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Jon Isaacs
Postmaster
Reged: 06/16/04
Loc: San Diego and Boulevard, CA
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Re: astronomy stores going out of buisness?
[Re: stratocaster]
#5627426 - 01/17/13 04:26 AM
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There was a Pocono Mountain Optics that opened up here in Las Vegas, NV sometime in the mid to late 1990s. I had read on-line that they had a lot of positive reviews from buyers in their original location out east. I was excited to have them locally. It was a very small shop, but that's where I purchased my first "serious" equipment. But then the owner retired, I think, and they just closed up some time in the early 2000s.
That only left Scope City, which has recently closed its doors.
Pocono Mountain Optics was an large east coast based store that went under due to the owner's personal problems, if I am not mistaken, it was a gambling debt. Maybe that small Las Vegas branch had something to do with it. I believe the employees resurrected the store as High Point Scientific.
Scope City is the most recent name vendor to go under. I was no surprise to me, I could never figure how they stayed in business. For years, the San Diego store had a large inventory of Parks Equatorially mounted Newtonians but no Dobsonians. About 14 years ago my wife and I moved to within a 1/2 mile of the store but a couple of answers like "we don't believe in Laser Collimators" was all it took. OPT is about 25 miles up the road, they got my business. If I needed something, Scope City never even entered my consciousness.
- Apogee Inc. I don't know what happened to them but I used to love their ads and their affordable products, some of which were very poorly made, some quite good.
- WholeSale Optics: This was an east coast based online store that advertised great prices. It was no surprise when they went under. I once tried to buy something from them. Called them up, arranged for the order, 3 Celestron Plossls, and then was told I would have to send a check, the order was too small (well over $100) to use a Visa... So instead I called Woodland Hills Camera and Telescope and received the excellent service that Farah is know for.
There are others, look through an old sky and telescope and there are lots of companies that are no longer around but I suspect that is always the case, it is difficult to run a successful business. I am sure that internet savvy and market sense are important but just good business is also important.
As far as OPT being a large store. It's a beautiful store and for a telescope store it's big, but compared to your local supermarket, it's small.
Jon
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Joe Bergeron
Vendor - Space Art
Reged: 11/10/03
Loc: Upstate NY
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Re: astronomy stores going out of buisness?
[Re: Jon Isaacs]
#5627433 - 01/17/13 04:43 AM
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The original Pocono Mountain store in PA was a nice place, located a couple of hours from where I live, and I visited it several times. The owner was an amiable guy and great to deal with. I hated to witness his downfall.
At one time in Sedona there was a small store than carried two product lines: telescopes and vacuum cleaners. I don't know if it's still there, but I'd like to think so.
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Paul G
Post Laureate
Reged: 05/08/03
Loc: Freedonia
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Re: astronomy stores going out of buisness?
[Re: herrointment]
#5627557 - 01/17/13 07:46 AM
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A picture is worth a thousand words.
Indeed. One never knows when buying over the internet. Here are pictures of some online camera storefronts:
Brooklyn camera storefronts
Amateur astronomers have always had the reputation among dealers of being very "frugal." Some say it goes back to the ATM days. But in the internet age when people can easily price shop and will buy elsewhere to save $5 it's impossible to support a storefront. Retail space is expensive and it's hard to compete with a box cross shipper who doesn't have the overhead of the retail space, inventory, or staff. Despite the woofing and tweeting we see here in threads complaining about the lack of tech support or spare parts available from the online stores the fact is that most aren't willing to pay the extra it costs to buy from their local store. And it goes out of business. Add to that the big scope companies publishing MRSP's that leave the retailer sometimes low single digit profit and it gets pretty dismal. Add a crippling economy that isn't getting better to the mix and it's surprising that they have hung in there as long as they have.
Astro stores don't always just fade away gently. A large one in California a few years ago rolled over holding over $30,000 in deposits for Losmandy equipment alone. They were still taking deposits the week before they folded, customers lost their money.
Amateur astronomy is a very small niche market in the first place, absolutely dwarfed by birding. Birding optics and guns are far more profitable and help keep places like Anacortes open. Astronomics has birding business. Hands on Optics is a packing/shipping store that sells scopes. Company 7's custom optics for NASA and others keeps their amateur astro store open.
Edited by Paul G (01/17/13 08:15 AM)
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FirstSight
Postmaster
Reged: 12/26/05
Loc: Raleigh, NC
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Re: astronomy stores going out of buisness?
[Re: Paul G]
#5627609 - 01/17/13 08:36 AM
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In Raleigh, we are fortunate to have a camera store catering to photography professionals and serious amateurs that maintains a decent astronomy section (for example, they're a Televue dealer with plenty of in-stock eyepieces) [Southeastern Camera on Atlantic Avenue]. They keep some very useful items on-hand such as Telrads or Dew Controller units, and are dealers for enough other things that they can order much of what else you might need. They clearly depend on the photography trade for maintaining a profitable business, and only carry the astronomy equipment as a break-even sideline because the principal owner of the business likes indulging in it and the people who come into his store because of the astro equipment.
IMHO there simply isn't enough market for more than a handful of full-time brick-and-morter astronomy equipment businesses to keep going, except in online form, e.g. our sponsor Astronomics. Most of them are like Southeastern Camera or Anacortes, who do astronomy as a sideline because the proprietor likes having it as part of the business, not because it makes them rich doing so.
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csrlice12
Post Laureate
Reged: 05/22/12
Loc: Denver, CO
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Re: astronomy stores going out of buisness?
[Re: Paul G]
#5627610 - 01/17/13 08:39 AM
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Yep, Here in Denver, while we have a few high-end astronomy equipment mfgs (JMI, Collins I3), we have only one actual telescope store (S&S Optica). It by no means is a large business. The building looks like an old convenience store, it's not large, maybe a coouple thousand square feet. Theres a dozen or so new scopes on display and quite a few used items (nice though). She's got a little used Meade 2045 Schmidt Cass that's calling my name (trying to resist, wife would well, you know). They've been there for about 40 years now. Don't know how much longer as the owners appear in their 60s (reallly nice folks, and as knowledgeable as can be). They also host the local DAS for meetings occasionally and have monthly "star parties". I've bought both my scopes there. All I can say is TGFBMS (Thank God for Brick & Morter Stores), unlike some who've had to go thru the nightmare of putting together equipment with those IKEA instructions, when professionals do the work, your scope is delivered put together and properly collimated (gotta keep the dob that way though, doubtful I'll have to collimate the refractor ever again). I've went in there and asked many a question--they know me by name now--(is there a message there?) There is one drawback to having a brick and morter store---you tend to go there---and they have all these homeless eyepieces and scopes just sitting there in the room and in the display cases, just waiting for someone to come in and adopt them.
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MikeBOKC
Post Laureate
Reged: 05/10/10
Loc: Oklahoma City, OK
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Re: astronomy stores going out of buisness?
[Re: csrlice12]
#5627630 - 01/17/13 08:46 AM
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You guys all need to become Okies . . . 35 minutes down the road to Astronomics for me.
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okieav8r
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 03/01/09
Loc: Oklahoma!
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Re: astronomy stores going out of buisness?
[Re: Joe Bergeron]
#5627644 - 01/17/13 08:55 AM
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At one time in Sedona there was a small store than carried two product lines: telescopes and vacuum cleaners. I don't know if it's still there, but I'd like to think so.
There is a store in the town where I live here in Oklahoma, Steve's Pro Shop, that also carries two product lines. One side of the store is an Orion telescope shop, the other side is a bowling pro shop. The owner and I observe together occasionally. I bet MikeBOKC knows the place.
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Thomas Karpf
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 02/09/09
Loc: Newington, CT
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Re: astronomy stores going out of buisness?
[Re: Paul G]
#5627670 - 01/17/13 09:19 AM
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Internet savvy and the (temporary) ability to not charge sales tax for internet sales are certainly major contributors. Although I find Amazon convenient for stuff I don't need NOW, they're putting most brick-and-mortar bookstores out of business. I really think there needs to be a way for ALL internet sales to be sales-taxed to give brick-and-mortar a fighting chance. Perhaps something as simple as a 5% tax on everything, distributed to the states.
Never mind the expense of having a store-front and needing to man it.
Frankly, with the typical buyers' mindset of 'lowest price', it astonishes me that ANY astronomy web business (like Astronomics) can afford to have anyone even vaguely knowledgable answer questions over the phone or email.
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EFT
Vendor - Deep Space Products
Reged: 05/07/07
Loc: Phoenix, AZ
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Re: astronomy stores going out of buisness?
[Re: herrointment]
#5627741 - 01/17/13 10:12 AM
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A picture is worth a thousand words.
You got that right.  It's obvious where the bigger profit is.
I was surprised the first time I went into OPT and saw how small the showroom was. The internet has actually allowed some of the these companies to grow substantially while only having to pay for more warehouse space rather than showroom space and the accompanying overhead. There use to be 3 brick and mortor dealers here in the Phoenix area. The only one that survives today is a semi-retired gentleman that owns his very old building and is only open 4 afternoons a week and this is in a part of the country generally considered very good for astronomy.
In this economy particularly, having a showroom and the associated overhead and employee costs is pretty much a non-starter. For those with big wallets to start with, it is easier and more economical to concentrate on the internet and work out of a warehouse. For those of us who are smaller, it is easier to concentrate on providing custom solutions to fit exact needs and rely on drop shipping many things rather than stocking.
It is disappointing to not be able to put hands on to equipment that often benefits from being able to see and touch it before buying, but those days are mostly gone and will not likely return. Many small shops are gone and even some large ones and by all indications we could even loose one of the big manufacturers. Times are still tough out there. I just happy that this hobby perseveres as well as it does.
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Footbag
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 04/13/09
Loc: Scranton, PA
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Re: astronomy stores going out of buisness?
[Re: Thomas Karpf]
#5627771 - 01/17/13 10:31 AM
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I really think there needs to be a way for ALL internet sales to be sales-taxed to give brick-and-mortar a fighting chance. Perhaps something as simple as a 5% tax on everything, distributed to the states.
I completely agree. We need a national tax on Internet sales. No matter what their specialty is, specialty retailers are going out all over the place. They need a level playing field.
Internet vendors still take advantage of national and state infrastructure, yet they only pay sales tax to a single state on a small portion of their sales.
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csrlice12
Post Laureate
Reged: 05/22/12
Loc: Denver, CO
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Re: astronomy stores going out of buisness?
[Re: Footbag]
#5627783 - 01/17/13 10:42 AM
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I say we don't need a sales tax...period. We're already taxed for earning it and saving it...and now for spending it......beginning to think that money was created by an insane fingerless tribe counter (the one who counted everybody after the latest hungry animal attack on his fingers). Would be nice to have their dark skies though, eh?
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Tom Polakis
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 12/20/04
Loc: Tempe, Arizona
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Re: astronomy stores going out of buisness?
[Re: kbastro]
#5627791 - 01/17/13 10:46 AM
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The Astronomy Shoppe was a large scope store in Phoenix that closed around 2000. The owner also did car window screens, and that business was his real moneymaker. He couldn't take the stress of running a telescope shop that had such small margins, and put all of his energy into the screen store.
That leaves Phoenix - a city of 4 million in a location with great astronomy climate - with only one very small telescope store. Most of us make the 1 1/2 hour drive to Tucson to Starizona or Stellar Vision if we want to buy astronomy equipment from a place with a showroom.
Tom
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csa/montana
Den Mama
Reged: 05/14/05
Loc: montana
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Re: astronomy stores going out of buisness?
[Re: Paul G]
#5627817 - 01/17/13 10:56 AM
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Astronomics has birding business.
I would say Astronomics main business is astronomy, with their new showroom!
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George Methvin
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 01/30/06
Loc: Central Texas
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Re: astronomy stores going out of buisness?
[Re: Footbag]
#5627838 - 01/17/13 11:07 AM
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It's a hard buisness to be in. Not like selling cars or TV that people buy every year or so. I have been in this hobbie for over 40 years and have only bought 4 brand new telescope in that time plus a dozen or so eyepeice from vendors. These stores depends of those folks that have, or need to have the latest new astro toys that come out. Or new people just getting in to this hobbie. I know many folk here on these fourms that go through several telescopes and new mounts every year or so. These are the folks that help keep the Astronomy store going. If these Astronomy store depended on folks like me to keep them going they would be in bad shape.  I am one of those folks that when I buy a car I keep it for at lest seven years or more but many folks buy a new car every year, those are the folks Auto dealers love.
Edited by George Methvin (01/17/13 11:17 AM)
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