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Metrowest Daily News
Small-scale operation
By Greg Turner/ Daily News Staff
Monday, March 20, 2006
Shortly after quitting his sales job at a machine tool company in October 2001, Bob Rice went to a hobby store in Bellingham to buy a remote-controlled race car for his 8-year-old son Bobby.
To paraphrase the late Victor Kiam, the one-time owner of the New England Patriots who appeared in TV ads pitching his Remington electric shavers, Rice liked Hobby USA so much, he bought the store.
Well, first Rice got a job there.
"I went to the store to buy a race car for my son's birthday, and the next thing I know I was working part time for the holidays," Rice said. "Then in February 2002, I started working on a plan to purchase the store."
What sealed the deal was Hobby USA owner Dick Cafarelli's decision to retire to Florida and sell the business to Rice, his neighbor in Ashland.
Cafarelli had opened Hobby USA, which is one of 186 franchises in HobbyTown USA's nationwide chain, in 1990 in the Shaw's supermarket plaza on Pond St. in Ashland. He moved the store to Bellingham two years later.
Rice took over the store in August 2002 and operated it in Bellingham until March 1, when he brought it back "home" to Ashland, in a space directly across the street from Shaw's. Hobby USA is located at 316 Pond St., in the Sears Hardware Plaza.
The store carries all kinds of popular hobby product lines, including radio-controlled cars, boats and planes; scale models; strategy and collectible card games; model railroad products; kites and rockets; metal detectors; telescopes and puzzles.
By the front door, a huge cardboard box sits on the floor. It contains a model of a P-47D Thunderbolt 150 Razorback plane with an 81-inch wing span and a gas-powered engine. The price tag says $569.99.
In a room in the back of the store that's stocked with railroad and electric race cars, a shelf holds a box with an Acela Express model train that goes for $219.99.
Small boxes with plastic models -- there's a recent product featuring Daisy Duke's white Jeep from "The Dukes of Hazzard" -- run half the length of one wall, above racks of paints and painting tools.
Rice is proud about the wide range of products he has on his shelves.
"Without being arrogant, I don't think there's a hobby store like this within 70 miles," he said, adding that there are no other HobbyTown franchises in Massachusetts. "Other stores are tiny and may specialize in trains or models. That's always been the (HobbyTown USA) corporate philosophy: diversity."
In Ashland, Hobby USA has about 3,400 square feet of retail space, about 50 percent more than what he had in Bellingham. Rice relocated because his former landlord wanted to boost his rent by nearly $3,000 to $10,000 a month.
"See ya!" was what Rice told them.
Though it has been less than a month since the move, Rice is confident he will not lose too much business because he believes his store is a draw for serious hobbyists.
"Any time a business moves, there's a fear of losing your customer base," he said. "What we found is we're a destination store. People will seek you out."
The store is nine miles away from where it was before, but it is closer to a more populated area in Framingham and Natick and beyond.
"I'm also moving nine miles closer to Rte. 9, nine miles closer to the Pike and nine miles closer to 128," Rice said. "Instead of being on the southern outskirts (of MetroWest), I'm now in the center of it."
Rice, who lives a half-mile away from the store and co-owns the franchise with his wife, Crystal, said he has a lot of regular customers who won't have a problem getting to the new location.
"We have a good customer base and we're looking to expand it by coming to a larger demographic area," he said.
In the train area in the back room, Rice has set up a table with a few rings of track, a running electric train. It will eventually be decked out with detailed landscapes done by a regular customer and model train enthusiast.
"He offered to decorate it," Rice said. "It will probably always be a work in progress, so other people can see how to put together a train set, so you can see how to build the scenery and what scenery adds to it. The kids can come in and look at it and ooh and ah."
It's something that could evolve in anyone's basement, over time and with regular investments in engines, box cars, cabooses and tracks and switches. A basic starter set for electric trains costs about $40 to $50.
Remote-control land and air vehicles represents about 50 percent of Rice's business; the other half is everything else that's sold in the store.
Big remote-control planes -- whether powered by batteries or nitromethane gas -- are pretty popular. But the most powerful planes, which can fly at 60 mph and have a fast-spinning, potentially dangerous prop, require membership in the Academy of Model Aeronautics, a nonprofit sport aviation organization. There are many local clubs in the area.
"The whole idea is it's governed by a body and it's always suggested you join a club," Rice said. "We can sell (such a plane) and a customer can buy it and bring it home, but it's up to them to do the right thing."
Hobby USA sells slower-flying, battery-powered planes geared toward beginners or those who want to guide a toy above a large open space in the neighborhood.
"It's probably the largest sector that's growing, if you wanted to get into flying," he said.
The faster planes start at about $280 while the slower models run about $35 to $100. The radios are usually sold separately but some models come "ready to fly" with the controller right in the box.
For the record, the store is called Hobby USA, rather than HobbyTown USA, because there was already a hobby retailer called HobbyTown in Massachusetts when Cafarelli opened his shop in Ashland.
A lawsuit ensued, which Lincoln, Neb.-based HobbyTown USA won, but Cafarelli was already using Hobby USA -- instead of HobbyTown USA -- so he decided to keep it that way. Rice did too.
HOBBY USA
Owner: Bob Rice
Employees: Five part time
Industry: Retail
Company background: Hobby USA, a franchise store which recently moved to Pond Street in Ashland from Bellingham, sells a wide range of hobby products. The chain's Web site is www.hobbytown.com.
(Greg Turner can be reached at gturner@cnc.com or 508-626-3909.)
Created on 11/19/2006 02:09 PM by admin
Updated on 11/20/2006 05:57 AM by admin
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