Post by RLFoster on Feb 1, 2020 14:14:12 GMT -6
(Click to see Article)
After over 65 years in business, a staple of the Pensacola hobby community, Bobe's Hobby House, is no more. In addition to myself, I know that both Bucky and Mark have had the pleasure of perusing the aisles of this store. While I hadn't been in the new store location anywhere near as often as their old one, it's still disappointing to see this convenient local store close it's doors.
Bobe's was the primary reason I got back into modeling around 2000 - 2001. While still on active duty in the Air Force, I accompanied our unit supply NCO on a trip out to town to buy supplies for the USAF technical training schools on NAS Pensacola. One of our stops was Bobe's where we bought bulk quantities of X-Acto blades and occasionally micro drill bits. While the supply NCO was doing his thing in the back, I took the opportunity to check out the model aisles -- my first such time looking at models in more than 15 years. Several models caught my attention and that very weekend I returned to Bobe's and bought the Tamiya 1/35 scale Early Tiger, a rattle can of grey spray paint, several bottles of enamel, a couple brushes, a sprue cutter, and some glue. By Sunday night I had a (poorly) completely built model sitting on my kitchen table and I was hooked like a big mouth bass!
Over the years, I returned to Bobe's quite regularly for both model kits and supplies. Sometimes I would just pop in to "shoot the poop" for a couple hours, but inevitably bought at least one bottle of paint or a new brush on may way out the door. Even when they first moved to their newer location - which was about three times as far away from my house as before - I tried to stop in at least once every month or two, but I found that more and more difficult as the years went by.
While the article above does a good job of telling the story of Bobe's, it really doesn't cover the real reasons why the store closed. I'm certain that the drop in business was not the only reason Mike decided to close shop. Over the past three years his oldest employee, Bob Davis, passed away (Mike discovered the body) and after trying to stay with the shop after it's move, Ken, his second oldest employee decided to retire last year. While the newer and younger employees he hired tried, they just couldn't replace decades of lost experience and customer service. As expected, Mike was forced to deal with a lot of "little issues" that previously were handled for him. Register cash counts didn't match, inventory was either misplaced or not properly input in the computer, and customer complaints began to rise. With all of his family either gone or not interested in the business, Mike finally decided it just wasn't worth the effort anymore -- I think that's the biggest reason for the closure.
Thankfully, we still have another non-big box hobby shop (we have those too) in Pensacola, John's Models, and he's indicated that he'll try to pick up the slack now that Bobe's is gone. However, it will still be strange not to be able to just zip over to Bobe's for that bottle of paint, package of Plastruct or Evergreen, brush, or glue. I know I'll miss it and feel bad that the kids growing up today will never get a chance to walk the aisles. It's truly the end of an era...
