AUSTIN, Texas — Holiday sales launched on Black Friday, but Cyber Monday brings many more online deals for those looking to wrap up holiday shopping in a span of four days.
For a few years, King's Hobby Shop has run any online sales through their eBay Market. Before Christmas comes around, King's Hobby Shop will have a new online store for shoppers.
"[Hobby shops] have been online for awhile, for a couple of decades now, but I don’t think you really see hobby shops really at the forefront with the cutting edge technology which is what we’re trying to do," Marc Hobbs, the owner of King's Hobby Shop, said.
Hobbs added many hobby shop websites are pretty basic with their content, compared to other online retailers like Amazon or eBay.
"You see a lot that are kind of just place-holders where it’s like, ‘Here we are and here’s what we do,’ and that’s about it," Hobbs said.
In that vein, Hobbs will be changing that with the store's new website. It's been a year or so in the making and will bring the personal experience customers have in the store to the web.
“[Currently] it’s not dynamic, you can’t like chat with someone on the site and get reviews of brand new kits that are coming out and that sort of thing and that’s what we’re trying to implement in the new site," Hobbs said.
Hobbs bought the store in 2009 and almost immediately implemented an eBay site for the shop's products and consignment opportunities for hobbyists. With the new web store almost online, the eBay site will slowly be taken down.
This all stems from increasing numbers of customers making orders online or over the phone based on what they see elsewhere on the web.
“We’re also beginning to see, ‘My kid saw this on YouTube, and he wants to build a model.’ That’s pretty exciting," Dave Edgerly, an employee at King's Hobby, said.
Customers seeing products on YouTube and other social media sites inspired Hobbs to create social media pages of his own for the shop. He rarely logs on for personal use.
“We have followers on Instagram that want to see what’s new, what’s going on," Hobbs said. "Also if you want to go to a train show in Dallas, but you live in San Antonio, we'll post videos and pictures so even if you're not there, it kind of feels like you are."
Hobbs noted the shop's pages will also post videos on YouTube of new products, live stream events and post pictures to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
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