By maintaining a retail division, isn’t Walthers competing with the hobby shops it distributes to?
The hobby of model railroading thrives on personal service. Walthers has long acknowledged that a local hobby shop can always give better service than a mail order house. And we regularly encourage hobbyists to patronize local shops, where they can get direct service and informed answers to their questions. We also encourage you to build a relationship with your shop owner as you grow in the hobby. As a distributor, we want to provide the best service we can to hobby shop owners; our service to them enables shops to provide you with the kind of service you have a right to expect. Still, we consistently get requests for online orders. These come from hobbyists who do not have easy access to a hobby shop, but who nevertheless want to buy products listed in our reference books and sale catalogs. Through our web site, Walthers is serving these customers. Many of our activities — from publishing our reference books to setting up walthers.com — contribute to our effort to stimulate modeling
