Posted By:
LetsGoBucsFrom the NY Times...in an article about the economic impact to smaller businesses:
Some are also nervous about their sales. Michael Frome, 40, a partner in Fromeco Scale Avionics, says they are way off. He and a partner lease space in a hangar in Sandy, Ore., where they and three employees build parts for remote-controlled model airplanes not the balsa wood variety, but steel planes with wing spans up to 10 feet. Hobbyists buy them for $5,000 to $10,000 and often race them.
A month ago, Mr. Frome realized that the hobbyists, most of them men over 50 with six-figure incomes, had all but stopped buying the planes and replacement parts including a new electronic device, developed by Fromeco, that logs flight data. Sales plummeted from a $1 million annual rate to half that level, and they are still falling.
Mr. Frome attributes the sudden drop-off to the sophistication of the hobbyists, whom he describes as conversant with Wall Street, investors themselves and shocked more than most by the current debacle.
I think my customers are quickly reducing their discretionary spending to near zero and squirreling away money, Mr. Frome said. Fear and uncertainty grip them.
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Sounds like very similar demographic to vintage baseball card collectors with perhaps an age difference.