I wanted to say thanks to the group for such thorough and thought-provoking responses. In my best beer commercial imitation: "I love you guys" I recently turned 40 and I hear "do what you love", so I admit I have been thinking about how to earn a living in some astronomy-related field. Joe - I'm sure you're right about not enough walk-in customers. I was also thinking about other revenue sources besides telescope sales, such as services, education, private star parties, and probably some other stuff I haven't thought of. Chuck - I hear you about the storefront. I was thinking I could skip the minimum wage employees and run the place myself. But then you said "knowledgeable salespeople with a background in astronomy and optics" and I realized that's not me! Dave - Bill helped me a ton when he was at Inkleys. I loved chatting with him about scope and accessories, and digging through shelves and boxes looking for obscure parts. Seth - thanks for the insight. I'm glad Clark still has a section for telescopes and accessories. I admit that I do the same thing - shop in person and buy online - especially when the prices go up. Mat - I'm glad to know your scopes are for sale. I can say from personal experience they are amazing! Wayne - interesting news about Scope City. I went to the Costa Mesa store a few weeks ago and was surprised to find it was gone! I had a really good experience with the guy there named Mike who helped me with my 10"SCT when I first bought it. He collimated it for free, gave me the tools he used for free, gave me a Meade camera piggy-back bracket for free, and sold me a very nice 2" diagonal and 36mm eyepiece that I love. At least I can scratch "open ScopeCity franchise" off my list! Thanks again for the discussion. Dion ________________________________ From: Seth Jarvis <SJarvis@slco.org> To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Saturday, July 6, 2013 4:32 PM Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Retail astronomy in Utah I can offer a little perspective on this. Margins on telescopes are very small because most manufacturers are trying to simultaneously support a dealer network, sell from their own websites and sell through other online retailers such as Amazon. It's not just telescopes, _all_ consumer products retailers with brick & mortar stores are finding that if you don't also aggressively offer an online sales system your days are numbered. We charge sales tax, but Amazon doesn't. When you're buying something for less than $100 that's not such a big deal, but when you're spending well into four digits _and_ online stores increasingly offer free or dirt-cheap shipping, _and_ they're discounting below MSRP, customers will buy online in order to save a couple of hundred bucks. Price is everything these days. I've lost count of the people who've told me, "Yeah that's a cool telescope but Amazon sells it for $50 less and they don't charge sales tax and with Amazon Prime I get free shipping, so thanks for showing it to me, but I'm going to buy it online." Seriously, they were comparison shopping our floor models and then using their smartphones to order from Amazon while standing right there. They're proud of it. And can I really blame them? By buying that 8" go-to SC online they've saved themselves more than $150. Plus they don't have to figure out how to lug the thing home - it's being delivered to them. People who are serious about telescopes are generally tech-savvy enough to shop online, they know what they want, so they search online for the best price. I'd adore being a full-service stocking retailer of high quality telescopes and accessories, but today's consumer purchasing behavior in a market of our size just doesn't support that business model. If you figure out how to make that work here, please let me know and I'll apply for a job with you. Seth