Transair Fairoaks closing:-(

[18greens]

I've just heard the excellent shop at Fairoaks is closing. Thats sad.

[aviate1138]

Maybe they charged too much? Or spent too much money on shiny flying machines?

[A and C]

With such a good service by mail via the internet why have the shops?

[Nibbler]

Have we somehow totally lost the need to touch and examine a product before buying it? The online option is good for many items but it does have limits.

Hope all the staff get jobs quickly.

[PompeyPaul]

I am sad to see it go. Before I started flying I used to go in there and dream of getting my PPL. My girlfriend, of the time, told me I had a choice of doing my PPL or marrying her.

Today I have my PPL and a new fiancee. Sorry to see the shop go. On a slightly less sentimental note I wondered how they could justify charging £24.99 for a torch, when something that does the same job could be bought in Sainsburys for £2.99

[IO540]

AFAIK Transair run their mail order warehouse from their Shoreham place, and obviously one doesn't need more than one location for that. So a retail shop located anywhere else would not have the economies inherent in being next door to the warehouse which has all the stock.

As a businessman of over 30 years, I do find it amazing how these shops can make money, selling 95% the same stuff today as they did when I started flying nearly 10 years ago. Most of the stuff that moves is ATPL training material and all of that can be done mail order.

Transair have a very good level of customer service but nothing can make it easy to make money in a business where most people are just passing through, and at the PPL level of things (the bulk of local airfield walk-in business, I reckon) giving up flying permanently within a year or two, without having spent any money on anything beyond a kneeboard.

Aviation is in desperate need of innovation. When I started flying, maybe 90% of pilots thought that GPS was illegal, and that figure has probably improved to some 50% today.

Harry M has a seemingly better formula, selling certified avionics on top of the usual retail tat. Unfortunately they are restricted as to who they can sell it to because e.g. Garmin are very tight on where their panel mount stuff goes.

[expedite08]

Transair are good but they do sell a lot of 'toys'. Another up and comming victim of the downturn???

[Fuji Abound]

Transair run their mail order warehouse from their Shoreham place

It would not seem a good time to have half your total asset value in stock.

[herman the crab]

Before I started flying I used to go in there and dream of getting my PPL. My girlfriend, of the time, told me I had a choice of doing my PPL or marrying her.

Today I have my PPL and a new fiancee.

Classic! :) :ok:

HTC

[Fuji Abound]

new fiancee

What happened to the old one?

[NutLoose]

Fuji AboundQuote:
new fiancee
What happened to the old one?

She probably settled for a Woolies shopper instead :p

[MartinCh]

PP: My girlfriend, of the time, told me I had a choice of doing my PPL or marrying her.
NL: She probably settled for a Woolies shopper instead
Any female giving such ultimatum asks for it - dumping/leaving - (and is NOT worth it in the first place). Not going into details.

[IO540]

Couldn't agree more.

Anybody who chooses a partner who disagrees with one's chosen lifestyle, hobbies, etc is a mug.

As the old saying goes.... the man hopes the woman will not change (but she does) while the woman hopes the man will change (but he doesn't) :)

[rotorboater]

Had a girlfriend that gave me the ultimatum of her or sailing, I told her to pass me my life jacket ;)

[Sciolistes]

Shame. I used Transair at Fairoaks frequently. I shudder to think how many thousands I've spent there! I definitely preferred visiting the shop to have a play with stuff like expensive stuff like GPS and to thumb through the books prior to purchase. But it has to be said whenever I visited, the place was bereft of other custom.

[BackPacker]

I live close to the Luchtvaart Hobby Shop in Aalsmeer. It's a huge place, mostly catering to the hobby/spotter crowd but they do have some pilot stuff too. Just the section with the little replica aircraft, in every possible paint scheme of every airline around the world, must be a minimum of 20 m2. Not to mention the aviation history bookstore section or the section of glue-together-yourself aircraft.

I have never seen that shop with more than 10 customers inside. I can't believe they're able to pay the five or so staff that seems to be the minimum they have around. And their location isn't cheap either: they're located in a highly popular, very expensive business park very near to Schiphol airport.

[IO540]

What we don't know is the business profile.

More and more people are shopping online because travel/transport is such a waste of time and usually pretty unpleasant. In the UK, the # of cars on the road has gone up some 3 x over the past 30 years, and driving has gone from being a fun activity (tearing around the country lanes in one's new XR3i :) ) to a hassle to be avoided at all costs.

The internet has transformed the buying scene, and most people who are intelligent are shopping online. The High Street is largely filled with stores selling the "dumb fashion" products: £1 t-shirts, mobile phones, etc.

My business (industrial electronics) is about 10% down over a year ago (not bad for the present economic climate) but the phone is a lot quieter than it was a year ago, and 10x quieter than it was 10 years ago when I was doing 1/5 of the business. Today, anybody with a brain (and all my products are sold to relatively smart people) goes to the website and gets clued-up there.

For all we know, Transair are doing just fine but it's all going by mail order.

Let's face it, GA itself is just about impossible without the internet. You need it for weather, notams, even filing flight plans is now possible.

And 99% of the pilot shop merchandise has not changed for so many years.... every pilot has seen a Garmin 496 or whatever a hundred times and doesn't need to finger the real thing in a shop before purchasing it.

[Fright Level]

Any retailer that doesn't move with the times is going to get slaughtered, one by their internet competitors and second by the economy. I needed a couple of aviation items this week and late in the evening, I went to an online merchant, clicked what I needed and the second morning after they arrived by post. I paid £3 for shipping but the items were discounted compared to Transair and I didn't have to leave the house despite the nearest Transair shop being just a couple of miles away.

Look at how well Amazon, Screwfix etc are set up and look at the proof in Woolworths, MFI etc to show that piling shelves high with tat won't work forever.

[Fuji Abound]

For all we know, Transair are doing just fine but it's all going by mail order.

IO540

See my earlier comment which might indicate otherwise.

I was surprised their foray into yachting and boating apparel was not more successful.

Hopefully a good time to retrench, but not easy with so much stock.

However, low interest rates and low(ish) rent should help. The real problems for many might come if inflation takes off and interest rates go up. That should prove interesting for all those currently being coerced into lending more so we can borrow more.

[airborne_artist]

Look at how well Amazon, Screwfix etc are set up and look at the proof in Woolworths, MFI etc to show that piling shelves high with tat won't work forever.

Though Screwfix, and its competitor, ToolStation, have both just opened outlets in Oxford. They each have quite a few now.

The new Woolies is Wilkinsons - I was in the Oxford one on Sat - pick n'mix, paint, bike locks, cleaning stuff and pallets of sugar and tinned food. It was heaving with customers at 4.30 pm.

[IO540]

Fuji - are you speaking with knowledge of Transair's published accounts? I haven't seen them (and have no reason to).

I wonder how much of their "stock" is loan stock. I used to know somebody who ran a hi-fi shop, and almost none of his stock was paid for. It was on a permanent "sale or return" from the manufacturers. I also happen to know somebody who used to make specialist top-end hi-fi and he found the business (the aforementioned hi-fi shops) absolutely horrid to deal with because he had a load of stuff out on this permanent loan system and didn't get paid for anything until the item was sold, and then he had to send out another "SOR" item to replace the one that got sold :)

These days, a lot of mail order business is done by 3rd party order fulfilment. You buy a Miele fridge from some online shop, but the fridge is delivered directly by Miele. The online shop is entirely virtual - no stock carried. I have no knowledge of how online pilot shops work but obviously the more valuable items could be done that way.

Also, 80% of stock is likely to be slow moving anyway but hopefully it makes up only 20% of the stock value :) Also, the slow moving low-value stuff is going to be helluva high margin stuff - a fuel sampler for £10 which comes from China for £0.30.

If I was running a pilot shop, I would make sure that only the old tat (like fuel samplers) is actually stocked, and I would buy it from China in bulk, for next to nothing. And I would do the high value stuff (GPSs etc) either mostly on back to back ordering, or by 3rd party fulfilment by getting e.g. Garmin to despatch the item direct.

[BackPacker]

In addition to this, I would also try to keep a grasp of what items are current, and heavily discount the ones that are not.

In the shop I mentioned, they are very happy to sell outdated VFR charts at full price, and they'll even sell you Bottlang binders for the full price. No discounts possible, even if you mention that the stuff is no longer current.

[IO540]

I am 99% sure these shops must have a stock protection deal on stuff that expires (charts etc). Like newspaper shops which return unsold newsprint.

If they haven't got stock protection, the pilot shop business must be a mug's game. Unless they buy these products for practically nothing (say 5% of selling price), which I am sure is not the case, especially with anything where UK Ordnance Survey is even remotely involved ;)