Dear friends, bad news for UK modellers. ModelZone are set to appoint administrators in the next few days according to the Daily Telegraph. This will affect a number of towns and cities removing yet another source of kits, railways and diecast as well as toys from the High St. I hope they can continue in some form

That's a shame.

While vacationing last August in Scotland and England, I visited ModelZone stores on Glasgow, Nottingham, and London. Each store had some decent selections of items, a variety of discounted items, and helpful staffs.

They might be a chain store, but at least they catered to modeling and other hobbies.

On 26 June 2013, Richard Michael Hawes, Nicholas Guy Edwards and Robert James Harding of Deloitte LLP were appointed Joint Administrators of Modelzone Holdings Limited, The Amerang Group Limited, Modelzone Limited and Amerang Limited (together the "Companies"). The affairs, business and property of the Companies are being managed by the Joint Administrators. The Joint Administrators act as agents of the Companies only and contract without personal liability. The Joint Administrators are authorised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). All licensed Insolvency Practitioners of Deloitte LLP are licensed in the UK

Been to my local Liverpool shop for years and I ordered a Dragon tiger from them whilst I was in the shop last week

They use to be called Beatties many years ago before they got took over.

Very sad

Really dissapointed to hear this, I usually visit the Glasgow shop every other week, they had a good stock of paints and sundries, my current model came from them a couple of weeks ago. Hope something can rise from the ashes and the staff get sorted with something.

See this is what happens when business go under there is no one there to rescue them,but when a bank goes the same way the government are there to bail them out

Hello,

Sadly this has been on the cards for years. I used to buy all my kits and supplies from the store but I have not been in my local shop for almost a year because they stopped stocking the WW2 AFV that I wanted. My local store cut down the tank section to one small shelf and the store lost all relevance.I used to spend £100's in there but lack of range and my disposable income falling from a wage freeze and inflation meant I have not been in there in ages.

Also the store was staffed by young people who thought that serving you was a distraction from talking to each other, nothing like bad customer service to keep you out of the shop.

On hearing that they were going under I bought lots of thinner and some other heavy supplies before I would have to go 100% online. The guy that I spoke to said that the administrators would prpobably be launching a closing down sale this week (1st July 2013) so keep a close lookout. He also said that he did not know if he would have a job in a weeks time.

All very sad.

Sadly, doesn't surprise me one bit.

Saw the signs in my store early this year. The space for armour kits was halved to make room for more 'toys' and corgi die-casts.

Having said that, whilst I've bought a lot from them in the past, I've not been a good customer.

This is because I've always focussed on their bargains - I have got some very good deals that way.

Sadly, as a model shop it never really delivered. Bargains aside, prices were RRP (expensive) and the range restricted. Chances that they would have exactly what I wanted were always slim and even if they did, I could generally get it cheaper online even with P&P.

From beginning of this year, the range became very limited and the bargains very few so I haven't bought anything from them this year.

Cheers,

Nigel

I never really rated ModelZone as a proper "model shop". Poor selection of kits and far too much die-cast, railways and Star Wars type of stuff for my liking.

Is it really a model shop or a toy shop? A bit of both perhaps - and neither!

MZ is okay to kill half an hour or so while in town, and I have scored the occasional bargain Revell in there. But it's a poor substitute for those of us old enough to remember back to the 70s and 80s when you could find at least one REAL model shop in pretty much every town, packed to the rafters with a dazzling array of plastic kits, paints and general modelling paraphernalia.

I won't really miss it if it does disappear, though I do feel sorry for those who stand to lose their jobs. That to me is the saddest aspect of it.

- Steve

Certainly lack the range but I have had some great deals from them over the past through years - examples off the top of my head

Acadamy Achillies - £12
Acadamy Russian Sherman - £12
Academy Marine Sherman - £12
CyberHobby Stug and Crew - £20
Dragon Panther - £18
AFV-Club Churchill - £18
Revel SDKFZ 251/3 - £8

Cheers,

Nigel

Its interesting to see one thread talking about kit prices being too high, and then see another thread about a hobby shop closing ,and how sad it is. Yet, you mention usually only buying the bargains,clearance,and shopped mostly online...hmmm..makes you wonder why there arent more stores staying open to supply hobbyists with kits at their cost.

Hello Tim,

Its not as simple as that. The prices at modelzone were only ever a few Pounds more expensive than say E-models where I buy my models from. When you added in postage they were priced the same more or less.

The problem with model zone was availability, they cut down their tank section radically to make space for more "commercial" items and cut the amount of stock they had in. One of the staff members told me that they used to have 10 of the new model kits when they were released, when new management took over they were recieving 2 of each to save money.

This forced me to look online for a new supplier who could acutally supply me with tanks and that was E-models as I could never get the new kits in model zone.

The problem is that I and many others stopped even looking in there as we just assumed that they would not have anything that I was interested in. That and the abrasive kids they hired and poor customer service doomed them

S

Well a few things

1 - There range is pretty small. It is extremely unlikely that if you wanted model ABC from maker XYZ that you would be able to go to the store and buy it or even for them to get it in for you.

2 - If you were to see one of the shops you would probably say that it was more of a model toy shop than a true model shop. In terms of a model shop it isn't a great loss. I only mourn its loss as somewhere to browse for a few minutes when my wife drags me out shopping.

3 - They did have bargains now and then and they were great. But everything else was full RRP. Are you really saying that you would pay $75 for a kit in-store that you could get for $50 online?

Cheers,

Nigel

Never a good thing when a model store goes out of business.
Anyone know if the store in Merry Hill has any good offers on?

All stores currently have 10% -30% off all kits, and between 20% & 50% off paints etc. Got myself a few cars in Crawley last week, including my present for next Christmas!

the tricky thing is now convincing the girlfriend to give me a lift there in the morning ha