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5) Keep it small. Keep it cheap. Al always had a very modest space. His shops were in the greater Detroit area, so rent was relatively cheap. London, NYC, DC are always going to be tough for retail.
Actually, at least in the Northern Virginia suburbs of DC, we are pretty well-served with hobby shops. This is is probably due to the large number of people in the military and the defense industry here and the relatively high incomes in our area. We also have large and active IPMS chapter in Northern Virginia and I was blown away last April by the one-day show Northern Virginia IPMS puts on: The Model Classic. The size and quality of the show for a local show was incredibly impressive.
Also, someone who just got back into modelling last year after being away nearly 40 years and has spent those 40 years as an active board wargamer (still my primary hobby, but, fortunately, there is overlap with modelling), I've been reading the same type of discussion about the board wargaming hobby, i.e., the hobby is graying, the hobby in dying, no kids are interested in it, the local hobby/game stores are all closing, etc.
However, in both cases, I think the "death of the hobby talk" is both inaccurate and is often based on a view of a history of the hobby that is also inaccurate.
As someone getting back into modelling, I can not tell you how blown away I am by all the choices of models. The number of 1/35 WWI tank models alone kitted in the last 5 years is amazing to me. Never in my wildest dreams when I was modelling back in the 70s could I have conceived that there would be two competing highly detailed 1/35 models of the Whippet tank released during the same year. Yet, that actually happened last year. And the quality of details and molding in many (but not all) kits today is just amazing, particularly in comparison with the 60s and 70s.
Also, although I am not very familiar with the history of modelling magazines, but the number still published today seems like a pretty decent number.
But no, plastic models are not a mass-market item like they were in the 60s and 70s I don't see them in drug stores, toy stores like Toys "R" Us and variety stores like I used to do when I was a kid (although I do seem models in arts & crafts stores, a type of store which hardly existed back in the 60s and 70s). But, in the days of models being mass-market items, the number of subjects was really limited. You only saw the most popular subjects and usually only one variant from each company at each scale (see most of the 1/48 Monogram aircraft, for example). Also, until Tamiya began to enter the U.S. market, most armor models were incredibly inaccurate and the selection of subject matter available at any one time was really limited.
Also, during the mass-market era of plastic models back in the 60s, 70s and 80s how many kids actually considered themselves serious modelers? My guess is, very few. Most kids would go through a phase when they built a few models and give it up, similar to way there would be a phase when they played boardgames and gave it up.
My guess is that serious modelling has probably always been a niche hobby (just like board wargames).
I will also say that as a kid growing up in the suburbs of DC, I was lucky to have a nice local hobby shop. But even then, plastic models were just one side of one aisle. And I'm sure that fads, such as slot cars, were every bit as important to the hobby store's bottom line as drones are today.
I would also bet that kids in smaller towns were often not so lucky to have a decent hobby store. One of the things that I think is under-appreciated about the Internet is how it allows many people who do not live near big cities to be active members of a niche hobby by allowing them access to the same hobby resources that used to be available only to people living in or near big cities.
So, from someone getting back into the hobby in 2015, the scale modelling hobby looks pretty healthy to me.
